'Why did he do that?' asked Jack.
'Because he dresses his bargemen in all colours of the rainbow, and likes them to have answerable names. He has a Green, a Brown, a Black, a White, a Gray and even a Scarlet, and he fairly longed for my John Blew: offered me a brass nine-pounder he had taken from a French privateer. Somebody must have told him that Iris meant rainbow in Greek,' added Dundas, seeing that Jack still looked puzzled, if not downright stupid.
'Really?' said Jack. 'I had no idea. Yet perhaps he knew it before. He is quite a learned cove, and stayed at school till he was fifteen. What would he do if he had Amazon, I wonder?' - laughing heartily - 'But I do hate that way of making monkeys out of the men, you know. He is kissing his hand to someone this side of the street.'
'It is Mrs Chapel,' said Dundas, 'the master-attendant's wife.' And after a pause he cried, 'Look! There is the man I was telling you about, Allen, who knows so much about whaling. But I dare say you have already had a word with him.'
'Not I,' said Jack. 'I sent round to his lodgings, but he was not in the way. The people of the house said he was gone to Cadiz for a couple of days.' As he spoke he looked intently at Allen, a tall, upright, middle-aged man with a fine strong face, wearing the plain uniform of a master in the Royal Navy, and as he took off his hat to a superior officer, a lieutenant of barely twenty, Jack saw that his hair was grey. 'I like the look of him,' he said. 'Lord, how important it is to have a well-assorted set of officers, men that understand their calling and that do not quarrel.'
'Of course,' said Dundas. 'It makes all the difference between a happy commission and a wretched one. Have you managed to do anything about your lieutenants?'
'Yes, I have,' said Jack 'and I think I have solved the problem. Tom Pullings has very handsomely suggested coming along as a volunteer, as I thought he would; and even if Rowan don't join from Malta before we sail, I can give Honey or Maitland an acting order: after all, both you and I were acting lieutenants, taking a watch, before their age.'
'What about the port-admiral and his young man?'
'I utterly refuse to have that niminy-piminy blackguard on my quarterdeck,' said Jack. 'The port-admiral may be damned.'
'I should like to see you telling him so, ha, ha, ha!' said Dundas.
Happily the need did not arise. As soon as Jack walked into his office Admiral Hughes cried, 'Oh Aubrey, I am afraid I must disappoint you of young Metcalf. His mother has found him a place in the Sea Fencibles. But sit down, sit down; you look quite fagged.' So he did: Jack Aubrey was a tall, burly man, and the labour of propelling his sixteen stone about the reverberating sun-baked Rock from dawn till dusk and beyond, trying to urge slow officials into equally brisk motion, was telling on him. 'On the other hand,' continued the Admiral, 'I have just the master you need. He sailed with Colnett - you know about Colnett, Aubrey?'
'Why, sir, I believe most officers that attend to their profession are tolerably well acquainted with Captain Colnett and his book,' said Jack.
'Sailed with Colnett,' said the Admiral, nodding, 'and is a thorough-going seaman, according to all accounts.' He rang the bell. 'Desire Mr Allen to walk in,' he said to the clerk.
It was just as well that Dundas had spoken highly of Mr Allen, for otherwise Jack would have made little of him: Allen did not do himself justice at all. From his boyhood Jack had been an open, friendly creature, expecting to like and to be liked, and although he was by no means forward or over-confident he was not at all given to shyness, and he found it difficult to conceive that the emotion could still paralyse a man of fifty or more, filling him with a repulsive reserve, so that he responded to no civil advance, never smiled, nor spoke except in reply to direct questions.
'Very well. There you are,' said the Admiral, who seemed equally disappointed. Mr Allen will join as soon as his order is made out. Your new gunner should have reported already. That is all, I believe: I will not detain you any longer.' He touched the bell.
'Forgive me, sir,' said Jack, rising, 'but there is still the question of hands: I am short, very far short, of my complement. And then of course there is the chaplain.'
'Hands?' exclaimed the Admiral, as though this were the first he had ever heard of the matter. 'What do you expect me to do about them? I can't bring men out of the ground, you know. I am not a goddam Cadmus.'
'Oh no, sir,' cried Jack with the utmost sincerity, 'I never thought you were.'
Well,' said the Admiral, somewhat mollified, 'come and see me tomorrow. No. Not tomorrow. Tomorrow I am taking physic. The day after.'
Allen and his new captain walked out into the street. 'I shall see you tomorrow, then, Mr Allen?' said Jack, pausing on the pavement. 'Let it be early, if you please. I am very anxious to put to sea as soon as possible.'
'With your permission, sir,' said Allen, ' I had rather go aboard directly. If I do not attend to the stowing of the hold from the ground-tier up, I shall never know where we are.'
'Very true, Mr Allen,' cried Jack, 'and the forepeak calls for a mort of care. Surprise is a very fine ship - no better sailer on a bowline in the service - can give even Druid or Amethyst maintopgallantsails close-hauled - but she has to be trimmed just so to give of her best. Half a strake by the stern, and nothing pressing on her forefoot.'
'So I understand, sir,' said Allen. 'I had a word with Mr Gill in the Burford, and he told me he could not rest easy in his cot, thinking about that old forepeak.'
Now that they were out in the open, surrounded by quantities of people and talking about subjects of great importance to them both, such as the ship's tendency to gripe and the probable effects of doubling her, Allen's constraint wore off, and as they walked along towards the ship he said, 'Sir, may I ask what a Cadmus might be?'
'Why, as to that, Mr Allen,' said Jack, 'it might not be quite right for me to give you a definition in such a public place, with ladies about. Perhaps you had better look into Buchan's Domestic Medicine.'
They were received aboard by a more than usually distracted Mowett: the purser had refused to accept a large number of casks of beef that had twice made the voyage to the West Indies and back; he said they were short in weight and far, far too old for human consumption, and Pullings had gone to the Victualling Office to see what could be done; Dr Maturin had flung his slabs of portable soup into the sea, on the grounds that they were nothing but common glue, an imposture and a vile job; and the Captain's cook, having rashly and falsely accused
