listened attentively to Borrell’s account of each and to Pullings’ provisional arrangements for the crews, and once again he blessed the luck that had given him reliable officers, as well as enough right men-of-war’s men to provide at least an experienced first and second captain for every piece.
‘Well,’ he said at the end of their tour, ‘I believe we may have some live practice this evening. I hope so, indeed. We can afford quite a number of rounds: my Dock powder was a most amazing bargain, and we fairly cleared the widow’s shop. You have plenty filled, Mr Borrell?’
‘Oh yes, sir. But I was obliged to fill promiscuous, which some of the kegs had no marks and others two or three; and very old-fashioned some of it smelled arid tasted, too. Not that it was not very fine-corned and bold and dry, sir: I mean no reflection.’
‘I am sure you do not, master gunner. But I hope you did not taste much of the powder with antimony in it. Antimony is ticklish stuff, they say. It is most uncommon damp down here,” he added, pushing his finger deep into the mould on the beam over his bowed head. ‘We certainly need a thorough house-warming, as you might put it.’
‘Much of the wet comes through the hawse-holes and the manger, sir,’ said Pullings, who was very willing to find some virtue in his ship. ‘The bosun has a party there with extra hawse-bags. But upon the whole, sir, she is pretty tight – tighter than I had expected, with this swell. She certainly labours much less with these new topgallantmasts, and she scarcely heaves under the chains at all.’
‘Oh, a swell like this don’t put her out,’ said Jack.
‘As far as she was designed at all, she was designed for the Atlantic. But what she will do in those short steep Mediterranean seas that cut up so quick – well, it will be interesting to find out. And it will be interesting to see the effect of antimony. The effect on the guns, I mean, Mr Borrell; I am sure you would have to eat a peck of it to do a man of your constitution any harm.’
‘Pray, Dr Maturin,’ he said on the quarterdeck, ‘what is the effect of antimony?’
‘It is a diaphoretic, an expectorant and a moderate cholegogue; but we use it chiefly as an emetic. You have heard of the everlasting antimony pill, sure?’
‘Not I.’
‘It is one of the most economical forms of physic known to man, since a single pill of the metal will serve a numerous household, being ingested, rejected, and so recovered. I have known one handed down for generations, perhaps from the time of Paracelsus himself. Yet it must be exhibited with discretion: Zwingerius likens it to the sword of Scanderberg, which is either good or bad, strong or weak, as is the party that prescribes or uses it, a worthy medicine if it be rightly applied to a strong man, otherwise it may prove but a freward vomit. Indeed, the name is said to signify monk’s bane.’
‘So I have always understood,’ said Jack. ‘But what I really meant was its effect on guns, was a little mixed with the powder.’
‘Alas, I am wholly ignorant of these things. But if we may go by analogy, it should cause the piece to vomit forth the ball with more than common force.’
‘We shall soon know,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Pullings, I believe we may beat to quarters.’
It was common knowledge throughout the Worcester that something was up, and none of the seamen was particularly surprised when after a preliminary running in and out of the guns the Captain walked forward along the gangway through the hush of a ship stripped for battle, all hands silent at their action-stations, the officers and midshipmen by their
divisions, deck after deck, the powder-boys sitting on their cartridges behind each gun, the slow-match smouldering in the tubs and sending its heady scent eddying along the deck as the tensely expectant Worcester lay to in the grey and empty Channel, heaving high but easy on the swell. They were not particularly surprised when on reaching the starboard bow-chaser, whose first captain was his own coxswain, Barret Bonden, he took out his watch and said, ‘Three rounds: fire on the roll.’
The usual crashing roar, the stab of flame, and the usual furious ordered activity of the crew in the billowing smoke, sponging, reloading with the practice powder, ball and wad rammed home, the gun heaved up and primed, everything directed at cutting a few seconds off the time between the discharges. For this was the gun-crew that was to set the standard by which the rest would be compared. No surprise here, though a keen appreciation of their speed: but amazement, sheer amazement fore and aft, when in fifty-one seconds flat Bonden clapped his match to the priming of the second charge and the gun uttered an enormously loud high-pitched unnatural screeching bellow, jetting out a vast tongue of brilliant white light, in which the fragments of wad showed momentarily black.
It was a miracle alone that prevented the astonished crew from being crushed by the recoiling gun, and Jack had to tally on to the train-tackle to stop it running out again unchecked on the downward roll. He too wore the same blank look of wonder as those about him, but quicker than the rest he changed it to the Olympian calm appropriate to a captain, and when Bonden took the rope, muttering ‘Beg pardon, sir: I wasn’t expecting . .
.’ he returned to the counting of the seconds and observed, ‘Come, Bonden, you are wasting time.’
They did their best, they heaved valiantly, but their rhythm, their coordination was upset and a full two minutes passed before the gun was run up, primed and pointed, and Bonden bent over it with an expression of ludicrous apprehension on his tough, battle-hardened face, his mates all edging as far from the piece as was decent or even farther, in an atmosphere of the most lively tension. His hand came down: this time the gun belched crimson, a noble, long-lasting crimson flame and crimson smoke, a deep, solemn, musical boom; and all along the deck the exact discipline of the gun-crews dissolved in delighted laughter.
‘Silence fore and aft,’ cried Jack, cuffing a contorted powder-boy, but his voice trembled as he said, ‘Stop your vent. House your gun. On the roll, fire three.’
After the first dull blast of the regulation powder with which it had been loaded, number three produced a splendid blue, a splendid green; and so it went throughout the ship, deck after deck: exquisite colours, strange unheard-of bangs, infinite mirth (though sternly repressed) and a truly wretched performance in point of time.
‘That was the most cheerful exercise I have ever known in my life,’ said Jack to Stephen in the after-cabin. ‘How I wish you had seen Bonden’s face, just like a maiden aunt made to hold a lighted squib. And it was almost as good as a real action for pulling the people together – Lord, how they were laughing on the lower deck when hammocks were being slung. We shall make a happy ship of her, for all her faults. If the wind holds, I shall take her in close tomorrow evening, and let them break some glass.’
In his long career Captain Aubrey had observed that of all the forms of great-gun exercise there was none that came anywhere near firing at a fixed mark on land, above all if it had windows. Until the gun-crews were quite steady they tended to throw away many
of their shots in full-blown action, and although firing at barrels laid out by the boats was very well in its way – infinitely better than the dumb-show of merely heaving cannon in and out that was usual in many ships ? it lacked the high relish, the point of real danger, of smashing valuable defended property, and whenever circumstances allowed he would take his ship close to the enemy shore to bombard some one of the many small posts and batteries strung all along the coast to guard harbours, estuaries, and places where the Allies might land. Now, the breeze having come well north of east with every sign of backing farther still, he fixed his position by two exact lunar observations and altered course to raise the He de Groix a little before the break of day. Although the night turned thick and troubled in the middle watch – no moon to be seen, still less a star – he was confident of his calculations, precisely confirmed by the mean of his three chronometers, and although his chief hope was of some privateer slipping out of Brest or even a commerce-raiding frigate, if he missed of them, he would at least be able to provide his people with a fine selection of posts to batter.