‘How tall would they be?’
‘I cannot say the number of fathoms or feet, but very tall indeed – tall enough to hide a ship of the line; and we were becalmed between them. But when the wind blew even harder than usual their tops came curling over at the crest, sometimes tumbling down the
slope in a white cataract, sometimes causing the whole prodigious mass to break in an utter confusion of shattered water, disrupting those that followed. It was then, I understand, that we were in the greatest danger of being pooped, and broaching to.’
‘Dear me,’ said the purser, ‘that must have been a most uncomfortable situation, Doctor.’
‘So it was too,’ said Stephen. ‘But an even greater danger was that of running into a mountain of ice. They are huge, in these waters, vast beyond all imagination, with what can be
seen towering high and what can not spreading far out on either side, as perilous as any reef; they are invisible on a dark night, and even if they were not, one cannot steer as one chooses in such a preternatural blast.’
‘But surely, sir,’ said Welby, the Marine, ‘they must be extremely uncommon, in the parts frequented by shipping?’
‘On the contrary, sir,’ said Stephen. ‘We fleeted past scores, some of them an exquisite aquamarine blue in parts, with the surf raging against their sides, breaking mountains high; and we were partially crushed, almost sunk and quite disabled, our rudder torn off, by one that was reckoned half a mile across. This was in the Leopard, a ship of fifty guns.’
Twice that afternoon Stephen was called on deck, once to see a troop of grampuses, and once to be shown a startling change in the sea, which from a turbid, undistinguished glaucous hue had become clear, glass clear, and of that aquamarine colour which had come back to his mind when he spoke of Leopard’s iceberg: the rest of the time he spent in the cabin, speaking Malay with Ahmed or listening to him read from Fox’s text. Ahmed was a gentle, good-natured, cheerful young man, an excellent servant, but far too deferential to be much of a teacher; he never corrected any of Stephen’s mistakes, he always agreed with Stephen’s stress on a word, and he went to infinite pains to understand whatever was said to him. Fortunately Stephen had a gift for languages and an accurate, retentive ear: Ahmed had rarely been called upon to exercise much ingenuity after the first few weeks, and by now they conversed with tolerable ease.
There was no beating to quarters that evening, which was unusual, and having attended to his patients in the last dog watch, Stephen thought he would stroll on the quarterdeck and perhaps converse with Warren, the master, a well-informed and interesting man; but as he set foot on the ladder up from the orlop he was illumined by a flash of lightning so intensely vivid that its reflection pierced down hatchway after hatchway and along shadowy decks with such power that it dimmed the sick-berth lanterns. It was instantly followed by the most enormous and lasting clap of thunder, apparently breaking in the maintop itself. And by the time he had groped his way up to the gunroom bulkhead he could already hear the downpour, a rainstorm of prodigious violence.
‘Come and have a look, sir,’ cried Reade in great glee, checking his eager pace at the sight of the Doctor, ‘I have never seen the like in all my time at sea. Nor has the master. Come along; I will fetch you a griego.’
Most of what Reade said was drowned by the thunder, but he urged Stephen up the ladder to the half-deck, fetched him a hooded watch-coat, and led him up to a total blackness filled with hurtling water, a blackness so thick that the bulwark could not be
seen – nothing but a faint orange glow from the binnacle lights. But a moment later the entire horizon, clean round the ship, was lit by such lightning that everything stood out clear
– sails, rigging, people, their expressions – the whole length of the ship, in spite of the rain.
Stephen felt Reade pull his sleeve and saw his delighted face say something, but the continuous bellow of thunder covered the words.
Jack was standing by the weather rail with Fielding and he called Stephen over.
Even his powerful voice, at close quarters, was somewhat overlaid, yet ‘beats Guy Fawkes night’ came through, and his smile, oddly cut by the intermittent flashes so that it appeared to spread in jerks, was quite distinct. They stood there with this stupendous display roaring and flashing for an indeterminate time and then Jack said, ‘You are ankle deep and in your slippers. I will give you a tow below.’
‘Lord, Jack,’ said Stephen, sitting and dripping in the cabin while Ahmed pulled off his stockings, ‘a fleet-action must be quite like this.’
‘Very like, but for the lack of smoke,’ said Jack. ‘Now listen, I shall be in and out till morning, waking you with my light, because it is likely to cut up rough, so you had better sleep below. Ahmed, see that the Doctor’s cot is aired, and make sure that his feet are thoroughly dry before he turns in.’
Their Guy Fawkes night was as it were a gateway from one
region to another totally different: in the morning the Diane was tearing away to the east-south-east at twelve knots through a confused tumbling sea with a great deal of white water on it but also an underlying pattern of long, consistent moderate swell, a cold, cold sea and a wind with a fierce bite to it; and there was enough north in the westerly gale to make her heel some twenty-five degrees.
A fair amount of water in the form of spray and odd packets came aboard, but nothing like enough to damp the galley fires or the appetites of the officer and the midshipman of the morning watch, Elliott and Greene, who breakfasted with the Captain.
They were not Jack’s favourite officers, but they had had a rough time of it since four o’clock when they relieved the deck, and in any case there must be no favouritism: he was perhaps a little less genial than he might have been with Richardson and Reade, but he plied them with porridge, eggs from his twelve worthy hens, with somewhat rusty bacon, toasted Irish soda-bread – Stephen’s brilliant innovation – and marmalade from Ashgrove, the coffee coming in a succession of pots. Stephen watched them sitting there, all three haggard from their watch; and once again it occurred to him that it was not so much the iniquitous imposition of income tax that was causing the decline of this form of entertainment, but rather the boredom and the labour on the part of the host: by naval tradition Elliott could start no subject, and although as a well-bred man he made real efforts by way of response, he was no more gifted as a conversationalist than he was as a seaman, Greene, on the other hand, interrupted his steady eating only to say Yes, sir or No, sir.
‘Now surely you will turn in, brother,’ said Stephen, when they had gone. ‘You look destroyed.’
‘Oh certainly: quite soon,’ said Jack. ‘But first I must take some readings for Humboldt; I have not missed a day yet, and it would be a pity to start now. Perhaps I will come down and tell you the temperatures at least. We can test the salinity later. Ho, Killick, there. Pass the word for my clerk, will you?’
Elijah Butcher had been expecting the call and he came
prepared, muffled up to his ears, with an inkhorn in his buttonhole, the register under his arm, hygrometer, cyanograph and a variety of thermometers in his pocket, all cased, his bright black eyes and his bright red face eager for the fray.
‘Mr Butcher,’ said Jack, rising, ‘good morning to you. Let us get under way.’
Jack did not come down. He sent Butcher to show Dr Maturin the temperature at the surface, and ten and at fifty fathoms, together with the hygrometrical readings and a message to the effect that Captain Aubrey was obliged to stay on deck.
Stephen had expected it, because he knew very well that this was the kind of sailing that Jack loved beyond any other; but he did not know how wholly the Diane’s captain would be absorbed in his task.
Jack had never really driven her before. The trades had been benign, regular, agreeable and steady, but always on the feeble side; they had hardly ever allowed him to log more than ten knots even with royal studdingsails abroad and the wind three points abaft the beam, which she liked best; and now he very earnestly wished to run off his easting as fast as ever he could make her fly. With the dear Surprise he knew exactly what sails would give her fifteen knots in these latitudes without straining, but he had little notion of what would suit the Diane. In winds of this force different ships behaved very differently on being driven; some would plunge their bows deep, shipping green seas that would tear aft; others would tuck down their sterns, and then the green seas, with a following wind, were worse by far; some might be sluggish, some might gripe, some might steer wild and even broach to with the very combination of sails that would make another fly.