– rejoiced in their new status, their freedom from criticism; and they loved to see the massive symbol of it, with the Nile medal in his buttonhole and his number one scraper on his head. The general feeling aboard was that the Surprises now had the best of both worlds, the relative freedom and equality of a letter of marque on the one hand, and on the other the honour and glory of the King’s service: a charming state of affairs, particularly when it was coupled with the possibility of very great rewards. But so far their Captain had scarcely made his official entrance.
From far over the water came the sound of bosun’s calls as the prizes and their guardians prepared to ship capstan bars.
‘Very well, Tom,’ said Jack. ‘But this coat is killing me. I shall go below, take it off, and see whether I can grow a little cooler. When you and the other officers have shifted into nankeens, let us get under way; then I will ask the people how they do. Doctor, will you come with me? Do not you feel the heat?’
‘I do not,’ said Stephen. ‘Sobriety and moderation preserve me from plethory; they preserve me from discomfort in what is after all but a modest warmth.’
‘Sobriety and moderation are capital virtues and I have practised them from my earliest youth,’ said Jack, ‘but they are sadly out of place in a host, who must encourage his guests to eat and drink by example; so there is a Roland foryour. .
In his shirt-sleeves and stretched out on the locker by the open stern-windows, Jack loosened his waist-band and reflected for a while. The name Oliver floated up out of a score of others and he called ‘Killick. Killick, there.’
‘What now?’ cried Killick, also in his shirt-sleeves; he had worked exceedingly hard to clear the table and he was not pleased at being torn from his enormous washing-up, far too delicate to be trusted to seamen who would use brick-dust on plate the minute they were left unwatched.
‘Roland and Oliver: have you ever heard of them?’
‘There is a Roland, sir, gunsmith off of the Haymarket; and there are Oliver’s Warranted Leadenhall Sausages. Many an Oliver’s Warranted Leadenhall Sausage have I ate at the Grapes when we was ashore.’
‘Well,’ said Jack, unconvinced. ‘I may drop off. If! do, give me a call when we are under way.’
He heard the pipe All hands unmoor ship followed by its
invariable sequence: the muffled thunder of running feet, orders, pipes, the steady click of pawls, the stamp and go of those manning the bars and the shrill fife on the capstan-head; and his mind tried to recapture the exact state of the ship’s company, her complete-book, as it stood when he left her in Portugal, but so much had happened since then, and he had eaten and drunk so heartily at dinner, that his mind refused its duty, and at the distant cry of thick and dry for weighing he went to sleep. During the extraordinarily active period that had followed dropping anchor in this road, with the repairing of the Nutmeg, the disposal of the French prisoners, the inspection of the prizes, the transfer of his and Stephen’s possessions to the Surprise, and his farewell to his former shipmates, who cheered him in the kindest way when he went down the side for the last time – in these hours of continual running about he had of course seen the Surprises, but only in a fleeting way, exchanging very few words except with his bargemen, who pulled him from ship to ship in the warm calm sea. He slept; but his sleep was pervaded by an anxiety: few things wounded a foremast jack more than having his name forgotten and it was an officer’s duty to remember it.
In fact it was not Killick who woke him but Reade: ‘Mr West’s duty, sir, and Nutmeg has hoisted permission to part company.’
‘Reply with affirmative and add Merry Christmas: you will have to telegraph that. Where are we?’
‘We have just catted the best bower, sir, and we were just about to fish it when a man called Davis fell overboard. Mr West passed him a line, and they hauled him aboard not a minute ago, much scraped.’
Jack was on the point of saying ‘Then they can heave him back again,’ but Reade was much caressed by everyone aboard
– in the Nutmeg grim old forecastle hands would run the length of the gangway to hand him up a ladder, and it promised to be much the same in the Surprise – and he had a certain tendency to be above himself: this was not to be encouraged and the remark changed to a dismissive ‘Thank you, Mr Reade.’ But the feeling behind it remained. Davis was a very large dark
hairy man, dangerously savage, clumsy – his shipboard name of Awkward Davis arose from both these qualities – and so devoid of nautical skill that he was always quartered in the waist, where his enormous strength was of some use in hoisting. Jack had once saved him from drowning, as he had saved many a man, being a capital hand at swimming; and the grateful Davis had persecuted him ever since, following him from ship to ship, impossible to shake off, though he had been offered every opportunity of deserting in ports where merchantmen were offering wages far above the Navy’s £1 5s 6d a month.
A disaster of a man, violent and quite capable of maiming or even killing a valuable hand out of jealousy or an imagined slight; but half a glass later Jack found himself shaking Davis’s hand with real pleasure – a terrible grip followed by others almost equally powerful, for though the Surprises were pleased to see their Captain in his full naval glory once more, his white silk stockings, his hundred guinea presentation sword and the Turkish chelengk in his hat intimidated them a little; and although his progress was remarkably talkative for a King’s ship, it was restrained for a privateer, so the seamen put nearly all their welcome into their handshake. Fortunately Jack too had enormous hands, quite as
strong if not quite as horny; and fortunately the Surprise, having left England ostensibly as a private ship of war, was much less heavily manned than a King’s ship
– apart from anything else she carried no Marines – and there were not many more than a hundred hands to shake. As for the names, which had so worried him, they came without the slightest difficulty. Of course it was easy enough with very old shipmates like Joe Plaice, who had sailed with him in many a commission – ‘Well, Joe, how are you coming along, and how is the headpiece?’ ‘Prime, sir, I thank you kindly,’ said Joe, tapping the silver dome that Dr Maturin had screwed on to his damaged skull in 49 degrees south a great while ago, ‘And I give you all the joy in the world of them two swabs’ – winking at the crowned epaulettes that Jack had never worn until his reinstatement appeared in the London Gazette. But it was much the same with the other hands he had taken on at Shelmerston, privateers or smugglers to a man: ‘Harvey, Wall,
Curtis, Fisher, Waites, Halkett,’ he said to the next gun-crew, standing about their charge, old Wilful Murder, in easy, informal attitudes, ‘how do you do?’ and shook hands all round.
And so it went until he reached Sudden Death, and there he was very nearly brought up all standing by six profoundly bearded faces, each showing a broad, pleased, expectant smile beneath the mat. ‘Slade, Auden, Hinckley, Mould, Vaggers, Brampton, I trust I see you well.’ The position of the gun, its name and something about their stance had brought the names of the ship’s Sethians darting into his mind.
‘Very well, sir,’ said Slade. ‘Which we thank you for your kindness. Only Auden here’ – both his neighbours pointed at him – ‘lost two toes in Tierra del Fuego; and John Brampton sinned with a woman in Tahiti, and is in the sick-berth yet.’
‘I grieve to hear it. I shall visit John by and by. But prosperous otherwise, I hope?’
‘Oh dear me yes, sir,’ said Slade. ‘Not quite up to your Nebuchadnezzar pitch, but Seth has been very good to us.’ He and all his mates jerked their thumbs at what in their sect was both a holy and a lucky name.
‘Ha, ha,’ said Jack, his mind running back to the glorious prizes they had taken in their first cruise together, ‘I am glad the barky has done well.’They all looked affectionately over the side to where the Nutmeg, the Triton and the two merchantmen stuffed with wealth were standing away to the north-west with the wind two points free, now more than half hull down. ‘But you must not expect the Nebuchadnezzar touch again, not in these waters.’