upon the deck. They are in their best sea-going clothes, they are newly-shaved, their pigtails have been tied afresh. This has taken them two and a half hours; and they have been closely inspected by their lieutenant and his midshipmen. And now, as you see, the Commodore inspects them all over again - see, he checks a midshipman for not wearing gloves. But on the whole there are very few reproofs... very little occasion for reproof in so seasoned and competent a ship’s company.’
‘Is nobody to be flogged?’
‘No, sir. Not at divisions.’
‘I am glad of that. It is a spectacle that I find extremely painful.’
Jack had finished with the first division: he said something kind to the lieutenant and the senior midshipman and moved on. The group he had just inspected was made up of the afterguard and waisters, but in such a ship as the Surprise almost all of them were right seamen, though some might be a little less nimble than they were: Stephen knew every soul present except for those who replaced the casualties in the recent action; and even of these one had been shipmates with him in the Worcester. He had a word with most, particularly those he had treated, calling them by name, until halfway along the line, when he came to a face, a perfectly distinct, typical middle-aged seaman’s face, brown, wrinkled, gold-earringed, yet one that baffled him again and again, as the waister knew very well: he was used to it and he called out, ‘Walker, sir, if you please; and much better for the bolus.’ They both laughed: Stephen said, ‘I must take one myself, to jog my memory.’
‘Is this familiarity usual in the service?’ asked the Caroline’s secretary.
‘Only in ship’s companies that have served long together,’ said Stephen.
‘In a Russian ship, such a remark...’ began the secretary, but he checked himself as they came to the next group, under Whewell, the third lieutenant, and three comparatively mature midshipmen or master’s mates. These hands, all prime seamen, managed the midship guns in a way and at a speed that gave Jack the utmost satisfaction: many of them came from that curious little port Shelmerston, when the Surprise was a letter of marque. Stephen knew them and their families, had treated them again and again for everything from the cruellest wounds and scurvy to piles, with the usual seamen’s diseases in between. Many, if not most of them he had always called by their Christian names. ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘how are you coming along?’
The Commodore, the French captain and Mr Harding were well ahead, so some of Tom’s wittier companions answered for him, in hoarse whispers - Tom had got a young woman with child again - and there was a good deal of stifled mirth.
The ceremony carried on, past the forecastle-men, the oldest, most highly-skilled seamen in the ship, then to the boys - the few ship’s boys - under the master-at-arms, and so by way of the galley with its gleaming cauldrons and coppers, which Jack ritually wiped, looking at his spotless handkerchief, and so to the sick-berth, which Poll Skeeping and her friends had reduced to such a supernatural state of cleanliness that the two patients (bloody flux), pinned in their cots by tight-drawn, unwrinkled sheets, dared neither speak nor move, but lay there as though rigor mortis had already reached its height.
The sick-berth, however gratifying, was only a preliminary to the climax of divisions; and when Jack, Stephen and Christy-Palliere returned to the quarterdeck they found everything set out, with chairs for the officers and a kind of lectern made of an arms-rack with a union flag draped over it for the captain.
‘Shipmates,’ said he, with a significant look, ‘this Sunday I am not going to read a sermon. Let us just sing the Old Hundredth. Mr Adams’ - to his clerk - ‘pray give the note.’
The clerk drew a pitch-pipe from his bosom, blew the note loud and clear, and the ship’s company fearlessly joined their captain in the psalm, a fine deep body of sound. The frigate had a moderate breeze on her larboard quarter, with Pomone no great way astern; and when the Surprises had uttered their full-throated amen, the Pomones’ hymn reached them over the water, admirably clear. Jack stood listening for a moment, then he squared to the lectern, opened the book the clerk had brought him, and in a strong, grave voice he read the Articles of War, right through to XXXV: ‘If any person who shall be in actual service and full pay in his Majesty’s ships and vessels of war, shall cornmit upon the shore, in any place or places out of his Majesty’s dominions, any of the crimes punishable by these articles and orders, the persons so offending shall be liable to be tried and punished for the same, to all intents and purposes, as if the same crimes had been committed at sea, on board any of his Majesty’s ships or vessels of war.’ And to XXXVI, the catch-all: ‘All other crimes, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea.’
During this familiar series of articles (twenty-one of which included the death penalty) Stephen had been reflecting on his quite unusually happy morning and the evident good will that surrounded him as he walked along the decks. He rarely saw many of his shipmates at any one time; and for a long while now those that his duties or his leisure had brought him into touch with had been grave and if not reserved then something like it - concerned only with the matter in hand, unwilling to speak at length, even embarrassed - no open expression of sympathy, still less of condolence, until
