they had behaved very well off Tristan. Yet even so there were still a good many who would run if they possibly could, and that was still another reason that he was glad to be going far south of the Cape.
The Surprise that he regretted had no pressed men, of
course. Desertion never entered into consideration at all; in fact the only severe punishment he had ever had to inflict was turning men ashore for misconduct. And what was rather more to the point at this moment, she had no midshipmen either. The Diane had six young gentlemen in her midshipmen’s berth, two of them, Seymour and Bennett, being master’s mates. There were no really small boys, no squeakers under the gunner’s care, but even so Jack’s responsibilities – and he was a conscientious captain where his midshipmen were concerned, leaving little to Mr Warren the master – were quite varied.
Since the ship did not carry a chaplain or a schoolmaster, Harper and Reade, the youngest, needed his help with spelling hard words and with fairly simple arithmetic, let alone the elements of spherical trigonometry and navigation; while Seymour and Bennett,
near the end of their servitude, would pass, or try to pass, for lieutenants at the end of this year or the beginning of next and they were already growing anxious; they were very willing, even eager, to have the finer points of their profession explained.
It was they who were due at four bells, and as the second bell struck he heard them tap at the door, clean, brushed, exactly dressed, carrying the log-books and draughts of the journals they would have to produce, together with their captain’s certificates of service and good conduct, at their examination.
‘Sit down, both of you,’ he said, ‘and let me see your journals.’
‘Journals, sir?’ they cried: hitherto Captain Aubrey had been concerned only with their logs, which, among other things, contained their noon observations for latitude, their lunars for longitude, and a variety of astronomical remarks. Neither he nor any other of their captains had shown the least interest in their journals.
‘Yes, of course. They have to be shown up at the Navy Board, you know.’
They were shown up now, and Jack looked at what Bennett had to say about Tristan:
Tristan da Cunha lies in 57°6’S and 12°i7’W; it is the largest of a group of rocky islands; the mountain in the middle is above 7000 feet high and has very much the appearance of a volcano. In clear weather, which is rare, the snowy peak can be seen from 30 leagues away. The islands were discovered in 1506 by Tristan da Cunha, and the seas in their vicinity are frequented by whales, albatrosses, pintados, boobies, and the sprightly penguin, whose manner of swimming or as it were flying under water irresistibly brings Virgil’s remigium alarum to mind. But, however, the navigator approaching from the west should take great care not to do so in a dead calm, because of the strong current setting east and the heave of the swell .
Seymour’s journal, which had a drawing of Inaccessible with a ship scraping her yardarms against the face of the cliff, began:
Tristan da Cunha lies in 5706’S and 12°17’W; it is the largest of a group of rocky islands; the mountain in the middle is above 7000 feet high and has very much the appearance of a volcano.
The sprightly penguin irresistibly reminded Seymour too of Virgil, and on reaching the remigium alarum Jack cried, ‘Hey, hey, this won’t do. You have been cribbing from Bennett.’
No, no, sir, they said with the utmost candour, for in spite of his stern expression they were perfectly convinced that he did not intend to mangle them. It was a joint production, with the facts taken from the Mariner’s Companion and the style put in by – by a friend. But they themselves had worked out the position, and for the longitude they had had a particularly fine lunar according to the method he had shown them. There were several others, almost as good, in their logs, if he chose to look at them.
‘Where is the style?’ asked Jack, not to be diverted.
‘Well, sir,’ said Seymour, ‘there is the sprightly penguin, for example, and the remigium piece, and later on there is the rosy-fingered dawn.’
‘Well, no doubt it is very fine: but how in Heaven’s name do you expect the examining captains to swallow two sprightly penguins, one after another? It is against
nature. They will come down on you like a thousand of bricks and turn you away directly, for making game of them.’
‘Why, sir,’ said Bennett, the more ingenuous of the two, ‘our names are so far apart in the alphabet that we cannot be called the same day; and everyone says the captains never have time to read the journals anyway, certainly not to remember them.’
‘I see,’ said Jack. The argument was perfectly sound. What really mattered in these cases was the severe viva voce about seamanship and navigation and then the young man’s family, its status, influence and naval connexions. ‘But still, the captains are not to be treated with disrespect, and in decency you must strike out the style when you copy your journals fair, make some changes in each, and keep to plain official prose.’
They turned to the moons of Jupiter, which might with profit be observed on St Paul’s or Amsterdam islands, should they touch there, to fix their longitude with greater certainty; and when they had finished with the moons Jack looked at his watch, saying, ‘I shall just have time to speak to Clerke. Pray send him aft.’
Clerke came within the minute, looking alarmed, as well he might, for Captain Aubrey’s face now wore a look of strong and perfectly genuine disapprobation. He did not invite Clerke, a leggy youth with a still uncertain voice, to sit down but instantly said to him,
‘Clerke, I have sent for you to tell you that I will not have the hands blackguarded. Any low scrub can pour out foul language, but it is particularly disagreeable to hear a young fellow like you using it to a seaman old enough to be his father, a man who cannot reply. No, do not attempt to justify yourself by blaming the man you abused. Go away and close the door behind you.’
The door opened again almost immediately and Stephen, equally clean, brushed and properly dressed, was led in by Killick, who had little notion of his punctuality or sense of fitness.
‘Killick tells me that your dinner for the envoy is today,’ he said. ‘And Fielding is of the same opinion.’
‘You astonish me,’ said Jack, putting on his coat. ‘I had the impression it was yesterday. Killick, is everything in hand?’ He spoke with some anxiety, for he had had to leave his admirable cook Adi in the Surprise, and his replacement, Wilson, was apt to grow flustered when called upon for fine work.
‘All in hand, sir,’ replied Killick. ‘Never you fret. Which I soused the pig’s face myself, and one of the afterguard caught a fine great cuttlefish to start with, fresh as a daisy.’
Fielding came stumping in, looking pleased and well; he was immediately followed by Reade, the smallest, the least useful, but also the prettiest of the midshipmen, though now looking pale and drawn with hunger – he was ordinarily fed at noon – and they sat drinking madeira until Fox and his secretary arrived. Killick disliked the envoy and allowed him only four minutes before announcing, ‘Dinner is on table, sir, if you please.’
Jack’s dining-cabin was now also his sleeping-cabin, and sometimes Stephen’s too, but naval ingenuity made little of stowing the cots and sea-chests on the half-deck, the Marine sentry perpetually on duty at the cabin door being shown how to cover them with a hammock-cloth in case of drifting spray. Six people, and more at a pinch, could be seated comfortably at the table, placed athwartships and gleaming with silver, Killick’s pride and joy. Naval ingenuity was less able to deal with the two eighteen-pounder guns that shared
the cabin, but at least they could be urged as far as possible into the corners, made fast and covered with flags.
It was one of these flags or to be more exact a long pennant kicked aside by Stephen as he took his seat on the envoy’s right that was Killick’s undoing. After the wholly successful soused
pig’s face, he brought in the monstrous cuttlefish, borne high on a silver charger, cried ‘Make a lane, mates,’ to Ahmed and Ali, standing behind their master’s chairs, and advanced to set it down in front of Jack. But his right foot trod on the pennant’s end, his left caught in its substance, and down he came, flooding his captain with melted butter (the first of Wilson’s two sauces) and flinging the cuttlefish to the deck.