The Surprise's royals, which were set flying, had already been bent to their yards, with the halliards hitched to the slings and the starboard arm stopped to them, the hands fidgeting to be at it; but no man laid a finger on a rope until Mr Grainger called, 'Now then, our George, haul away,'and the long slim yards fairly shot up through the rigging, up and up, threading lengthways through a cat's-cradle of cordage, up to the masthead, where the light and nimble Abraham Dorkin cut the small stuff stopping the yard to the halliards, swung it on to the horizontal plane of the topgallant yard, fixed it there with a becket, lashed the clews of the sails, its lower corners, to the topgallant yardarm, cast off the beckets, and cried, 'Way-oh!'
His cry almost exactly coincided with others from the fore and mizen mastheads, and the royals flashed out at the same moment, filling at once to the gentle breeze. The Surprises cheered; from over the water the weary Franklins did the same; and Jack turned a beaming face to Stephen, his eyes more startlingly blue than ever. 'Ain't that capital?' he cried. 'Now we can have our concert at last.'
'Very capital indeed, upon my soul,' said Stephen, wondering why they were all so delighted. Certainly the ships, particularly the Franklin, were more beautiful by far with their towering clouds of ordered whiteness reducing their hulls to low slim elegant forms: and as he watched the sun lit the Franklin with more than common force, causing all the staysails to make strong exactly-curved shadows on the square courses, topsails and topgallants behind them. Very fine indeed, and perhaps there was a just-perceptible increase in their gentle pace, a very slightly greater lean from the breeze.
'Mr Reade,' called Jack, 'pray heave the log.'
'Aye aye, sir: heave the log it is,' replied Reade, all duty and submission still. The usual ceremony followed: the log-ship splashed over the leeward quarter, went astern at a walking pace until it was free of what mild eddies the Surprise might make, watched with the closest attention by all hands. The moment the bunting that marked the end of the stray-line went over the rail Reade cried 'Turn,' and Norton turned the twenty-eight-second sand- glass, holding it close to his eye. As the last grain fell he bawled 'Stop' and Reade nipped the line a little after the second knot had passed. The quartermaster holding the log reel gave the line a tweak, dislodging a pin so that the log-ship floated sideways, and wound it in. Reade measured the distance between his nip and the second knot with a knowing eye: 'Two knots and a trifle better than one fathom, sir, if you please,' he reported, bareheaded, to the Captain.
'Thank you, Mr Reade,' said Jack, and to Stephen, 'There, Doctor: ain't you amazed? Two knots and a little more than a fathom!'
'Profoundly amazed; yet I seem to remember having gone even faster.'
'Why God love you, of course you have,' cried Jack. 'It is not the absolute speed that I am talking about but the relative speed, the speed in this miserable zephyr of yours. Good Lord, if we can both make better than two knots in an air that would scarcely bend a candle-flame, there is precious little can escape us, without it has wings or carries seventy-four guns.'
'Hear him, hear him,' said somebody in the waist of the ship, and both helmsmen and quartermaster chuckled.
'To be sure, there is always the joy of the chase,' said Stephen with what enthusiasm he could command; and after a pause in which he felt he had been disappointing he said, 'For our concert, now, have you anything particular in mind?'
'Oh, old favourites, for sure,' said Jack. 'I remember your telling me long ago, when we were beating out of Port Mahon in the Sophie, that in Spain they had a saying 'Let no new thing arise'. I thought at the time it might do very well for the Navy; and I am not so sure there is not something to be said for it in music.'
It was a very old favourite they began with that evening, Benda's violin and 'cello duet in C minor, and they played it unusually well. There is a great deal to be said for a steady deck under a 'cello: a great deal to be said for a cheerful heart behind a fiddle: and they would have brought it to an unusually handsome close if Killick had not blundered in, tripping over a little stool, unseen because of his tray, and saving their supper only by a miracle of juggling.
At one time this supper had consisted of toasted cheese held in a remarkably elegant piece of Irish silver, a covered outer dish that held six within it, the whole kept warm over a spirit-stove: the dish was still present, gleaming with a noble brilliance, but it held only a pap made of pounded biscuit, a little goat's milk, and even less of rock-hard cheese-rind rasped over the top and browned with a loggerhead, so that some faint odour of cheddar could still just be made out.
Jack Aubrey weighed sixteen or seventeen stone, Stephen barely nine, and to avoid the tedium of self- sacrifice, protests against the sacrifice, and privy maundering afterwards it had long been agreed that they should share accordingly: finishing his fourth dish, therefore, Jack also finished his explanation of the remarkable sailing qualities of both the Franklin and the Surprise: '... so as I say, although at present we have the current setting against us, I believe I can promise we shall make as much of what breeze there is as any two ships afloat: from the look of the sky and the glass I should not be astonished if we achieved five knots tomorrow. And then, you know, as we slant down towards the equator, there is the counter-current in our favour.'
'So much the better,' said Stephen. 'Now what do you say to our Boccherini in D major? The minuet has been running in my head these last two or three days; but we have still to work out the adagio.'
'I should like it of all things,' said Jack. 'Killick. Killick, there. Clear the decks and bring another decanter of port.'
'Which it is getting wery low, sir,' said Killick. 'At this rate we shall have to rouse up your feast-day eighty- nine, or be satisfied with grog.'
'Rouse it up, Killick: let us live whilst we are alive.' When Killick was gone, looking pinched and disapproving, Jack went on. 'That reminds me of Clarissa Oakes. She said something of the same kind in Latin, you told me, and translated it for her husband. Lord, Stephen, that was a fine young woman. How shamefully I lusted after her: but it would not do, of course, not in my own ship. And I believe poor Martin was much smitten. Sheep's eyes were not in it. However, I do so hope she will be happy with Oakes. He was not perhaps quite up to her mark, but he was a tolerable seaman.'
'Little do I know of port wine,' said Stephen. 'Was eighty-nine an uncommon year?'
'Pretty good,' said Jack, 'but I love it because of its associations. I never drink it without thinking of the Spanish Disturbance.'
'My dear, you have the advantage of me.'
'Really? Well, I am amazingly glad to know something you do not. It had to do with Nootka Sound, the place where the fur-traders go. Captain Cook, that great man, discovered it during his last voyage, when he was running up the north-west coast of America; and our people had been trading there and to the northwards for years and
