‘Mr. Harding, sir,’ they said in unison.
‘Go back to him at the double and tell him that on my orders you are to go to the foremast head and Mr. Shepherd to the mizzen, there to stay until I return.’
Wantage had stopped short on hearing Captain Aubrey’s hail, and now that the midshipmen were running off he came up. ‘What is your errand, Mr. Wantage?’ asked Jack.
‘Sir, the carpenter asked me to go along with his mate’ -the mate touched his forehead with a knuckle – ‘and cheapen some pieces of dragon-wood for him.’
‘You speak the Portuguese, I collect?’
‘Yes, sir: my father was a wine-merchant here in Funchal, and I used to come and stay with my grandmother.’
‘That is a capital accomplishment, to be sure. I shall call upon you, if I may, when the ship needs an interpreter. I hope you are successful in your bargaining: but do not stick for a dollar or two – the ship comes first. Good day to you.’
He returned their salute, and after a pause he went on to Stephen, ‘There is your point to the very life. Wantage may not be a Newton or a Halley or a Cook – how I honour that man! – but he did have a Portuguese grandmother, when he was a little fellow, and now he has the Portuguese, ha, ha, ha! And to think I never knew it.’
‘Perhaps you never asked,’ said Stephen, somewhat put out.
‘On the other hand, that might have been his loss too. Without the Portuguese he could never have cuckolded the shepherd. But I must not speak lightly of serious things . . . I shall have a word with Harding.’
Back to the ship – the ceremony of boarding her – to the great cabin, and the word passing for the first lieutenant.
‘Mr. Harding, pray take a seat. May I offer you a glass of Madeira?’
Harding bowed his agreement, and having drunk a sip, he said, ‘Capital Madeira, sir, capital.’
‘It is pretty good, is it not, though I say it myself: but where can you get capital Madeira if not in Funchal itself?’ They drank in a grave, considering way, and refilling their glasses Jack went on, ‘But I tell you this, Mr. Harding, our midshipmen’s berth is not what it should be.’
‘No, sir: it is not.’
‘I watched them on the way from Gibraltar. The newcomers have no idea of their duty and except for the little fellow, the first-voyager, no wish to learn it. But what really angered me extremely was Store’s conduct ashore. He followed that poor unfortunate Wantage, crowing like a cock in an affected eunuch’s voice. For God’s sake, a gentleman’s son behaving so in public! I have told him very clearly that if he ever ventures upon such a caper again I shall first have him made fast to a gun and beat him very hard indeed and then put him ashore at the nearest port, in whatever country it may be. I think that has calmed him for the moment: but he is a thoroughly undesirable influence on the mere boys, and since we cannot inflict him on the gunner, I believe we must return to the old way of asking him to look after youngsters, which will leave Daniel, Salmon, Adams – who must be thirty-odd – and Soames to keep Store in order: to say nothing of poor Wantage, who must make the wretched fellow anxious.’
‘I quite agree, sir. You would not consider putting him ashore here?’
‘No. I did think of it; but his father and I were shipmates. Yet at the very first hint of a repetition, out he goes. You and the bosun and the bosun’s mates must keep him very busy – he cannot even manage a clove-hitch. And whenever he presumes to start a seaman with fist, foot or rope-end let him go straight to the masthead. In any case, if we re-commission in England after the repair, I very much doubt that I shall invite him to come with us.’
‘Stephen,’ he said much later, when they had finished their rather dull game of piquet – not a really interesting hand since the very first deal, and only fourpence won or lost – and they were sitting at their ease, drinking Madeira, ‘I rarely, or tolerably rarely, bore you with the miseries of command: a good ship, a happy ship – and the two are much the same –
pretty well runs herself, once all the people are settled down, above all if they are mostly old man-of-war’s men.’
‘Certainly. One can see that particular ethos come into being: and what has struck me quite forcibly is that it differs from ship to ship.’
‘Ethos is not a Christian word, brother.’
‘I beg pardon: I should have said something like tribal sense of right conduct but for the fact that sea-officers usually employ tribal to signify a group of black or red men created only for the comic or picturesque effect – I mean, leaving slavery aside. However, since nothing else occurs to my wine-fuddled mind, let us go on with tribal, using tribal in the noble sense of Boadicea’s Iceni.’
‘I have no objection whatsoever.’
Stephen bowed and went on. ‘This tribal nature, which is of course most obvious towards the end of a long commission, may be likened to that which one senses in London clubs.
No one could mistake an habitual member of Boodle’s for an habitual member of Black’s.
It is not necessarily a question of better or worse. The Bactrian camel with two bunches is a valuable creature: the Arabian with but one is also a valuable creature.’
‘I should not deny it for a moment – though I could wish that Black’s did not have what some people might call an almost Whiggish complexion – but my real point is that in peace-time everything becomes much more difficult. You cannot distinguish yourself; and although as a captain it is your obvious duty to do your best for the people under your command, how can it be done? Getting a ship at all, when so many are being paid-off, is a near impossibility, like. . . .’ He searched for the word.
‘Making a mountain out of a molehill?’
‘Even worse, Stephen, even worse. These three young fellows who came aboard were able to do so only because they have very highly influential fathers; two of whom were my old shipmates anyhow. And boys, youths, with very highly influential fathers have to be handled with tongs: above all in peace-time . . . No, I don’t mean for myself, Stephen – I shall tell you about that on Sunday – but if any of the lieutenants or the master or any of the warrant-officers comes down on them heavy, it might cost him very dear. I have known it: some miserable little scrub writes to his mother, “Mr. Blank boxed my ears so cruelly in the middle watch that I can hardly see out of my right eye at all.” And if Father Scrub votes for the ministry and knows someone in Whitehall, in peace-time Mr. Blank may whistle for a ship until Kingdom Come.’
Jack Aubrey could never have been described as enthusiastically evangelical, but he did possess a sort of disseminated piety, sometimes expressing itself in mere superstition, sometimes in a very powerful singing of his favourite psalms, and sometimes in little private rites, such as keeping presents or good news for Sundays.
Sunday, and a very welcome pause from the hellish beating of mauls and square-headed mallets in the forepeak. Wantage, who knew Funchal through and through and who was recovering some of his self-possession with the familiar life of the Royal Navy going on all around him, had told Harding of the best eating-house in the town, and there the first lieutenant was entertaining Reade of the Ringle, Whewell, Candish and Woodbine of the gunroom, and the two master’s mates, Daniel and Wantage. He had hoped to invite Jack and Stephen too, but his servant, sounding Kil-lick first, had learnt that the Captain and the Doctor were engaged to eat a young wild boar, roasted according to the Madeiran fashion, in the hills.
‘Please tell the Senhor that I have never eaten better porco in my life,’ said Jack, holding up a bare white bone. Jack had a variety of little imbecilities, but none irritated Stephen more than his way of tossing in the odd word or two of a foreign language.
‘Oh mind your breeches, sir,’ cried Killick, interposing a napkin, a napkin too late. ‘There: now you’ve gone and done it.’
‘Never mind,’ said Jack, and he tossed the bone into the glowing embers. ‘What now?’ he called, addressing a nervous horse-borne midshipman on the edge of the picnic dell.
‘If you please, sir, Mr. Somers thought you might like to know that a packet is come in from Gibraltar.’