It was at five bells in the graveyard watch, with the situation, as far as he could tell, quite unchanged, that Stephen finally returned to the orlop, unlocked the medicine-chest and took out his bottle of laudanum. ‘No,’ he said, drinking his modest dose with deliberate composure, ‘the only concrete and feasible solution I have been able to devise is worthless. I shall have to await the event and act accordingly; but in order to act with any effect I must have at least some sleep and I must overcome this disproportionate distress.’
He climbed the ladders for the last time, walked into the
coach, and threw off his sodden clothes. Killick, who had no right to be up at this hour, silently opened the door and handed him a towel, then a dry nightshirt. He picked up the heap of clothes, looked sternly at the Doctor, but changed what he was going to say to a
‘Good night, sir.’
Stephen took his rosary from its drawer: telling beads was as near to superstition as intelligence-work was to spying, but although for many years he had thought private prayer, private requests impertinent and ill-mannered, the more impersonal, almost ejaculatory forms seemed to him to have quite another nature; and at this point a need for explicit piety was strong on him. Yet the warmth of the dry nightshirt on his pale soaked shivering body, the ease of the swinging cot, once he had managed to get into it, and the effect of his draught were such that sleep enveloped him entirely before his seventh Ave.
He was woken by the sound of gunfire and by the roar of orders immediately overhead.
He sat up, staring and collecting himself; a thin grey light was straggling through the companion, and he had the impression that the glass was being strongly hosed with water. The sea had gone down. Another gun, right forward.
He stepped out of the cot, stood swaying, and then put on the clean shirt and breeches lying on the locker. He was hurrying towards the companion-ladder when Killick roared out
‘Oh no you don’t. Oh no you don’t, sir. Not without this here’ – a long, heavy, smelly tarpaulin coat with a hood, both fastened with white marline.
‘Thank you kindly, Killick,’ said Stephen, when he was tied in. ‘Where is the Captain?’
‘On the forecastle, in the middle of the catastrophe, carrying on bike Beelzebub.’
At the foot of the ladder Stephen looked up, and his face was instantly drenched –
drenched with fresh water, with teeming cold rain so thick he could hardly draw breath.
Bowing his head he reached the mizen-mast and the wheel, the rain drumming on his hood and shoulders. The decks were full of men, exceedingly busy, apparently letting fly sheets, most of
55them unrecognizable in their foul-weather gear; but there seemed to be no very great alarm, nor was the ship even beginning to clear for action. A tall sou’westered figure bent over him and looked into his face: Awkward Davies. ‘Oh, it’s you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you forward.’
As they groped their way along the larboard gangway, scarcely able to see across the deck for the downpour, the squall passed over, still blotting out the north-east entirely but leaving no more than a remnant of drizzle over the ship and the sea to the south and west.
There was Jack in his oilskins with Pullings, the bosun and some hands, still streaming with water amidst what looked like an inextricable tangle of cordage, sailcloth and a few spars, among which Stephen thought he recognized the topgallantmast with its cheerful apple-green truck.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ cried Jack. ‘You have brought fine weather with you, I am happy to see. Captain Pullings, you and Mr Bulkeley have everything in hand, I believe?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Pullings. ‘Once Mr Bentley has roused out his spare cap, there are only trifles left to be done.’
‘At least the decks will not need swabbing today,’ said Jack, looking aft, where the rain-water was still gushing in thick jets from the scuppers. ‘Doctor, shall we take an early pot, and what is left of the soft-tack, toasted?’
In the cabin he said, ‘Stephen, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you I have made a sad cock of it, and the snow has run clear. Last night Tom wanted to have a long shot at her, in the hope of checking her speed. I said no, but this morning I was sorry for it. The squall had flattened the sea, and with the breeze dying on us she was drawing away hand over fist: so I said “It is now or never” and cracked on till all sneered again. We came within possible range and we had a few shots, one pitching so close it threw water on to her deck, before a back-stay parted and our foretopgallant came by the board. She has run clear away, going like smoke and oakum, and in this dirty weather there will be no finding her again. I hope you’ are not too disappointed.’
‘Not at all – never in life,’ said Stephen, drinking coffee to hide his intense satisfaction and gratitude.
‘Mark you,’ said Jack earnestly, ‘she is very likely to be taken by one of our cruisers. She altered course eastwards when she saw us coming up so fast, and now she is hopelessly embayed in the Firth. She will never get out with this wind, and it may last for weeks.’
‘Does not the same apply to us?’
‘Oh no. We have much more sea-room. Once we have head-sails we can make a short leg to the south-east to be sure of weathering the Mull, go north about past Malin Head, gain a good offing, a very good offing, and then hey for Lisbon. Come in, Tom. Sit down and have a cup of coffee, cold though it be.’
‘Thank you, sir. The immediate work is done, and we can hoist jib and foretopmast staysail whenever you choose.’
‘Very good, very good indeed: the sooner the better.’ He swallowed his coffee and the two of them hurried on deck. A moment later Stephen, finishing the pot, heard Jack’s powerful voice at its strongest: ‘All hands, there. All hands about ship.’
Chapter
3
‘Bonden,’ said Jack Aubrey to his coxswain, ‘tell the Doctor that if he is at leisure there is something to be seen on deck.’
The Doctor was at leisure; the ‘cello on which he had been practising gave a last deep boom and he ran up the companion-ladder, an expectant look on his face.
‘There, right on the beam,’ said Jack, nodding southwards. ‘You can catch the breakers at its foot as clear as can be on the rise.’
‘Certainly,’ said Stephen, watching Malin Head fade and faintly reappear in the thin rain; then, feeling that something more was expected of him, ‘I am obliged to you for showing it to me.’
‘It will be your last glimpse of your native land for about sixteen degrees of latitude and God knows how many of longitude, for I mean to make a great offing if ever I can. Should you like to look at it with a telescope?’
‘If you please,’ said Stephen. He was fond of his native land, even though this piece of it booked unnaturally black, wet and uninviting; but he could not wish the spectacle prolonged, particularly as he knew from personal experience that part of this province was inhabited by a tattling, guileful, tale-bearing, noisy, contemptible, mean, wretched, unsteady and inhospitable people, and as soon as he decently could he clapped the glass to, handed it back, and returned to his ‘cello. They were to attempt another Mozart quartet in a few days and he did not wish to disgrace himself in the presence of the purser’s far more accomplished playing.
Left alone Jack continued his habitual pacing fore and aft
He must have covered hundreds and hundreds of miles on this same quarterdeck in the course of all these years and the ringbolt near the taffrail where he turned shone like silver; it was also dangerously thin. He was glad to have seen Maim Head so clear. It proved that Inishtrahull and the Garvans, upon which many a better navigator than himself had come to grief, especially in thick weather with no sight of the sun by day or any star by night, were all safely astern. After a measured mile for good buck, he gave the orders that would carry the ship as nearly due west as the south-west wind would allow; and he found to his pleasure that she needed it only half a point free to run happily at seven knots under no more than topsails and courses, though a moderate sea kept striking her barboard bow with all the regularity of a long-established swell, throwing her slightly off her course and sweeping spray and even packets of water diagonally across the forecastle and the waist.