He rang his bell, and said, ‘Pass the word for Mr Smithers.’
‘Sit down, Mr Smithers. Tell me over the names of your Marines, if you please. Very good: and there is your sergeant, of course. Now listen to what I say. Think of each of these men separately, with great attention, and tell me whether or no each is to be relied upon.’
‘Why, of course they are, sir,’ cried Smithers.
‘No, no. Think, man, think,’ said Jack, trying to force some responsibility from that pink smirk. ‘Think, and reply when you have really thought. This is of the very first consequence.’
His look was exceedingly penetrating and savage; it had effect. Smithers lost countenance and began to swear. He did evidently put his mind into painful motion; his lips could be seen moving, telling over the muster; and after some time he came up with the answer,
‘Perfectly reliable, sir. Except for a man called – well, he has the same name as me; but no sort of connection, of course – a Papist from Ireland.’
‘You will answer for that? You are dead certain of what you say? I say dead certain?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Smithers, staring, terribly upset.
‘Thank you, Mr Smithers. You are to mention this conversation to no one. That is a direct, absolute order. And you are to display no uneasiness. Pray desire Mr Goodridge to come here at once.’
‘Mr Goodridge,’ he said, standing at his chart-table, ‘be so good as to give me our position.’
‘Exact, sir, or within a league or two?’ asked the master, with his head on one side and his left eye closed.
‘Exact.’
‘I must bring the log-board, sir.’ Jack nodded. The master returned, took up scale and compasses, and pricked the chart. ‘There, sir.’
‘I see. We are under courses and topsails?’
‘Yes, sir. We agreed to run down easy for Sunday’s tide, if you remember, so as not to hang about in the offing, we being so recognizable.’
‘I believe, I believe,’ said Jack, studying the chart and the board, ‘I believe that we may catch this evening’s tide. What do you say, Master?’
‘If the wind holds, sir, so we may, by cracking on regardless. I should not care to answer for the wind, though. The glass is rising.’
‘Not mine,’ said Jack, looking at his barometer. ‘I should like to see Mr Parker, if you please: and in the meantime it would be as well to get the stuns’ls, royals and skylines into the tops.
‘Mr Parker, we have a mutiny on our hands. I intend to take the Polychrest into action at the earliest possible moment, by way of dealing with the situation. We shall crowd sail to reach Chaulieu tonight. But before making sail I shall speak to the men. Let the gunner load the two aftermost guns with grape. The officers are to assemble on the quarterdeck at six bells – in ten minutes – with their side-arms. The Marines will fall in with their muskets on the fo’c’sle. No hurry or concern will be shown before that time. When all hands are called the guns will be traversed for’ard, with an oldster standing by each one.
When I have spoken to the hands and we make sail, no man is to be struck or started until further orders.’
‘May I offer an observation, sir?’
‘Thank you, Mr Parker, no. Those are my orders.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He had no confidence in Parker’s judgment. If he had asked the advice of any man aboard it would have been Goodridge. But this was his responsibility as captain of the ship and his alone. In any case, he felt that he knew more about mutinous hands than anyone on the quarterdeck of the Polychrest: as a disrated midshipman he had served before the mast in a discontented ship on the Cape station
– he knew it from the other side. He had a great affection for the foremast jack, and if he did not know for certain what would go with the lower deck, at least he was quite sure what would not.
He looked at his watch, put on his best coat, and walked on to the quarterdeck. Six bells in the forenoon watch. His officers were gathering round him, silent, very grave.
‘All hands aft, if you please, Mr Parker,’ he said.
The shrill pipes, the roaring down hatchways, the stampede, the red coats trooping forward through the throng. Silence, but for the tapping of the reef-points overhead.
‘Men,’ said Jack, ‘I know damned well what’s going on. I know damned well what’s going on; and I won’t have it. What simple fellows you are, to listen to a parcel of makee-clever
sea-lawyers and politicians, glib, quick-talking coves. Some of you have put your necks into the noose. I say your necks into the noose. You see the Ville de Paris over there?’
Every head turned to the line-of-battle ship on the horizon. ‘I have only to signal her, or half a dozen other cruisers, and run you up to. the yardarm with the Rogue’s March playing. Damned fools, to listen to such talk. But I am not going to signal to the Ville de Paris nor to any other king’s ship. Why not? Because the Polychrest is going into action this very night, that’s why. I am not going to have it said in the fleet that any Polychrest is afraid of hard knocks.’
‘That’s right,’ said a voice – Joe Plaice, well out in front, his mouth wide open.
‘It’s not you, sir,’ said another, unseen. ‘It’s him, old Parker, the hard-horse bugger’.
‘I’m going to take the Polychrest in tonight,’ jack went on, in a growing roar of conviction,
‘and I’m going to hammer the Frenchmen in Chaulieu, in their own port, dy’ye hear me? If there’s any man here afraid of hard knocks, he’d better stay behind. Is there any man here, afraid of hard knocks?’
A kind of universal growl, not ill-natured: some laughter; further cries of ‘that hard-horse bugger’.
‘Silence fore and aft. Well, I’m glad there ain’t. There are some awkward hands among us still – look at that wicked ugly slab-line – and some men that talk too much, but I never thought there was a faint heart aboard. They may say the Polychrest ain’t very quick in stays; they may say she don’t furl her tops’ls all that pretty; but if they say she’s shy, if they say she don’t like hard knocks, why, black the white of my eye. When we thumped it into the Bellone, there wasn’t a single foremast jack that did not do his duty like a lion. So we’ll run into Chaulieu, I say, and we’ll hammer Bonaparte. That’s the right way to bring the war to an end – that’s the right way, not listening to a set of galley-rangers and clever chaps –
and the sooner it’s over and you can go home, the better I’ll be pleased. I know it’s not a bed of roses, looking after our country the way we have to. Now I tell you this, and mark what I do say. There is going to be no punishment over this business: it will not even be logged, and there’s my word upon it. There is going to be no punishment. But every man and boy must attend to his duty tonight, he must mind it very carefully, because Chaulieu is a tough nut to crack – an awkward set of shoals – an awkward tide – and we must be every hand to his rope, and haul with a will, d’ye hear?
Quick’s the word and sharp’s the action. Now I am going to pick some men for the barge, and then we shall crowd all the sail she can bear.’ He walked into the tight crowd of men, into the low buzz of talk, the whispers, and silence went before him. Smiling, confident faces, worried faces or blank, some apprehensive, some brute-terrified and savage. ‘Davis,’ he said, ‘go along into the barge.’ The man’s eyes were frightened as a wild beast’s: he darted looks left and right. ‘Come on, now, come along, you heard what I said,’ said Jack quietly, and Davis lumbered aft, bowed and unnatural. The silence was
general now, the atmosphere quite different. But he was not going to leave these men to have dinner with their messmates and try some desperate foolery. He was in a state of exceedingly acute awareness; he had no shadow of a doubt of the men he chose.
‘Wilcocks, into the barge. Anderson.’ He was far in among them. He had no weapons.
‘Johnson. Look alive.’ The tension was heightening very fast; it must go no higher.
‘Bonden, into the barge,’ he said, looking over his coxswain’s head. ‘Me, sir?’ cried Bonden piteously. ‘Cut along,’ said Jack. ‘Bantock, Lakey, Screech.’ The low excited talk had begun again on the periphery. Men who could not be suspected were being sent into the barge: