These were Jack's personal brass long nine-pounders, wonderfully accurate, very old friends. 'The chasers too, Mr White. We keep only the light carronades.'
After that last double splash - he was ashamed of the pang it caused - he called 'Mr Fielding, let us splice the main-brace.'
This was greeted by a confused cheer, and Jemmy Bungs darted down to the spirit-room, returning with a beaker not of rum, for that was all gone, but of the even stronger arrack, a quarter of a pint for every soul aboard. This was mixed on deck with exactly three times its amount of water from the scuttle-butt, with stated proportions of lemon-juice and sugar, and so served out, Jack taking the first full pint.
It seemed to him that whatever might be said against the custom there were times when it could not be faulted, and this was one: he drank his tot slowly, feeling its almost instant effect as he watched the still water over the side. 'Now, shipmates,' he said at last, 'let us see if we can shift the barky this time.'
It seemed to him that he had felt some life underfoot since the loss of the guns, as though she were on the edge of being waterborne: if there had been anything of a sea she would surely have lifted on her bed, and it was with rising hope that he took his place at the capstan-bar. He nodded to the fifer and all hands walked steadily round to the tune of Skillygaleeskillygaloo and the invariable cries of nippers, there and light along the messenger and side out for a bend; steadily round, and then the strain came on, stronger and stronger; the cable lifted, jetting from its coils and stretching thinner, thinner. 'Heave and rally,' cried Jack, setting his whole weight and great strength against the bar, grinding his feet into the deck. 'Heave and rally,' from the deck below, where another fifty men and more were thrusting with all their might.
'Heave, heave, oh heave.' The ship made a grating motion beneath their feet and they flung themselves with even greater force against the bars: at this everything gave before them and on both decks they fell in a confused heap.
'Wind her in,' said Jack. 'A man at each bar will be enough.' He limped forward - some heavy foot had trodden on his wounded leg - and watched the cable come home alone. Bitter end or not, it had parted. 'A bitter end indeed, for us,' he said to the bosun, who gave a wan smile.
All that night they lightened ship, and at low tide, a calm low tide, they saw her guns all round her in the shallow water, catching the light of the moon. After an early breakfast they carried out the small bower with two carronades lashed to it, choosing a slightly truer line, more nearly a continuation of the ship's keel; and having done so they waited for high water, shortly after sunrise.
The sun came up at six, and it shone on clean, trim decks: they had not been holystoned but they had been thoroughly swabbed and flogged dry, particularly under the sweep of the capstan-bars; and now all hands were watching the tide as it rose. It crept up the copper, the ripples gaining and losing, but always gaining a little more than they lost until the sun was a handsbreadth clear of the horizon, when the rise came to an end, leaving a broad streak of copper above the level of the sea.
Can this be all, they asked, can this be true high water? According to the ship's chronometers it was, and had been for some time past. Of course, as every seaman knew, each succeeding tide after the spring mounted less and less until the neap was over; but so great a difference as this seemed unnatural.
However, this was all the high water they were going to have to float the ship, so they manned the bars and they heaved till sweat poured off them on to the deck. But it was clearly hopeless and presently Jack cried 'Belay,' then directing his hoarse, cracked voice below, 'Mr Richardson, there, avast heaving.' And walking away from the capstan he said in an involuntary whisper to Stephen, 'It is no good heaving out both her guts and our own; we must wait for the next springtide. Shall we have our breakfast? That good fellow has the coffee on the brew, by the smell. I should give my soul for a cup.' But with his foot on the ladder he turned and called, 'Oh, Mr Fielding, when the gunroom has breakfasted and when you can summon enough hands able to pull, I think we should weigh the small bower with the launch. I do not like to keep the cable chafing on this rocky ground until next spring. And then perhaps after a pause we can carry some more of the envoy's baggage ashore.'
The first boat to carry anything to the island brought back the secretary, Edwards, with the envoy's compliments, and should it be convenient for Captain Aubrey to come ashore, Mr Fox would be happy to have an interview, as a matter of some urgency.
'Please put my reply in the proper form,' said Jack, smiling at the poor young man. 'I am far too stupid to do so this morning. Something in the line of happy - delighted - earliest convenience, if you please: compliments, of course.' And when Edwards had gone he said to Stephen, 'I shall go, when I have had a cat-nap; but what a time for standing on ceremony, for God's sake. He might just as well have come here in the same boat.'
Fox seemed to have some sense of this when he greeted Aubrey at the landing-place - a haggard, ill-looking, dead-tired Aubrey, in spite of his cat-nap. 'It is very good of you to come, sir, after what I am sure was a trying day and night; and I should not have troubled you if I had not felt it urgently necessary to consult you on the King's service. Shall we walk along the shore?' They turned from the miscellaneous heaps of files, tape-bound papers, baggage, bales and stores, with disconsolate people sitting about among them, and paced slowly towards the farther end of the little bay, where the sand curved away to rocks that thrust far into the sea.
'I speak under correction, sir,' began Fox after a few steps, 'but as I understand it, in spite of your heroic efforts the ship has remained on her reef and must there remain until the next spring-tide.'
'Just so.'
'And even then it is not quite certain that she will come off, or that having come off she can sail to Batavia without more or less prolonged repairs.'
'There is almost no absolute certainty at sea.'
'Yet in all this we do have one firm unquestioned fact: she cannot float until next spring-tide. Now I do not speak in the least sense of criticism, far less of blame, but I do put it to you, Captain Aubrey, that this delay would be most prejudicial to His Majesty's service, and that it is therefore my duty to ask you to have me conveyed to Batavia in one of the larger boats.
The loss of more time may have incalculable effects on the general strategy at home - as you know, the balance is so fine that the detachment of a single ship can make an enormous difference - and it may have more immediate and obvious effects on the East India Company's actions. The Directors must know as soon as possible whether or not they can risk this season's Indiamen on the China voyage; and all this has the greatest influence on the country's prosperity and its power of waging war.' And after a pause in which Jack was turning this over in his weary mind, 'Come, it is barely two days' sail with the steady breeze of this time of the year; and the Governor will instantly send ships and artisans in case the Diane needs extensive repairs.'
'It is close on two hundred miles to Batavia,' said Jack. 'And these are dangerous waters. I am not familiar with the South China Sea or what its sky foretells, and my instruments are out of order. There is the weather; there are the Malays, the Dyaks and the Chinese.'
