knees, massive enough to withstand the recoil of his brass ninepounders, so that by removing the stern windows as though to ship deadlights, together with some of the gingerbread-work from the gallery, he could use them as
chasers, firing from a higher station than the more usual gunroom ports. And this he did almost every day under his own immediate supervision, bringing in different teams, sometimes of officers alone, led by himself – how he loved pointing the gun – sometimes of midshipmen, but more often of the two extremes of the lower deck, the first and second captains on the one hand, and the boobies, the downright creeping lubbers on the other, in the hope that the best might grow better and the worst learn the exercise at least well enough to be of some use to the ship. This firing of the stern-chase had the great advantage of allowing him to shoot at empty casks bobbing away in the wake, so that those who aimed them could see the results of their aiming at various ranges; and all this without heaving the ship to for the boats to tow out a target.
On the other hand, it made a shambles of the cabin. Most Captain’s stewards would have cried out at seeing their housekeeping blasted to every wind that blew, their cherished brass, paintwork, checkered sailcloth, deck, windows, desecrated as though by battle; and Killick, old in insubordination and dumb insolence, indulged for old times’ sake and grown tyrannical, was perhaps the most crabbed steward in any rated ship, an Attila to the swabbers and ship’s boys under his sway, and a source of anxiety to his Captain. But Jack was happily inspired to invite him to touch off the first discharge, and after that the glory of the cabin might go hang – deck-rings and metal slides might wreck the checkered cloth, garlands of hammered shot, wet swabs, and sooty worms might ruin the unvarying symmetry of this drawing-room, adorned with swords on one hand and with telescopes on the other, the pistols forming a tasteful sunburst in between and the chairs and tables always just so, taking their bearings from the mahogany wine-cooler by the starboard quarter-gallery door, and the whole place might reek of powder-smoke -Killick was there, eyeing the slow-match that was to fire
the gun, much as a terrier might eye a rat or a groom his bride. A single shot would make him civil, and even obliging, for a week.
Apart from this banging and belching of morning fire, life aboard quickly resumed the agreeable monotony of a man-of-war on passage. Jack and Stephen returned to their music, sometimes playing out on the stern-gallery in the warm night, with the wake ploughing a line of phosphorescence far behind them in the velvety sea, flecked with the distorted images of the southern stars, while the steady trade sang overhead. Sometimes birds, rarely to be identified, would dart at the stern-lanterns, and sometimes a whole acre of the surface would erupt in a brief firework-display as a school of flying-fish escaped from some unseen enemy. The daily routine went on, and although the decks looked rather thin, this thinness, and the presence of so many bald-headed languid invalids, soon
began to seem the natural order of things: what is more, the bald heads, shaved in the fever, grew first a bristly cap, and then a dense upright fur, so that they looked less abnormal. Stephen became intimately acquainted with the first lieutenant’s carious teeth and indifferent digestion, and with the bosun’s ague, first caught at Walcheren; and he wormed the entire midshipmen’s berth.
In this same resumption of their former days, he returned to his walks with Mrs Wogan, while the surviving convicts exercised upon the forecastle. Now they did so with far less restraint than in the early days; the men voluntarily heaved at the pumps and lent a hand with the simpler tasks – they no longer belonged to an entirely foreign, reprobated world, and sometimes they received illicit gifts of tobacco.
The slight stock of fresh provisions from Recife soon disappeared; iced puddings were an insubstantial dream; the wardroom went back to its ordinary fare – less monotonous than that of the lower deck, but still pretty
tedious, with the inept catering of young Mr Byron, whose notion of pudding varied only from figgy-dowdy to plum-duff and back again. And in the wardroom Grant began to assert his authority as president of the mess, doing his utmost to abolish oaths and bawdy and to discourage cards, thereby coming into conflict with Moore, a jovial soul, who feared he must be reduced to total silence and inactivity.
Throughout the unsleeping four and twenty hours the watches changed, the log was heaved, the winds, the course, and the distance run recorded: none of the distances was spectacular, since the breezes, though in general steady, hung so far to the east of south that the Leopard was perpetually as close-hauled as she could be, her bowlines twanging taut; and still she trailed her mass of doldrum weed.
An uneventful series of days, an ordered monotony spaced by bells, among them that which the loblolly-boy pealed daily at the foremast, when those who felt pale reported to the surgeon.
‘At this present rate, we shall exhaust our venereals as well,’ he said, washing his hands.
‘How many does that make, Mr Herapath?’
‘Howlands is the seventh, sir,’ replied his assistant.
‘The gaol-fever might fox me,’ said Stephen, ‘but the lues venerea never can: pox in all its forms is as familiar to the seafaring medical man as the common cold to his colleague by land. These are all recent infections, Mr Herapath; and since our Gipsy woman is continence itself, sure the only source is Mrs Wogan’s servant Peg. For you are to observe that although a protracted voyage may bring about a wonderful increase in sodomitical practices, these are the wounds of Venus herself. A fireship is among us, and her unlucky name is Peggy Barnes.’
Stephen brushed this aside. ‘How do they get at her? and how can she be rendered chaste? A serricunnium, a belt for that purpose, is not provided in ships of the fourth
rate; nor, perhaps, in others. And this, when you reflect upon the number of women to he found in some vessels with captains of a different humour, is a strange lacuna. Our captain, however, obeys the letter of the law, happy to do so, since he maintains that women are a source of discord in a ship. Perhaps the sailmaker, or the armourer, that ingenious man . . . I shall speak to the Captain.’
Stephen did indeed speak to the Captain, and it so happened that he did so at a moment when Jack was particularly inflamed against the sex. ‘They make a sorry heart, an heavy countenance, a wounded mind, weak hands, and feeble knees,’ he said, to Stephen’s unspeakable astonishment. ‘And that is in the Bible: I read it myself. Damn them all. There are only three women aboard, but they might as well be a troop of basilisks.’
‘Basilisks, joy?’
‘Yes. You must know all about basilisks: they spread pests by glaring at people. There is this Peggy of yours, that will reduce the whole ship’s company to a parcel of noseless, toothless, bald paralytics unless she is headed up in a barrel with no bunghole. There is your vile witch of a Gipsy, that has told one of the Portuguese hands the ship is unlucky, so unlucky that the two-headed fetch of a murdered sheriff’s man haunts the bowsprit netting: all the people have heard the tale, and the morning watch saw this ghostly bum sitting on the spritsail yard, mopping and mowing at them – every hand on the forecastle came racing aft, tumbling over one another like a herd of calves, never stopping until they reached the break of the quarterdeck, and Turnbull could not get the headsails trimmed.
And then there is your Mrs Wogan. Mr Fisher was with me just before you came. He thinks it would be far more proper for the chaplain to walk her on the poop rather than the surgeon or the surgeon’s young man. His admonition would have more weight if he had the sole control of her movements; her reputation would no longer suffer from certain rumours that are current; and most of the other
officers were of his opinion. How do you like that, Stephen, eh?’ Stephen spread his hands. ‘Now I may not see much farther through a brick wall than the next man,’ Jack went on, ‘but I know damned well that for all his black coat, that man wants to come to her bed – I only speak to you like this, Stephen, because you are directly called in question. Since I have a respect for the cloth, all I said was, that I did not relish having my orders canvassed in the wardroom or anywhere else, that it was not customary in the service to dispute a captain’s decisions nor to carry dirty rumours to the cabin, and that I expected my directions to be promptly obeyed.’