‘Why, sir, I could not get a ship and they would not confirm me in my rank. “No white lapels for you, Pullings, old cock,” they said. “We got too many coves like you, by half.”‘
‘What a damned shame,’ cried Jack, who had seen Pullings in action and who knew that the Navy did not and indeed could not possibly have too many coves like him.
‘So I tried for a midshipman again, but none of my old captains had a ship themselves; or if they had -and the Honourable Berkely had – no vacancy. I took your letter to Captain Seymour – Amethyst, refitting in Hamoaze. Old Cozzens gave me a lift down as far as the Vizes. Captain Seymour received me very polite when I said I was from you, most obliging: nothing starchy or touch-me-not about him, sir. But he scratched his head and damned his wig when he opened the letter and read it. He said he would have blessed the day he could have obliged you, particularly with such advantage to himself, which was the civillest thing I ever heard – turned so neat
– but that it was not in his power. He led me to the gunroom and the mids’ berth himself to prove he could not
take another young gentleman on to his quarter-deck. He was so earnest to be believed, though in course I credited him the moment he opened his mouth, that he desired me to count their chests. Then he gave me a thundering good dinner in his own cabin just him and me – I needed it, sir, for I’d walked the last twenty miles – and after the pudding we went over your action in the Sophie: he knew everything, except quite how the wind had
veered, and he made me tell just where I had been from the first gun to the last. Then
“damn my eyes,” says he, “I cannot let one of Captain Aubrey’s officers rot on shore without trying to stretch the little interest I have,” and he wrote me one letter for Mr Adams at the Admiralty and another for Mr Bowles, a great man at East India House.’
‘Mr Bowles married his sister,’ observed Jack.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Pullings. ‘But I paid little heed to it just then, because, do you see, Captain Seymour promised that Mr Adams would get me an interview with Old Jarvie himself, and I was in great hopes, for I had always heard, in the service, that he had a kindness for chaps that came in over the bows. So I got back to town again somehow, and there I was, double-shaved and all of a tremble in that old waiting-room for an hour or two. Mr Adams called me in, warns me to speak up loud and clear to his Lordship, and he is going on to say about not mentioning the good word you was so kind as to put in for me, when there’s a bloody great din outside, like a boarding-party. Out he goes to see what’s o’clock, and comes back with his face as blank as an egg. “The old devil,” he said, “he’s pressed Lieutenant Salt. Pressed him in the Admiralty itself, and has sent him off to the tender with a file of marines. Eight years’ seniority, and he has sent him off with a file of Marines.” Did you ever hear of it, sir?’
‘Never a word.’
‘Well, there was this Mr Salt right desperate for a ship, and he bombarded the First Lord with a letter a day for months and turned up every Wednesday and Friday to ask for an interview. And on the last Friday of all, the day I was there, Old Jarvie winked his eye, said “You want to go to sea? Then to sea you shall go, sir,” and had him pressed on the spot.’
‘An officer? Pressed for a common sailor?’ cried Jack. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life.’
‘Nor nobody else: particularly poor Mr Salt,’ said Pullings. ‘But that’s the way it was, sir.
And when I heard that, and when people came in and whispered about it, I felt so timid-like and abashed, that when Mr Adams said perhaps I should try another day, I hurried out into Whitehall and asked the quickest way to East India House of the porter. I fell lucky –
Mr Bowles was very kind – and so here I am. It’s a good berth: twice the pay, and you are allowed a little venture of your own – I have a chest of China embroidery in the after-hold.
But Lord, sir, to be in a man-of-war again!’
‘It may not be so long now,’ said Jack. ‘Pitt’s back and Old Jarvie’s gone – refused the Channel Fleet – if he weren’t a first-rate seaman I’d say the devil go with him – and Dundas is at the Admiralty. Lord Melville. i’m pretty well with him, and if only we can spread a little more canvas and get in before all the plums are snapped up, it will go hard if we don’t make a cruise together again.’
Spreading more canvas: that was the difficulty. Ever since his disagreeable experience in latitude 33° N. Captain Spottiswood had been unwilling to set even his topgallant-sails, and the days passed slowly, slowly by. Jack spent much of his time leaning over the taffrail, staring into the Lord Nelson’s gentle wake as it stretched away to the south and west, for he did not care to watch the unhurried working of the ship, and the sight of the
topgallantmasts struck down on deck filled him with impatience. His most usual companions were the Misses Lamb, good-natured jolly short-legged squat swarthy girls who had gone out to India with the fishing-fleet – they called it that themselves, cheerfully enough – and who were now returning, maidens still, under the protection of their uncle, Major Hill of the Bengal Artillery.
They sat in a line, with Jack between the two girls and a chair for Stephen on the left; and although the Lord Nelson was now in the Bay of Biscay, with a fresh breeze in the southwest and the temperature down in the fifties, they kept the deck bravely, cocooned in rugs and shawls, their pink noses peeping out.
‘They say the Spanish ladies are amazingly beautiful,’ said Miss Lamb. ‘Much more so than the French, though not so elegant. Pray, Captain Aubrey, is it so?’
‘Why, upon my word,’ said Jack, ‘I can hardly tell you. I never saw any of ’em.’
‘But was you not several months in Spain?’ cried Miss Susan.
‘Indeed I was, but nearly all the time I was laid up at Dr Maturin’s place near Lérida – all arches, painted blue, as they have in those parts; a courtyard inside, and grilles, and orange-trees; but no ladies of Spain that I recall. There was a dear old biddy that fed me pap -would not be denied – and on Sundays she wore a high comb and a mantilla; but she was not what you would call a beauty.’
‘Was you very ill, sir?’ asked Miss Lamb respectfully.
‘I believe I must have been,’ said jack, ‘for they shaved my head, clapped on their leeches twice a day, and made me drink warm goat’s milk whenever I came to my senses; and by the time it was over I was so weak that I could scarcely sit my horse – we rode no more than fifteen or twenty miles a day for the first week.’
‘How fortunate you were travelling with dear Dr Maturin,’ said Miss Susan. ‘I truly dote upon that man.’
‘I have no doubt he pulled me through – quite lost, but for him,’ said Jack. ‘Always there, ready to bleed or dose me, night and day. Lord, such doses! I dare say I swallowed a moderate-sized apothecary’s shop – Stephen,
I was just telling Miss Susan how you tried to poison me with your experimental brews.’
‘Do not believe him, Dr Maturin. He has been telling us how you certainly saved his life.
We are so grateful; he has taught us to knot laniards and to splice our wool.’
‘Aye?’ said Stephen. ‘I am looking for the captain.’ He peered inquisitively under the empty chair. ‘I have news that will interest him; it is of interest to us all. The Lascars are suffering not from the buldoo-panee of their own miasmatic plains, whatever Mr Parley may maintain, but from the Spanish influenza! It is whimsical enough to reflect that we, in our haste, should be the cause of our own delay, is it not? For with so few hands we shall no doubt see our topsails handed presently.’
‘I am in no hurry. I wish this voyage would go on for ever,’ said Miss Lamb, arousing an echo in her sister alone.
‘Is it catching?’ asked Jack.