'Does not the same apply to us?'
'Oh no. We have much more sea-room. Once we have head-sails we can make a short leg to the south-east to be sure of weathering the Mull, go north about past Malin Head, gain a good offing, a very good offing, and then hey for Lisbon. Come in, Tom. Sit down and have a cup of coffee, cold though it be.'
'Thank you, sir. The immediate work is done, and we can hoist jib and foretopmast staysail whenever you choose.'
'Very good, very good indeed: the sooner the better.' He swallowed his coffee and the two of them hurried on deck. A moment later Stephen, finishing the pot, heard Jack's powerful voice at its strongest: 'All hands, there. All hands about ship.'
Chapter 3
'Bonden,' said Jack Aubrey to his coxswain, 'tell the Doctor that if he is at leisure there is something to be seen on deck.'
The Doctor was at leisure; the 'cello on which he had been practising gave a last deep boom and he ran up the companion-ladder, an expectant look on his face.
'There, right on the beam,' said Jack, nodding southwards. 'You can catch the breakers at its foot as clear as can be on the rise.'
'Certainly,' said Stephen, watching Malin Head fade and faintly reappear in the thin rain; then, feeling that something more was expected of him, 'I am obliged to you for showing it to me.'
'It will be your last glimpse of your native land for about sixteen degrees of latitude and God knows how many of longitude, for I mean to make a great offing if ever I can. Should you like to look at it with a telescope?'
'If you please,' said Stephen. He was fond of his native land, even though this piece of it booked unnaturally black, wet and uninviting; but he could not wish the spectacle prolonged, particularly as he knew from personal experience that part of this province was inhabited by a tattling, guileful, tale-bearing, noisy, contemptible, mean, wretched, unsteady and inhospitable people, and as soon as he decently could he clapped the glass to, handed it back, and returned to his 'cello. They were to attempt another Mozart quartet in a few days and he did not wish to disgrace himself in the presence of the purser's far more accomplished playing.
Left alone Jack continued his habitual pacing fore and aft. He must have covered hundreds and hundreds of miles on this same quarterdeck in the course of all these years and the ringbolt near the taffrail where he turned shone like silver; it was also dangerously thin. He was glad to have seen Maim Head so clear. It proved that Inishtrahull and the Garvans, upon which many a better navigator than himself had come to grief, especially in thick weather with no sight of the sun by day or any star by night, were all safely astern. After a measured mile for good buck, he gave the orders that would carry the ship as nearly due west as the south-west wind would allow; and he found to his pleasure that she needed it only half a point free to run happily at seven knots under no more than topsails and courses, though a moderate sea kept striking her barboard bow with all the regularity of a long- established swell, throwing her slightly off her course and sweeping spray and even packets of water diagonally across the forecastle and the waist.
This, and the taste of salt on his lips, was a deep satisfaction; yet at the same time he knew that the frigate's people were upon the whole low-spirited, disappointed and out of humour. He thought it very probable that some of the more dismal hands might already be using the words 'an unlucky voyage' or 'a Jonah aboard', which could become very dangerous indeed if they got a firm hold on the ship's collective mind, always inclined to fatalism - even more dangerous in a ship with no Marines, no Articles of War, no recourse to the service as a whole, a ship in which the Captain's authority depended solely on his standing and his standing on his present as well as his past success. This he had not learnt from listening to their conversation nor from reports brought by confidential hands like Bonden or Killick or the equivalent of the master-at-arms or the ship's corporal - he hated a tale-bearer - but from having spent most of his life afloat, some of it as a foremast-jack. His gauging of the ship's mood was for the most part unconscious - faintly recorded impressions of dutifulness rather than zeal, lack of coarse humorous remarks forward, the occasional wry look or contentious answer between shipmates, and the general want of tone - but though it was largely instinctive it was surprisingly accurate.
'There is little hope of any consolation in these waters unless we chance on an American,' he reflected, 'but at least for the rest of the month we shall have regular blue-water sailing, tack upon tack every watch until we reach the westerlies; plenty to keep them busy but not too much; and then presently we shall see the sun again.'
Far out into the Atlantic, long tack upon long tack, every day having the same steady routine from swabbing the decks at first dawn to lights out, its unchanging succession of bells, its wholly predictable food, nothing in sight from one horizon to another but sea and sky, both growing more agreeable, and the habit of sea-life exerted its usual force; cheerfulness returned to almost its old carefree level and as always there was the violent emotion and enthusiasm of the great-gun practice every evening at quarters - practice carried out with the full deadly charge and the ball directed at a floating target.
While the Surprise was making her westing Jack spent more in barrels of powder than ever he would have made in prize-money if the snow had been taken. He justified this to his conscience (for no one else, least of all Stephen, questioned the expense) by an appeal to the frigate's very high standards of rapid, accurate fire, by the fact that all hands were somewhat rusty and the Orkneymen (some of whom had come aboard with crossbows) had very little notion of combined disciplined practice at all; but he knew very well that the thunderous roar, the stabbing flame in the smoke-cloud, the screech of the recoiling gun, the competition between watch and watch, and the ecstasy when a raft of beef-cask two hundred yards away flew suddenly to pieces in a flurry of white water and single staves flung high did a great deal towards restoring the general tone and bringing the Surprise back towards the state of a happy ship, the only efficient fighting-machine, the only ship that it was a pleasure to command.
Only in a few exceptional cases did this state arise spontaneously, as when a good set of foremast hands happened to enter upon a dry, weatherly ship with efficient warrant-officers - the bosun was often a most important figure where happiness was concerned - a decent group of seamanlike officers, and a taut but not tyrannical captain. Otherwise it had to be nursed along. The lower deck had its own way of dealing with really worthless hands, turning them out of their messes and leading them a horrible life; but there were others, stronger characters, men of some education, who could cause serious trouble if they chanced to be both awkward and discontented. In the Surprise at present, for example, there were eight Shelmerstonians serving before the mast who had had commands of their own, while there were more who had been mates and who understood navigation.
The same applied, in rather a different way, to the wardroom or gunroom as the case might be. An ill-fitting member of that small society could upset the working of the whole ship to a remarkable degree; and the small failings that would not matter at all during a passage to Gibraltar might assume gigantic proportions in the course of a long commission - a couple of years blockading Toulon, for example, or three on the African station. And Jack was wondering whether he had been very wise in appointing Standish purser, almost entirely on the basis of the man's excellent violin-playing and the recommendation of Martin, who had been acquainted with him at Oxford,
