As he approached the quarterdeck he saw Captain Thomas of the Thames come out of the Commodore’s cabin, looking furious: his face was an odd colour, the extreme pallor of anger under the tan making it resemble a mask. He was piped over the side with all due ceremony, making no acknowledgement whatsoever, in marked contrast to Duff of the Stately and Howard of the Aurora, who had set off in their barges immediately before him.
Stephen noticed looks of intelligence and privy smiles among the officers assembled in formal array on the quarterdeck, but as soon as the Thames’s boat had shoved off Tom Pullings turned from the entry port with a broad, candid, cheerful smile of a very different sort and hurried over, crying ‘Welcome aboard, dear Doctor, welcome aboard. We had not looked to see you so soon – what a charming surprise. Come and see the Capt – the Commodore. He will be so happy and relieved. But first let me name my second lieutenant – the premier is in the sick-list: not at all the thing – Lieutenant Harding, Dr Maturin.’
They shook hands, each looking at the other attentively – shipmates could make or mar even a short commission – and to the civil ‘How do you do, sir?’ the other replied ‘Your servant, sir.’
This was the first time Stephen had seen Pullings in the infinitely covetted uniform of a post-captain, and as they walked aft he took notice of it: ‘How well that coat becomes you, Tom.’
‘Why sir,’ said Pullings with a happy laugh, ‘I must admit I love it dearly.’
They reached the Marine sentry and Pullings said ‘I will leave you here, sir, and bring my report of the rates of fire as soon as they are wrote out fair. There is not a moment to lose, because half the meaning of the scribbles on the slate is still in my head and the other half in Mr Adams’s.’
Stephen walked through the coach into the great cabin, smiling: but Jack sat right aft, staring out over the stern, both arms on his paper-covered desk; he sat motionless, and with such a look of stern unhappiness that Stephen’s smile faded at once. He coughed. Jack whipped round, strong displeasure masking the unhappiness for an instant before he sprang up,as lithe as a much younger man: he seized Stephen with even more than his usual force, crying ‘God’s my life, Stephen, how glad I am to see you! How is everything at home?’
‘All well, as far as I am aware: but I came post-haste, you know.’
‘Aye. Aye. Tell me about your run. You must have had leading winds all the way.
The packet said you were still windbound in the Downs as late as last Tuesday – last Tuesday week, I mean. Lord, I am so happy to see you. Should you like some madeira and a biscuit? Sherry? Or perhaps a pot of coffee? What if we both had a pot of coffee?’
‘By all means. That villain in the Ringle, though no doubt a capital seaman, has no notion of coffee. None at all, at all, the animal.’
‘Killick.
Killick,
there,’ called Jack.
‘What now?’ asked Killick, opening the door of the sleepingcabin. He added ‘Sir,’
after a distinct pause; and directing a wintry smile at Stephen he said ‘I hope I see your honour well?’
‘Very well, I thank you, Killick: and how are you?’
‘Bearing up, sir, bearing up. But we have great responsibilities, wearing a broad pennant.’
‘Light along a pot of coffee,’ said Jack. ‘And you must ship a cot for the Doctor.’
‘Which I just been doing it, ain’t I?’ replied Killick, but in a more subdued tone of grievance than usual, and not without an apprehensive look.
‘So tell me about your run,’ Jack went on. ‘I am afraid I cut you short, in my hurry of spirits.’
‘I shall not trouble you with my doings by land, apart from observing that the tender and her people behaved in the most exemplary manner, and that we put ashore at Shelmerston and then again at Corunna: but let me tell you that in spite of the strong and favourable wind that sometimes propelled us two hundred miles between one noon and the next, we saw . . .’ He eagerly recited a list of birds, fishes, sea-going mammals (a pod of right whales among them), vegetables, crustaceans and other forms of life plucked from the surface or caught in a little trawl until he noticed a slackening in Jack’s attention. ‘Off Finisterre,’ he went on, ‘the breeze abandoned us for a while, and I may have seen a monk seal; but the wind soon answered our whistling and ran us down merrily until the Berlings came in sight and we heard the mating of your guns. That excellent young man Reade hung out sails in all directions, so unwilling he was to miss the battle, as we supposed it to be; nor would he take them in when the breeze revived –
the masts bent most amazingly. But, however, it turned out to be no more than the great-gun exercise on an heroic scale. I trust you found it satisfactory, my dear?’
‘Stephen, it was a bloody shambles. It was indeed. But perhaps we shall do better another time. Tell me, you did not bring any letters when you came away from Shelmerston? From Ashgrove, I mean, in particular.’
‘I did not,’ said Stephen. ‘I am truly sorry to be disappointing, but I had promised young Reade to catch the morning tide, the holy morning tide. Besides, as well as an eagerness to keep my appointment with you – one might even say apart from a sense of duty – I was travelling with my daughter and Clarissa Oakes, taking them to Spain, where an eminent authority is to be consulted; and I did not call: Clar. issa and Sophie are not friends.’
‘No. I know they ain’t.’
‘I am sorry to be disappointing,’ said Stephen again, into the silence.
‘Oh, never fret about that, Stephen,’ cried Jack. ‘You could not be disappointing. In any case I had one but the other day by the Lisbon packet, and a damned unpleasant letter it was. I will not say it made me uneasy, but…’
Stephen said inwardly ‘Brother, I have never seen you so destroyed but once, and that was when you were struck off the Navy List.’
‘Come in,’ called Jack.
‘All laid along, sir,’ said Tom Pullings. ‘And here is the report on the exercise. I am afraid you will not be pleased.’
Jack glanced at the paper. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. It is not pleasing. Let us try to show them something rather better. Stephen, it is long since you watched a great-gun
exercise,and I do not remember ever having shown you a ship firing both sides at targets.
Should you like to watch?’
‘I should like it of all things.’
As they walked out on to the quarterdeck Pullings gave the order to beat to arms, and above the thunder of the drum Jack said ‘It is just the main batteries, you understand, the gun-deck and the upper deck, the thirty-two pounders and the eighteens.’
Even Dr Maturin could not have supposed that this was a normal great-gun exercise, with the hands called away from their ordinary occupation to run their pieces in and out three or four times before being dismissed. Not at all: it was meant, and everyone in the squadron knew it was meant, as an example of how these things should be done in battle: and everyone in the Bellona was exceedingly anxious that the pennant-ship’s example should indeed be exemplary, for not only was there already a very high degree of pride in the barky, but even among those who had served with him from his very first command, a lumpish brig in the Mediterranean, there was a strong inclination to please the Commodore, or more exactly to avoid his displeasure, which could be devastating, above all at present. From an early hour Mr Meares, the gunner, his mate, the quarter-gunners and of course the guncrews, first captain, second captain, sponger, fireman, sail-trimmers, boarders, powder-boys and Marines, had been titivating their pieces, greasing trucks, begging slush from the cooks to ease the blocks, arranging tackles and shot-garlands just so, while the midshipmen and officers in charge of stated divisions also fussed over every detail of powder-horns, wads, cartridge-cases, locks, works and the like: and this each crew did on both the starboard and larboard batteries, for although the Bellona had rather better than five hundred people aboard, that was not enough to provide men for each side, and a single crew had to serve two guns.
The crews, often captained by old Surprises, used to Jack Aubrey’s ways, or at all events by men who had seen a great deal of action, had been formed as soon as Jack took command and they had practised together ever since. They should have been confident, but they were not. They settled their handkerchiefs round their heads, hitched their trousers, spat on their hands and stared out forward into the brilliant light over the smooth-heaving sea, their black, brown, or whitish deep-tanned upper parts unconsciously swaying with the heave of the deck as they waited for the signal-gun from the quarterdeck and the appearance of the targets.