There was a general confused sound of disapprobation and denial. ‘You must understand, sir,’ said Webberfore, ‘that if you go for to open a time-keeper’s case, by the Articles of War, you are flogged to death, your pay and allowances are forfeit, your widow has no pension, and you are buried with no words said over you.’
‘You mustn’t open a chronometer, no, not if it is ever so,’ said the master: and the company agreed. ‘Flesh on Friday ain’t in it.’
The talk ran on in this righteous way for some time, but Stephen felt that it was deviously approaching an outlet. ‘Of course,’ said Webberfore, ‘the outer case may always be opened, for the officer – usually the master himself,’ – bowing to Woodbine ‘- to wind the machine: and it is always possible for a part such as the ratchet-click to lose its tip, which, having tumbled about with the motion of the ship, interfering with the chronometer’s accuracy, works its way down to the winding-hole, from which a skilled hand may pluck it with superfine Swiss pincers. Pluck it out without ever opening the watch.’
‘Very true,’ said the master, looking earnestly at Stephen.
‘The ratchet is the piece that rises when you wind the watch, is it not?’ They all agreed.
‘Like a windlass,’ said one. ‘Or a capstan: but then you call it a pawl,’ said another.
‘But surely,’ said Stephen, ‘if the ratchet fails, the wheel runs backwards without control. It has happened to me. I was winding my watch, and as I took out the key, there was a dismal whirr, and the watch was dead.’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said Webberfore, ‘because the whole of the ratchet’s tip had gone and there was nothing to stop the wheel or the spindle as the case may be from turning. But if only a corner of the tip had gone, which sometimes happens with over-tempered metal, the rest would hold the spring wound tight – under tension – so the watch would go – while the odd corner would ramble about making sure it would not keep true time.’
‘Well, I am content, Webberfore,’ said Stephen, ‘and I congratulate you heartily.’
‘And so do I,’ cried Wilkins. ‘By God, navigating with a single chronometer is . . .’ He shook his head, unable to express the horror, the extreme anxiety; and then, the men having retired, he asked Woodbine whether they ever smoked or chewed tobacco. Woodbine answered that they did both, when they could, but the ship was on very short commons, and they longed for Rio and a fresh supply.
Wilkins nodded with great satisfaction, stowed his chronometers in a padded bag and, taking his leave, he said, ‘I believe I am to have the pleasure of dining aboard you tomorrow, sir?’
Tomorrow was another day, at least by the calendar, but the two could hardly be told apart: the heat, the faintly drifting cloud, the ship pitching heavily with no way on her, the
flaccid sails, were all the same: to be sure, an outraged frigate-bird had replaced the boobies, and a slightly smaller blue shark now swam under the counter, but the tar still dripped, the hands still cursed and sweated.
‘I am sorry not to see Ringle yet,’ said Stephen, gazing into the general murk.
‘I am sorry too,’ said Jack. ‘But I do not think you need feel really anxious. William is a tolerable navigator and his master is even better – sailed with Cook. Then again a schooner as light as Ringle is more affected by these shifting currents than we are. In any case William knows very well that we victual and water at Rio. Stephen, forgive me for saying so, but there is tar on your breeches, and our guests will be aboard in ten minutes.’
Dining to and fro, under awnings that sheltered the deck from the misty yet strangely ardent sun, and from the now more liquid tar, they enjoyed themselves more than it might have been thought possible in such conditions. The Americans certainly had the better of it, they having victualled at Rio and still possessing stores of tropical fruit and veg- .
etables: the Americans had also seen the Asp being refitted there, which gave rise to a number of long, highly technical descriptions during which Stephen’s attention wandered, though Jack and his officers assured him that they were of the very first interest.
* * *
‘How particularly agreeable that was,’ said Stephen as the Surprise’s barge pulled back through the varying mist, the coxswain steering by the sound of a small maroon, booming every thirty seconds. ‘It was indeed,’ said Jack, and the other officers in the boat mentioned a variety of delights, mostly in the tropical line but some, such as chess-pie, among the foundation stones of the American cuisine: while Candish and the master agreed that they had never drunk such quantities of wine before.
After a reminiscent pause, Jack said, ‘Captain Lodge told me that as soon as it was dark and a little cooler, he meant to send his boats out ahead and tow east-north-east for a watch or two, now that they knew their position for sure. He believed there was a fairly steady current – had experienced it before.’
When they were aboard and in the cabin, Stephen went on, ‘And I was so pleased with what Dr. Evans told me about young Herapath’s medical studies – highly gifted -and the success of his book.’
‘Young Herapath? Yes, decent creature indeed: but no mechanical power known to science could ever make a seaman out of him – Lord above,’ he cried over an enormous peal of thunder, the cabin lit through and through by lightning just overhead, and the literal crash of rain on the deck, ‘those poor souls are in for a ducking.’
The prodigious downpour was so monstrously thick that one could hardly breathe in the open; and after ten minutes naked figures could be seen flitting through the deluge, opening the inlets that would replenish the butts far below with a water as clean and pure as the heavens could provide. All this, however, angered and terrified the cats more than anything that had gone before: the more austere of the two, the long-legged animal with an apricot-coloured belly, flung herself into Stephen’s unwilling lap, and could not be comforted.
It was inconceivable that the deluge should last till dawn – the sky could not hold so much
– but it did, leaving them stunned, deafened, amazed at the light of day to eastward and
the familiar sails of Ringle making three or even four knots towards them, the tiny breeze right aft. Incomprehensibly the deck had become littered, even covered in places, with strange forms of deep-sea life, presumably sucked up by some remote series of waterspouts and liberated here.
But Jack Aubrey was having absolutely none of them: Surprise’s only care, and Ringle’s too, was to get out of this odious part of the sea without a moment’s pause – no breakfast, even, until they were well under way with clear decks, rigging free of seaweed, flying squids and various monsters – Stephen had to content himself with pocketing the less gelatinous creatures and hurrying them below before his stony-faced captain had him forcibly removed.
Still, breakfast there was, in time – at least for those not labouring at the pumps, shooting out thick jets of water on either side – when humanity returned to Captain Aubrey’s face and Stephen asked him timidly ‘did he think they were out of the doldrums yet?’
‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ said Jack. ‘When the belt – the convergence – is very narrow and concentrated as I think this one was, it sometimes ends in a furious tantrum like this, as who should say . . .’ Meeting the cats’ steady, attentive gaze, he changed his mind and finished ‘ “Fare you well, ye Spanish ladies”. Killick, Killick there.’
‘Sir?’
‘Pass the word for Poll Skeeping. Forgive me, Stephen, I trespass upon your ground.’
‘Sir?’ said Poll Skeeping, tying on a new apron.
‘Be so good as to remove those cats. They know perfectly well that they are not allowed in the cabin.’
They did, indeed, and suffered themselves to be carried away, one in each hand, limp, meek, with lowered eyes.
‘How glad I was to see Ringle,’ said Stephen after a while.
‘So was I, by God: she is only a little thing; and at times the weather was close on as heavy as weather comes.’
‘Would it be improper, unlucky, to ask where we are? I mean, just a very vague approximation.’
‘After taking the sun’s height at noon, which I think we shall achieve, I hope to be able to tell you in rather finer limits than that: but even now I shall hazard the guess that by tomorrow morning we shall be in the steady south-east trades, not much above a week’s sailing from Rio, according to how strong they prove.’