there he was, so unnaturally trim that he almost did the frigate credit. The bosun piped divisions, and in the howling of the long-drawn notes the Commodore, with his guest and Mr Harding, walked up to the quarterdeck, followed by Stephen and Richard.
Here, as exactly arranged as the men on a chess-board in spite of the swell, stood the Surprise’s Royal Marines, drawn up athwartships right aft, with their officer, sergeant, corporal and drummer. They were in their fine scarlet coats, white waistcoats, tight white breeches and gaiters; their black stocks were as trim and tight as was consistent with breathing at all, their muskets, side-arms, buttons gleaming. Ordinarily, when they were helping with the work of the ship or making part of a gun-crew, they wore seaman’s slops, sometimes with an old Marine jacket or cap. The high pitch of military splendour was reached only when they were on guard-duty or at this climax of the week; and out of Christian charity Jack inspected them first, so that they could be dismissed and no longer suffer in the sun.
This done, with a fine stamp, a dismissive clash of arms and a roll on the drum, the Commodore turned to the purely nautical side.
‘As you see,’ murmured Stephen, ‘the various divisions, each under a particular lieutenant, with sub-divisions under his midshipmen or master’s mates, are already standing along predetermined lines upon the deck. They are in their best sea-going clothes, they are newly-shaved, their pigtails have been tied afresh. This has taken them two and a half hours; and they have been closely inspected by their lieutenant and his midshipmen. And now, as you see, the Commodore inspects them all over again – see, he checks a midshipman for not wearing gloves. But on the whole there are very few reproofs
. . . very little occasion for reproof in so seasoned and competent a ship’s company.’
‘Is nobody to be flogged?’
‘No, sir. Not at divisions.’
‘I am glad of that. It is a spectacle that I find extremely
painful.’
Jack had finished with the first division: he said something kind to the lieutenant and the senior midshipman and moved on. The group he had just inspected was made up
of the afterguard and waisters, but in such a ship as the Surprise almost all of them were right seamen, though some might be a little less nimble than they were: Stephen knew every soul present except for those who replaced the casualties in the recent action; and even of these one had been shipmates with him in the Worcester. He had a word with most, particularly those he had treated, calling them by name, until halfway along the line, when he came to a face, a perfectly distinct, typical middle-aged seaman’s face, brown, wrinkled, gold-earringed, yet one that baffled him again and again, as the waister knew very well: he was used to it and he called out, ‘Walker, sir, if you please; and much better for the bolus.’ They both laughed: Stephen said, ‘I must take one myself, to jog my memory.’
‘Is this familiarity usual in the service?’ asked the Caroline’s secretary.
‘Only in ship’s companies that have served long together,’ said Stephen.
‘In a Russian ship, such a remark. . .’ began the secretary, but he checked himself as they came to the next group, under Whewell, the third lieutenant, and three comparatively mature midshipmen or master’s mates. These hands, all prime seamen, managed the midship guns in a way and at a speed that gave Jack the utmost satisfaction: many of them came from that curious little port Shelmerston, when the Surprise was a letter of marque. Stephen knew them and their families, had treated them again and again for everything from the cruellest wounds and scurvy to piles, with the usual seamen’s diseases in between. Many, if not most of them he had always called by their Christian names. ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘how are you coming along?’ The Commodore, the French captain and Mr Harding were well ahead, so some of Tom’s wittier companions answered for him, in hoarse whispers – Tom had got a young woman with child again – and there was a good deal of stifled mirth.
The ceremony carried on, past the forecastle-men, the oldest, most highly-skilled seamen in the ship, then to the boys – the few ship’s boys – under the master-at-arms, and so by way of the galley with its gleaming cauldrons and coppers, which Jack ritually wiped, looking at his spotless handkerchief, and so to the sick-berth, which Poll Skeeping and her friends had reduced to such a supernatural state of cleanliness that the two patients (bloody flux), pinned in their cots by tight-drawn, unwrinkled sheets, dared neither speak nor move, but lay there as though rigor mortis had already reached its height.
The sick-berth, however gratifying, was only a preliminary to the climax of divisions; and when Jack, Stephen and Christy-Palliere returned to the quarterdeck they found everything set out, with chairs for the officers and a kind of lectern made of an arms-rack with a union flag draped over it for the captain.
‘Shipmates,’ said he, with a significant look, ‘this Sunday I am not going to read a sermon. Let us just sing the Old Hundredth. Mr Adams’ – to his clerk – ‘pray give the note.’
The clerk drew a pitch-pipe from his bosom, blew the note loud and clear, and the ship’s company fearlessly joined their captain in the psalm, a fine deep body of sound.
The frigate had a moderate breeze on her larboard quarter, with Pomone no great way astern; and when the Surprises had uttered their full-throated amen, the Pomones’ hymn reached them over the water, admirably clear. Jack stood listening for a moment, then he squared to the lectern, opened the book the clerk had brought him, and in a strong, grave voice he read the Articles of War, right through to XXXV: ‘If any person who shall be in actual service and full pay in his Majesty’s ships and vessels of war, shall cornmit upon the shore, in any place or places out of his Majesty’s dominions, any of the crimes
punishable by these articles and orders, the persons so offending shall be liable to be tried and punished for the same, to all intents and purposes, as if the same crimes had been committed at sea, on board any of his Majesty’s ships or vessels of war.’ And to XXXVI, the catch-all: ‘All other crimes, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea.’
During this familiar series of articles (twenty-one of which included the death penalty) Stephen had been reflecting on his quite unusually happy morning and the evident good will that surrounded him as he walked along the decks. He rarely saw many of his shipmates at any one time; and for a long while now those that his duties or his leisure had brought him into touch with had been grave and if not reserved then something like it – concerned only with the matter in hand, unwilling to speak at length, even embarrassed – no open expression of sympathy, still less of condolence, until the horn was broken, when Bonden and Joe Plaice and a few others he had known for a great while, said ‘it was a cruel hard thing – they were very sorry for his trouble.’
That day Stephen dined in the gunroom, with Richard as his guest. The sense of well-being continued. Black desolation underlay it, as he knew perfectly well; but the two could exist in the same being. Some part of the gunroom’s friendliness would certainly have been caused by the presence of his guest, part of his happiness to the fact that he was speaking French most of the time (a language in which he had been wildly happy, amorous and even politically enthusiastic when he was a student in Paris), and part to the excellence of the dinner; but there remained an overplus that he had to attribute to his return to what was, after these many years, his own village, his own ship’s company, that complex entity so much more easily sensed than described:
part of his natural habitat.
The long pause after the gunroom’s dinner, while Jack and Christy-Pallière carried on with their conversation in the cabin, was filled, as far as Stephen and Richard were concerned, with medical consultation. ‘I do not in any way mean to criticize the Royal Navy’s food,’ said Richard, when they were alone. ‘An excellent dinner, upon my word, and remarkably good wine. But what was that ponderous mass, glutinous and yet crumbling, enveloped in a sweet sauce, that came at the end?’
‘Why, that was plum duff, a great favourite in the service.’