‘Never mind. It will be much better this time. You shall watch great flights of platypuses at your leisure.’
‘My dear, they are mammals, furry animals.’
‘I thought you said they laid eggs.’
‘So they do. That is what is so delightful. They also have bills like a duck.’
‘No wonder you long to see one.’
The night was even warmer than usual and they sat there very easy and relaxed on two paunch-mats, talking at random
about that voyage in the Leopard, about -the scent that was now coming off the land, distinct wood-smoke on some occasions, green things, sometimes separable, on others, and about the acuity of one’s nose after only a short time at sea and the wonderful cleanliness and lack of stench aboard the Nutmeg, even in her hold.
The moon set: the stars glowed brighter still, and Jack harked back to his observatory at Ashgrove Cottage. An intelligent Dutchman in Batavia had shown him a better way of
turning the dome, based on the practice of millers in his own country – of wind-millers, of course.
Eight bells. Fielding took over, but Jack remained on deck, and when Bonden came aft in the darkness some time later he said ‘Bonden, you will have to tell your mates it will not do. The tide is too strong, the Frenchman too slow.’
‘Oh yes, sir,’ said Bonden. ‘Which I only came aft to say Killick has a pot on the hob and a dish of burgoo, and should you like it on deck or below?’
‘What do you say Doctor? Upstairs or down?’
‘Oh, down, if you please. I must look at my patients quite
soon.’ –
‘Do you mind if we wait five minutes? I should like to see the crescent Venus.’
‘Venus? Ah, God love us,’ said Stephen, oddly disconcerted. ‘By all means. I am sure you have remarked the sea is much less agitated?’
‘Yes. It often happens before the turn of tide, you will recall. Presently we shall have the ebb, and the whole mass of water will pour back eastwards, millions and millions of tons of it. And I dare say it will flow faster with the wind pushing it: there is promise of a close-reefed topsail breeze, as well as squalls.’
Stephen could see no promise of any kind, apart from a profounder darkness in the west, but knowing that salamanders, cats, sea-monsters had senses he did not possess he agreed; he also looked at the risen Venus, a vacillating form so near the horizon, but extraordinarily brilliant and sometimes, in the telescope, distinctly horned.
They went below and took their infinitely welcome burgoo and coffee in the gunroom, still talking very quietly, although by this time the idlers had been called and the grind of holystones cleaning the deck in the darkness rumbled through the ship. Their talk ran back and back to that voyage in the Leopard, to the wholly relative delights of Desolation Island, and to Mrs Wogan. ‘She was a fine woman,’ said Jack, ‘and a rare plucked un: as I recall she was being transported for pistolling the runners that came to arrest her, and I do like a woman with spirit. But it will not do, you know: it will not do, having women aboard.
There -, pointing at Stephen’s second bowl of burgoo, which had slopped on to the table ‘-
and that is what I meant by the changing tide. It is on the ebb now, and with the rising breeze behind it we shall have seas of quite a different kind. Do you hear the rain? That is one of my squalls: cats and dogs for twenty minutes and then a clear sky. The sun will be up presently.’
‘I must go and see my patients. I am not altogether happy about young Harper.’ –
Splinter-wounds occupied them for some time: instances of healing at first intent, instances of malignant impostumes; and when Stephen stood up Jack said ‘I will come with you.’
Down the ladder and away aft. ‘You observe the sweetness even here?’ asked Stephen.
‘Well may she be called the Nutmeg.’
Before Jack could reply there was a tremendous triple crash overhead and the simultaneous discharge of both stern-chasers. He raced up the various ladders, reached the quarterdeck in the last veil of rain and the first light of dawn and instantly grasped the
position: the Cornélie, bringing up the wind, bringing up the tide, spreading a little more makeshift canvas and moving faster out there in the channel, had come up hidden by the squall to well within range of her long guns, had yawed and fired a full broadside. One of her balls had struck the Nutmeg’s maintopsail yard in the slings and though the halliards had already been let go the great sail was billowing away to leeward, making a noise like thunder.
‘Port the helm,’ he cried, partly to ease the sail but much
more to change the Nutmeg’s course, which was now carrying her diagonally across the Cornélie’s path.
‘She don’t steer, sir,’ shouted Fielding over the roar of the chasers. ‘Tiller-rope shot away and a ball between rudder and sternpost.’
Jack hailed the forecastle. ‘Spritsail course and topsail. Cast off the buoy.’ Then turning,
‘Mr Crown, relieving-tackles directly. Mr Seymour, clew up to windward: cut the leeward robans: bundle all you can into the top.’ He ran into the cabin and as the starboard-chaser fired and recoiled said ‘Check her inboard.’ He leaned far out and there was Richardson in his nightshirt, slung over the stern, up to his chin every time a sea overtook her, prising furiously at the ball with a handspike. ‘Dick,’ he called, ‘has it pierced or is it wedged?’
‘Mostly wedged, sir, between the upper pintle-strap and . . .’ a rising smother of foam cut him short.
Withdrawing, Jack said ‘Bonden, give me a bight of rope fast to the munnion. Tell bosun to haul the helm hard a-starboard the moment the tackles are shipped. Pass me a crow. Mr White, carry on.’
A moment later he was in the white boil of the wake. The massive crowbar sank him but with a hearty kick he rose to what surface there was and seized the pendant-chain hook as the Cornélie began a rolling broadside. Swinging himself under the overhang Jack heard one ball strike the Nutmeg’s hull and then Mr White’s stern-chaser deafened him.
With one foot on the ring-plate and his left arm round the rudder he stabbed his crow into the space beneath the half-buried ball and tried to force it out while Richardson levered it from the other side. Wave after wave drowned them in foam for the Nutmeg was gathering way, and it seemed hopeless: Jack’s strength was going fast. He was near losing his grip on the iron when the whole rudder to which they were so intimately attached gave a groan and moved slightly to larboard. A last wrench and the ball fell free.
They exchanged a nod, mouths shut tight against the flying sea, and Jack, dropping his bar, tried to climb aboard. His arms refused their duty and he hailed his coxswain. They hauled him up, cruelly scraped against the counter; and then came Richardson, his leg streaming red from an unnoticed wound. They both sat, sodden and gasping, and Jack said ‘Run her up, Bonden.’ The gun slammed against the port and almost instantly fired.
As the smoke cleared Jack saw Fleming race in bawling ‘Mr Fielding says she steers, sir.’
At the same moment he saw the
Cornélie begin her turn to close the growing distance and he said ‘Thank you, Mr Fleming.
Desire him to put her before the wind and to send me one of the waisters.’ Then to Richardson ‘Dick, how do you find yourself? ‘
‘Perfectly well, sir, I thank you; I never felt it at the time. I think the pendant-hook must have caught me.’
The waister came in: touched his forehead. ‘Jevons, give Mr Richardson a hand below.
Dick, get yourself bound up:
tell thc Doctor we are before the wind: and if he says you are
to stay below, then you stay below.’
Richardson’s answer as the waister heaved him up was lost in the crash of guns and a savage cheering. ‘Hulled her amidships, sir,’ called Mr White. ‘I saw the splinters fly.’
Staring through what gap there was Jack saw the frigate plain, lit by the sun through a gap in the clouded east, and now three quarters on; the light caught the stream jetting from her starboard chain-pump.
He stood up, flexed his hands and arms and swarmed up the ladder to the quarterdeck: a scene of apparent confusion under the troubled sky. ‘We have cleared away a spare yard, sir,’ said Fielding, ‘and the topsail is passing down as you see, but Seymour says the mast is too much injured.’
‘Cut half way through a foot from the crosstrees, sir.’