would not have danced and sung without the pipe, but the pipe made the whole thing legal, not to be checked for any ordinary reason. 'That must be Simmons's tromba marina,' he said, catching the distinctive note, a note that could scarcely be missed, an immensely loud deep brassy hoot marking the end of a measure in the dance and followed by a confused cheering and two more hoots. 'Have you ever seen a tromba marina, Mr Edwards?' he asked, to ease the young man's woe.
'Never, sir.'
'It is a very singular instrument, a kind of prism of three thin planks about a fathom long with a string stretched over a curious bridge - it is played with a bow, though you would never think so from the sound. If you would like to see one, go along forward with the midshipman. A carpenter's mate knocked it together the other day.' He rang his bell and to Seymour he said, 'My compliments to Mr Fielding and the merriment on the forecastle is to diminish by half.'
'I would have sworn that was an answer to my note,' he said, returning to his disastrous game.
In fact the answer did not appear until well on in the next forenoon watch, when he came from the masthead in a long controlled glide down the maintopgallant backstay. The Diane had been on her cruising-ground for some hours now, and each mast had its lookout; in this clear weather they could survey seven hundred square miles of sea, but so far they had seen nothing at all, not so much as a proa or a drifting palm-trunk: a pale cobalt dome of sky, darkening imperceptibly as it came down to the sharp horizon and the true azure of the great disk of ocean - two pure ideal forms, and the ship between them, minute, real, and incongruous.
'Sir, there is a note for you in your cabin, if you please,' said Fleming.
'Thank you, Mr Fleming,' said Jack. 'Pray let me have it, together with my sextant.'
While they were coming he looked at the log-board: between four and five knots with this rather stronger breeze, just one point free. 'Very little leeway, Mr Warren,' he observed.
'Almost none at all, sir,' said the master. 'I paid particular attention each time the log was heaved.'
The note and the sextant came. He slipped the paper into his pocket, stepped over to the starboard hances and brought the sun down to the horizon. The corrections for the time short of noon were clear in his mind; he applied them to his reading and nodded. The Diane was certainly on her true parallel.
He found Stephen in the cabin, working over a musical score by the strong light of the stern-window. 'We are on our true parallel,' he said, and opened the note. 'Well, I'm for ever damned alive,' he said in quite a surprised tone of voice and passed the unfolded sheet.
Mr Fox presents his compliments to Captain Aubrey, whose invitation to dinner on Wednesday he has received but which pressure of work prevents him and his suite from accepting.
'Well,' said Stephen, 'I had not thought a man of his education could be so gross. Tell me, brother, were you very severe?'
'Not at all. The only time I spoke a little sharp was when he asked me whether I knew I was addressing His Majesty's direct representative, and I told him that though he might represent the King by land, I represented him by sea - that under God I was sole captain aboard.'
A pause. 'Killick,' called Jack. 'Killick, there.'
'Now what?' cried Killick with real indignation. He was wearing a frock and gloves that shed powdered chalk at every movement; and there was a long pause before he added the necessary 'Sir.'
'Killick has been polishing the silver,' observed Stephen.
'And only half done and my mates always needing an eye on them, heavy handed hoaves liable to scratch it something cruel.' Killick took a passionate delight in silver and for this dinner he had brought out the rarely-used best service, much tarnished in spite of its green baize.
'Pass the word for Mr Fielding,' said Jack: and to his first lieutenant, 'Mr Fielding, pray sit down. I have a damned awkward request to make of you and the gunroom. The position is this: I had invited the envoy and his colleagues to dine with me tomorrow: foolishly I took their consent for granted and here is poor Killick in a cloud of powdered chalk, while my cook is working double tides at two or even three courses and God knows how many removes. But this morning I find that I had counted my geese without laying their eggs - that I had killed my geese - that is to say, pressure of work prevents Mr Fox and his people from dining with me tomorrow. So what I should like to do, with your permission, is to invade the gunroom and feast among friends. It is a damned left-handed kind of an invitation, yet. .
Left-handed it might have been, but it was an unusually happy and successful one. The gunroom table blazed from a great gilt tureen at its foot to the golden mizenmast in the middle and then to another gilt tureen at its head, and they standing in a spring-tide of silver, exactly squared and set so thick that there was scarcely room for bread between. No direct sun reached it, but in the diffused light the general effect was extraordinarily rich, and the hands brought aft on various pretexts felt that it did their ship the utmost credit.
The splendour had the curious effect of doing away with the stiffness and solemnity that usually and perhaps necessarily attended the Captain's ordinary visits to the gunroom: from the beginning it was clear that this was not going to be one of those many, many Yes, sir, no sir dinners through which Jack Aubrey had sat since his very first command, labouring in an occasionally successful attempt at making official entertainment somewhat less forbidding. It had not needed as much as a single bottle of wine to set the table in a pleasant hum of conversation, though the stream that flowed throughout the meal certainly helped. Nothing particularly brilliant was said, but all the officers sitting there were pleased with their company, pleased with their fare, and pleased with the glory. Another point was the servants. Every man had one behind his chair, sometimes a Marine, sometimes a ship's boy, and although they were well turned out, clean and attentive, they were not highly trained; even the comparatively rigid Marines took a certain part in the feast - much more than usual on this glittering occasion, which pleased them even more than the guests - and the attendants' smiles, nods, becks (for there was no pretence of not listening to what was said at table) and cheerful faces added to the general gaiety. At one point they added too much. Welby, the Marine officer, was almost as inept a teller of anecdotes or jokes as Captain Aubrey, but he did have one story in which he could scarcely go wrong: it was true, it was decent, he had told it many, many times, and it had no pitfalls. Now, in very fine form after his second helping of goose and his sixth glass of wine, he launched upon it.
He caught Jack's eye during a momentary lull in the conversation, smiled at him and said, 'A curious thing happened to me, sir, when I was acting as recruiting officer in the year eight. A young fellow, a fine upstanding young fellow though rather ragged came to the rendezvous: I was sitting there at a table with the clerk, and my sergeant behind me, and I said to him, 'You look as if you might suit us. Where do you come from?' 'Ware,' says he. 'Yes, where?' says I, and the sergeant says rather louder, 'the Captain asks where you come from - what is your parish?' 'Ware,' says he. 'No,' says I, louder still, 'Where was you born?' 'Ware,' says he in a shout, looking
