There was of course Pratt’s magnet. A ship’s compass would deviate from the north in the presence of a magnet and the helmsman would be misled: the ship would wander from her true course. But how much would the compass deviate, and how near was the required presence? He knew nothing whatsoever about either point. Nor did he know the ship’s position, except that she was in the Irish Sea; and in such a state of general
ignorance he could not form any useful opinion about the danger of casting her and his friends away on some rocky shore.
He put the instrument into his pocket and made his way to the quarterdeck, stopping to put the lantern on its hook in the coach. Although the bight coming through the companion should have warned him, he was still astonished by the brilliance of the moonlit night.
Though the colours were subtly different it might almost have been day; there was not the least question of his failing to recognize the four men at the wheel, Davis and Simms, old Surprises, and Fisher and Harvey, from Shelmerston, or the quartermaster at the con, old Neave. Nor was there the least question of his approaching the binnacle and observing the variation of the compass as he moved the magnet, for not only did West, who had the watch, at once come over and ask him whether he had not turned in, but it was perfectly obvious that the ship was not steering by compass at all. The wind had now increased to a stiff gale, and at the last change of watch the Surprise had taken another reef in her topsails and forecourse and had furled the spritsail, so there, right ahead, lay the chase; and it was by the chase that the frigate was steering, her bowsprit pointing directly at the long moonlit wake, both ships tearing through the sea with extreme urgency.
‘The distance seems about the same,’ observed Stephen.
‘I wish I could think so,’ said West. ‘We had gained a cable’s length by two bells, but now she has won it back and even more. Still, the tide will change against the wind in an hour or so, and that should chop up a nasty head-sea for her.’
‘Has the Captain gone to bed?’ asked Stephen, cupping his hands to make his voice, curiously hoarse and weak at present, carry over the roar of sea and wind.
‘No. He is in the cabin, pricking the chart. We had a very fine fix with Vega and Arcturus just now.’
That, of course, would be the simplest way of dealing with at least one side of his ignorance. If he were to walk into the cabin there he would see the ship’s position marked on the chart with all the accuracy of an expert navigator. Doing so would not be elegant however; and as well as being inelegant it would be in direct contravention to his particular morality,
the private set of laws which for him separated the odious practice of spying from the legitimate gathering of intelligence.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, having missed everything of West’s last remark but for the fact that he had spoken or rather bellowed something about fire.
‘I was only saying they must be burning heather or furze over there in Anglesea,’ said West, pointing to a distant orange serpent on the starboard beam.
Stephen nodded, reflected for a moment and then crept backwards down the companion-ladder meaning to walk forward along the waist. Most of the starboard watch were sheltering under the break of the quarterdeck, and Barret Bonden left the group to shepherd him along past the double-breeched guns and under the double-griped boats on the skid-beams, past the galley and so by the hooked steps in the Surprise’s broad top-tackle scuttle to a place as nearly comfortable, safe and dry as so bleak a station could afford.
It was quieter here in the bows, in the lee of the foremast and the topsail-sheet bitts, and they talked for a while about the progress of the chase, the snow there before them clear
and sharp, a mile ahead, tearing along and throwing the water wide. Bonden knew the Doctor was upset, and in case it should be something to do with this prize, with the frigate’s relatively poor performance, or with what a landsman might consider the Captain’s want of enterprise, he very delicately offered a few points for consideration: at the beginning of a very long voyage, no captain would risk masts, spars and cordage unless he were up against an enemy man-of-war, a national ship, or at least a very important privateer; at the beginning of a very long voyage the ship, low and sluggish with all her stores, could not be driven really hard, as she could be driven when she was riding light and homeward-bound, with supplies only a few days ahead – the Doctor would remember how the barky wore topgallants in a close-reef topsail breeze, and not only topgallants but foretopmast and lower studdingsails too, when they were chasing the Spartan on their way home from Barbados. If they were to do that now, the barky would fall to
pieces, and they would have to swim home, those that were not provided with wings.
Bonden observed with regret that he had been on the wrong lay altogether, that this was not what the Doctor had been fretting about. So with a few general remarks about taking great care when he came aft – a hand for the ship and a hand for himself – he left him to his own reflexions, if indeed that was the word for the anxious hurry of spirits, going over and over the same ground while the frigate and her chase sailed perpetually over the same troubled moonlit sea, neither making any perceptible progress in a world with no fixed object.
Yet there was this new factor: Jack Aubrey did not regard the capture of the snow as of the first importance. Might it therefore be suggested to him that they turn about and hurry south for their rendezvous in Lisbon?
No, it might not. Jack Aubrey knew exactly how far he was allowed or rather required to endanger the ship for the sake of the prize; and where his professional duty was concerned it would be as useful to offer him a bribe as a piece of advice.
‘Why, Stephen, there you are,’ cried Jack, suddenly emerging from behind the bitts and Bonden’s little sailcloth screen stretched between them. ‘You are as wet as a soused herring. The tide is on the turn; it will Cut Up quite a sea presently and you will get wetter still, if possible. Lord, you could be wrung out like a swab even now. Why did not you put on oilskins? Diana bought you a suit. Come and have a mug of broth and some toasted cheese. Let me give you a hand round the bitts:
wait till she rises.’
A quarter of an hour later Maturin said that he would digest his broth and toasted cheese in the orlop, where he had a number of urgent tasks.
‘I am going to turn in until the end of the watch,’ said Jack. ‘You might be well advised to do the same: you look quite done up.’
‘Indeed, I am somewhat out of order. Perhaps I shall prescribe myself a draught.’
He had every reason to be out of order, he reflected, sitting
there by the medicine-chest on his stool. His very remote and tentative words about other commanders, in other circumstances, abandoning some hypothetical chase had been quite useless; or even, if Jack had caught any faint hint of their drift, worse than useless.
His only plan, that of diverting the ship’s course, was one of those easy phantasms that look well enough until they are examined; in this case it would be practicable only in dark
and covered weather, when the compass alone commanded, and if it could be done discreetly. Though admittedly the ship’s position was right; she could be made to turn well to the west of her present position without coming to any harm: not that in itself the fact was of any consequence.
Out of order he was, and restless he was: the changing tide had worked up a considerable sea, not as fierce as had been hoped, because the wind was slackening, but still so rough that the bows were impossible for any length of time. He therefore paced the length of the upper deck between the cabin door and the foremost gun on the weather side. Each watch saw him pass to and fro, and in each watch some of the simpler hands said they had never known the Doctor worry so about a prize, while their more gifted mates asked them ‘was it likely that a gent with a gold-headed cane and his own carriage should worry about a little ten-gun privateer snow? No. It was the toothache he had, and he was trying to walk it off; but that would not answer – it never did – and presently he would take a comfortable draught, or perhaps Mr Martin would draw the tooth.’