smothered in foam. She reeled off her twelve and even thirteen knots throughout the sunlit hours and seven or eight by night, with the topgallantsails taken in and in spite of her foul bottom; and all this through a hugely rolling sea that varied from the deepest indigo to pale aquamarine but that always (apart from the broken water) remained glass-clear, as though it had been created yesterday. Her pace slackened only at sunrise and sunset, when Jack and Mr Adams, who dearly loved statistics, took their readings of the temperature at various depths, thc salinity, and the atmospheric pressure.
But these were also days during which high white clouds passed in flocks across the sky, while others, higher still by far, moved in the opposite direction on the anti-trade, an interesting phenomenon and one rarely seen to such perfection; yet it had the disadvantage of shutting out the stars and even, for fine observation, the sun; and as Jack did not choose to rely on dead reckoning, above all in these waters, he had decided to proceed at a moderate pace that afternoon, so that his lookouts might catch sight of one of the notorious reefs in these latitudes, the Angerich Shoal, which with rollers of this kind showed as a white boil even at spring tides, and was used by many commanders as a sea mark.
Jack called for coffee. It came in an elegant silver pot protected by white manila fenders, beautifully plaited by Bonden in the form of robands; and as they drank it the sail came off the ship, the rushing sound of the water along her side diminished, and they no longer sat braced in their chairs.
'When you come on deck,' said Jack, 'do not scruple to walk the windward side. That is where my reef should be if it has any sense of what is right,' and he pushed civility so far as to ask Mr Martin to sup in the cabin that evening and play music, although his execution was indifferent, his sense of pitch and time imperfect, and he always played rather sharp.
They stood by the windward rail of the quarterdeck, discreetly aft; and a fine waste of blue water did they command, an unending series of wide-spaced rounded crests, sometimes topped with white, all crossed with a transverse ripple from the local current. They leant there in their shirtsleeves, spattered by spindrift on occasion, but comfortable in the sun, warm though veiled. 'You met Macmillan, my assistant in the Nutmeg, I believe?' said Stephen.
'Just for a moment. A tall thin young Scotchman, very much concerned at being left in charge.'
'An amiable youth, diligent, conscientious, but necessarily inexperienced. I remember telling him of the miseries of human life, particularly as they affect medical men. I spoke of that continual, insistent demand for sympathy and personal concern that exhausts all but the most saintly man's supply before the end of the day, leaving him openly hard in a hospital or a poor practice, secretly hard in a rich one, and ashamed of his hardness in either case until he comes to what terms he can with the situation. But I omitted another aspect, trifling in itself, yet one that can become disproportionately irritating: there is a good example,' - glancing forward to where Awkward Davis was packing a mended shirt into his bag. The massive, lowering creature was sometimes possessed by an elfin gaiety, and now he seized Emily, hoisted her on to the back of his neck, bade her 'clap on tight, now,' and raced up the foremast shrouds, over the top-rim and right up to the crosstrees, the child hooting with joy all the way. - 'That great hulking fellow, for whom I may say I have a real liking, is as you know very well growing madder, and I give him a weekly draught of hellebore to prevent him doing any of his shipmates an injury: he is irascible and exceedingly strong. And every single time he presents himself for his dose with a poor face, a mincing, shuffling gait, a pursed mouth, his great head inclined to one side, and answers my questions in a weak, gasping tone like an old ewe. I should kick him if I dared.'
'Shoal, ho!' from the masthead.
The usual question, the bearing as usual, the usual hurrying up and down; and in time the unmistakable turmoil of white water could be seen from the deck, broad on the larboard beam.
'It is very well,' said Martin when he had looked at it for some time through his telescope. 'And I should be ungrateful to repine: but I could wish that Captain Aubrey had given us as clear a view of the Great Barrier Reef.'
'I had hoped above all for that Lizard Island from which Cook and Sir Joseph surveyed the passages. Yet I can well understand the Captain's reluctance. The Endeavour at last got outside the reef by means of these passages, but then the breeze failed them, as it will close to the land, and the huge swell heaved them in, slowly, inevitably, and they helpless, towards the great wall of coral and the mountainous surf. At the very last moment a hint of breeze moved them just far enough for the making tide to sweep them through a channel to the inner side of the reef. I remember Sir Joseph telling us of it, and the horror of those last heaves before apparent destruction were with him still. It was much the same with us in the Diane, off Tristan, as I have told you: I was below at the time, but she was within ten yards of the cliff, the precipitous cliff of the island Inaccessible, before just such a providential waft of air edged her aside. And the Captain is absolutely determined not to call upon Providence in that way again: he has nothing whatsoever to say to any reef, coral or otherwise.'
Martin digested this for some time, and then said in a low voice, 'The little girls have quite a family of pet rats now.'
'Indeed? I knew they had one apiece, but not several.'
'Half a dozen at least,' said Martin. 'Do you think that might be a Norfolk Island petrel?'
'It might be, too. There is a group of them somewhat to the east. No, my dear Martin: the east is to the right.'
'Surely not in the southern hemisphere?'
'We will ask Captain Aubrey. He will probably know. But to the right, for all love. Ah, they are vanished and gone.'
They returned to the rats, how mild in temper they were, and placid, and how they were to be seen wandering about in the day, well above the hold and even the cable-tier: the hands put it down to the unnatural cleanliness of the ballast, flooded every night and pumped clear every day. It was known that rats fattened on the smell; and now, with the barky tossed about so that her ballast was fairly scoured, as clean as Deal beach, there was no smell.
'Sail ho!' cried the masthead, and this time in answer to Jack's 'Where away?' the lookout answered 'Right ahead, sir. As right ahead as ever could be. Square rigged, but ship or brig I cannot tell.'
The Surprise had been making sail methodically ever since she had obtained her fix with the Angerich Shoal, and now she was making a good ten knots. The sail ahead was travelling faster, and presently Oakes at the jack called down that she was 'certainly a ship, weather studdingsails aloft and alow.'
Then later, 'Man-of-war pennant, sir.' And later still, when she was hull-up on the rise, 'Two-decker, sir.'
'Ha, ha,' said Jack to Pullings, 'she must be the old Tromp, fifty-four. Billy Holroyd has her now. Did you ever meet Captain Holroyd, Tom?'
