parthenogenetic lizards there - he said 'Very well. But it must be touch and go - just the time to hurry ashore, buy a dozen bottles of bark and away.' 'And don't I wish that may be the case,' he added to himself.
It was not, of course: it never was the case in any but a British port. First there was the matter of the salute: none of His Majesty's ships might salute any foreign fort, governor or local dignitary without having first made certain that the same number of guns would be returned. This meant sending in an officer, accompanied by an interpreter - fortunately Mr Adams had a certain amount of Portuguese. Then there was the question of pratique: after the fifteen covenanted guns had boomed to and fro across Chaves Bay, a man from the captain of the port came out in a handsome galley, and on hearing that the squadron was last from the Slave Coast he looked grave and said that since there had been an outbreak of the plague in Whydah three years ago they would have to perform quarantine before anyone could be allowed on shore. Stephen reasoned with him privately, so convincingly that the regulations were slightly eased: the Doctor and a boat from each ship might spend a few hours ashore, but no one was to go more than a hundred paces from the high-tide mark.
As most people in the squadron expected, the second lieutenant of the Thames and the young Marine officer from the Stately who had been Stephen's neighbour at dinner took this opportunity, the first, to settle their disagreement. They and their seconds went more than a hundred paces from the shore, but not much, there being a convenient coconut grove at hand. Here the ground was measured out, and at the drop of a handkerchief each young man shot the other in the belly. Each was carried back to his boat, and the question of the Stately's manliness and fighting qualities remained undecided.
'Did you know about this rencontre, Stephen?' asked Jack that evening, when St Thomas was sinking on the southern rim of the sea and the Bellona making up for the loss of time with studdingsails aloft and alow, spread to the south-east trades.
'Faith, I was there when the provocation was given.'
'If you had told me, I might have prevented it.'
'Nonsense. There was a direct offence, and the Stately's Marine was bound to resent it. No apology was offered, no withdrawal; and this was the necessary result, as you know very well.'
Jack could not deny it. He shook his head: 'How I hope the young fellow don't die. If he do, poor Duff is like to hang himself. Do you think he will recover? The Stately, I mean.'
'The Dear knows. I have not seen him. It was over before I had done with the apothecary, and all I saw was their blood on the strand. But an abdominal,wound very often has a fatal issue, if the viscera are injured.'
In the event both young men died, though not before the second lieutenant, at the urging of the Thames's chaplain, had acknowledged that he was in the wrong and had sent a proper message to Willoughby, the Royal Marine, who returned his thanks and best wishes for a prompt recovery. This reconciliation, however, was confined to those who had fought. The hostility between the two ships increased, and it was made evident on all possible occasions by cries of 'What ho, the molly-ship' if there was time, or 'The pouffes ahoy,' and if there was not, on the part of the Thames, and of 'Slack in stays,' or 'Make more sail, there,' from the Stately. Not that there were many occasions for rudeness, for although the beautiful trade-wind varied in strength it never declined to anything near enough to one of those calms so usual in the doldrums for ordinary ship-visiting among the hands to be possible, or for it to be easy for the officers of any one ship to invite those of another: nor did the Commodore ever create an artificial calm by lying-to, even on Sundays. He was haunted by the dread of being late; and although on days less blowy than usual he would summon the Ringle and run up the line to see how his captains were coming along, he consistently urged his maxim 'Lose not a minute: there is not a minute to be lost', and obeyed it himself even to the point of forbidding the ships he visited to reduce sail to let him come aboard more easily.
He dined once in the Stately, and although he had shifted her first lieutenant, the most inveterate against Captain Duff and the man who had wished to arrest him, to the command of a brig, he was sorry to find a marked degree of tension at the captain's table: the officers ill at ease, and Duff, though a good host, anxious and wanting in authority. 'He is a good, kind fellow, and he handles his ship like a prime seaman, but he seems incapable of taking a hint,' said Jack on returning.
Yet this was the one sad day out of the ten - ten, no more; and but for the heavy-sailing Thames it would have been eight- that it took to run up to Freetown, and the rest of the time was delightful sailing, a world to which they had grown so accustomed in the vast stretches of the Pacific and to which they returned as to the natural way of life, with all the ship. board ceremonies and routines in their due order, as exactly marked by bells as those of a monastery. Eight bells in the middle watch, when those whose duty it was to show the sun a spotless deck had to leave their hammocks two hours before he rose; eight bells in the forenoon watch, when the officers fixed the height of the noonday sun and hands were piped to dinner: bells and pipes all day long, with some music too - the drum beating 'Heart of Oak' for the wardroom dinner (though Aumra, whose Marine officer had organized a band among his men, did it in a higher style), the drum again for quarters and the retreat, and on most evenings fiddles, bagpipes or a little shrill fife playing for the hands as they danced on the forecastle: bells all night long, too, though somewhat muted. These formal measures and divisions had of course been there during the wearisome creep along the shores of the Gulf the Bellona often lying to, doing nothing; but it was only now that they regained their full significance, and in a suprisingly short time this part of the voyage seemed to have been going on for ever.
For Jack and Stephen too the evening resumed their old familiar pattern of supper and music - occasionally chess or cards if the seas were heavy enough to shake Stephen's control of his 'cello - or rambling talk of common friends, former voyages: rarely about the future, an anxious prospect for both and one they tended to shy away from.
'Jack,' said Stephen, when the ship's pitching had obliged him to lay down his bow: he spoke rather diffidently, knowing how Jack disliked any topic that might reflect discredit on the service, 'would it grieve you to tell me a little more about sodomy in the Navy? One often hears about it; and the perpetual reiteration of the Articles of War with their 'unnatural and detestable sin of buggery' makes it seem part of the nautical landscape. Yet apart from your very first command, the brig Sophie...'
'She was a sloop,' said Jack, quite sharply.
'But she had two masts. I remember them perfectly: one in the front, and the other, if you follow me, behind: whereas a sloop, as you never cease pointing out, has but one, more or less in the middle.'
'If she has no masts at all, or fifty, she would still have been a sloop from the moment my commission had been read aboard her: for I was a commander, a master and commander; and anything a commander commands instantly becomes a sloop.'
'Well, in that vessel there was a sailor who could not command his passion - for a goat, as I remember. But apart from that I scarcely remember any instance, and by now I am a very old and experienced salt dog.'
'I do not suppose you do. But when you consider what the lower deck is like - three or four hundred men packed tight- the cloud of witnesses when hammocks are piped down - and the very public nature of the heads - it
