The Surprises, their ship being barely habitable, were scattered about the town, most of the officers at the Crown, the master’s mates and the superior warrant-officers at the Blue Boar, while the greater part of the ship’s company were lodged in a disused set of barracks, food and beer being supplied by the dockyard in exchange for stores removed from the frigate – ‘Nothing for nothing, and precious little for fourpence’ being the invariable doctrine of the Victualling Office – barracks that were guarded with a certain amount of pomp in front, but whose laundry and sculleries opened on to a squalid lane.
The Crown, however, being a civilized place where Jack had often stayed when he was in funds – a place that provided him and Stephen with a handsome parlour and with a bedroom apiece – was not at all unlike a ship, so that it came quite naturally to Captain Aubrey to invite two of his officers to breakfast with him, Harding, the first lieutenant, and Whewell, the third. From about two in the morning the town had been, and still was, almost preternaturally silent: all hands had slept well after an extremely trying day, and now all hands were laying into their breakfast with a splendid zeal.
‘May I trouble you again for the sausages, Mr. Whewell?’ asked Jack; and, taking the dish,
‘Good morning, Mr. Somers. Will you join us?’
‘Good morning, sir,’ said the distressed young man. ‘I am very sorry to trouble you – very sorry to bring such wretched news – but I am afraid most of the hands have deserted.’ He had seen all the men except those granted shore-leave into their hammocks at lights out: he had spoken to the responsible bosun’s mates and quartermasters, and he had left proper orders with the sergeant commanding the soldiers at the outer gate. There were still a couple of score old Surprises in the barracks: they complained bitterly of the dockyard food, but they knew nothing about their shipmates’ disappearance: nothing whatsoever.
‘They have probably gone over the Lines into Spain,” said Jack. ‘Many of them would venture upon it for a passage home. Sit down, Mr. Somers, and take at least a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. I shall send to the Convent -their people are almost certain to have news of the deserters. And Mr. Harding, please arrange for a muster aboard at noon.
Now, if you will forgive me, I must go and pay an early morning call on the Admiral.’
The Admiral in question was not Barmouth, who, though civil, was neither very well inclined nor, in matters of this sort, with their odd, ambiguous responsibilities, a fount of wisdom: not Barmouth, but Lord Keith, Jack’s friend from very early days and a man of immense naval and administrative experience.
It was at Keith’s door that he knocked, therefore, and the anxious, downcast servant (an old acquaintance) showed him into the breakfast-room, where Queenie was sitting, mechanically dipping into a bowl of porridge. ‘Oh Jack,’ she cried, ‘such wretched news from Tullyallan . . .’
Tullyallan was a very considerable estate in Scotland belonging to the Admiral – an estate he prized extremely -and it appeared that the factor who looked after it, a man with very wide powers and responsibilities, had made the most of them, absconding with a very large sum of money and leaving Tullyallan in debt and heavily encumbered. ‘I have never seen Keith so affected,’ said Queenie. ‘It is as though he had been struck by a disease …
he sits there writing letters as fast as his pen can fly, and then tearing them up. But I shall tell him you called, dear Jack.’
Returning, hot and tired from his bitterly disappointing walk under a sun blazing from very near the zenith – a broadcloth uniform coat a prison rather than a protection -returning as ignorant of his exact legal status and powers as when he set out – Captain Aubrey found Stephen and Dr. Jacob sitting on the Crown’s veranda, smoking a hubble-bubble. Both Stephen and Jack were used to Jacob’s sudden appearances and disappearances: Jack put it down to his being a naturalist as well as a medical man – he had once found Jacob gazing with affection at a remarkably fine plant of henbane, whose qualities he explained with much the same vigour and with an approval almost amounting to enthusiasm as Stephen might have used – a naturalist who could come and go as he pleased.
‘How happy I am to see you, Dr. Jacob; I trust you are tolerably recovered?”
‘Perfectly recovered, I thank you: a mere blood-letting, sir.’
‘I am heartily glad of it,” he said, sitting wearily down on the step. ‘I dare say Maturin has told you of our misfortune?’
‘Yes, sir: and I told him where they had gone.’
‘Over the Lines, I suppose?”
‘No, sir: they traversed the entire Rock and dropped down to Catalan Bay, where the fishermen packed them all into three boats and took them across to the Spanish shore under San Roque and there landed them. It cost two and a half ounces of silver each.”
‘Pray, how did you find out?”
‘Why, I asked a fisherman, sir.’
‘Sir,’ said Harding, ‘forgive me for interrupting, but the muster you called for will take place at noon, if that is convenient.’
‘Perfectly convenient. Make it so, Mr. Harding: and if you pass by the bar, please ask them to bring a jug of very cold sangria, with at least four glasses.’
The muster was not a very cheerful occasion, to be sure – the inevitable first name to be called was answered by a heavy, embarrassed silence, and a capital R was placed by Anderson’s name, R for run, one of the very few deserters Jack had known as a commanding officer – but he had not asked for numbers, and judging by his officers’ tone he had expected things to be much worse. Most of the old and valuable Surprises were there: he greeted each by name -‘Well, Joe, and how are you coming along?’ ‘Davies, I am happy to see you; but you must take that head of yours to the Doctor’ – and they answered with such evident and personal good will that it cancelled the absence of many a good seaman, to say nothing of waisters and members of the afterguard.
This oddly heartening muster took place aboard a docked ship, her bows in an impossible position to allow carpenters – hypothetical carpenters – to deal with some of the sprung butts; and it ended with Harding’s most agreeable words, ‘Sir, Mr. Daniel tells me that Ringle has just made her number.’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said Jack. ‘Mr. Reade will no doubt have a message for Lord Keith: please leave word that when he has delivered it, I should be happy if he would dine with me. In the meantime, let us look at the wreck of the bows with Chips.’
There they stood, or rather crouched, right forward and what ordinarily would have been far below: by now their eyes were used to the darkness, and by what light the lanterns could be induced to shed they gazed at the breast-hooks – at the horrible gashes round the breast-hooks – and sighed. ‘Listen, Chips,’ said Jack to the carpenter, ‘I think you know perfectly well that the yard is going to do nothing to all this for a long, long time. Have any of your fellow-carpenters on the commercial side both the timber and the skill to allow us to put to sea and creep to Funchal, to da Souza’s place?’
‘Well, sir,’ said the carpenter, ‘I do know a little firm of private shipwrights just below Rosia Bay – I sailed as mate with the top man once, and the other day he showed me some lovely wood in his yard. But they are what you might call carriage-trade, and very expensive. And to do anything here, in the royal yard, they would have to come surreptitious, and sweeten many a palm.’
‘Can you give me any sort of a figure?’
‘It would not be less than ten guineas a day, I am afraid; and the wood on top.’
‘Well, Chips, pray lay it on,’ said Jack. ‘And pray tell your friends that they shall have a handsome present if upon their conscience we can swim before the new moon.’
He and Stephen left the ship and walked along the mole, gazing eastward at the white spread of Ringle’s sails as she beat against the wind, making good progress; and in this total privacy Jack said, ‘I think I have made up my mind. It is very probable that Chips’s friends will patch her up well enough for us to hope to reach Madeira and a pretty good yard, which should see us home.’
‘Home, brother?’
‘Why, yes: to Seppings’ yard in the first place, the best yard in the kingdom, that practically rebuilt her. And in the second place, to gather an adequate crew, a crew of real seamen.