fortunes, were it less noxious. Pray let me take it home with me, will you?’
‘I should be infinitely obliged to you, sir, but …’
‘I used to do the same for Cousin Christine’s skeletons many years ago. And while you are playing I shall muse with the other half of my mind on the lower shaft, in which those whorls and spirals are so startlingly obvious. A very extraordinary puzzle indeed.’
‘You mean to play, Stephen?’ Jack murmured in his ear.
‘Why,
certainly.’
‘Bonden,’ called Jack, ‘place the music stand and light along my fiddle, d’ye hear me, there?’
‘Aye-aye, sir: music stands and light along the fiddle it is.’
Chapter
Four
9′
Once again the thunder roared from the saluting batteries as Jack Aubrey’s squadron made its painful and dangerous way out of Mahon harbour: short boards down the narrow Cala de San Esteban against an irregular gusting southerly breeze and what tide the Mediterranean could summon up at its worst. A small squadron now, since Briseis, Rainbow and Ganymede had been sent off to protect the eastern trade and Dover was still escorting the Indiamen on their homeward run.
Ringle, leading the way, was nimbler and brisk in stays, as became a schooner of her class, and she was tolerably at home in such waters; so was Surprise, handled by a man who had sailed her for the finest part of his life at sea and who loved her dearly – a ship, furthermore, that was blessed with an uncommonly high proportion of truly able seamen, thoroughly accustomed to her ways and to her captain’s. Not that theirs was a happy lot as the channel grew even narrower, the cries of ‘Hands about ship’ more frequent, and the recently-shipped Marines (at least one in each gun-crew) more awkward still: for in common decency the batteries’ salutes to the broad pennant had to be returned, returned exactly: and this called for wonderful activity.
Yet the sufferings of the Surprises, though severe and
often commented upon, were not to be compared to those
of the Pomones, a huddled-together ship’s company with a
captain who had never commanded a post-ship before, a
disgruntled first lieutenant and a new second lieutenant – he was now officer of the watch –
who did not know a single
man aboard and whose orders were often confused, often
misunderstood and sometimes shouted down by exasperated, frightened bosun’s mates, far too busy with their starters: and all this in an unhandy, heavily-pitching frigate with far too much sail set forward, pressing down her forefoot.
The Commodore and his officers watched from the quarterdeck: often and often their faces assumed the appearance of whistling and their heads shook with the same grave, foreboding motion. Had it not been for the frenzied zeal of Pomone’s aged gunner and his mates she would never have contributed a tenth part of her share of salutes, and even so she cut but a wretched figure.
‘Shall I ever be able to use her heavy broadside in the Adriatic?’ murmured Jack to himself. ‘Or anywhere else, for that matter? Three hundred blundering hopeless grass combing buggers, for all love,’ he added, as the Pomone very, very nearly missed stays, her jib-boom brushing the pitiless rock.
Unlikely though it had seemed at times, even the Cala de San Esteban had an end: first Ringle cleared the point, stood on and brought the wind abaft the beam; and she was followed by the others. Yet although against probability he had escaped shipwreck, young Captain Vaux (a deeply conscientious officer) did not, like some of his shipmates, give way to relief and self-congratulation. ‘Silence, fore and aft,’ he cried in a voice worthy the service, and in the shocked hush he went on, ‘Mr Bates, let us take advantage of the guns being warm and the screens being rigged and make the signal Permission to fire a few rounds.’
Fortunately Mr Bates, whose talents would never have recommended him anywhere, had a thoroughly efficient master’s mate and yeoman of the signals: between them they whipped the flags from the locker, composed the hoist and ran it aloft. It had barely broken out before another intelligent young master’s mate, the recently-joined John Daniel,
murmured to Mr Whewell, Surprise’s third lieutenant, ‘I beg pardon, sir, but Pomone is asking permission to fire a few rounds.’
Mr Whewell confirmed this with his telescope and the yeoman; then stepping across to Jack Aubrey he took off his hat and said, ‘Sir, if you please, Pomone requests permission to fire a few rounds.’
‘Reply As many as you can afford: but with reduced charges and abaft the beam.’
Captain Vaux was of a wealthy, open-handed family and he dreaded having the appearance of one who owed his early promotion to his connexions: he wanted his ship to be a fighting-machine as efficient as the Surprise, and if a few hundredweight of powder would advance her in that direction he was perfectly willing to pay for them, particularly as he could renew his supplies in Malta.
A few minutes after the Commodore’s signal, therefore, the gunfire began again, starting with single chasers, the occasional carronade, and then fairly regular broadsides that surrounded the frigate with a fine cloud of smoke – broadsides that grew perceptibly more regular as time went on.
The stabbing flame and the heart-shaking din of a great gun exercise of this kind nearly always spread cheerfulness and high spirits – the noise alone was exhilarating, and exhilaration has some affinity with joy. Yet although Pomone’s cannon roared and bellowed prodigiously, there was precious little joy aboard her near neighbour the Surprise.
Even after dinner (two pcunds of fresh Minorcan beef a head) and dinner’s charming grog, and even after supper, the general gloom persisted. Killick’s misfortune was known to the last detail; the wretched boy’s capers were recounted again and again; and the dreadful fall, the shattering of the precious horn.
It was much the same the next day, and the next; and even when Mahon was far astern, beneath the western horizon from the main royal masthead, the squadron holding its
course for Malta with a steady, gentle topgallant breeze on the starboard quarter.
No joy among the people of Surprise, for the luck had gone out of the ship together with the broken horn: for what could be expected of a broken horn, however expertly repaired? Many a time did the older hands mutter something about virginity, maidenhead; and this, with a melancholy shake of the head conveyed all that was to be conveyed. No joy among those of Pomone, either; for not only did their new skipper prove a right Tartar, keeping them at the great-gun exercise morning, noon and night, stopping the grog of a whole gun-crew for the least trifling mistake, but some of those badly hurt by recoil, powder-flash or rope-burn, had to be taken across to the pennant-ship, their own surgeon being so far gone with the double-pox that he did not choose to risk his hand on the delicate cases, and aboard Surprise the Pomones soon learnt what had happened. Nor among the Ringles, their captain having dined with the Commodore and his boat’s crew having spent the afternoon among their friends and cousins. No joy.
Yet the officer in command of the Surprise’s Royal Marines, Captain Hobden, had a long-legged, rangy, limping yellow dog, Naseby, whose mother had belonged to the horse-artillery and who absolutely delighted in the smell of powder, even that which came wafting faintly across from Pomone, the laborious Pomone. He was a friendly young creature, used to shipboard life and scrupulously clean, though somewhat given to theft: but he at least was thoroughly cheerful, the animal. He was fond of Marines and their familiar uniform, of course, but he also liked seamen; and as Captain Hobden was much given to playing the German flute (an abomination to dogs) while his other ranks spent their free time cleaning their weapons, polishing, brushing and pipeclaying their equipment, Naseby very soon found out the smoking-circle in the galley. It was not a very jovial, lively place at present, but they were kind to
him and the women might give him a biscuit or even a piece of sugar; and in any case it was company.
‘Well, Naseby, here you are again,’ said Poll, when they were far and far from land, the stars beginning to prick. ‘At least it wasn’t you.’ She gave him an edge of cake and went on ‘. . . there they were, the Doctor and his mate, or rather the two doctors as I should say, stamping up and down in a horrid passion and uttering words which I shall not repeat them in mixed company, like a pair of mad lions.’
At this point Killick came in with an improbable pile of shirts in his arms, kept there by his pointed chin – linen to be aired in the galley when the fires were drawn. He had been washing, ironing and goffering (where appropriate) all Jack’s and Stephen’s shirts, neck-cloths, handkerchiefs, waistcoats, drawers and duck trousers, and polishing the great cabin’s silver to an unearthly brilliance in the hope of forgiveness: but from the great cabin to the galley and even to ship’s heads he was still looked upon with a sour, disappointed dislike: and none of the women, nor even the ship’s boys, called him Mr Killick any more.