When they crept aboard a most unfortunately idle, becalmed and staring Bellerophon, their explanations, widely different and in both cases so weak that they could not be attempted to be believed, were brushed aside, and their captain flogged them severely on the bare breech. ‘How we howled,’ said Dundas. ‘You were shriller than I was,’ said Jack.
‘Very like a hyena.’
Killick, his steward, had long since turned in, so Jack fetched more port himself; and after they had been drinking it for some time he noticed that Dundas was growing curiously silent. Orders and bosun’s pipes on deck, and the Surprise came smoothly about with no more than the watch, settling easily on the starboard tack.
‘Jack,’ said Dundas at last, in a tone that Jack had heard before, ‘this is perhaps an improper moment, while I am swilling your capital wine .. . but you did speak of some charming prizes in the Pacific.’
‘Certainly I did. We were required to act as a privateer, you know, and since I could not disobey my instructions we took not only some whalers, which we sold on the coast,
but also a vile great pirate fairly stuffed with what she had taken Out of a score of other ships: maybe two score.’
‘Well, I tell you what it is, Jack. The glass is rising, as I dare say you have noticed.’
Jack nodded, looking at his friend’s embarrassed face with real compunction. ‘That is to say, it is likely the weather will clear, with the wind backing west and even south of west: tomorrow or the next day we should run up the Channel and then we shall part company at last, with you putting into Shelmerston and me carrying right on to Pompey.’ This, though eminently true, called for some further observation if it were to make much sense; but Dundas seemed incapable of going on. He hung his head, a pitiful attitude for so distinguished a commander.
‘Perhaps you have a girl aboard that you would like landed somewhere else?’
suggested Jack.
‘Not this time,’ said Dundas. ‘No. Jack, the fact of the matter is that as soon as the Berenice makes her number and it is known in the town that she is at hand the tipstaffs will come swarming out of their holes and the moment I set foot on shore I shall be arrested – arrested for debt and carried off to a sponging-house. I suppose you could not lend me a thousand guineas? It is a terrible lot of money, I know. I am ashamed to ask for it.’
‘In course I could. As I told you, I am amazingly flush – Crocus is my second name.
But would a thousand be enough? What was the debt? It would be a pity to spoil the ship for a…
‘Oh, it would be amply enough, I am sure; and l am prodigiously obliged to you, Jack. I dare not come down on Melville at this point: it would be different if he loved me as much as he loves you, but the last time he showed me out of the door he called me an infernal trundle-thrift whoremonger and condemned me to this vile New Holland voyage in the Berenice.’ Heneage’s elder brother, Lord Melville, was at the head of the Admiralty, and he could do such things. ‘No. The judgment was for five hundred odd – the same young person, I am sorry to say, or rather her infamous attorney – but even with legal charges and interest I am sure a thousand would cover it handsomely.’
They talked about arrest for debt, sheriff’s officers, sponging-houses and the like for some time, with profound and dear-bought knowledge of the subject, and after a while Jack agreed that a thousand would see his friend clear until he could draw his long-overdue pay and see the factor who looked after his Scottish estate: with a vessel as slow and unwieldy and unlucky as the Berenice there could be no question of prize-money, above all on such an unpromising voyage.
‘How happy you make me feel, Jack,’ said Dundas. ‘A draft on Hoare’s – for you bank with Hoare’s, as I well remember
–
will be like Ajax’s shield when I go ashore.’
‘There is nothing like gold for satisfying an attorney out of hand.’
‘Truer word you never spoke, dear Jack. But even if you had gold – you will never tell me you have gold, English gold, Jack? – it would take hours to tell out a thousand guineas.’
‘God love you, Hen. All this morning and much of this afternoon Tom, Adams and I were counting and weighing like a gang of usurers, making up bags for the final sharing-out when we drop anchor in Shelmerston. The Doctor helped too, nipping about among our heaps and taking out all the ancient coins – there were some of Julius Caesar and
Nebuchadnezzar, I think, and he clasped an Irish piece called an Inchiquin pistole to his bosom, laughing with pleasure – but he threw us out of our count and I was obliged to beg him to go away, far, far away. When he had gone we sorted and counted, sorted and counted and weighed, only finishing just before dinner. Those large bags on the left of the stern-window locker hold a thousand guineas apiece – they are part of the ship’s share –
while the smaller bags hold mohurs, ducats, louis d’ors, joes and all kinds of foreign gold by weight of five hundred each, and the chests all along the side and down in the bread-room hold sacks of a hundred in silver, also by weight: there are so many that the ship is a good strake by the stern, and I shall be glad when they are better stowed. Take one of those thousands on the left, then. I can make up the sum in a moment from the rest, but silver would be much too heavy for you to carry.’
‘God bless you, Jack,’ said Dundas, hefting the comfortable bag in his hand. ‘Even this weighs well over a stone, ha, ha, ha!’ and as he spoke four bells struck, four bells in the graveyard watch, This was almost immediately followed by an exchange of orders and distant cries on deck: they were not the routine noises that preceded going about, however, and both captains listened intently, Heneage still holding the bag poised in his hand, like a Christmas pudding. Some moments later a wet, one-armed midshipman burst in and cried ‘Beg pardon, air, but Mr Wilkins desires his compliments and duty and there is a ship about two miles to windward, he thinks a seventy-four, in any case a two-decker, and he don’t quite like her answer to the private signal.’
‘Thank you, Mr Reade,’ said Jack. ‘I shall be on deck directly.’
‘And pray be so good as to rouse out my bargemen,’ called Dundas, stuffing the bag into his shirt and buttoning his waistcoat over it. And when Reade had vanished at a run, ‘Jack, infinite thanks: I must get back to my ship. Clear and come within hail’ – he was the senior captain – ‘and short-handed though &renice is, I believe the two of us can take on any seventy-four afloat.’
Out on the cold wet quarterdeck Jack’s eyes grew used to the comparative darkness as Dundas groped awkwardly down into the tossing barge, clasping his anxious belly as he went. Comparative darkness, for now an old hunchbacked moon was sending enough light through the low cloud for him to make out a blur of white to windward, a blur that resolved itself into topsails and courses as he focused his glass, and a double row of lit gunports. But it was the hoist that fixed almost the whole of his attention, the reply to the private signal that distinguished friend from foe. It was a string of three lanterns, the topmost winking steadily: there should have been four.
‘I replied do not understand your signal, sir,’ said Wilkins, ‘but she still keeps this one hoisted.’
Jack nodded. ‘Clear for action and make sail to close the Berenice,’ he said.
‘All hands and beat to quarters,’ roared Wilkins to the bosun’s enchanted mate.
‘Forward there, forward: forestayssil and full jib.’
The Surprise was in very good order: she had seen a great deal of action and she was kept in high training for a great deal more; she could change from a darkling ship, three parts asleep, to a brilliantly-lit man-of-war with guns run out, hammocks in the netting, magazines opened and protected with fearnought screens, and every man in his accustomed, appointed station together with all his mates, ready to give battle at the word of command. But she could not do so in silence, and it was the roar of the drum, the
muffled thunder of four hundred feet and the screech of trucks that started Stephen Maturin from his profound and rosy peace.