Gnosce teipsum – my dreams appal me. This morning, when I was walking beside the coach as it laboured up Ports Down Hill and I came to the top, with all Portsmouth harbour suddenly spread below me, and Gosport, Spithead and perhaps half the Channel fleet glittering there – a powerful squadron moving out past Haslar in line ahead, all studdingsails abroad – I felt a longing for the sea. It has a great cleanliness. There are moments when everything on land seems to me tortuous, dark, and squalid; though to be sure, squalor is not lacking aboard a man-of-war.
‘I am not sure how far JA practised upon Mrs Williams’s avid credulity: pretty far, to judge by her obsequious reception of me. It has had this curious result, that JA’s stock has risen with her in almost the same proportion as mine. She would have no objection to him if his estate were clear. Nor, I swear, would Sophie. Yet I do believe that
that good child is so firm in the principles she has been taught, that she would wither away an old maid, rather than disobey her mother – marry without her consent. No Gretna Green. She is a dear good child; and she is one of those rare creatures in whom principle does not do away with humour. This is no time for roaring mirth, to be sure, but I remember very well to have noted, again and again at Mapes, that she is quietly and privately jolly. A great rarity in women (Diana included, apart from an appreciation of wit and now and then a flash of it), who are often as solemn as owls, though given to noisy laughter. How deeply sorry, how more than sorry I should be if she were to take the habit of unhappiness: it is coming on her fast. The structure of her face is changing.’ He stood looking out of the window. It was a clear, frosty morning, and the blackguardly town looked as well as it could. Officers passed in and out of the Port Admiral’s house, over against the inn; the pavements were full of uniforms, blue coats and red, church-going officers’ wives in pretty mantuas, with here and there a fur pelisse; scrubbed children with Sunday faces.
‘A gentleman to see you, sir,’ said the waiter. ‘A lieutenant.’
‘A lieutenant?’ said Stephen; and after a pause, ‘Desire him to walk up.’
A thundering on the stairs, as though someone had released a bull; the door burst inwards, trembling, and Pullings appeared, lighting up the room with his happiness and his new blue coat. ‘I’m made, sir,’ he cried, seizing Stephen’s hand. ‘Made at last! My commission came down with the mail. Oh, wish me joy!’
‘Why, so I do,’ said Stephen, wincing in that iron grip, ‘if more joy you can contain – if more felicity will not make your cup overflow. Have you been drinking, Lieutenant Pullings? Pray sit in a chair like a rational being, and do not spring about the room.’
‘Oh say it again, sir,’ said the lieutenant, sitting and
gazing at Stephen with pure love beaming from his face. ‘Not a drop.’
‘Then it is with present happiness you are drunk. Well. Long, long may it last.’
‘Ha, ha, ha! That is exactly what Parker said. “Long may it last,” says he; but envious, like, you know – the grey old toad. Howsomever, I dare say even I might grow a trifle sour, or rancid, like, five and thirty years without a ship of my own, and this cruel fitting-out. And he is a good, righteous man, I am sure; though he was proper pixy-led before the captain came.’
‘Lieutenant, will you drink a glass of wine, a glass of sherry-wine?’
‘You’ve said it again, sir,’ cried Pullings, with another burst of effulgence. (‘You would swear that light actually emanated from that face,’ observed Stephen privately.) ‘I take it very kind. Just a drop, if you please. I am not going to get drunk until tomorrow night – my feast. Would it be proper for me to propose a sentiment? Then here’s to Captain Aubrey –
my dear love to him, and may he have all his heart desires. Bottoms up. Without him I should never have got my step. Which reminds me of my errand, sir. Captain Aubrey’s compliments to Dr Maturin, congratulates him upon his safe arrival, and will be very happy to dine with him at the George this day at three o’clock; has not yet shipped paper, pens, or ink, and begs to be excused the informality of his reply.’
‘It would give me great pleasure if you would keep us company.’
‘Thankee, sir, thankee. But in just half an hour I am taking the long-boat out off of the Wight. The Lord Mornington Indiaman passed Start Point on Thursday, and I hope to press half a dozen prime seamen out of her about dawn.’
‘Will the cruising frigates and the Plymouth tenders have left you anything to take?’
‘Love you, sir, I made two voyages in her. There are
hidey-holes under her half-deck you would never dream of, without you helped to stow men into ’em. I’ll have half a dozen men out of her, or you may say, “black’s the white of your eye, Tom Pullings.” Lieutenant Tom Pullings,’ he added, secretly.
‘We are short-handed, so?’
‘Why it’s pretty bad, of course. We are thirty-two men short of our complement, but ’tis not so short as poor. The receiving-ship sent us eighteen Lord Mayor’s men and twenty-odd from the Huntingdonshire and Rutland quotas, chaps taken off the parish and out of the gaols -never seen the sea in their life. It’s seamen we’re short of. Still, we do have a few prime hands, and two old Sophies among ’em – old Allen, fo’c’sleman, and John Lakey, maintop. Do you remember him? You sewed him up very near, the first time you ever sailed with us and we had a brush with an Algerine. He swears you saved his – his privates, sir, and is most uncommon grateful would feel proper old fashioned without ’em, he says Oh, Captain Aubrey will lick ’em into shape, I’m certain sure. And there’s Mr Parker seems pretty taut; and Babbington and me will have the hide off of any bastard as don’t attend to his. duty – the Captain need not fear for that.’
‘What of the other officers?’
‘Why, sir, I have not rightly had time to come to know ’em, not with all this day-of-judgment hell and shindy of fitting-out – purser in the Victualling Yard, gunner at the Ordnance, master in the hold, or where the hold would be if there was a hold, which there ain’t.’
‘She is constructed on new principles, I find?’
‘Well, sir, I hope she’s constructed to swim, that’s all. I would not say it to any but a shipmate, sir, but I never seen anything like her, Pearl River, Hugh or Guinea coast. You can’t tell whether she’s coming or going. Not but what she’s a gallows deal more handsome than the common run,’ he added, as though taking himself up for disloyalty. ‘Mr Parker seen to that – gold-leaf, bright-work galore, special
patent blacking for the bends and yards, blocks stropped with red leather. Was you ever at a fitting-out, sir?’
‘Not I.’
‘It’s a right old Bedlam,’ said Pullings, shaking his head and laughing. ‘Dockyard mateys underfoot, stores all over the deck, new drafts milling about like lost souls, nobody knowing who anyone is or where to go – a right old Bedlam, and the Port Admiral sending down every five minutes to know why you’re not ready for sea – is everybody observing the Sabbath aboard the Polychrest, ha, ha, ha!’ In the gaiety of his heart Tom Pullings sang
‘We’ll give you a bit of our mind, old hound:
Port Admiral, you be damned.
‘I haven’t had my clothes off since we commissioned her,’ he observed. ‘Captain Aubrey turns up at crack of dawn – posted all the way – reads himself in to me and Parker and the Marines and half a dozen loobies which was all we had then, and up goes his pennant.
And before his last words are rightly out – fail not as you will answer the contrary at your peril – “Mr Pullings, that topsail-sheet block needs a dog-bitch thimble, if you please,” in his own voice exactly. But Lord, you should have heard him carrying on at the riggers when he found they had been giving us twice-laid stuff; they had to call the Master-Attendant to soothe his horrid passion. Then “Lose not a minute,” says he, driving us all though fit to drop, merry as a grig and laughing when half the people run to the stern thinking it is the bows, and t’other way about. Why, sir, he’ll be glad of his dinner, I’m sure: he’s not had above a bit of bread and cold beef in his hand since I been aboard, And now I must take my leave. He would give his eye-teeth for a boat-load of thorough-paced seamen.’