Fox played with a great want of attention, and having quite unnecessarily lost the second game – a downright backgammon, with one on the bar and one in Stephen’s home table – he said, ‘As you may imagine, I am extremely eager that our triumph should be known in England as soon as possible, because . . .’ He had emphasized the our, but with Stephen’s cool, thoroughly informed eye upon him he felt unable to produce any of the high political and strategic reasons he had mentioned to Loder, and after a pause for coughing and blowing his nose he went on, ‘So naturally I should very much like to know what Captain Aubrey has in mind – whether he still intends to pursue the course we spoke of earlier, or whether this more or less mythical ship I hear of has suddenly assumed great importance.’
‘I am sure he would tell you, were you to ask him.’
‘Perhaps so. But I do not choose to risk a snub. He spoke to me in a most intemperate manner the other day, enlarging upon the powers of the captain of a man-of-war, his unaccountability to any but his own superiors in the service, and his complete autonomy afloat – an absolute monarch. He spoke with a masterful, domineering authority and dislike that shocked me extremely. And this was not the first example of ill-will by any means, an ill-will that I find absolutely incomprehensible, gratuitous and incomprehensible.’
‘I do not believe it exists. A brief, strongly-expressed vexation about the incident some nights ago, certainly, since for a sea-officer it was a most heinous offence; but as to any settled ill-will, no. Oh no, no, not at all.’
‘Then why did he not have the ship dressed, with flags everywhere and the sailors standing on the yards and cheering when I embarked with the treaty? I pass over many other slights, but an insult so deliberate as that could only be the effect of deep ill-will.’
‘No, no, my dear sir,’ said Stephen smiling. ‘There you must allow me to correct a misapprehension. Manning the ship occurs when a member of the royal family visits her; sometimes when two consorts meet or part; and above all in honour of an officer who has won a famous victory. Captain Broke of the Shannon was so honoured in my sight. But the victory has to be won in battle, my dear sir, not at the council-table: it must be a military, not a diplomatic victory.’
For a moment Fox was staggered, but then his face resumed its look of complete, knowing assurance. He nodded and said, ‘You are obliged to support your friend, of course. And of course your motives are quite clear. There is no more to be said.’ He stood up and bowed.
Stephen’s intense irritation lasted all the time he was climbing into the maintop, and this so took away from his dread and his habitual caution that Jack said, ‘What a fellow you are, Stephen. When you choose you can go aloft like’ – he was about to say ‘a human being’
but changed this before it quite left his gullet to ‘like an able seaman.’
A league away to the north, over a sea that seemed as devoid of malice as it was of ships, birds, cetaceans, reptiles or even driftwood, a sea of the second day of Creation, rode the
white-fringed False Natunas, their generous streak of paint as certain in the glass as the absence of any kind of flag.
‘This is not unlike polishing Cape Sicié on the Toulon blockade,’ said Jack, closing his telescope. ‘Day after day we saw that God-damned headland, always looking much the same. We used to stand in – but of course you remember it perfectly well. You were there. Yes, Mr Fielding?’
‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said his first lieutenant, ‘but I quite forgot to ask you whether we were rigging church tomorrow. The choir would like to know what hymns to prepare.’
‘Well, as for that,’ said Captain Aubrey with a resentful look at, the False Natunas, ‘I think the Articles would come better before the salute. You have not forgotten it is Coronation Day, I am sure?’
‘Oh no, sir. I was having a word with Mr White just now. Should you like the board put out, sir?’
‘I know them pretty well by heart; but even so it would be as well to have the board.
Two precautions are better than one.’
It was before this folding double-leafed object, like a logboard but with a large-printed text of the Articles of War pasted on the wood and varnished, that Captain Aubrey took up his stand at a little after six bells in the forenoon watch on Sunday. He had already inspected his ship, and now its well-washed, shaved, clean-shirted people were ranged before him in attentive groups rather than regular lines; though the mission, the officers and young gentlemen gave the assembly a more formal appearance and the Marines provided their usual geometrical red-coated perfection.
The Articles did not possess the terrible force of some parts of the Old Testament, but Captain Aubrey had a deep voice with immense reserves of power, and as he ran through the catalogue of naval crimes it took on a fine comminatory ring that pleased the hands almost as much as Jeremiah or the Great Anathema. It seemed to Stephen, who attended this ceremony as he did not that of the Anglican rite, that Jack slightly emphasized Article XXIII, ‘If any person in the fleet shall
quarrel or fight with any other person in the fleet, or use reproachful or provoking speeches or gestures tending to make any quarrel or disturbance, he shall, on being convicted thereon, suffer such punishment as the offence shall deserve, and a court-martial shall impose’, and XXVI, ‘Care shall be taken in the conducting and steering of any of His Majesty’s ships, that through wilfulness, negligence, or other defaults, no ships be stranded, or run upon any rocks or sands, or split or hazarded, upon pain that such as shall be found guilty therein be punished by death. . .’ He did not stress the notorious XXIX
which laid down that any man guilty of buggery or sodomy with man or beast should also be punished with death, but a good many of the foremast hands, particularly those who
had rowed Fox to and fro across that blazing anchorage without so much as a good day or a thank you, did so for him, with coughs and pointed looks and even, far forward, a discreet ‘ha, ha!’
Jack clapped the boards to and called out in an equally official voice, ‘All hands face starboard. Carry on, Mr White.’
Fox and his suite sat there, looking uncertain, but as the royal salute boomed on and on in its deliberate splendour, the loyal smoke-bank rolling away to leeward, the envoy’s face cleared, and after the last gun he stood up, bowing right and left, and said to Fielding, ‘I thank you for a very handsome compliment, sir.’
‘Oh no, sir,’ said Fielding, ‘I must beg your pardon, but no thanks are due. It was in no way personal: all ships of the Royal Navy fire a royal salute on Coronation Day.’
Somebody
laughed,
and
Fox, with a furious look, walked rapidly to the companion-
ladder.
The laughter had come from the waist or the gangway: no one on the quarterdeck took the least notice of the painful little incident, and while the Diane was returning to her usual occupation Jack took a few turns fore and aft, fanning himself with his best gold-laced hat. He said to Stephen, ‘Somewhere in these waters Tom will have done the same.
How I hope they heard us! That would bring them tearing down, indeed, clapping on like smoke and oakum.’ They reached the barrieade, and Jack, looking forward, noticed a ship’s boy seated on the fore-jear bitts rising and bowing graciously right and left. ‘Mr Fielding,’ he called, ‘that boy Lowry is cutting capers on the forecastle.
Let him jump up to the masthead as quick as he likes and learn manners there until supper-time.’
All the seamen who had seen action were of their Captain’s opinion about gunfire: nothing would bring another man-of-war over the horizon quicker than the distant thunder of a cannonade, even one so far away that it sounded like swallows in a chimney; and if possible those aloft looked out with even greater zeal – so great a zeal indeed that a little before Jack’s guests arrived for dinner a message came below: from the main masthead Jevons, a reliable man, had almost certainly sighted if not a sail then something very like it far to leeward, two points on the starboard bow, now dipping below the horizon, now nicking it again. This was not confirmed either from the fore or the mizen, but then they were both considerably lower.