tight at the top, broad down below and the seams piped with green. Once she has them on, she will never throw them off, I warrant you. The same for her brother Kevin too.’
Poll shook her head. ‘When I think of all that good calico, the cutting, the measuring and the fine stitching - look at these flounces! I could find it in my heart to have her whipped and put in the black hole with biscuit and water.’
The trousers were indeed successful: in both cases they were a cause of sinful pride and they never came off, but hid the children’s shameful parts day and night, except when they went to the head; furthermore they promoted such a degree of agility and daring that on any idle day, with light airs coming from all points of the compass - a make-and-mend day too, with most of the hands busy with thimbles and shears on the forecastle or in the waist of the ship - Kevin, on his way to the mainmasthead, discerned a sail in the west, bringing up a little breeze of its own. Partly out of mother-wit and partly because he could not remember the English for west, he climbed the remaining few feet and told Geoghegan, the lookout, who had been watching a couple of tunny-boats far astern, but who now hailed the deck. ‘On deck, there. On deck. A sail three points on the starboard bow.’ Then some time later, ‘Frigate, sir, I believe.’ Pause. ‘Yes. Hamadryad; and she is making sail.’
‘What joy,’ said Jack to Stephen. ‘That will be Heneage Dundas out of Gibraltar. I have not congratulated him yet on his new ship: we will ask him to supper - a pair of fowls, and there is still plenty of sucking-pig. Killick, Killick, there. Pass the word for Killick.’ And when his steward arrived, with his invariable look of ill-usage and a denial of anything, anything at all that might be alleged against him, ‘Killick, freshen some champagne, will you?’
‘Which we ain’t got none, your honour,’ said Killick, barely containing his triumph. ‘Not since the Admiral dined aboard. Oh dear me, no.’
‘Some white Burgundy, then: and let it down in a net on a twenty-fathom line.’
There was no white Burgundy either; but Killick was capable of relishing a private victory too, and he only replied, ‘A twenty-fathom line it is, sir.’
‘Now, Mr Hallam,’ said Jack to his signal midshipman, ‘Once the usual signals have passed, pray invite Captain Dundas and Mr Reade to supper. Doctor, should you like to come up into the foretop to watch Hamadryad make sail?’
It was not really a very dangerous ascent, nor lofty, and Stephen had been known to go even higher, entirely by himself, but he had so often been found clinging by his fingernails to improbable parts of the rigging that Jack and Bonden exchanged a private look of thankful relief when they had successfully pushed and julled him up into the top through the lubber’s hole.
Though the foretop was of no great height’it gave them a splendid view of the western Mediterranean: they were a little late for some of the phases of Hamadryad’s increase of sail, but still there were many delights to come: studdingsails aloft and alow on either side of fore and mainmast, of course, and even royal studdingsails, which was coming it pretty high, as Jack observed - then a skysail above the main-royal- ‘and look, look, Stephen,’ cried Jack, ‘the audacious reptile has flashed out a skyscraper- do you see? The fore-and-aft affair above everything: take my glass and you will make out its sheet. Did you ever see the like, Bonden?’
‘Never, sir. But once when I was aboard Melpomene in the doldrums we spread a sail above the royal: though it being square we called it a moonsail.’
This prodigious spread brought Hamadryad within pistolshot of the little Surprise before dusk. She clapped her helm a-lee, swung round in an elegant curve, spilt the wind from her sails, furled her wings, and sent her captain across the narrow lane in his barge, as neat and trim as the Channel fleet. ‘My dear Hen, how do you do?’ cried Jack, receiving him on the quarterdeck with a hearty shake of his hand. ‘You know Dr Maturin and all my officers, I believe?’ Captain Dundas made his round of civilities. ‘Come below,’ said Jack, ‘and let us have a whet - you must be mortal parched after such a frantic spread of cloth. What did you make?’
‘Only a span above eight knots, even with all our washing hung out to dry,’ said Dundas, laughing. ‘But it did please our topmen.’
‘It certainly amazed all ours - amazed and impressed. Sherry, or a draught of right Plymouth gin?’
‘Oh, gin, if you please. Two of our victuallers were stove on the Berlings in that shocking southerly blow and we have not had a drop since then - they happened to be carrying it all. Did the wind reach as far as you?’
‘Yes: and as far as Alexandria, I believe: a truly wicked blast. But tell me, Hen’ - pouring him a stiff tot and speaking with an affectation of casual unconcern that deceived neither of his friends - ‘what has Lord Barmouth in the way of frigates?’
‘None at all,’ said Dundas. ‘Some battered seventy-fours, a sixty-four-gun ship, some indifferent sloops, and of course the flag. But Hamadryad was the last of the frigates. The rest have been sent
