then again he was profoundly dissatisfied with himself for his performance aboard the San Fiorenzo. A gross abuse of authority: he should have dealt with it firmly. Yet there he was, bound hand and foot by the Printed Instructions and the Articles of War. And then again there was the problem of midshipmen. The sloop needed at least two more, a youngster and an oldster; he would ask Dillon if there was any boy he chose to nominate – cousin, nephew, godchild; it was a handsome compliment for a captain to pay his lieutenant, not unusual when they liked one another. As for the oldster, he wanted someone with experience, best of all someone who could be rated master’s mate almost at once. His thoughts dwelt upon his coxswain, a fine seaman and captain of the maintop; then they moved on to consider the younger men belonging to the lower deck. He would far, far rather have someone who came in through the hawse-hole, a plain sailorman like young Pullings, than most of the youths whose families could afford to send them to sea . . . If the Spaniards caught Stephen Maturin they would shoot him for a spy.
It was almost dark by the time the third merchantman had been dealt with, and Jack was shattered with fatigue – red eyes prickling, ears four times too sharp and a feeling like a
tight cord round his temples. He had been on deck all day, an anxious day that began two hours before first light, and
he went to sleep almost before his head was down. Yet in that brief interval his darkening mind had time for two darts of intuition, the one stating that all was well with Stephen Maturin, the other that with James Dillon it was not. ‘I had
no notion he minded so about the cruise: though no doubt
he has grown attached to Maturin too: a strange fellow,’ he said, sinking right down.
Down, down, into the perfect sleep of an exhausted healthy well-fed young fattish man – a rosy sleep; yet not so far that he did not wake sharply after a few hours, frowning and uneasy. Low, urgent, quarrelling voices came whispering in through the stern-window: for a moment he thought of a surprise, a boat-attack, boarding in the night; but then his more woken mind recognized them as Dillon’s and Marshall’s, and he sank back. ‘Yet,’ said his mind a great while later, and still in sleep, ‘how do they both come to be
on the quarter-deck at this time of the night, when they are keeping watch and watch? It is not eight bells.’ As if to confirm this statement the Sophie’s bell struck three times, and from various points all through the sloop came the low answering cries of all’s well. But it was not. She was not
under the same press of sail. What was amiss? He huddled on his dressing-gown and went on deck. Not only had the
Sophie reduced sail, but her head was pointing east-northeast by east.
‘Sir,’ said Dillon, stepping forward, ‘this is my responsibility entirely I overruled the master and ordered the helm to be put up. I believe there is a ship on the starboard bow.’
Jack stared into the silvery haze – moonlight and a half-covered sky the swell had increased He saw no ship, no light: but that proved nothing. He picked up the traverseboard and looked at the change of course. ‘We shall be in with the coast of Majorca directly,’ he said, yawning.
‘Yes, sir so I took the liberty of reducing sail
It was an extraordinary breach of discipline. But Dillon knew that as well as he did: there was no good purpose to be served in telling him of it publicly.
‘Whose watch, is it at present?’
‘Mine, sir,’ said the master. He spoke quietly, but in a voice almost as harsh and unnatural as Dillon’s. There were strange currents here; much stronger than any ordinary disagreement about a ship’s light.
‘Who is aloft?’
‘Assei, sir.’
Assel was an intelligent, reliable Lascar. ‘Assei, ahoy!’
‘Hollo,’ the thin pipe from the darkness above.
‘What do you see?’
‘See nothing, sir. See star, no more.’
But then there would be nothing obvious about such a fleeting glimpse. Dillon was probably right: he would never have done such an extraordinary thing else. Yet this was a damned odd course. ‘Are you quite persuaded about your light, Mr Dillon?’
‘Fully persuaded, sir – quite happy.’
Happy was the strangest word to hear said in that grating voice. Jack made no reply for some moments; then he altered the course a point and a half to the north and began pacing up and down his habitual walk. By four bells the light was mounting fast from the east, and there indeed was the dark presence of the land on their starboard bow, dim through the vapours that hung over the sea, though the high bowl of the sky was clear, something between blue Rnd darkness. He went below to put on some clothes, and while the shirt was still over his head there was the cry of a sail.
She came sailing out of a brownish band of mist a bare two miles to leeward, and as soon as he had cleared it Jack’s glass picked out the fished foretopmast, with no more than a close-reefed topsail on it. Everything was clear: everything was plain: Dillon had been perfectly right, of course. Here was their quarry, though strangely off its natural course; it must have tacked some time ago off Dragon Island, and
now it was slowly making its way into the open channel
to the south; in an hour or so their disagreeable task
would be done, and he knew very well what he would be
at by noon.
‘Well done, Mr Dillon,’ he cried. ‘Well done indeed. We could not have fallen in with her better; I should never
have believed it, so far to the east of the channel. Show her our colours and give her a gun.’
The John B. Christopher was a little shy of what might prove a hungry man-of-war, eager to impress all her English seamen (or anyone else the boarding-party chose to consider English), but she had not the least chance of escape, above all with a wounded topmast and her topgallantmasts struck down on deck; so after a slight flurry of canvas and a tendency to fall off, she backed her topsails, showed the American flag and waited for the Sophie’s boat.’You shall go,’ said Jack to Dillon, who was still hunched over his telescope, as though absorbed in some point of the
American’s rigging. ‘You speak French better than any of
us, now the Doctor is away; and after all you discovered
her in this extraordinary place – she is your discovery.
Should you like the printed papers again, or shall you Jack broke off. He had seen a very great deal of
drunkenness in the Navy; drunken admirals, post-captains,
commanders, drunken ship’s boys ten years old, and he had been trundled aboard on a wheelbarrow himself before now;
but he disliked it on duty – he disliked it very much indeed, above all at such an hour in the morning. ‘Perhaps Mr
Marshall had better go,’ he said coldly. ‘Pass the word for Mr Marshall.’
‘Oh, no, sir,’ cried Dillon, recovering himself. ‘I beg your pardon – it was a momentary – I am perfectly well.’
And to be sure, the sweating pallor, the boltered staring look had gone, replaced by an unhealthy flush.’Well,’ said Jack, dubiously, and the next moment James Dillon was calling out very actively for the cutter’s crew, hurrying up and down, checking their arms, hammering
the flints of his own pistols, as clearly master of himself as possible. With the cutter alongside and ready to push off, he said, ‘Perhaps I should beg for those sheets, sir. I will refresh my memory as we pull across.’
Gently backing and filling, the Sophie kept on the John
B.
Christopher’s larboard bow, prepared to rake her and cross her stem at the first sign of trouble. But there was none. A few more or less derisive cries of ‘Paul Jones’ and
‘How’s King George?’ floated across from the John B. Christopher’s fo’c’sle, and the grinning gun-crews, standing there ready to blow their cousins to a better world without the least hesitation or the least ill-will, would gladly have replied in kind; but their captain would have none of it -this was an odious task, no time for merriment. At the first call of
‘Boston beans’ he rapped out, ‘Silence, fore and aft. Mr Ricketts, take that man’s name.’
Time wore on. In its tub the slow-match burned away, coil by coil. All along the deck attention wandered. A gannet passed overhead, brilliant white, and Jack found himself pondering anxiously about Stephen, forgetful of his duty. The sun rose: the sun rose.