‘A remora!’ cried Stephen with all the amazement and delight the Greek and Jack had counted upon, and more. ‘A bucket, there! Be gentle with the remora, good Sponge, honest Sponge. Oh, what happiness to seethe true remora!’
Old Sponge and Young Sponge had been over the side in this flat calm, scraping away the weed that slowed the Sophie’s pace: in the clear water they could be seen creeping
along ropes weighed down with nets of shot, holding their breath for two minutes at a time, and sometimes diving right under the keel and coming up the other side from lightness of heart. But it was only now that Old Sponge’s accustomed eye had detected their sly common enemy hiding under the garboard-strake. The remora was so strong it had certainly torn the sheathing off, they explained to him; but that was nothing – it was so strong it could hold the sloop motionless, or almost motionless, in a brisk gale! But now they had him
– there was an end to his capers now, the dog – and now the Sophie would run along like a swan. For a moment Stephen felt inclined to argue, to appeal to their common sense, to point to the nine-inch fish, to the exiguity of its fins; but he was too wise, and too happy, to yield to this temptation, and he jealously carried the bucket down to his cabin, to commune with the remora in peace.
And he was too much of a philosopher to feel much vexation a little later when a pretty breeze reached them, coming in over the rippling sea just abaft the larboard beam, so that the Sophie (released from the wicked remora) heeled over in a smooth, steady run that carried her along at seven knots until sunset, when the mast-head cried, ‘Land ho! Land on the starboard bow.’
Chapter Seven
The land in question was Cape Nao, the southern limit of their cruising ground: it stood up there against the western horizon, a dark certainty, hard in the vagueness along the rim of the sky.
‘A very fine landfall, Mr Marshall,’ said Jack, coming down from the top, where he had been scrutinizing the cape through his glass. ‘The Astronomer Royal could not have done better.’
‘Thank you, sir, thank you,’ said the master, who had indeed taken a most painstaking series of lunars, as well as the usual observations, to fix the sloop’s position. ‘Very happy to – approbation -, His vocabulary failed him, and he finished by jerking his head and clasping his hands by way of expression. It was curious to see this burly fellow – a hard-faced, formidable man – moved by a feeling that called for a gentle, graceful outlet; and more than one of the hands exchanged a knowing glance with a shipmate. But Jack had no notion of this whatsoever – he had always attributed Mr Marshall’s painstaking, scrupulous navigation and his zeal as an executive officer to natural goodness, to his nautical character; and in any case his mind was now quite taken up with the idea of exercising the guns in the darkness. They were far enough from the land to be unheard, with the wind wafting across; and although there had been a great improvement in the Sophie’s gunnery he could not rest easy without some daily approach to perfection. ‘Mr Dillon,’ he said, ‘I could wish the starboard watch to fire against the larboard watch in the darkness. Yes, I know,’ he went on, dealing with the objection on his lieutenant’s lengthening face, ‘but if the exercise is carried on from light into darkness, even the poorest crews will not get under their guns
or fling themselves over the side. So we will make ready a couple of casks, if you please, for the daylight exercise, and another couple, with a lantern, or a flambeau, or something of that kind, for the night.’
Since the first time he had watched a repetition of the exercise (what a great while since it seemed), Stephen had tended to avoid the performance; he disliked the report of the guns, the smell of the powder, the likelihood of painful injury to the men and the certainty of a sky emptied of birds, so he spent his time below, reading with half an ear cocked for the sound of an accident – so easy for something to go wrong, with a briskly-moving gun on a rolling, pitching deck. This evening, however, he came up, ignorant of the approaching din, meaning to go forward to the elm-tree pump – the elm-tree pump, whose head the devoted seamen unshipped for him twice a day – to take advantage of the sloping light as it lit up the under-parts of the brig; and Jack said, ‘Why, there you are, Doctor. You have come on deck to see what progress we have made, no doubt. It is a charming sight, is it not, to see the great guns fire? And tonight you will see them in the dark, which is even finer. Lord, you should have seen the Nile! And heard it! How happy you would have been!’
The improvement in the Sophie’s fire-power was indeed very striking, even to so unmilitary a spectator as Stephen. Jack had devised a system that was both kind to the sloop’s timbers (which really could not bear the shock of a united broadside) and good for emulation and regularity: the leeward gun of the broadside fired first, and the moment it was at its full recoil its neighbour went off – a rolling fire, with the last gun-layer still able to see through the smoke. Jack explained all this as the cutter pulled out into the fading light with the casks aboard. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘we make our run at no great range – only enough to get in three rounds. How I long for four!’
The gun-crews were stripped to the waist; their heads were tied up in their black silk handkerchiefs; they looked
keenly attentive, at home and competent. There was to be a prize, naturally, for any gun that should hit the mark, but a better one for the watch that should fire the faster, without any wild, disqualifying shots.
The cutter was far away astern and to leeward – it always surprised Stephen to see how smoothly-travelling bodies at sea could appear to be almost together at one moment and then, when one looked round, miles apart without any apparent effort or burst of speed –
and the cask was bobbing on the waves. The sloop wore and ran evenly down under her topsails to pass at a cable’s length to windward of the cask. ‘There is little point in being farther,’ observed Jack, with his watch in one hand and a piece of chalk in the other. ‘We cannot hit hard enough.’
The moments passed. The cask bore broader on the bow. ‘Cast loose your guns,’ cried James Dillon. Already the smell of slow-match was swirling along the deck. ‘Level your guns
out tompions . . . run out your guns. . . prime. point your guns. . . fire.’
It was like a great hammer hitting stone at half-second intervals, admirably regular: the smoke streamed racing away in a long roll ahead of the brig. It was the larbowlines who had fired, and the starboard watch, craning their necks a-tiptoe upon any point of vantage,
watched jealously for the fall of the shot: they pitched too far, thirty yards too far, but they were well grouped. The larboard watch worked with concentrated fury at their guns, swabbing, ramming, heaving in and heaving out: their backs shone and even ran with sweat.
The cask was not quite abeam when the next broadside utterly shattered it. ‘Two minutes five,’ said Jack, chuckling. Without even pausing to cheer, the larboard watch raced on; the guns ran up, the great hammer repeated its seven-fold stroke, white water sprang up round the shattered staves. The swabs and rammers flashed, the grunting crews slammed the loaded guns up against their ports, heaving them round with tackles and handspikes as far as ever
they would go; but the wreckage was too far behind – they just could not get in their fourth broadside.
‘Never mind,’ called Jack. ‘It was very near. Six minutes and ten seconds.’ The larboard watch gave a corporate sigh. They had set their hearts on their fourth broadside, and on beating six minutes, as they knew very well the starboard watch would do.
In fact, the starboard watch achieved five minutes and fifty-seven seconds; but on the other hand they did not hit their cask, and in the anonymous dusk there was a good deal of audible criticism of ‘unscrupulous grass-combing buggers that blazed away, blind and reckless – anything to win. And powder at eighteen pence the pound.’
The day had given place to night, and Jack observed with profound satisfaction that it made remarkably little difference on deck. The sloop came up into the wind, filled on the other tack and bore away towards the wavering flare on the third tub. The broadsides rapped out one after another, crimson-scarlet tongues stabbing into the smoke; the powder-boys flitted along the deck, down through the dreadnought screens past the sentry to the magazine and back with cartridge; the gun-crews heaved and grunted; the matches glowed: the rhythm hardly changed. ‘Six minutes and forty-two seconds,’ he announced after the last, peering closely at his watch by the lantern. ‘The larboard watch bears the bell away. A not discreditable exercise, Mr Dillon?’