always a little over-cordial with Martin, whom he did not like very much and whom he did not invite as often as he felt he ought. Killick's arrival with the coffee and his mate's with little toasted slices of dried breadfruit masked the slight, the very slight, awkwardness and when they were all sitting comfortably, holding their little cups and gazing out of the sweep of windows that formed the aftermost wall of the great cabin, Jack asked, 'What news of your instrument, Mr Martin?'
The instrument in question was a viola, upon which, before it was broken, Martin played indifferently, having an uncertain ear and an imperfect sense of time. No one had expected to hear it again this voyage, or at least not until they touched at Callao; but the fortune of war had brought them a French repairer, a craftsman who had been sent to Louisiana for a variety of crimes, mostly crapulous, and who, escaping from bondage, had joined the Franklin.
'Gourin says that Mr Bentley has promised him a piece of lignum vitae as soon as he has a moment to spare: then it will be only half a day's work, and time for the glue to dry.'
'I am so glad,' said Jack. 'We must have some more music one of these days. There is another thing I wanted to ask, for you know a great deal about the various religious persuasions, as I recall?'
'I should, sir, because in the days when I was only an unbeneficed clergyman,' said Martin, with a bow towards his patron, 'I translated the whole of Muller's great book, wrote my version out again in a fair copy, saw it through the press and corrected two sets of proofs; every word I read five times, and some very curious sects did I come across. There were the Ascitants, for example, who used to dance round an inflated wine-skin.'
'The people I should like to know about are Knipperdollings.'
'Our Knipperdollings?'
'Oh, Knipperdollings in general: I do not mean anything personal.'
'Well, sir, historically they were the followers of Bernhard Knipperdolling, one of those Miinster Anabaptists who went to such very ill-considered lengths, enforcing equality and the community of goods and then going on to polygamy - John of Leiden had four wives at a time, one of them being Knipperdolling's daughter - and I am afraid that even worse disorders followed. Yet I think they left little in the way of doctrinal posterity, unless they can be said to live on in the Socinians and Mennonites, which few would accept. Those who use the name at present are descendants of the Levellers. The Levellers, as you will recall, sir, were a party with strong republican views in the Civil War; they wished to level all differences of rank, reducing the nation to an equality; and some of them wanted land to be held in common - no private ownership of land. They were very troublesome in the army and the state; they earned a thoroughly bad name and eventually they were put down, leaving only a few scattered communities. I believe the Levellers as a body did not have a religious as opposed to a social or political unity, though I cannot think that any of them belonged to the Established Church; yet some of these remaining communities formed a sect with strange notions of the Trinity and a dislike of infant baptism; and to avoid the odium attached to the name of Levellers and indeed the persecution they called themselves Knipperdollings, thinking that more respectable or at least more obscure. I imagine they knew very little of the Knipperdollings' religious teaching but had retained a traditional knowledge of their notions of social justice, which made them think the name appropriate.'
'It is remarkable,' observed Stephen after a pause, 'that the Surprise, with her many sects, should be such a peaceful ship. To be sure, there was that slight want of harmony between the Sethians and the Knipperdollings at Botany Bay - and in passing I may once more point out, sir, that if this vessel supplied her people with round rather than square plates, these differences would be slighter still; for you are to consider that a square plate has four corners, each one of which makes it more than a mere contunding instrument.' He perceived from the civil inclinations of Captain Aubrey's head and the reserved expression on his face that the square plates issued to the Surprise when she was captured from the French in 1796 would retain their lethal corners as long as he or any other right-minded sea-officer commanded her: the Royal Navy's traditions were not to be changed for the sake of a few broken heads. Stephen continued '... but generally speaking there is no discord at all; whereas very often the least difference of opinion leads to downright hatred.'
'That may be because they tend to leave their particular observances on shore,' said Martin. 'The Thraskites are a Judaizing body and they would recoil from a ham at Shelmerston, but here they eat up their salt pork, aye, and fresh too when they can get it. And then when we rig church on Sundays they and all the others sing the Anglican psalms and hymns with great good will.'
'For my own part,' said Captain Aubrey, 'I have no notion of disliking a man for his beliefs, above all if he was born with them. I find I can get along very well with Jews or even...' The P of Papists was already formed, and the word was obliged to come out as Pindoos.
Yet it had hardly fallen upon Stephen's ear before a shriek and the crash of glass expelled embarrassment: young Arthur Wedell, a ransomer of Reade's age, who lived and messed in the midshipmen's berth, fell through the skylight into the cabin.
Reade had been deprived of youthful company for a great while, and although he was often invited to the gunroom and the cabin he missed it sorely: at first Norton, though a great big fellow for his age, had been too bashful to be much of a companion in the berth, but now that Arthur had been added to them his shyness wore away entirely and the three made enough noise for thirty, laughing and hooting far into the night, playing cricket on the 'tween-decks when the hammocks were out of the way or football in the vacant larboard berth when they were not; but this was the first time they had ever hurled one of their number into the cabin.
'Mr Grainger,' said Jack, when it had been found that Wedell was not materially injured and when the lieutenant had been summoned from the head, 'Mr Wedell will jump up to the mizen masthead immediately, Mr Norton to the fore, and you will have Mr Reade whipped up to the main. They will stay there until I call them down. Pass the word for the carpenter; or for my joiner, if Mr Bentley is not in the way.'
'I have rarely known such delightful weather in what we must, I suppose, call the torrid zone,' said Stephen, dining as usual in the cabin. 'Balmy zephyrs, a placid ocean, two certain Hahnemann's petrels, and perhaps a third.'
'It would be all very capital for a picnic with ladies on a lake, particularly if they shared your passion for singular birds; but I tell you, Stephen, that these balmy zephyrs of yours have not propelled the ship seventy sea-miles between noon and noon these last four days. It is true that we could get along a little faster ourselves, but clearly we cannot leave the Franklin behind; and with her present rig she is but a dull sailer.'
'I noticed that you have changed her elegant great triangular sail behind.'
'Yes. Now that we are making progess with her lower masts we can no longer afford that very long lateen yard: we need it for pole topgallants. Presently you will see that twin jury mainmast of hers replaced by something less horrible made up from everything you can imagine by Mr Bentley and that valuable carpenter we rescued: upper-tree, side-trees, heel-pieces, side-fishes, cheeks, front-fish and cant-pieces, all scarfed, coaked, bolted, hooped and woolded together; it will be a wonderful sight when it is finished, as solid as the Ark of the Covenant. Then with that in place, and the respectable fore and mizen we already possess, we can send up topmasts and
