‘You are puzzled to know how to begin, my dear,’ said Stephen after half a dozen turns, ‘so I will tell you how it is. The Irish question, as people are coming to call it in the newspapers, can as I see it be solved by two simple measures, Catholic emancipation and the dissolution of the Union; and it is possible, possible, that this may come about in time without violence. But were the French to be there and busily arming the discontented there would be the very Devil to pay – endless violence- and it might even tip the balance, giving that infernal Buonaparte the victory. And where would Ireland be then? In a very much worse state, under an efficient and totally unscrupulous tyranny, Catholic only in name, and remarkably avid for spoil. Think of Rome, Venice, Switzerland, Malta.
No. Though it would grieve many of my friends, I should, with all my heart, prevent a French landing. I have served long enough in the Navy to prefer the lesser of two weevils.’
‘So you have, brother,’ said Jack, looking at him affectionately. ‘I am of course required and directed to advise with you on difficult points and I shall show you the whole set of papers presently, when you are at leisure – though in passing let me say that the Admiralty, having observed that the loss of men from disease was sometimes very great on the West African coast, said that in the early period a severely sick or diseased ship might collect a judicious number of invalids from other vessels and stretch away to Ascension Island, where refreshments were to be had in the form of turtles in the proper season, clear fresh water, and certain green plants.’
‘Ah, Ascension. . .’ said Stephen in a voice of longing.
‘And they say that the present governor of Sierra Leone is my old shipmate James Wood. You remember James Wood, Stephen? He was shot through the throat at Porto Vecchio and talks in a wheeze: we went aboard him in the Downs when he had the Hebe, and’ he came to stay at Ashgrove.’
‘The cheerful gentleman who filled his ship with such unconscionable amounts of rope and paint and the like?’
‘Just so – no stickler for form – he loved to go to sea in a wellfound ship, even if it meant conciliating the dockyard people to a surprising degree. And an uncommon keen hand at whist.’
‘I remember him perfectly.’
‘Of course you do, ‘said Jack, smiling at the recollection of Captain Wood’s jovial way with a bribe, his acquisition of one of the flagship’s spare anchors. ‘And since you know everything about the second part,’ he continued in little more than a whisper, ‘I shan’t go on about it at all – not a word – tace is the Latin for a candlestick. But I will tell you about the first, about knocking the slavers on the head: we are required to make a great roaring din straight away and amaze all observers, as well as liberating as many slaves as possible. Now I have no experience of this particular service at all, and although I have glanced at the earlier commanders’ tolerably meagre remarks I should still like to know a great deal more, and I believe asking questions it the only way of finding out. You cannot ask questions of a book or a report, but a word to the cove that wrote is would make everything clear. So I mean to summon all captains and ask them what they know; and then I shall invite them to dinner tomorrow.’ He strode forward and called down to the quarterdeck ‘Captain Pullings.’
‘Sir?’
‘Let us heave out the signal for all captains.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Mr Miller’ – to the officer of the watch – ‘All captains.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Mr Soames. . .’ And so it went from signal lieutenant to the signal midshipman and thus to the yeoman of the signals himself, who had had plenty of time to prepare the hoist All captains repair aboard pennant that broke out at the Bellona’s masthead a moment later, to be echoed along the line by the repeating brigs and to spread consternation in many a cabin, where captains flung off their duck trousers and nankeen jackets – it was a hot day, with the breeze aft – and struggled sweating into white stockings, white breeches and white waistcoat, the whole topped with a blue broadcloth gold-laced coat.
They arrived in no particular order but in excellent time, only the Thames’s barge being somewhat late – her captain could be heard cursing his midshipman, his coxswain and ‘that son of a bitch at bow-oar’ for the best part of five minutes. When they were all assembled on the poop, which seemed to Jack an airier, more informal place than the quarterdeck, he said to them, ‘Gentlemen, I must tell you that my orders require the squadron to make a very strong demonstration of force at our first arrival on the coast. I have the remarks and observations of earlier commodores on the station, but I should also like to question officers who have been on this service. Have any of you been engaged, or any of your officers?’
A general murmur, a looking at one another, and Jack, turning to Captain Thomas, who had long served in the West Indies and who owned property there, asked him whether he had anything particular to say.
‘Why me?’ cried Thomas. ‘Why should I have anything particular to say about slavery?’ Then, seeing the astonishment on the faces all round him, he checked himself, coughed, and went on ‘I ask pardon, sir, if I have spoken a little abruptly – I was put out by my bargemen’s stupidity. No, I have nothing particular to say.’ Here he checked again, and Stephen and Mr Adams’ eyes met in a fleeting glance; the expression of neither
altered in the least degree, but each was certain that the swallowed words were a eulogy of the trade and indeed of slavery itself.
‘Well, I am sorry to have drawn a blank covert,’ said Jack, looking round his captains’ uniform stupidity. ‘But my predecessors’ reports make it perfectly clear that much of this service is inshore, smalicraft work, and I must desire all officers present to ensure that their boats are in very good order, with their crews thoroughly accustomed to stepping masts and proceeding under sail for considerable distances. Mr Howard, I believe I saw you lower down your launch in a most surprising brisk manner the day before yesterday.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Howard, laughingly. ‘It was the usual idiot ship’s boy. He harpooned a bonito with such zeal that he flung himself out of the bridle-port on to the fish, the harpoon fast to his wrist. Fortunately the launch was in the act of being shifted, so we got her over the side straight away and saved our only decent weapon.’
‘Well done,’ said Jack, ‘well done indeed. And the word weapon reminds me: getting boats over the side quick and handling them well is very important, but it must not, must not, affect our great-gun exercises, which, as you will all admit, still leave something to be desired. Yet tomorrow is a somewhat exceptional day; and tomorrow I hope and trust the exercise will leave you all time enough to dine with me.’
Two bells, and Killick, his mate and three mess attendants walked carefully up the poop ladder, the first two carrying trays with decanters of all things proper to be drunk at such an hour, the others with glasses to drink them from.
As the captains were being piped over the side Stephen’s friend Howard came, and standing by him said discreetly ‘Of course, Maturin, you know the Commodore infinitely better than I do: is he very exact and naval in his use of the word officer?’
‘Fairly so, I believe: certainly punctilious in the use of rank and title. He could no more bear the Swedish knight than could Nelson. But he is the most reasonable of men.’
‘To be sure. I was astonished at the cogency, sequence and clarity of his account of nutation at the Royal Society – Scholey took me – and for several days I believe I understood not only nutation but even the precession of the equinoxes.’
‘Sure, he is the great astronomer of the world.’
‘Yes. But my point is this: in the Aurora I have an elderly master’s mate called Whewell. And a master’s mate, as you know very well, is not an officer in our ordinary use of the word – a commission officer. He served his time, passed his public or quasi-public examination for lieutenant, but failed to pass for gentleman – in short, the examining officers, conferring in private, did not think him one, and so no commission was ever made out. Yet he is a good seaman and he knows a great deal about slave-ships and their ways.’