From time to time Reade or a seaman would come and ask him how he did, or tell him that that was Selsey Bill, or that the breeze was freshening a little – those were the lights of
Worthing, New Shoreham…
Well on in the middle watch the stream of tide came more southward, so that great quantities of spindrift, spray and even green water swept across the low deck. Reade came forward with a cloak over his shoulder and begged Stephen to put it on. ‘And don’t you think, sir,’ he said, ‘that you should turn in? On the leeward bow that is Beachy, and round Beachy it
will cut up rough. It worries the people to think of you getting soaked.’
‘To tell you the truth, William, I do not mind it at all. Nothing could be more agreeable to my spirit than this allpervading sense of speed – speed of air, sea, and rushing water.
It is so very much more present in a boat like this than in a stolid great ship.’
‘Why, sir, we have been clipping along at a very fair pace:
ten knots most of the time, with points of twelve; and if the breeze don’t die or box the compass we should have quite a tolerable run. But sir, will you not step below and take a little something?’
The little something was a dish of lobscouse, salt beef, biscuit, onions, potatoes, all pounded or cut up small, stewed close with a good deal of pepper and kept warm between hot bricks covered with a blanket for the graveyard watch: it went down extraordinarily well with a quart of beer, which they shared in the sea-going manner, passing the pot to and fro without ceremony.
‘I do not like to tempt fate, sir,’ said Reade, ‘but I sometimes think that if only we could catch the early flood, we might make a truly extraordinary run, with never a check between the North Foreland and Sheerness, meeting the first of flood at the Nore and so straight up to London River, ha, ha. Old Mould did it once, in the Flying Childers, from off St Catherine’s Point.’
‘That would be very fine, sure.’
‘And it would absolutely delight the Captain. He thinks the world of this craft, and he means to give her a fine-weather suit of the best Riga poldavy, including a square running course. Now if you will excuse me, sir, I believe I must go on deck. Your berth is behind that hanging. Pray try to close an eye.’
Stephen did so, swimming presently into that series of inconsequential thoughts and half-memories that so often preceded sleep; and he woke from it again in a grey dimness to the sound of a fairly discreet cough, the clink of china, and the smell of coffee.
‘God be with you, William,’ he said, ‘would that be coffee, at all?’
‘Which it is Vaggers, sir,’ said the seaman with the tray. ‘The Captain is on deck, looking at the convoys. You never seen so many windbound ships. We are in the Downs.’
‘How is the breeze, Vaggers? And shall we catch our tide?’
‘Breeze holds true, sir. But as for the tide. . . nip and tuck,sir, nip and tuck. Though it will not be Mr Reade’s fault if we miss it. He has been driving the clipper most zealous all night.’
He was driving it still when Stephen found him calling for a bonnet to the forestays, but he came over at once with civil enquiries and the assurance that this was not a real lull in the wind, only a slight blanketing from the South Foreland – ‘we are well in with Deal, as
you see’ – and it would pick up again directly. ‘And all those poor souls,’ he said, waving out to sea, to the crowded anchorage of the Downs, ‘are praying it may drop entirely and come round into the north-east. Some have been windbound for a fortnight and more: it often happens here. That is the West Indies convoy just this side the Gull Stream; and there, stretching right up to the North Foreland, those are the Mediterranean ships, a hundred sail of merchantmen at the very least. And towards the south Goodwin you can make out a group of Indiamen, all praying, no doubt.’
‘It is not the number that pray, William, but the intensity of the prayer that is offered up, and of course its quality,’ said Stephen. ‘Purely mercantile considerations cannot expect to receive much notice in Heaven.’
‘I am sure you are right, sir,’ said Reade, and he rehearsed the names of the guardian men-of-war, studding the glum-grey sea with its white horses and intermittent showers from the low racing sky. ‘Amethyst, Orion, Hercules, Dreadnought . .
unconsciously using a tone of voice more usual at the altar.
The North Foreland, and the Ringle hauled her wind, heading westward. ‘Do you think,’ asked Stephen at dinner, ‘that we could be said to be within the estuary of the Thames?’
‘I believe we may, sir,’ said Reade, happy though red-eyed from want of sleep. ‘And I believe we may almost say – though I touch wood – that we are not very likely to miss our tide.’
The Nore, and presently it became apparent even to Dr Maturin that the schooner’s motion had changed, that she had in fact caught her tide, and that the first hint of the making flood was carrying her on a living stream. The remote shore, visible now on either side, drew somewhat closer; and after a while Reade handed over to Mould, disappointed as a polygamous patriarch, but the best Thames pilot among them.
Mould told Stephen a great deal about the official men, all to their discredit, and presently he pointed out Muck Flat, on the northern shore, where a Trinity House branch pilot had run him aground in the year ninety-two. ‘Well might you have called it Muck Flat by the time we had served him out.’
Although the breeze, the river and even those that used the river, including the heavy slow awkward and inclined to be abusive Thames barges, that felt they had priority over all the other craft in the stream, behaved well through that long winding day, Mould was in a sombre mood. Towards evening, when between showers the sky cleared beautifully, showing Greenwich in all its splendour, shining white and green on the river-bank, he jerked his chin in that direction and said ‘Greenwich. You would not believe, sir, the amount of money they screw out of poor hardworking seafaring men for that old chest of theirs. And who ever seen a penny piece out of it? Not Old Mould, any gate.’
‘Lo, Greenwich, where many a shrew is in,’ said Stephen, unthinking.
‘Greenwich is bad enough, bad enough; there are some very disagreeable females in Greenwich. But it is nothing at all,’ said Mould, his voice rising passionately as he caused the stout tiller to tremble under his hand, ‘nothing at all, set against Shelmerston, for shrews. Take Mrs Mould, for instance. . .’ He took Mrs Mould and handled her most severely, not only for her ignorant, illiberal, worldly rejection of the plurality of wives –
‘Think of Abraham, sir: think of Solomon: remember Gideon – threescore and ten sons, and many wives!’ – but also for a variety of shortcomings that it would scarcely be decent to name, all denounced with such vehemence that it would have been necessary to check
him if a lighter more or less guided by an idiot boy with a single enormous oar had not drifted across the Ringle’s bows, so that her topsail was obliged to be backed at once, to take the way off her, and all sheets let fly, while every soul that could seize a spar fended off in an uproar of reprobation.
It was as though the din stunned both tide and breeze, for when at length the wretched lighter slanted off towards the farther shore, the Ringle no longer answered her helm, but slowly turned upon herself, facing the way she had come: for this was now slack-water, and presently the ebb would begin. Happily the calm was only the respite caused by the setting of the sun, and the reviving breeze carried them well up into the Pool before the downward current had gathered any real strength. Here, to the relief of all hands, they dropped anchor:
Reade looked at his watch, laughed aloud, and gave the formal order ‘Pipe to supper.’
There was a fair amount of traffic on the river – ship-visiting among the scores of merchantmen, citizens going about their business, parties of pleasure dropping down to Greenwich – and when he and the jubilant Reade had eaten their meal, a capon and a bottle of claret brought from the King’s Head to celebrate their wonderful passage, Stephen hailed a passing wherry, which carried him to the Temple stairs.