‘But then I am a surgeon, sir: so it is no virtue. The surgeon of the Commodore’s flagship, if that is the right expression. My name is Maturin.’
Joe Plaice uttered a loud, coarse laugh, attempted to be smothered with a white kid glove. Stephen and Duff glanced back at him with a smile. Thomas looked furious. ‘Oh, indeed,’ he said, ‘I had imagined that this was a dinner for commissioned officers, for officers in command,’ and spoke no more.
‘Sophie, my dear,’ said Stephen next morning, ‘that was a sumptuous feast you gave us.
When next I see Father George I shall have to admit to the sin of greed, of deliberate, premeditated greed. I returned to the venison pasty not once but three times. So did Captain Duff. We encouraged one another.’
‘I am so glad you enjoyed it,’ said she, looking upon him fondly. ‘But how I regret your having to sit next to that cross old stick. Jack says he is always finding fault, always against everything; and like many of those West Indies spit-and-polish captains he thinks that if he can drive his people so hard that they are able to shift topgallant masts in thirteen minutes and make all the brass shine like gold day and night they must necessarily beat any of the heavy Americans, to say nothing of the Frenchmen. He is going to try to persuade the Admiral to make an exchange.’
‘If you please, sir, Captain Tom has the dog-cart at the door,’ said George.
‘But he said nine,’ cried Stephen, bringing out his watch, his beloved Breguet.
Although it was of the perpetual kind and more reliable than the Bank of England, he shook it twice. The platinum mass that kept it always wound gave a muffled answer, but the hands still said ten minutes past the hour. ‘God’s my life,’ he said. ‘It is ten minutes past the hour. Sophie, forgive me, I must run.’
As a commander and a post-captain Jack Aubrey had never discussed the officers of his own ship with Stephen: as a commodore he had told him about Duff, but rather in the medical line than otherwise. He might also have spoken of the Purple Emperor’s shortcomings, since the earlier rule did not apply – Stephen and the Emperor were not messmates, more or less tied by a wardroom loyalty – but it was unlikely that he should do so right away.
Tom Pullings had no such inhibitions. He had known Stephen since he was a midshipman and he had always talked to him without the least restraint. ‘That cove should never have risen above master’s mate,’ he said as they drove towards Portsmouth on a sweet morning, talking about last night’s dinner and their fellow guests. ‘He should never have been given authority: he don’t know what to do with it so he is for ever giving orders to show that he does. He is always ill-used, always in a rage with someone. You get fathers of families like that. Always someone due for a flogging or kept to bread and water or sent to bed for tittering at the wrong moment. He makes life hell for everyone else in the ship, and to judge by his vinegar headpiece it is not much better for himself. Him and his dignity! Lord Nelson never topped it the dignified don’t-talk-to-me kind of nob. If you fart on this man’s quarterdeck even to leeward as is but right you have insulted the King’s representative. Bah. And he has never been in action.’
‘To be fair, nor have most sea-officers.’
‘No. But he thinks that those that have, hands and all, hold it against him and laugh behind his back: so he takes it out on them, as well as everybody else. How I hope the Commodore will get rid of him. We need a fighting captain in this squadron, not the first lieutenant of a royal yacht, with his double-blacked yards – a skipper whose people can fire their guns and who will follow him like the Sophies followed us – God love us, that was a day!’ Tom laughed, remembering the tall side of the Spanish thirty-two-gun frigate and the way he and his fifty-three shipmates from the fourteen-gun sloop Sophie had swarmed up it after Jack Aubrey, defeating the three hundred and nineteen Spaniards aboard and carrying their ship a prize into Port Mahon.
‘So it was, too,’ said Stephen.
‘What is more,’ said Tom, ‘the Thames’s gunner told our gunner they had not used up even their practice allowance this last eight months: the guns were rattled in and out now and then, but only in dumb-show; and he doubted – he fairly wept when he said so –
they could fire two broadsides in five minutes. Anything for pretty decks and perfect paint.’
‘Have you anything against Captain Thomas personally, Commodore?’ asked the Admiral. ‘Do you feel he may possibly lack conduct?’
‘Oh not at all, sir. I have no doubt he is as brave as a…’
‘A
lion?’
‘Just so. Thank you, sir. As brave as a lion. But I do feel so strongly that in this squadron gunnery is of the first importance; and a ship’s company capable of firing at least three well-directed broadsides in five minutes cannot be suddenly improvised.’
‘What makes you think the Thames cannot do so?’
‘Her captain’s statement that they have never timed themselves, and her gunner’s returns, which show that even the trifling official allowance of powder and shot has not been expended.’
‘Then you will have all the more to work them up with. No, Aubrey: I cannot shift the Thames and you will have to make do with what you possess. Which upon my word is pretty handsome for a young fellow of your age. I have never seen a ship in better order than Thames herself; and the Duke of Clarence said the same when he went aboard her at the Nore. In any case it is not a question of suddenly improvising anything at all. You will probably have several weeks before you are on your station, with the wind so wickedly fixed in the south-east. On the other hand, by way of compensation for taking Pyramus away, I mean to give you the Laurel; and what is more, I mean to give you your sailing-date at last. Wind and weather permitting, you will proceed to the rendezvous off the Berlings specified in your orders on Wednesday the fourteenth.’
‘Oh thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I am most uncommonly obliged to you; and if I may take my leave at once I shall hurry aboard and set everything in train for Wednesday the fourteenth.’
‘There is not a moment to lose,’ said the Admiral, shaking him by the hand.
‘Pass the word for Dr Maturin,’ said the Commodore, and the word passed down through the echoing decks.
‘Him and the Commodore have been tie-mates this many a year,’ observed a seaman as it made its way along the orlop.
‘What’s a tie-mate, guy?’ asked a landsman, newly pressed. ‘Don’t you know what a tie-mate is, cully?’ asked the seaman with tolerant scorn. The landsman shook his heavy head: there were already seventeen thousand things he did not know, and their number increased, daily. ‘Well, you know what a pigtail is?’ asked the seaman, showing his own, a massive queue that reached his buttocks, and speaking loud, as to a fool or a foreigner.
The landsman nodded, looking a little more intelligent. ‘Which it has to be unplaited, washed on account of the lice, combed, and plaited again for muster. And can you do it yourself, behind your back? Not in time for muster, mate. Not in time for Kingdom Come, neither. So you get a friend, like me and Billy Pitt, to do yours, you sitting on a cheese of wads at your ease, or maybe a bucket turned arsy-versy; and then you do his: for fair’s fair, I say. And that is what we call tie-mates.”I heard of that Billy Pitt of yours,’ said the landsman, narrowing his eyes.
Presently Stephen pitched upon the right ladder – the ship had at least one more floor than he had remembered – and found the Commodore and the Captain of the Bellona in the great cabin. They were smiling, and Jack said ‘Such pleasant news, Stephen. We are to have the Laurel, twenty-two, one of the new sixth-rates, amazingly quick in stays, and she is commanded by Dick Richards. You remember him, Stephen?’
‘The unhappy boy so woefully afflicted with acne that they called him Spotted Dick?
Indeed I do. An obstinate case, though not bad at heart.’
‘The very man. I taught him gunnery: he laid a pretty chaser, and his gun-crews were the best in the ship – the best ship afloat. I had been growing very anxious. I have seen so many squadrons formed, delayed in port, delayed still longer, the date put off, put off again, and then, when their officers had all their stores aboard for say a six months’