green water. The boobies preyed on both, either making a slight skimming dive to snatch up a squid just under the surface, or plunging from a height like so many mortar-bombs to reach the depth where the fishes cruised. They took no notice whatsoever of the men, sometimes diving so close to the boat that they splashed water into it; and after some time the men, having classified the birds (two species, neither particularly rare), took no notice of the boobies. They scooped up the squids with their hand-nets and found that they belonged to at least eleven different kinds, two of which they could not name; they sieved great quantities of the squids' food, which they put into well-closed pots; and they caught the fishes - handsome fellows, weighing a couple of pounds - baiting their hooks with pork rind cut in the shape of a minnow.
'Paradise must have been very like this,' observed Martin, putting another into their basket: and then 'How happy they will be when we bring back our catch. There is nothing like fresh -' Here he looked towards the ship and his face changed entirely. 'Oh,' cried he, 'she has lost a mast!'
Certainly she looked horribly lopsided, or rather deformed; but Stephen replied 'Not at all, at all.' He reached among his clothes for a little pocket spy-glass, pointed, focussed, and continued 'Never in life, my dear sir: they are only shifting topmasts.'
He saw from the great activity in the maintop, where topmast shrouds were being set up afresh, that they had begun aft and were working forward in one of the most strenuous exercises known to man.
Pullings and Oakes were on the forecastle; Davidge was in the foretop; West was perched in the maintopmast crosstrees; they and all the hands under their command were all in a state of extreme activity; and Jack Aubrey, with Reade on one hand and Adams on the other, was timing them with his open watch.
'I believe you have not seen it done before,' said Stephen, passing the glass. 'Will I tell you what they are at?'
'If you would be so good.'
'First they unbend the topgallantsails and send them down and the yard after them; then they strike the topgallant mast, a manoeuvre we are all familiar with - a matter of minutes for skilful mariners, attentive to their duty. But then they do the same to the great topsail, its mighty yard and then the very mast itself, a heavy task indeed. This they have evidently done to the mizenmast and the main; now they are operating on the foremast, and I perceive from the forms creeping along the bowsprit that they contemplate shifting the jibboom too, the creatures.'
'Do they look for flaws and change the defective pieces?'
'I suppose they do. But I believe the real aim is to make them brisker, to confirm them in their seamanlike activity, and perhaps to strengthen their sense of combined, exactly synchronous effort. Sometimes it is done, not from any desire to enforce discipline and instant compliance with orders but out of a spirit of competition if not indeed of vainglory and showing away. The old Surprise, with a crew that had been together a great while, all men-of-war's men, was extraordinarily good at it; and I remember that once, in the West Indies, shifting topmasts at the same moment as the Hussar, considered a crack ship, she did so in one hour and twenty-three minutes, the hands dancing hornpipes on the forecastle before the wretched Hussars had even crossed their main topgallant yards. See, the topmast is swaying up - it rises, rises, the capstan turns - higher, higher, secured by a complex system of ropes - high enough - Tom cries 'Launch ho!' - it is ridded and safe - they fling themselves upon the shrouds and cast off this and that - the brave topgallant-mast follows ...'
So it did; and once the frigate looked like a Christian ship again - for the shifting of the jibboom was neither here nor there to the medicoes - they returned to their squids, more active now than ever. 'I am almost certain that over there we have a species quite unknown,' said Martin. He leaned out with his long-handled net, but before he had even dipped it he started back. 'Oh,' he said in a shocked voice. 'Do not move. Do not hang your arm over the side. My image of Paradise was only too exact. The Evil One is with us too.'
They peered cautiously over the gunwale, and there under the frail skiff they saw the familiar form of a shark: one of the many kinds of Carcharias no doubt, though to tell just which they would have to look at its teeth; yet it seemed larger than most: far larger.
'Do you suppose it is likely to bump the boat?' asked Martin in a low voice.
'Sure he may well do so, by rising suddenly; or sometimes they are known to take a run and launch themselves bodily into the middle, or athwartships as we say, snapping right and left.'
'I wonder you can speak with such levity,' said Martin. 'And you too a married man.'
A silence fell, broken from time to time by the splash of a deep-diving booby and the remote shrilling of bosun's calls. A bird dived close at hand, down and down: the shark moved smoothly from under the boat: its bulk covered the diving form and carried on into the depths, growing steadily dimmer though still huge when it vanished. Three or four feathers floated up. 'Will he come back, do you imagine?' asked Martin, still gazing down with shaded eyes.
'I do not,' said Stephen. 'The flesh of the booby is acrid and rank, and I have no doubt he thinks we belong to the same genus at least.'
From over the sea came an urgent piping and Captain Aubrey's powerful voice urging haste. In rapid succession all the frigate's boats were lowered down; their crews leapt into them with the breakneck speed they would have shown if a valuable prize had just heaved up; and lines having been passed they began towing the ship in the direction of the boobies.
By the time the Surprise reached them the sun was already far down the sky. The fish had stopped biting; the squids and their prey had sunk out of sight; and as soon as the boats were hoisted in the hands were piped to a belated supper, with precious little rum served out.
'What a comfort it is to have solid heart of oak beneath one's feet,' said Martin as they took their pots fishes rods buckets and specimens out of the skiff. 'I had never felt the dreadful fragility of this boat - planking not half an inch thick - so much as when I saw that horrible creature almost touching it. I have never felt more uneasy in my life. As I peered down it rolled a little and gave me a cold look that I shall not soon forget.'
Supper was hardly swallowed before the drum beat for quarters. The cabins vanished in the usual clean sweep fore and aft; Stephen hid his specimens together with a large number of squids in the quarter-gallery and hurried to the sick-berth, his action-station; the great guns were cast loose, and the drooping officers reported 'All present and sober, if you please.'
They were soberer still by the time they had performed the great-gun exercise - running in the cannon (five hundredweight to a man) - running the massive object out again as far as possible, laying the tackle-falls in neat fakes - pointing the guns in a given direction - going through the motions of firing - running in, going through the motions of worming, sponging and reloading - replacing the tompion - housing and making all fast - a dozen turns apiece, each separately timed by their inflexible Captain, and then a full broadside together: all this in dumb show.
