‘Thursday?’ said Jack, his face falling. ‘I had reckoned on warping out for the powder-hoy tomorrow forenoon, getting our livestock in during slack water. and sailing on the evening tide.’
‘I know that tomorrow he has a council-meeting and then a great dinner for a score of potentates at Buitenzorg.’
‘Of course he is very much taken up,’ said Jack; and having reflected he went on,
‘Thursday means the loss of a couple of days. Yet it would make me most uneasy not to do the civil thing by the Governor; he has been so uncommon obliging. But I tell you what it is, Stephen: was you to see him before Thursday and beg him not to trouble with his clerk and the reefers, but just tell a secretary to give them a note for me, how very much better that would be. He and Mrs Raffles would not have a couple of awkward louts on their hands and I could get a much better notion of their capabilities. Do you know why they were discharged?’
‘Drunkenness, fornication and sloth were their undoing; and they were not so much discharged as abandoned. They left their disorderly house at about noon, made their staggering,
crapulous way to the strand, and found that the squadron had sailed at dawn. They have been living in squalor ever since; for although the Governor has taken some little indirect notice of them, it does not appear that their friends have relieved them in any way,
possibly for want of time rather than of inclination. It does after all take an eternity for an Indiaman to come and go.’
Jack gazed at the South China Sea for a while – brilliant sun and countless small craft moving busily under it, but a greenish tinge to the water, with a rain-charged cloudbank rising a handsbreadth from the horizon in the south – and then pouring Stephen another cup he said ‘As for the purser, I can do without. Poor Blyth had an intelligent, reasonably honest steward and a knowing Jack-in-the-dust: and in any case Captain Cook was his own purser. I should most cordially welcome a good clerk however; it would wound my heart to lose all our records as you suggested – my observations for Humboldt were to some extent combined with them – and a clever man used to ship’s books could perhaps disentangle the confusion Besides, there was the awful case of Macintosh – you remember Macintosh took the Sibylle 36 in a running fight right down the Channel – who tried the same solution when he went ashore in the Cyclades and
lost half his papers. He took the remaining half, wrapped it up in a sheet of lead on which he wrote S – the Navy Board, f – the Admiralty, b – the Sick and hurt” and dropped it overboard A week later a Greek sponge-diver brought it to the flagship in perfect condition and asked for a reward.’
‘He counted his chickens without reckoning with his host,’
• said
Stephen.
‘Yes. As for the reefers, I shall look at them of course; but an unrecommended reefer, and an oldster at that . . . I had
been thinking of young Conway of the foretop; but it is an
•
awkward thing coming through the hawse-hole in your own
ship giving orders to men who were your messmates yesterday, quite apart from joining a midshipmen’s berth full of people who were your superiors. And then again my promotions have often been unlucky. The quarterdeck is a damned unhealthy place in action, you know.’
‘Little do! know of battle,’said Stephen, ‘but! had imagined that the midshipmen were with their gun-crews or in the tops with the small-arms men.’
‘So they are, most of them; but there are always some on the quarterdeck with the captain and first lieutenant – aides de camp, as you might say.’
On Wednesday the Nutmeg sailed out into the bay, picked up the Dutch moorings the Diane had used, and underwent a very severe examination by her captain, her master and her mate of the hold. Neither in the yard nor alongside the powderhoy had they been able to get far away enough to judge her trim as they could wish, but now they had all the room in the world, and all three were agreed that she was a little by the stern. The laying of the ballast and the stowing of the hold was an exceedingly laborious, highly-skilled process; it had been completed even to the installation of the livestock, so that the familiar smell of swine now rose from the fore hatchway and wafted along the decks; and to undo it all would have led not perhaps to mutiny but quite certainly to muttering. Fortunately Mr Warren, who was well acquainted with the Captain’s devotion to trim and to sailing his ship
as fast as ever she could go, had so arranged the hoses that he was able to shift some tons of water to and fro along the ground-tier. ‘I think half a strake will do it, sir,’ he said.
Jack nodded, and filling his lungs he called ‘Mr Fielding:
pray start pumping forward.’
‘What a voice our Captain has,’ said Stephen, walking to the boat with Welby. ‘It carries a vast distance; yet you are to remark that it has none of the hoarseness or metallic quality we find in auctioneers, politicians, shrews.’
‘There is a bird in my part of England we call a mire-drum or bull of the bog that is almost as good. You can hear him a good three miles off on a calm evening. But I dare say you know all about that, Doctor.’
‘Oh sir. Sir, if you please,’ called a voice from behind – a youth running along the quay and panting as he called. ‘If you are going to Nutmeg, please would you take us with you? We have a note for the Captain.’
‘How do you mean, we?’ asked Welby, frowning.
‘There is my friend too, sir, just the other side of the bridge. The heel of his shoe came away again.’
‘Then let him take off the other shoe and carry them both in his hand,’ said Welby. ‘And at the double. We cannot wait here all night.’
‘Come on, Miller, come on,’ cried the youth in a shout that cracked in the middle. ‘Carry your shoes in your hand. The gentlemen cannot wait here all night.’
Stephen considered them as the boat pulled out across the calm water. They were pale, sallow youths, all elbows and knees (What is the English for age ingrat? he wondered); they were thin and underfed, and although they had obviously taken great pains with their appearance and their remaining shabby outgrown clothes they were barely presentable. Indeed, their
very care had done them disservice, for they were neither of them practised, expert shavers and both were at the
~, pimply stage the gashes and excoriations had turned ordinarily plain adolescent faces into something quite repulsive. They
were pitiful as the lost and anxious young are pitiful but they did not seem to Stephen particulaly interesting youths until one of them, catching his piercing gaze just before the boat
touched, said in a low voice ‘I am afraid we must seem rather squalid, sir.’ He said it shyly but with a direct look and an evident confidence in Stephen’s good will that touched him Not at all, at all,’ he said, and as he went up the side I wonder what Jack will make of them. I hope he will find they
are seamen. Otherwise they must take to the loom or the plough
A friendly hand pulled him up the last step and he saw Fielding smiling down upon him There you are, Doctor,’ he
said The Captain desired me to let you know that he is in the cabin with a surprise
Smiles again in the cabin, perfectly easy on Jack’s fine red face, diffident on that of his neighbour, a small man, standing behind a great array of papers. ‘There you are, Doctor,’
cried Jack, ‘and here is an old shipmate of ours.’
‘Mr Adams,’ said Stephen, shaking his hand, ‘it gives me
great pleasure to see you again; and I wish you joy of your recovery.’
‘Mr Adams swears he can sort out all this chaos, deal with the necessary replacements and provide us with a full set – we shall preserve everything, and we shall be able to pass our accounts!’
‘I have every confidence in Mr Adams’ thaumaturgical powers,’ said Stephen, speaking with the utmost sincerity, for Adams had been captain’s clerk and secretary in the Lively when Jack was her temporary commander and he was renowned throughout the Mediterranean for his ability: troubled pursers from other ships came privately aboard for his advice, and many a captain’s dispatch owed its clear, accurate account of a complex action to his pen. He could have been a purser himself long ago, but he disliked the candle-counting side; and in any case it was easier for a captain’s clerk to take part in cutting-out expeditions, which were his particular delight.