'I have known these waters for thirty-five years; and Loder,who has sailed right round Java in just such a boat as the pinnace, has known them almost as long. He foretells fair weather, our Malays foretell fair weather, and well armed we should be quite at our ease. I put it to you again: this is a matter of duty.'
They walked on in silence, and when they reached the end of the cove Jack sat down on the rock, reflecting. 'Very well,' he said at last. 'I will let you have the pinnace with a carronade in her bows and a couple of hands to work it - muskets for all your people - an officer to navigate, and a coxswain.'
'Thank you, Aubrey, thank you,' cried Fox, shaking his hand. 'I am deeply obliged.... but I expected no less of you, sir.'
'I shall send the pinnace in at eleven o'clock, manned and rigged. There are provisions, water and firing already ashore. I wish you a quick and fortunate passage: my best compliments to Mr Raffles, if you please.'
Returning to the ship he said to Fielding, 'The envoy is away for Batavia in the pinnace, armed with a twenty- four-pound carronade, a dozen muskets and proper ammunition. They have all they need in the way of stores. I shall need three volunteers, one fit to act as coxswain, and an officer to take them there.'
To Stephen he said, 'Fox cannot wait for the moon. He is off to Batavia with his treaty: I have agreed to let him have the pinnace.'
'Is this a sensible man's undertaking, Jack?' asked Stephen in a low, troubled voice. 'It is not a mad, disproportionate venture?'
'Mad? Lord, no. Batavia is only a couple of hundred miles away. Bligh sailed close on four thousand in a smaller boat, much less well-found than our pinnace.'
'Your pinnace,' observed Stephen; and in fact it was Jack's private property.
'Well, yes. But I hope to see it again, you know.'
'He will be accompanied by competent people? He will not give wild improper orders?' Stephen went on, willing to soothe his uneasy conscience.
'He may give wild improper orders,' said Jack, smiling wearily, 'but no one will take any notice. One of our officers will be in command.'
The officer in question was Elliott, who had had the watch when the Diane struck. He knew very well that if he had remembered his orders and had reefed topsails when the breeze increased the ship would have been making no more than three or four knots at the moment of impact rather than a full eight. A cruel blow in any case, but probably not a disastrous one. Jack knew it, since he had seen the full topsails laid aback; and Elliott knew that he knew it. Neither had said anything, but Jack at once agreed to his request that he should take the pinnace, led him through the charts and observations and checked his instruments, lending him a better azimuth compass.
Elliott left the ship in what was in fact his first command a little before eleven. He was at the landing-place at the stated time; and then followed one of those intolerable delays typical of landsmen - packages forgotten, fetched, exchanged for others, confused; arguments, screeching, counter-orders; arrangements changed - and Jack, who had intended to remain on deck until the pinnace sailed by into the offing, went below and slept for twenty minutes: he had not turned in all night.
Hauled back into the present world, he stood on the motionless quarterdeck, taking off his hat to the distant Fox, equally erect, equally bareheaded, as the pinnace, quarter of a mile away, went about and headed south- south-west.
'Well, Mr Fielding,' he said, having gazed for a while at the decks and the distant shore, 'they have left us looking not unlike Rag Fair: decks all ahoo, and the beach like a gypsy encampment after the constables have taken them all away. Is that Mr Edwards I see over there, in the black breeches?'
'Yes, sir. He told me he was to be left behind with a copy of the treaty, in case of accident.'
'Oh, indeed? After dinner, then, let all hands make things look a little more shipshape here - I should like my joiner and his mates to put the cabin back as it was - and then repair on shore and put that mass of objects into some kind of an order before we lighten the ship any further. We cannot go on living indefinitely with a disused pawnshop just at hand: furthermore, we must set about finding water.'
A real sleep before his own dinner, and above all dinner itself did wonders for Captain Aubrey. 'I once ate my mutton at an inn called The Ship Aground,' he said to his guests, 'but I never thought to do so in sober earnest: a very whimsical idea, upon my word. Mr Edwards, a glass of wine with you, sir. Captain Welby, I know I must not speak of service matters at table, but pray put me in mind of the word that has been on the tip of my tongue this last half hour - the subject I must consult with you when we go ashore - the learned word for setting up tents and so on.'
'Castramentation, sir,' said Welby, beaming with decent triumph - it was rare that a soldier could triumph aboard a man-of-war-'And there is more to it than might be supposed.'
Certainly there was more to it than Jack had supposed. 'To begin with, sir,' said Welby, 'it is always wise to be both on rising ground and to have a good supply of fresh water within your lines if it is at all possible; and it would be strange if this sloping stretch of grass did not kill two birds with one stone. By that, sir, I mean it might on the one hand house all our people on its upper right-hand face, and on the other, give them a well at no great depth - there has certainly been a watercourse in the middle, long ago. The position would not answer against artillery, but for an ordinary surprise you could hardly ask better. A square with a moderate breastwork and a stockade would leave a fine open space between itself and the forest on three sides, and command the landing-place on the fourth. With a carronade at each corner it would make a very neat little post, even without re-entering angles or ravelines or anything ambitious like that.'
Jack could best survey the broad sweep, a green triangle thrust uphill into the swarming forest, from a central mound, now covered by the Diane's livestock, sheep, goats, pigs, geese, poultry, grazing on a particularly sweet grass shoulder to shoulder. 'Baker,' he called, 'drive them over to the far side.'
'I can't, sir,' replied Baker. 'They won't follow anyone but Jemmy Ducks and young Pollard; and the hogs bite, if shoved.'
It was the old story. Even the most recent animals, influenced by the older inhabitants, were already too tame to be driven; they could only be led by those they liked. The next step would be their conversion into holy cows that could not possibly be slaughtered, cut up and served out. 'Then pass the word for Jemmy Ducks and Pollard,' said Jack, making a mental note to tell Fielding to move Pollard to other duties; detachment was easy enough where poultry was concerned, but the four-legged stock required a frequent change of keeper.
