the pole topgallants I was telling you about. That will be best of what breeze there is. How I long to see her royals! I have sworn not to touch my fiddle until they are set.'
'You are in a great hurry to reach Peru, I find.'
'Of course I am. So would you be, could you see our bread-room, our spirit-room, reckon up our water and count our pork and beef casks, with all these new hands aboard. Above all our water. We had no time to fill at Moahu, or the Franklin would have run clear. And she having pumped all hers over the side, we are now in a sad way. There is only one thing for it: no fresh water will be allowed for washing clothes or anything else: only a small ration for drinking - no scuttle-butts standing about -and a minimum for the steep-tubs to get what salt off the pork and beef that towing them in a net over the side won't do.'
'But since we can go so much faster, could you not give the Franklin a modicum, sail briskly on and let her follow? After all, Tom found his way here: he could surely find it back.'
'What a fellow you are, Stephen. My whole plan is to arm her with our carronades and cruise in company, snapping up what China ships, whalers and fur-traders may appear, then to send Surprise in to Callao with, I hope, a captured ship or two so that they can be disposed of there and you can go ashore. Tom will be in command - they are used to him in Callao because of the prizes he took on the way out - and the barky will go on topping it the privateer. And while you are looking after your affairs and Tom is victualling, watering and getting in stores, I shall cruise alone offshore, sending in captures from time to time or at all events a boat. But without we spread more canvas we shall never get there before we die of thirst and starvation: that is why I am so eager to see the Franklin fully masted and looking like a Christian ship at last, instead of a God-damned curiosity.'
'So am I, upon my word,' said Stephen, thinking of his coca-leaves. 'I can hardly wait.'
'Possess yourself in patience for a day or two, and you will see her set her royals. Then that evening we shall have a concert -we may even sing!'
At the time Stephen wondered that Jack should speak so thoughtlessly, tempting a Fate that he almost always placated with a perhaps or if we are lucky or tide and weather permitting; and Stephen being by now a thorough- going seaman at least as far as weak superstition was concerned he was more grieved than surprised when a top-maul fell upon Mr Bentley's foot early the next morning. The wound was not dangerous but it confined the carpenter to his cot for a while and in the mean time his crew, most unhappily, fell out with the carpenter from the Franklin. The privateer had taken him from a Hull whaler and he spoke a Yorkshire dialect almost entirely incomprehensible to the west-country hands from Shelmerston, who looked upon him with dislike and suspicion as little better than a foreigner, a French dog or a Turk.
Work therefore went forward slowly, and not only work on the mast but the innumerable tasks that waited on its erection; and with an equal or even greater dliberation the two ships moved over the quiet sea through this perfect picnic weather. In spite of his eagerness to be in South America it pleased Stephen, who spread himself naked in the sun and even swam with Jack in the mornings: it pleased most of the people, who could devote themselves to a detailed reckoning of the Franklin's worth and the value of the goods she had taken out of her various prizes and dividing the total according to each man's share; and it would have pleased the midshipmen if the Captain had not come down on them like a thousand of bricks. Football was abolished, cricket prohibited, and they were kept strictly to their duty, taking altitudes right and left, showing up their day's working (which rarely amounted to fifty miles of course made good) and writing their journals neat and fair. No blots were allowed, and a mistaken logarithm meant no supper: they walked about barefoot or in list slippers, rarely speaking above a whisper.
During this time Stephen often went forward to Mr Bentley's cabin to dress and poultice his poor foot, and on these occasions he sometimes heard Dutourd, whose quarters were close at hand, talking to his neighbour the bosun or to the visiting Grainger or Vidal: quite frequently to more, most of them forecastle-men during their watch below. Stephen did not listen particularly but he did notice that when Dutourd was speaking to one or two his voice was that of ordinary human conversation -rather better in fact, since he was unusually good company - but that when several were present he tended to address them in a booming tone and to go on and on. They did not seem to dislike it, though there was little new to be said about equality, the brotherhood of man, the innate goodness and wisdom of human nature unoppressed; but then, he reflected, Dutourd's hearers, Knipperdollings for the most part, were accustomed to much longer discourses at home.
Mr Bentley's innate wisdom told him that if he remained in the Doctor's list much longer the newcomer would get the credit for the Franklin's mainmast, now nearing completion in spite of doggedness on the part of the carpenter's crew, and this, though he was a good and benevolent man, he could not bear. In spite of the pain he crossed to the prize the morning the last of the Franklin's casualties were buried. The privateer's company had not been together long enough to form a united crew and the dead went over the side with little ceremony and less mourning, though in the general indifference Dutourd did say a few words, received with approving nods by his former shipmates before they went back to work: they had all volunteered to serve as temporary Surprises, mainly, it was thought, for the sake of the tobacco.
Mr Bentley was only just in time. The Captain had already gone aboard the Franklin, meaning to take advantage of the calm sea to carry out the delicate manoeuvre of getting the new mast in by the old, the composite old; for by now neither ship could provide adequate sheers. With propitious weather, an eager and highly competent skipper and an eager and highly competent first lieutenant, both of them capable of hard-horse driving, there was certainly not going to be any leisure for mocking at a Yorkshire word: there was not indeed going to be loss of a single minute, and the carpenter heaved himself up the side, limping to his place by the new mainmast's heel.
Nearly all the Surprise's hands were aboard the prize, prepared to haul, heave, or gather up the wreckage in the by no means improbable event of accident, and it was Stephen who rowed Bentley across in his little skiff: a frightening experience. Having delivered the carpenter, he brought Martin back. The medical men had no place on the crowded, busy, anxious deck: ropes ran in every direction, and wherever they stood they were liable to be in the way: in any case since those Franklins who had been left in the ship were now either healed or buried, Martin's duty there was at an end.
The frigate's cook, a fine great black man with one leg, and a bearded Thraskite helped them up the side, Martin carrying his mended viola; and leaving the boat to more skilful hands the medicoes leaned on the rail for a while, watching the operations over the water.
'I wish I could explain what they are about,' said Stephen, 'but this is so much more complex than the business with the sheers that with your own limited command of the seamen's language you might not be able to follow me. Indeed, I might even lead you into error.'
'How quiet it is,' said Martin. Uncommonly quiet: a gentle heave and set, the yards and rigging answering each with a murmur; but no break and run of water, no singing of the breeze, and scarcely a word from the few hands aboard, grouped on the forecastle and gazing steadily at the Franklin.
'So quiet,' said Stephen some minutes later, 'that I believe I shall take advantage of it to write in peace for a while. There will soon be a stamping as of wild beasts and cries of belay, avast, and masthead, there.'
