caulker's mallets. It was early in the day, and although the weather was as fair as could be wished, apart from the lack of wind, the quarterdeck had nobody upon it who was not called there by duty: Vidal and Reade, officer and midshipman of the watch; the men at the helm; the carpenter and two of his crew at the taffrail, putting the frigate's modest decorative carving, her gingerbread-work, to rights. The usual daily procession of Jemmy Ducks, Sarah and Emily, carrying hen-coops and leading the goat Amalthea, had come and gone; and as usual Jack, reflecting upon the rapid growth of the little girls, thought of his own daughters, their present height, weight and happiness, their possible but unlikely progress in deportment, French and the pianoforte under Miss O'Mara. But neither Stephen nor Martin had appeared, nor any of the ransomers. A mile and a half of steady pacing followed these reflexions about home, and then two distinct thoughts arose: 'I must ask Wilkins whether he will act as third lieutenant until we reach Callao: they say he was a master's mate in Agamemnon.' This second thought ran on into a consideration of those young men who, having passed the Navy's examination for a lieutenant, remained senior midshipmen or master's mates because they did not also 'pass for a gentleman', a mute, unwritten, unacknowledged examination whose result was announced only by the absence of a commission - a practice that was becoming more and more frequent. He considered the advantages often put forward - a more homogeneous mess, less friction, the hands' greater respect for gentlemen than for their own kind - and the disadvantages - the exclusion of such men as Cook, the unstated qualifications and the varying standards of those who did the choosing, the impossibility of appeal. He was still considering when, on reaching the rail and turning, he noticed that the young man in question, one of the ransomer mates, was now present, together with some others of those who were allowed to walk the quarterdeck.
Four turns later he heard Reade's shrill cry of 'Oh no, sir, no. You cannot talk to the Captain,' and he saw Dutourd headed off, admonished, led firmly back to the group to leeward.
'But what did I do?' he cried, addressing Stephen, who had just come up the companion-ladder. 'I only wished to congratulate him on his playing.'
'My dear sir, you must not address the Captain,' said Stephen.
'You cannot possibly go over to the windward side, without you are invited,' said Wilkins.
'Even I may not speak to him, except on duty,' said Reade.
'Well,' said Dutourd, recovering from his surprise and concealing a certain vexation moderately well, 'you are a markedly formal, hierarchical society, I see. But I hope, sir' - to Maturin - 'that I may without sin tell you how very much I enjoyed your music? I thought the Boccherini adagio masterly, masterly...'
They walked off, still speaking of the Boccherini, with real knowledge and appreciation on Dutourd's part. Stephen, who in any case was not of an expansive nature, tended to avoid the Frenchman on general principles; but now he would voluntarily have remained in his company had not six bells struck. The sixth was followed by pandemonium fore and aft as the launch, towing astern, was hauled alongside to receive Mr Reade, her crew, barrels of water for the parched Franklin, and two carronades. The precious water, mercifully, could be pumped from the hold into barrels in the boat, but in the nature of things carronades could not: they were lowered down from the reinforced main yardarm, lowered with an infinity of precautions as though each were made of spun glass rather than of metal, and they were received with even more. They were ugly, squat little objects yet they had their advantages, being only a third the weight of the Surprise's regular twelve-pounder cannon but firing a ball twice as heavy; furthermore they could be fought by a much smaller crew - two zealous hands at a pinch, as opposed to the seven or eight gathered round a long twelve. On the other hand they could not fire their heavy ball very far nor very accurately, so Jack, who loved the fine-work of gunnery, disabling an opponent from a distance before bearing down and boarding him, carried them chiefly as ballast, bringing them up only when he contemplated a cutting-out expedition, dashing into a harbour and blazing away at nearby batteries and the like while the boats set about their prey. Or on an occasion such as this, when the disarmed Franklin could be equipped with a two-hundred-and-forty-pound broadside.
'If this weather continues,' said Jack '- and the glass is perfectly steady - the Franklin should soon be a very useful consort: and we are, after all, getting somewhat nearer the path of merchantmen, to say nothing of roving whalers.'
'I wish it may go on,' said Stephen. 'The temperature in Paradise must have been very like this.'
It did go on, day after golden day: and during the afternoons Martin and Dutourd could often be heard playing, sometimes evidently practising, since they would take a passage over and over again.
Yet in spite of his music, and in spite of the fact that he played better with the Frenchman far forward than he did in the cabin, Martin was not happy. Stephen was rarely in the gunroom - apart from anything else Dutourd, a frequent guest, was an inquisitive man, apt to ask questions, by no means always discreet; and evading enquiries was often potentially worse than answering them - and apart from the general taking of air on the quarterdeck Stephen and his assistant met for the most part either in the sick-berth or in Stephen's cabin, where their registers were kept. Both were much concerned with the effects of their treatment: they had kept accurate records over a long period, and at present it was the study and comparison of these case-histories that made up the great part of their professional duty.
At one of these meetings Stephen said, 'Once again we have not exceeded five knots at any time in the day, in spite of all this whistling and scratching of backstays. And it makes a great while since fresh water has been allowed for washing anything but the invalids' clothes, in spite of our prayers for rain. Yet providing we do not die of thirst, I comfort myself with the thought that even this languid pace brings us nearly a hundred miles closer to my coca-leaves - a hundred miles closer to wallowing in some clear tepid stream, washing the ingrained salt from my person and chewing coca-leaves as I do so, joy.'
Martin tapped a sheaf of papers together and after a moment he said, 'I have no notion of these palliatives, which so soon become habitual. Look what happened to poor Padeen, and the way we are obliged to keep the laudanum under lock and key. Look at the spirit-room in this ship, the only holy of holies, necessarily guarded day and night. In one of my parishes there are no less than seven ale-houses and some of them sell uncustomed spirits. I hope to put all or at least some of them down. Dram-drinking is the curse of the nation. Sometimes I turn a sermon in my mind, urging my hearers to bear their trials, to rely on their own fortitude, on fortitude from within, rather than their muddy ale, tobacco, or dram-drinking.'
'If a man has put his hand into boiling water, is he not to pull it out?'
'Certainly he is to pull it out - a momentary action. What I deprecate is the persistent indulgence.'
Stephen looked at Martin curiously. This was the first time his assistant had spoken to him in a disobliging if not downright uncivil manner and some brisk repartees came into his mind. He said nothing, however, but sat wondering what frustrations, jealousies, discontents had been at work on Nathaniel Martin to produce this change not only of tone but even of voice itself and conceivably of identity: the words and the manner of uttering them were completely out of character.
When the silence had lasted some heavy moments Martin said, 'I hope you do not think there is anything personal about my remarks. It was only that your mention of coca-leaves set my mind running in another direction...'
