How’s my gent?’
‘You’ll carry him to his cot, mate: he’s coming along royal, sheets aflowing. Which the same goes for buff
waistcoat. A bosun’s chair for him.’
‘Now, sir,’ said Jack to Canning, ‘we have a Navy dish that I thought might amuse you. We call it figgy-dowdy. You do not have to eat it, unless you choose – this is Liberty Hall. For my part, I find it settles a meal; but perhaps it is an acquired taste.’
Canning eyed the pale, amorphous, gleaming, slightly translucent mass and asked how it was made; he did not think he had ever seen anything quite like it.
‘We take ship’s biscuit, put it in a stout canvas bag -‘said Jack.
‘Pound it with a marlin-spike for half an hour -, said Pullings.
‘Add bits of pork fat, plums, figs, rum, currants,’ said Parker.
‘Send it to the galley, and serve it up with bosun’s grog,’ said Macdonald.
Canning said he would be delighted – a new experience – he had never had the honour of dining aboard a man-of-war – happy to acquire any naval taste. ‘And really,’ he said, ‘it is excellent, quite excellent. And so this is bosun’s grog. I believe I must beg for another glass. Capital, capital. I was telling you, sir,’ he said, leaning confidentially over towards Jack, ‘I was telling you some ten or twenty courses back, that I had heard a wonderful Figaro at the Opera. You must run up if you possibly can; there is a new woman, La Colonna, who sings Susanna with a grace and a purity I have never heard in my life – a revelation. She drops true on the middle of her note, and it swells, swells . . . Ottoboni is the Contessa, and their duet would bring tears to your eyes. I forget the words, but you know it, of course.’ He hummed, his bass making the glasses tremble.
Jack beat the time with his spoon and struck in with ‘Sotto i pini. .
They sang it through, then through again; the others gazed at them with a mild, bemused, contemplative satisfaction; at this stage it seemed natural that their captain should personate a Spanish lady’s maid, and even, somewhat later, three blind mice.
Before the mice, however, there was an event that confirmed them in their affectionate regard for Mr Canning:
the port went round, and, the loyal toast being proposed, Canning leapt to his feet, struck his head against a beam and collapsed into his chair as though pole-axed. They had always known it might happen to some land-soldier or civilian, had never actually seen it, and, since he had done himself no lasting injury, they were enchanted. They comforted him, standing round his chair, dressing the lump with rum, assuring him that it was quite all right
– it would soon pass – they often banged their heads – no harm in it – no bones broken.
Jack called for the punch, telling the steward in a rapid undertone that a bosun’s chair was to be rigged, and administered a tot with a medical air,
observing, ‘We are privileged to drink the King seated in the Navy, sir; we may do so without the least disrespect. Few people know it however – quite recent – it must seem very strange.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ said Canning, staring heavily straight at Pullings. ‘Yes. I remember now.’ Then, as the punch spread new life throughout his vitals he smiled round the table and said,
‘What a green hand I must look to all you gentlemen.’
It passed, as they had told him it would, and a little while later he joined them in these mice, the Bay of Biscay-o, Drops of Brandy, the Female Lieutenant, and the catch about the lily-white boys, in which he excelled them all, roaring out.
Three, three the rivals
Two, two the lily-white boys, clothed all in green-o,
But one is one and all alone
And evermore shall be so
ending with a power and a depth that none of them
could reach: Boanerges.
‘There is a symbolism there that escapes me,’ said Stephen, his right-hand neighbour, when the confused cheering had died away.
‘Does it not refer to – ‘began Canning; but the others had returned to their mice, all singing in voices calculated to reach the foretop in an Atlantic gale, all except Parker, that is to say, who could not tell one tune from another and who merely opened and closed his mouth with an expression of polite good-fellowship, in a state of exquisite boredom; and Canning broke off to join them.
He was still with the mice as he was steered into the bosun’s chair and lowered gently into his boat, still with them as he was rowed over the sea towards the great dark assembly of ships under the Goodwin sands; and Jack, leaning over the rail, heard his voice growing fainter and
fainter – see how they run, see how they run – until at last it turned back to Three, three the rivals, dying quite away.
‘That was as successful a dinner-party as I remember, afloat,’ said Stephen at his side. ‘I thank you for my part in it.’
‘Do you really think so?’ said Jack. ‘I was so glad you enjoyed it. I particularly wished to do Canning well:
apart from anything else, he is a very rich man, and one does not like the ship to look scrape-farthing. I was sorry to call a halt so soon, however; but I must have a little light for manoeuvring. Mr Goodridge, Mr Goodridge, how is your tide?’
‘She’ll be making for another glass, sir.’
‘Your fender-men are ready?’
‘Ready, all ready, sir.’
The wind was fair, but at slack water they were to unmoor and pass through the squadron and the convoy:
Jack had a mortal dread that the Polychrest might foul one of the men-of-war or half the straggling convoy, and he had armed a party with long poles to shove her off.
‘Then let us step into your cabin.’ When they were below he said, ‘You have the charts spread out, I see. I believe you are a Channel pilot, Master?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Just as well: I know the West Indian waters and the Mediterranean better than these. Now I want you to lay the sloop half a mile off Gris Nez at three in the morning, the steeple bearing north fifty-seven east and the tower on the cliff south sixty-three east.’
Towards four bells in the middle watch Jack came on deck: the Polychrest was lying to under foretopsail and mizen, bowing the swell with her odd nervous lift and jerk. The night was still sharp and clear, bright moonlight, and eastwards a pale host of stars – Altair rising over the dark mass of Cap Gris Nez under the starboard quarter.
And the wind was still this same nipping breeze out of the north-west. But far over on the larboard bow trouble was brewing: no stars above Castor and Pollux, and the moon was sinking towards a black bar right across the horizon. With a falling glass this might mean a blow from the same quarter – an uncomfortable position, with the shore so close under his lee. ‘I wish it were over,’ he said, begin-fling his ritual pace. His orders required him to be off the headland at three in the morning, to fire a blue light, and to receive a passenger from a boat that should answer his hail with the word Bourbon: he was then to proceed with all possible dispatch to Dover. If no boat appeared or if he were driven off his station by stress of weather, then he was to repeat the operation on the three succeeding nights, remaining out of sight by day
This was Pullings’ watch, but the master was also on deck, standing over by the break of the quarterdeck, keep. ing an eye on his landmarks, while the quiet business of the ship went on From time to time Pullings trimmed the sails to keep them exactly balanced, the carpenter’s mate reported the depth of water in the well – eighteen inches, which was more than was right; the master-at-arms made his rounds, the glass turned, the bell rang, the sentinels called ‘All’s well’ from their various posts, the look-outs and the helm were relieved. The watch took a turn at the pumps; and all the while the breeze hummed through the rigging, the sum of the notes rising and falling through a full tone as the ship rolled, her masts straining their shrouds and braces now this side, now that.
‘Look out afore, there,’ called Pullings.
‘Aye-aye, thir,’ came the distant voice. Bolton, one of the men pressed from the Indiaman, a glowering, surly, murderous brute with no front teeth – yellow fangs each side of a lisping gap; but a good seaman.
Jack held his watch to the moonlight: still a long time to go, and now the dark bar in the north-west had swallowed up Capella. He was thinking of sending a couple of men to the mast-head when the look-out hailed. ‘Upon deck, thir. Boat on the starboard quarter.’