‘That would give me the utmost pleasure,’ said Stephen.
‘It was when I was coming back from the Cape in the Minerva, a very wet ship, Captain Soules: once we were north of the line we had truly miserable weather, a whole series of gales from the westward. But the day after Christmas the wind grew quite moderate and we not only let a reef out of the maintopsail but also sent up the topgallant mast and yard: yet during the night it freshened once more and we close-reefed the topsails again, got the topgallant yard down on deck and shaped the mast.’
‘Before this it was amorphous, I collect? Shapeless?’
‘What a fellow you are, Stephen. Shaping a mast means getting it ready to be struck. But, however, while this was in train, with the people tailing on to the mast-rope, the one that raises it a little, do you see, so that it can have a clear run down, the ship took a most prodigious lee-lurch, flinging all hands, still fast to their rope, into the scuppers. And since they hung on like good ‘uns this meant that they raised the heel of the mast right up above the cross-trees, so that although the fid was out it could not be lowered down. Do you follow me, Stephen, with my fid and heel and cross-trees?’
‘Perfectly, my dear. A most uncomfortable position, sure.’
‘So it was, upon my word. And before we could do anything about it the topmast-springstays parted, then the topmast stay itself; and the mast went, a few feet above the cap, and falling upon the lee topsail yardarm carried that away too. And all this mare’s nest came down on the mainyard, parting the lee-lift -that is the lee-lift, you see? Then the weather quarter of the mainyard, hitting the top, shattered the weather side of the crosstrees; so that as far as the sails were concerned, the mainmast was useless. At that very moment the ship broached to, huge green seas coming aft. We survived; but ever since then I have been perhaps over-cautious. Though this afternoon I had meant to reduce sail in any event.’
‘You do not fear losing the prize?’
‘Certainly I fear losing the prize: I should never say anything so unlucky as No, she is ours.
I may lose her, of course; but you saw her start her water over the side, did you not?’
‘Sure I saw the water and the guns; and I saw how she drew away, free of all that weight. I spent a few moments liberating poor Mr Martin from behind the seat of ease where the wreckage had imprisoned him and he so squeamish about excrement, the creature, and when I looked up again she was much smaller, flying with a supernatural velocity.’
‘Yes, she holds a good wind. But she cannot cross the Pacific with what very little water she may have left – they pumped desperate hard and I saw ton after ton shoot into the sea
– so she must double back to Moahu. The Sandwich Islands are much too far. I think he will put before the wind at about ten o’clock, meaning to slip past us with all lights dowsed during the graveyard watch – no moon, you know – and be well to the west of us by dawn, while we are still cracking on like mad lunatics to the eastward. My plan is to lie to in a little while, keeping a very sharp look-out; and if I do not mistake she will be in sight, a little to the south, at break of day, with the wind on her quarter and all possible sail abroad. I should add,’ he went on after a pause in which Stephen appeared to be considering, ‘that taking into account her leeway, which I have been measuring ever since the chase began, I mean first to take the ship quite a long way south.’
‘The very same thought was in my mind,’ said Stephen, ‘though I did not presume to utter it. But tell me, before you lie in, do you not think it might calm our spirits if we were to contemplate let us say Corelli rather than this apocalyptic sea? We have scarcely played a note since before Moahu. I never thought to dislike the setting sun, but this one adds an even more sinister tinge to everything in sight, unpleasant though it was before. Besides, those tawny clouds flying in every direction and these irregular waves, these boils of water fill me with melancholy thoughts.’
‘I should like it of all things,’ said Jack. ‘I do not intend to beat to quarters this evening – the people have had quite enough for one day – so we can make an early start.’
A fairly early start: for the irregular waves that had disturbed Stephen Maturin’s sense of order in nature now pitched him headlong down the companion-ladder, where Mr Grainger, standing at its foot, received him as phlegmatically as he would have received a half-sack of dried peas, set him on his feet and told him ‘that he should always keep one hand for himself and the other for the ship’. But the Doctor had flown down sideways, an ineffectual snatch at the rail having turned him about his vertical axis, so that Grainger caught him with one iron hand on his spine and the other on his upper belly, winding him to such an extent that he could scarcely gasp out a word of thanks. Then, when he had at last recovered his breath and the power of speech, it was found that his chair had to be made fast to two ring-bolts to allow him to hold his ‘cello with anything like ease or even safety.
He had a Geronimo Amati at home, just as Aubrey had a treasured Guarnieri, but they travelled with rough old things that could put up with extremes of temperature and humidity. The rough old things always started the evening horribly flat, but in time the players tuned them to their own satisfaction, and exchanging a nod they dashed away into a duet which they knew very well indeed, having played it together these ten years and more, but in which they always found something fresh, some half-forgotten turn of phrase or of particular felicity. They also added new pieces of their own, small improvisations or repetitions, each player in turn. They might have pleased Corelli’s ghost, as showing what power his music still possessed for a later generation: they certainly did not please Preserved Killick, the Captain’s steward. ‘Yowl, yowl, yowl,’ he said to his mate on hearing the familiar sounds. ‘They are at it again. I have a mind to put ratsbane in their toasted cheese.’
‘It cannot go on much longer,’ said Grimble. ‘The cross-sea is getting up something cruel.’
It was true. The ship was cutting such extraordinary capers that even Jack, a merman if ever there was one, had to sit down, wedging himself firmly on a broad locker; and at the setting of the watch, after their traditional toasted cheese had been eaten, he went on deck to take in the courses and lie to under a close-reefed main topsail. He had, at least
by dead-reckoning, reached something like the point he had been steering for; the inevitable leeway should do the rest by dawn; and he hoped that now the ship’s motion would be eased.
‘Is it very disagreeable upstairs?’ asked Stephen when he returned. ‘I hear thunderous rain on the skylight.’
a force he had never known: the lantern swung madly, with no sort of rhythm now; and he could scarcely keep his footing.
‘This cannot go on,’ he murmured. But it did go on; and as he and Martin worked far into the night that part of his mind which was not taken up with probing, sawing, splinting, sewing and bandaging heard and partly recorded what was going on around him – the talk between the hands treated or waiting for treatment, the news brought by fresh cases, the seamen’s interpretation of the various sounds and cries on deck.
‘There’s the foretopmast gone.’
A long discussion of bomb-vessels and the huge mortars they carried: agreement: contradiction.
‘Oh for my coca-leaves,’ thought Stephen, who so very urgently needed a clear sharp mind untouched by sleep, and a steady hand.
The maintop was broken, injured or destroyed; but the half-heard voices said they should have had to get the topmast down on deck anyhow, with such a sea running and the poor barky almost arsy-versy every minute . . . poor sods on deck … it was worse than the tide-race off Sumburgh Head . . . ‘This was the day Judas Iscariot was born,’ said an Orkneyman.
‘Mr Martin, the saw, if you please: hold back the flap and be ready with the tourniquet.
Padeen, let him not move at all.’ And bending over the patient, ‘This will hurt for the moment, but it will not last. Hold steady.’