There was no music when they reached the westerlies either, for they were blowing briskly with a little north in them, so briskly that the Surprise went bowling along under close-reefed topsails with the wind on her quarter at nine and even ten knots, wallowing at the bottom of her long roll and pitch in a way that did her little credit.
This splendid breeze held day after day, only slackening when they were approaching the Berlings. Martin led Standish on deck to view them that evening – cruel jagged rocks far out in a troubled ocean and under a troubled sky, the horizon dark. The purser clung to the rail, looking hungrily at these first specks of land since Maim Head: his clothes hung loose about him.
‘I hope I see you in better trim, Mr Standish,’ said Jack
Aubrey. ‘Even at this gentle rate we should raise the Rock of Lisbon by dawn, and if we are lucky with our tide you may eat your dinner in Black Horse Square. Nothing sets a man up like a good square meal.’
‘But before that,’ said Stephen, ‘Mr Standish would be well advised to eat a couple of eggs, lightly boiled and taken with a little softened biscuit, as soon as ever his stomach will bear them; then he may have a good restorative, roborative sleep. As for the eggs, I heard two of the gunroom hens proclaim that they had laid this morning.’
They did indeed raise the Rock of Lisbon a little before the dawn of a brilliant sparkling clear morning with warm scented air breathing off the land; and at the same time they passed HMS Briseis, 74, a cloud of sail in the offing, obviously homeward bound from Lisbon and making the most of the stronger breeze out there. Jack struck his topsails as in duty bound to a King’s ship and Briseis, now commanded by an amiable man called Lampson, returned the salute, at the same time throwing out a signal whose only intelligible word was Happy.
But they were not lucky with their tide: breathing the warm scented air was certainly a delight to those that longed for land, but it prevented the Surprise from crossing the Tagus bar and she was obliged to anchor all through slack water and well beyond before the pilot would consent to take her in.
In this lakelike peace Standish, who had eaten his two eggs the evening before and had spent a calm night, spent his time eating first three pints of portable soup, thickened with oatmeal, and then a large quantity of ham; this recovered his spirits wonderfully, and although he was still feeble he gasped his way into the maintop, where Stephen and Martin were to explain the operation of getting under way.
Below them on the quarterdeck the pilot finished his account of how the Weymouth, relying on her own knowledge of the river, had been wrecked on the bar – just over there, three points on the starboard bow, not quite a mile away – with the words ‘And all for the sake of the pilot’s fee.’
‘That was very bad, I am sure,’ said Jack. ‘Were the people saved?’
‘A few,’ said the pilot reluctantly. ‘But those few were all horribly disfigured. Now, sir, whenever you please to give the word, I believe we may proceed.’
‘All hands unmoor ship,’ said Jack, raising his voice to the pitch of an order, though every man had been at his station these ten minutes past, angrily willing the pilot to stop his prating, to stash it, to pipe down; and instantly the bosun sprung his call.
‘See,’ cried Stephen, ‘the carpenter and his crew put the bars in the capstan – they ship them, pin them and swift them.’
‘They bring the messenger to the capstan: the gunner ties its rounded ends together.
What are they called, Maturin?’
‘Let us not be too pedantic, for all love. The whole point is, the messenger is now endless: it is a serpent that has swallowed its own tail.’
‘I cannot see it,’ said Standish, leaning far out over the rail. ‘Where is this messenger?’
‘Why,’ said Martin, ‘it is that rope they are putting over the rollers just beneath us in the waist, a vast loop that goes from the capstan to two other stout vertical rollers by the hawse-holes and so back.’
‘I do not understand. I see the capstan, but there is no rope round it at all.’
‘What you see is the upper capstan,’ said Stephen with some complacency. ‘The messenger is twined about the lower part, under the quarterdeck. But both the lower and the upper part are equipped with bars: both turn: both heave, as we say. See, they undo the deck-stoppers, or dog-stoppers as some superficial observers call them – they loosen the starboard cable, the cable on the right-hand side – they throw off the turn about the riding-bitts! What force and dexterity!’
‘They bring the messenger to the cable – they bind it to the cable with nippers.’
‘Where? Where? I cannot see.’
‘Of course not. They are right forward, by the hawse-holes,
where the cable comes into the ship, under the forecastle.’
‘But presently,’ said Stephen in a comforting tone, ‘you will perceive the cable come creeping aft, led by the messenger.’
John Foley, the Shelmerston fiddler, skipped on to the capstan-head; at his first notes the men at the bars stepped out, and after the first turns that brought on the strain, three deep voices and one clear tenor sang
Yeo heave ho, round the capstan go,
Heave men with a will
Tramp and tramp it still
The anchor must be weighed, the anchor must be weighed
joined by all in a roaring
Yeo heave ho
Yeo heave ho
five times repeated before the three struck in again
Yeo heave ho, raise her from below
Heave men with a will
Tramp and tramp it still
The anchor’s off the ground, the anchor’s off the ground
‘There is your cable,’ said Martin in a very much louder voice, after the first few lines.
‘So it is,’ said Standish; and having stared at it coming in like a great wet serpent he went on, ‘But it is not going to the capstan at all.’
‘Certainly not,’ said Stephen in a screech above the full chorus. ‘It is far too thick to bend round the capstan; furthermore, it is loaded with the vile mud of Tagus.’
‘They undo the flippers and let the cable down the main hatchway and so to the orlop, where they coil it on the cable-tiers,’ said Martin. ‘And they hurry back with the flippers to bind fresh cable to the messenger as it travels round.’
‘How active they are,’ observed Stephen. ‘See how diligently they answer Captain Pullings’
request to light along the
messenger, that is to say pull along the slack on that side which is not heaving in -‘
‘And how they run with the flippers: Davies has knocked Plaice flat.’
‘What are those men doing with the other cable?’ asked Standish.
‘They are veering it out,’ answered Martin quickly.
‘You are to understand that we are moored,’ said Stephen. ‘In other words we are held by two anchors, widely separated; when we approach the one, therefore, by pulling on its cable, the cable belonging to the other must necessarily be let out, and this is done by the veering cable-men. But their task is almost over, for if I do not mistake we are short stay apeak. I say we are short stay apeak.’ But before he could insist upon this term, better than any Martin could produce, and reasonably accurate, a voice from the forecastle called ‘Heave and a-weigh, sir,’ whereupon Jack cried ‘Heave and rally’ with great force.
All the veerers ran to the bars, the fiddler fiddled extremely fast, and with a violent, grunting yeo heave ho they broke the anchor from its bed and ran it up to the bows.
The subsequent operations, the hooking of the cat to the anchor-ring, the running of the anchor up to the cat.head, the fishing of the anchor, the shifting of the messenger for the
other cable (which of course required a contrary turn), and many more, were too rapid and perhaps too obscure to be explained before Jack gave the order ‘Up anchor’ and the music started again; but this time they sang
We’ll heave him up from down below
Way oh Criana
That is where the cocks do crow
We’re all bound over the mountain
to the sound of a shrill sweet fife.
The ship moved easily, steadily over the water – the tide was making fast – and presently West, on the forecastle, called ‘Up and down, sir.’
‘He means that we are directly over the anchor,’ said Stephen. ‘Now you will see something.’
‘Loose topsails,’ said Jack in little more than a conversational voice, and at once the shrouds were dark with men racing aloft.