‘Well, I am sorry for him,’ said Mr Goodridge. ‘But if it had to be, it might have been as well if he had sent the ship to the bottom at the same time. A cranker, more unseaworthy craft I never saw, and I have seen a mort in my time. She made more leeway than a common raft between St Helen’s and the Bill, for all the sharp floor and sliding keels, and she gripes like a man-trap. Then she
goes and misses stays in a mill-pond. There is no pleasing her. She reminds me of Mrs Goodridge – whatever you do is wrong. If the captain had not box-hauled her in a flash, why, I don’t know where we might have come to. A most seamanlike manoeuvre, I must say; though I should not have ventured it myself, not with such a ragamuffin crew. And indeed she had more sternway upon her than I should have thought possible. As you say, sir, she was built to recoil, and I thought she was going to go on recoiling until we were brought up all standing on the coast of France. A crinkum-crankum piece of work, in my opinion, and ’tis the Lord’s blessing we have a right seaman in command; but what even he will do, or what the Archangel Gabriel would do, if it comes on to blow, I do not know, I am sure. The Channel is not so broad as all that; and in point of searoom, what this here craft requires, is the great Southern Ocean, at its widest part.’
The master’s words were prompted by the Polychrest’s increasing roll; it sent the bread-barge careering over the table, and a midshipman into Jack’s cabin, with the news that the wind was shifting into the east, a little mouse-like child, stiff in his best uniform, with his dirk at his side -he had slept with it.
‘Thank you, Mr – ‘said Jack. ‘I do not believe I remember your name.’
‘Parslow, sir, if you please.’
Of course. The Commissioner’s protégé, a naval widow’s son. ‘What have you been doing to your face, Mr Parslow?’ he asked, looking at the red, gaping, lint-flecked wound that ran across that smooth oval cheek from ear to chin.
‘I was shaving, sir,’ said Mr Parslow with a pride he could not conceal. ‘Shaving, sir, and a huge great wave came.’
‘Show it to the doctor, and tell him, with my compliments, that I should be glad if he would drink tea with mc. Why arc you in your number one rig?’
‘They said – it was thought I ought to show an example to the men, sir, this being my first day at sea.’
‘Very proper. But I should put on some foul-weather clothes now. Tell me, did they send you for the key of the keelson?’
‘Yes, sir; and I looked for it everywhere. Bonden told me he thought the gunner’s daughter might have it, but when I asked Mr Rolfe, he said he was sorry, he was not a married man.’
‘Well, well. You have foul-weather clothes?’
‘Why, sir, there are a great many things in my chest, my sea-chest, that the shopman told Mama I should be equipped with. And I have my father’s sou-wester.’
‘Mr Babbington will show you what to put on. Tell him with my compliments, that he will show you what to put on,’ he added, remembering that gentleman’s inhuman barbarity.
‘Do not wipe your nose upon your sleeve, Mr Parslow. It ain’t genteel.’
‘No, sir. Beg pardon, sir.’
‘Cut along then,’ said Jack irritably. ‘Am I a Goddamned wet nurse?’ he asked his pea-jacket.
On deck he was greeted by a squall of rain mixed with sleet and spray. The wind had increased to a fine fresh breeze, sweeping the fog away and replacing it by a low sky –
bands of weeping cloud against a steely grey, black on the eastern horizon; a nasty short choppy sea was getting up against the tide, and although the Polychrest was holding her course well enough, she was shipping a good deal of water, and her very moderate spread of canvas laid her over as though she had topgallants abroad. So she was as crank as he had feared; and a wet ship into the bargain. There were two men at the wheel, and from the way they were cramped on to the spokes it was clear they were having to fight hard to keep her from flying up into the wind.
He studied the log-board, made a rough calculation of the position, adding a triple leeway, and decided to
wear in half an hour, when both watches would be on deck. He had plenty of room, and there was no point in harassing the few good men he had aboard, particularly as the sky looked changeable, menacing, damned unpleasant
– they might have a dirty night of it. And he would get the topgallantmasts down on deck before long. ‘Mr Parker,’ he said, ‘we will take another reef in the foretopsail, if you please.’
The bosun’s call, the rush of hands, the volley of orders through Parker’s speaking-trumpet – ‘Halliards let fly – clap on to that brace – Mr Malloch, touch up those hands at the brace.’ The yards came round, the wind spilled from the sail and the Polychrest righted herself, at the same time making such a cruel gripe that the man at the con had to fling himself at the wheel to prevent her being taken aback ‘Lay out – look alive, there – you, sir, you on the yardarm, are you asleep? Are you going to pass the
–
weather earing? Damn your eyes, are you going to stow that bunt? Mr Rossall, take that man’s name. Lay in.’
Through the clamour Jack watched the men aloft The man on the yardarm was young Haines, from the Lord Mornington, he knew his trade, might make a good captain of the foretop. He saw his foot slip as he scrambled in towards the mast – those horses wanted mousing.
‘Send the last man off the yard aft,’ called the first lieutenant, red in the face from shouting.
‘Start him, Mr Malloch.’
This same old foolery – the last man off was the first man on, the man who went right out on to the yardarm. It was a hard service – it had to be a hard service – but there was no need to make it harder, discouraging the willing hands. The people were going to have plenty to do: it was a pity for them to waste their strength beating one another. And yet again it was easy to seek a cheap popularity by checking an officer in public – easy, and disastrous in the long run.
‘Sail ho!’ hailed the look-out.
‘Where away?’
‘Right astern, sir.’
She came up out of a dark smudge of half-frozen rain, a frigate hull-up already, on the same tack as the Polychrest and overhauling her very fast. French or English? He was no great way from Cherbourg. ‘Make the private signal,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Parker, your glass, if you please.’
He fixed the frigate in the grey round of the objective, swaying to counterbalance the sloop’s roll, pitch and shudder, and as the Polychrest’s windward gun went off behind him he saw the blue-white-blue break out aboard her, curving far out to leeward, and the momentary whiff from her answering gun. ‘Make our number,’ he said, relaxing. He gave orders for the mousing of the horses, desired Mr Parker to see what he could make of the frigate, sent Haines forward, and settled to watch in peace.
‘Three of them, sir,’ said Mr Parker. ‘And I think the first is Amethyst.’
Three there were, in line ahead. ‘Amethyst she is, sir,’ said the signal midshipman, huddling his book under the shelter of his bosom. They were directly in his wake, steering the same course. But the Polychrest’s leeway was such that in a very short while he saw them not head-on, but from an angle, an angle that increased with alarming speed, so that in five minutes he was watching them over the weather quarter. They had already struck their topgallantmasts, but they were still carrying their topsails atrip – their full, expert crews could reef them in a moment. The first was indeed the Amethyst; the second he could not make out – perhaps the Minerve; the third was the Franchise, with his old friend Heneage Dundas aboard, a post captain, in command of a beautiful French-built thirty-six-gun frigate; Dundas, five years junior to him as a lieutenant, thirteen months as master and commander; Jack had cobbed him repeatedly in the midshipmen’s berth of Old Ironsides: and would do so
again. There he was, standing up on the slide of a quarterdeck carronade, as pleased as Punch, waving his hat. Jack raised his own, and the wind took his bright yellow hair, tearing it from the ribbon behind, and streamed it away north-westward. As if in reply a hoist ran up to the Franchise’s mizen-peak.