the glassy wall rearing before him they met a vast shape swimming east. He instantly knew what it was but for a moment his mind was too astonished, amazed to cry out Whale! A whale, a young plump sperm whale, a female, slightly speckled with barnacles; and she had a calf close by her side. They swam steadily, their tails going up and down, the calf’s faster than its mother’s; and at a given moment they were on a level and even higher than his gaze. Then the ship in its turn rose, heeling on the crest, and they were gone, quite gone. Farther off he saw other whales spouting, but they were too far away; they belonged to the rest of the school.
Suffused with joy, he made his way aft through all the busy hands, their cries, their tight-stretched ropes, staggering on the roll and twice very nearly pitching into the waist.
His expression changed when he saw Jack’s face and heard him say privately, ‘Stephen, you can do me an essential service: keep the civilians below, out of the way.’
He nodded and made straight for the companion-ladder. Fox and Edwards, his secretary, were just about to mount, but they stood aside to let him come down.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Stephen. ‘I have been banished. Apparently there is some manoeuvre toward for which the mariners require the deck quite clear.’
‘Then we had better stay below,’ said Fox. ‘Would you like a game of chess?’
Stephen said he would be very happy. He was an indifferent player and he disliked losing; Fox played well and he liked winning; but this would keep the envoy quiet and in his cabin.
‘It is curious that there should be little or no surf on that island with such a swell,’
observed Fox, looking out of the scuttle as he fetched the board and men. ‘We should surely see it from here. The island has come very much closer, in spite of the calm. Has the manoeuvre any connexion with it? Are we to confess our sins and make our wills?’
‘I think not. I presume the activity has to do with our landing on Tristan. Captain Aubrey has promised a wind in the middle of the day, which is to waft us to the northern island. I look
forward to it extremely; for among other things I hope to astonish and gratify Sir Joseph with some beetles unknown to the learned world. As to the surf, or rather its absence, the explanation, I am told, lies in a broad zone of that gigantic southern sea-wrack which some call kelp. Cook speaks of stems exceeding three hundred and fifty feet in length off Kerguelen. I have never been more fortunate than two hundred and forty.’
The game began, Stephen, who had the black men, following his usual plan of building up a solid defensive position in the middle of the board. Edwards, an obviously capable and intelligent young man, but unusually reserved, muttered something about ‘a glass of negus in the gunroom’ and sidled unnoticed out of the door Stephen’s hope was that Fox, in attacking his entrenchments, would leave a gap through which some perfidious knight might leap, threatening destruction, and indeed after some fifteen moves it appeared to him that such an opening would come into existence if he were to protect his king’s bishop’s fourth. He advanced a pawn one square.
‘Quite a good move,’ said Fox, and Stephen saw, with real vexation, that it was fatal. He knew that if Fox were now to castle on his queen’s side and attack with both rooks, black had no defence. He also knew that Fox would take some time before he made these moves, partly to check all the possible responses twice over and partly to relish the position.
Yet Fox delayed them three rolls too long. The board survived two unusually violent lurches as the ship entered the great kelp-bed, but at the third it slid off the table, scattering the pieces all over the cabin. As he helped to pick them up Stephen remarked,
‘You are cleaning your Manton again, I see.’
‘Yes,’ said Fox, ‘the lock is such a delicate affair that I do not like to leave it to anyone else. As soon as the sea grows more reasonable, we must go back to our competition.’
Fox had two rifles, as well as fowling-pieces and some pistols, and he was a remarkably good shot: better than Stephen. But although Stephen had little hope of improvement at chess he
could outdo Fox with a pistol and he thought that with practice he might perform quite well with a rifle; hitherto he had used nothing but sporting guns and the usual smooth-bore musket.
‘Do you think they have finished on deck?’ asked Fox. ‘There seems to be less trampling.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Stephen. ‘Captain Aubrey would surely have sent a midshipman to tell us.’
Less trampling, no outcry, no sound but the furious working on the launch, the only voice that of the white-faced sweating carpenter with his ‘I always said this coppering of boats was fucking nonsense. In course their fucking bottoms rot beneath it, never seen.’ The whole being of all the others was fixed upon the boats, the ten-oared pinnace, the ten-oared cutter, the four-oared jolly-boat and even the Doctor’s personal skiff as they towed the ship, the rowers rising from the thwarts as they pulled, straining their oars to the breaking-point: the eyes of all but those who were labouring with such passionate zeal shifted now from the boats to the stark cliff of Inaccessible and now from the cliff to the ship’s side to compare her forward progress with the sideways heave. The towing had begun quite well, but now that the ship had entered the binding weed, and now that the indraught of the current was stronger still it was clear that the boats were not pulling her ahead as fast as the swell was urging her inshore. There was only a quarter of a mile to go before the end of the cliff and the open sea beyond the island, but at this rate it was not possible that she should run that far before she touched. The anchors had been cleared away and they were hanging a-cockbill; but the lead gave no hope of a holding-ground – of any ground at all. And hands were stationed along the side with spars to boom off when the sheer rock was near enough; but that could not prolong the run more than a minute or so. Nearer; nearer with every enormous heave.
Jack gazed up at the top of the precipice. ‘Mind your helm, there,’ he called to the quartermaster with very great force, though the poor dazed man was within a few feet of him; and
the nascent breeze he had seen stirring the grass up on that distant edge came breathing along the cliff-face. It moved the main topgallant and faded; it came again, nearly filling all three topgallants and the topsails; again, and they and even the courses bellied out. The ship distinctly gathered way, and cheering began.
‘Silence fore and aft,’ roared Jack. ‘Man the braces.’ And to the man at the wheel,
‘Down with the helm.’
The carpenter came running from the waist. ‘She’ll swim, sir,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Mr Hadley,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Elliott, get her over the side. Launch’s crew away: jump to it, there, jump to it.’
They jumped to it indeed; but even pulling to crack their spines they could not make fast at the head of the tow before the ship, slanting away from that dreadful shore, had such motion on her that the hawser was slack.
‘Mr Elliott,’ said Jack, when the island was clear astern and the decks were filled with grinning men, laughing and congratulating one another as they worked in a general diffused sound of the most uncommon happiness, ‘the course is northeast a half east. The hands may be piped to dinner as soon as the boats are in. Mr Bennett’ – to a midshipman –
‘pray tell Dr Maturin with my compliments that if he is at leisure I should like to show him the north side of Inaccessible.’
Jack Aubrey sat in what remained to him of the great cabin, contemplating not only the frigate’s wake stretching away and away to the north-west, but also a variety of other things: the room, though now divided by a bulkhead running fore and aft for the accommodation of the envoy, was still a fine capacious place for one brought up to the sea, with enough space to contemplate a large number of subjects, and not only space but quietness and privacy in which to do so. Relative silence, that is to say, for the stays, shrouds and backstays were being set up again after the frightful stretching they had suffered off Tristan; and no one, least of all Jack Aubrey, could expect rigging to be set up without roaring and bawling: and Crown,