In the gun-room itself the master stretched and said to the purser, ‘Plenty of elbow-room now, Mr Ricketts.’
‘Very true, Mr Marshall,’ said the purser. ‘We see great changes these days. And how they will work out I do not know.’
‘Oh, I think they may answer well enough,’ said Mr Marshall, slowly picking the crumbs off his waistcoat.
‘All these capers,’ went on the purser, in a low, dubious voice. ‘The mainyard. The guns.
The drafts he pretended to know nothing about. All these new hands there is not room for.
The people at watch and watch. Charlie tells me there is a great deal of murmuring.’ He jerked his head towards the men’s quarters.
‘I dare say there is. I dare say there is. All the old ways changed and all the old messes broken up. And I dare say we may be a little flighty, too, so young and fine with our brand-new epaulette. But if the steady old standing officers back him up, why, then I think it may answer well enough. The carpenter likes him. So does Watt, for he’s a good seaman, and that’s certain. And Mr Dillon seems to know his profession, too.’
‘Maybe. Maybe,’ said the purser, who knew the master’s enthusiasms of old.
‘And then again,’ went on Mr Marshall, ‘things may be
a little more lively under the new proprietor. The men will
like that, when they grow used to it; and so will the officers, I am sure. All that is wanted is for the standing officers to
back him up, and it will be plain sailing.’
‘What?’ said the purser, cupping his ear, for Mr Dillon was having the guns moved, and amid the general rumbling thunder that accompanied this operation an occasional louder bang obliterated speech. Incidentally, it was this all-pervasive thunder that made their conversation possible, for in general there could be no such thing as private talk in a vessel twenty-six yards long, inhabited by ninety-one men, whose gun-room had even smaller apartments opening off it, screened by very thin wood and, indeed, sometimes by no more than canvas.
‘Plain sailing. I say, if the officers back him up, it will all be plain sailing.’
‘Maybe. But if they do not,’ went on Mr Ricketts, ‘if
they do not, and if he persists in capers of this kind -which I believe it is his nature so to do
– why then, I
dare say he will exchange out of the old Sophie as quick
as Mr Harvey did. For a brig is not a frigate, far less a ship of the line: you are right on top of your people, and they can give you hell or cause you to be broke as easy as kiss my hand.’
‘You don’t have to tell me a brig is not a frigate, nor yet a ship of the line, Mr Ricketts,’ said the master.
‘Maybe I don’t have to tell you a brig is not a frigate, 4 nor yet a ship of the line, Mr Marshall,’ said the purser
warmly. ‘But when you have been at sea as long as I have, Mr Marshall, you will know there is a great deal more than mere seamanship required of a captain. Any damned tarpaulin can manage a ship in a storm,’ he went on in a slighting voice, ‘and any housewife in breeches can keep the decks clean and the falls just so; but it needs a headpiece’ -tapping his own – ‘and true bottom and steadiness, as well as conduct, to be the captain of a man-o’-war: and these are qualities not to be found in every Johnny-come-lately – nor in every Jack-lie-by-the-wall, neither,’ he added, more or less to himself.
‘I don’t know, I’m sure.’
Chapter Four
The drum rolled and thundered at the Sophie’s hatchway. Feet came racing up from below, a desperate rushing sound that made even the tense drum-beat seem more urgent. But apart from the landmen’s in the new draft, the men’s faces were calm; for this was beating to quarters, an afternoon ritual that many of the crew had performed some two or three thousand times, each running to a particular place by one allotted gun or to a given set of ropes that he knew by heart.
No one could have called this a creditable performance, however. Much had been changed in the Sophie’s comfortable old routine; the manning of the guns was different; a score of worried, sheep-like landmen had to be pushed and pulled into something like the right place; and since most of the newcomers could not yet be allowed to do anything more than heave under guidance, the sloop’s waist was so crowded that men trampled upon one another’s toes.
Ten minutes passed while the Sophie’s people seethed about her upper deck and her fighting-tops: Jack stood watching placidly abaft the wheel while Dillon barked orders and the warrant-officers and midshipmen darted furiously about, aware of their captain’s gaze and conscious that their anxiety was not improving anything at all. Jack had expected something of a shambles, though not anything quite so unholy as this; but his native good-humour and the delight of feeling even the inept stirring of this machine under his control overcame all other, more righteous, emotions.
‘Why do they do this?’ asked Stephen, at his elbow. ‘Why do they run about so earnestly?’
‘The idea is that every man shall know exactly where
to go in action – in an emergency,’ said Jack. ‘It would never do if they had to stand pondering. The gun-teams are there at their stations already, you see; and so are Sergeant Quinn’s marines, here. The foc’s’le men are all there, as far as I can make out; and I dare say the waisters will be in order presently. A captain to each gun, do you see; and a sponger and boarder next to him – the man with the belt and cutlass; they join the boarding-party; and a sail-trimmer, who leaves the gun if we have to brace the yards round, for example, in action; and a fireman, the one with the bucket
– his task is to dash out any fire that may start. Now there is Pullings reporting his division ready to Dillon. We shall not be long now.’
There were plenty of people on the little quarter-deck
– the master at the con, the quartermaster at the wheel, the marine sergeant and his small-arms party, the signal midshipman, part of the afterguard, the gun-crews, James Dillon, the clerk, and still others – but Jack and Stephen paced up and down as though they were alone, Jack enveloped in the Olympian majesty of a captain and Stephen caught up within his aura. It was natural enough to Jack, who had known this state of
affairs since he was a child, but it was the first time that Stephen had met with it, and it gave him a not altogether disagreeable sensation of waking death: either the absorbed, attentive men on the other side of the glass wall were dead, mere phantasmata, or he was – though in that case it was a strange little death, for although he was used to this sense of isolation, of being a colourless shack in a silent private underworld, he now had a companion, an audible companion.
your station, for example, would be below, in what we call the cockpit – not that it is a real cockpit, any more than that fo’c’sle is a real fo’c’sle, in the sense of being raised: but we call it the cockpit – with the midshipmen’s sea-chests as your operating table and your instruments all ready.’
‘Is that where I should live?’
‘No, no. We shall fix you up with something better
than that. Even when you come under the Articles of War,’ said Jack with a smile, ‘you will find that we still honour learning; at least to the extent of ten square feet of privacy, and as much fresh air on the quarter-deck as you may choose to breathe in.’
Stephen nodded. ‘Tell me,’ he said, in a low voice, some moments later. ‘Were I under naval discipline, could that fellow have me whipped?’ He nodded towards Mr Marshall.
‘The master?’ cried Jack, with inexpressible amazement. ‘Yes,’ said Stephen, looking attentively at him, with his head slightly inclined to the left.
‘But he is the master. . .’ said Jack. If Stephen had called the Sophie’s stem her stern, or her truck her keel, he would have understood the situation directly; but that Stephen should confuse the chain of command, the relative status of a captain and a master, of a commissioned officer and a warrant officer, so subverted the natural order, so undermined the sempiternal universe, that for a moment his mind could hardly encompass it. Yet Jack, though no great scholar, no judge of a hexameter, was tolerably quick, and after gasping no more than twice he said, ‘My dear sir, I believe you have been led astray by the words master and master and commander – illogical terms, I must confess. The first is subordinate to the second. You must allow me to explain our naval ranks some time. But in any case you will never be flogged – no, no; you shall not be flogged,’ he added, gazing with pure affection, and with something like awe, at so magnificent a prodigy, at an ignorance so very far beyond anything that even his wide-ranging mind had yet conceived.