None came, and presently their sense of urgency diminished. The little girls sat on the deck outside the lantern’s strong ring of light, silently playing the game in which an outstretched hand represented a sheet of paper, a stone, or a pair of scissors. Stephen walked into the other berth, looked at his patients and asked them how they did. ‘Prime, sir,’ they answered, and thanked him kindly.
‘Well, I am glad of that,’ he said. ‘Yet although they were good clean breaks, immobilized at once, it will be long before you can go aloft, or dance upon the green, if ever we get home, which God send.’
‘Amen, amen, sir,’ they answered together.
‘But how did you ever come to be so indiscreet and thoughtless as to beat one another with those vile great loggerheads?’
‘It was only in fun, sir, like we sometimes do, meaning no harm. One has a swipe and the other dodges, turn and turn about.’
‘In all my experience of the sea I have never heard of such a dreadful practice.’
The patients looked meek, avoiding one another’s eyes; and presently Ellis said ‘It all depends on the ship, sir. We often used to play in the Agameinnon; and my father, which he was carpenter’s crew in the old George, had a real set-to, real serious, with a forecastleman that called him a. . .’
‘Called him what?’
‘I hardly like to say it.’
‘Murmur it in my ear,’ said Stephen, bending low.
‘A nymph,’ whispered Ellis.
‘Did he indeed, the wicked dog? How did it end, so?’
‘Well, sir, they were at right loggerheads, like I said – the whole forecastle agreed it was right – and my dad fetched him such a crack they had to take his leg off that very evening, much mangled. But it was a blessing to the poor bugger in the end. Having but one leg left, Captain the Honourable Byron, who was always very good to his men, got him a cook’s warrant, and he lived till he was drowned on the Coromandel coast.’
‘Sir,’ cried Reade in the doorway, with a covered can of coffee in his hand, ‘the Captain sends this with his compliments to raise your spirits and soften the blow. There is to be no action after all. The vessel to windward proved to be that famous, seamanlike ship of the line Thunderer, seventy-four. She hauled her wind, not liking the look of us, and in doing so some of the more brilliant officers aboard, those who could count above three, I mean, made out that she had a false signal flying: one lantern short.’
‘Must they not be flogged round the fleet?’
‘I am afraid not, sir. They say they are senior to us, which is quite true; that any possible inconvenience is regretted; and that Captain Dundas, Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin are desired to breakfast aboard. Lord, sir, I should not be in that signal-lieutenant’s shoes for instant promotion to flag-rank.’
Most of the exchanges that Reade reported were more or less imaginary, and in any case they had been slowly, laboriously transmitted through dense rain by hoists of lights variously arranged; but the breakfast invitation, which was true enough,. was repeated at first light by flags and again by a sodden midshipman in a boat; and the two captains, together with Dr Maturin, came alongside just before eight bells in the morning watch, ravenous, cold, wet, indignant.
Their host, an elderly man called Fellowes, was in much greater danger of promotion to flag-rank than Reade, being so high on the post-captain’s list that the next batch of admirals to be gazetted must necessarily include him as a rear-admiral of the blue squadron unless by some unspeakable misfortune he should be yellowed – attached to no particular squadron and given no command. But this unspeakable misfortune might be now at hand. The Thunderer’s wretched signal-lieutenant, now confined to his cabin, had aroused a perfectly justified rage in two quite eminent bosoms: the son of a former First Lord and the brother of the present holder of that awful office, in the first place; and in the second that of the Tory member of parliament for Milport. Captain Aubrey might represent no more than a handful of burgesses, all tenants on his cousin’s estate (it was a family seat) but his vote in the House counted as much as that of the member for the county. The ill-will of either of these gentlemen might have a horribly yellowing effect. And then there was this Dr Maturin, after whom the Admiralty official the Thunderer was carrying to Gibraltar had asked with such curious insistence. . . had he not been called in to treat Prince William?
Captain Fellowes greeted his guests with the utmost cordiality, with apologies, explanations, and a breakfast-table covered with all the luxuries that a ship only a few days outward-bound could offer: beef-steaks; mutton-chops; bacon; eggs in all their charming variety; soft-tack, crusty or toasted; mushrooms; pork sausages; a veal and ham pie; fresh butter; fresh milk; fresh cream, even; tea and cocoa: everything except the coffee that Jack’s and Stephen’s souls longed for.
Mr Philips, the black-clad Admiralty official, Stephen’s neighbour, said ‘I do not suppose you have seen the most recent Proceedings of the Royal Society. I have the
volume hot from the press in my cabin, and should be charmed to show it to you.’ Stephen said that he should be very happy, and Philips went on ‘May I help you to one of these kippered herrings, sir? They are uncommon fat and unctuous.’
‘You are very good, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘but I believe I must refrain. They would increase my thirst.’ And in a low confidential tone (in fact they knew one another quite well enough for such a remark), ‘Would there never be a drop of coffee, at all?’
‘I hope so,’ said Philips, and he asked the passing steward. ‘Oh no, sir. Oh no. This is a cocoa-ship, sir; though tea is countenanced.’
‘Coffee relaxes the fibres,’ called out the Thunderer’s surgeon in an authoritative voice. ‘I always recommend cocoa.’
‘Coffee?’ cried Captain Fellowes. ‘Would the gentleman like coffee?
Featherstonehaugh, run along and see whether the wardroom or the gunroom has any.’
‘Coffee relaxes the fibres,’ said the surgeon again, rather louder. ‘That is a scientific fact.’
‘Perhaps the Doctor might like to have his fibres relaxed, said Captain Dundas. ‘I am sure I should, having stood to all night.’
‘Mr McAber,’ called Captain Fellowes down the table to the first lieutenant, ‘pray be so good as to encourage Featherstonehaugh in his search.’
But no amount of zeal could find what did not exist. Stephen protested that it did not signify – it was of no consequence – there was always (God willing) another day – and that if he might be indulged in a cup of small beer it would go admirably with this pickled salmon. And when at last the uncomfortable meal was over he walked off to Philips’ cabin to see the new volume of the Proceedings.
‘How is Sir Joseph?’ he asked when they were alone, referring to his close friend and hierarchical superior the head of Naval Intelligence.
‘He is physically well,’ said Philips, ‘and perhaps a little stouter than when you last saw him: but he is worried. I shall not venture to say what about: you know how cloisonné these matters are with us, if I may use the expression.’
‘We say bulkheaded in the Navy,’ observed Stephen.
‘Bulkheaded? Thank you, sir, thank you: a far better term. But this letter’ – drawing it from an inner pocket – ‘will no doubt tell you.’
‘I am obliged to you,’ said Stephen, glancing at the black Admiralty seal with its fouled anchor. ‘Now please be so good as to give me a detailed account of events since last February, when I had an intelligence report from the Spanish.’
Philips looked down, reflected for a while, and said ‘I wish I could tell you a happier tale. There is progress in Spain, to be sure, but everywhere else there are diplomatic reverses; and everywhere he keeps finding resources in allies, men, money, ships and naval stores, which we cannot do, or only with great and ruinous difficulty. We are stretched to the uttermost, and may break: he seems indestructible. Things are going so badly that if he delivers one more knock-down blow we may have to ask for conditions. Let me take Europe country by country…’
He was dealing with the success of Buonaparte’s agents in Wallachia when a lieutenant came in with the news that as soon as the Doctor was in the Berenice’s barge the captains would be piped over the side: they were making their farewells this very minute. ‘And the wind is backing, too,’ he added. ‘You will have a drier pull.’
Drier it might have been, but not for those who habitually stood on the lowest of the steps on the ship’s side, holding on to the entering ropes and pondering until she rolled and the sea rose, soaking him, this time farther than the waist. Stephen came aboard the Surprise dripping, as usual; and as usual Killick, worn thin and old and preternaturally shrewish by the task of looking after both the Captain and the Doctor, a feckless pair with their clothes and their limbs, seized him and fairly propelled him into the sleeping cabin, crying ‘Your best breeches, too – your only decent breeches – take off your drawers too sir if you please – we don’t want no bleeding colds in the head – and now put on this here gown and dry your feet – sopping, fairly sopping – with this here towel and I will find you something reasonably warm. God love us, where’s your wig?’