‘As to your position that enough is as good as a feast, Judge, allow me to point out that it is contrary to the views of all good men from the earliest recorded times, said Stephen Think
of the feasts in Paralipomenon, in Homer, in Virgil they were neither prepared by fools nor eaten by them As for the rest,
it is clear that you cannot know that I am Captain Aubrey’s guest, or you would never have supposed that I could give him hints on how he should behave.’
Johnstone flushed with anger, said, ‘Then I shall do it myself,’ and turned away.
He did not do so at dinner, though he was obviously nerving himself for it and although his friends kept looking at him, but the news reached Jack that evening, when the frigate was threading the strait between Banka and Sumatra, less than ten miles broad in places. The breeze was awkward, coming now from one shore, now from the other, and although the spectacle of forests on either hand, separated by a stretch of sky-blue sea, was agreeable for the passengers – Stephen, in the maintop with a telescope, was very nearly sure he had seen a Sumatran rhinoceros – the continual tacking, the continual cry of the leadsman in the chains, sometimes calling less than five fathoms, and the continual possibility of uncharted shoals made it an active and uneasy passage for the seamen. At one point Jack hurried below to check a warning in Muffitt’s papers, and while he was doing so he heard Killick in the farther cabin giving Bonden a lively description of Those Old Buggers and the way they carried on about the music. Apart from calling ‘Avast, there,’ he took no notice, being too deeply concerned with his rocks, but it had sunk into the depths of his mind and it rose up again after quarters, when the cabins had just been
reassembled and his violin-case came up from the orlop. ‘Killick,’ he called. ‘Go and see if His Excellency is at leisure for a visit.’
His Excellency was, and Jack went round at once. ‘My dear Mr Fox,’ he cried, ‘I am so sorry. I had no idea we made such a din.’
‘Eh?’ said Fox, looking startled. ‘Oh, the music, you mean. Please do not feel the least concern. It is true I have no ear for music, no appreciation at all, but I cope with the situation perfectly well with little balls of wax: all I hear through them is a kind of general hum, which I find rather agreeable than otherwise – soporific.’
‘I cannot tell you how relieved I am. But your companions. . .’
‘I do hope they have not been making a fuss, after all your kindness in arranging their quarters and their stores. They have little sense of what is fitting: they have none of them travelled in a man-of-war, only in Company’s ships, where of course they are important people. I try to keep them in order, but they do not seem capable of understanding. One of them sent for Maturin this morning. . . Has the ship stopped?’
‘Yes. We have anchored for the night. I dare not go through the strait in the darkness, not carrying Caesar, or at least Caesar’s representative, and all his fortunes.’
Jack Aubrey rarely turned a compliment, but Fox’s unaffected, generous response really pleased him, the more so as it was unexpected. In fact he would not have dared go through the strait in any circumstances. It was a slow and anxious navigation, with strong, varying currents to add to the difficulty. The Old Buggers remained perfectly indifferent to all this, however: they might have been travelling in a coach on a well-traced road. They none of them ever tackled Jack directly, but they made Fielding’s life quite unhappy.
Fleming was reported to him for having prevented Loder from talking to the quartermaster at the con: he was told that it was extremely inconvenient to have their baggage struck down into the hold every evening, and that last time it happened Crabbe’s pencil-case and a valuable fan had not been put back in the right place – it was at least half an hour before he could find them: and every evening in the strait, when the ship lay at anchor, Jack turned the hands up to sing and dance on the forecastle by way of a break after the arduous day, which was another cause for complaint. But the most usual grievance had to do with their servants, who were obliged to wait their turn at the galley and who were treated with coarse jocularity, even with obscene gestures and expressions In any case Jack was far out of their reach He and the master spent much of their time in the foretop with azimuth compass and telescope at hand and a midshipman to hold their
papers flat. They saw, noted and dealt with a number of hazards, and as the frigate was crossing the shoal that made leaving the strait so dangerous if the passage were missed – as she was in fact entering the South China Sea – they saw another peculiar to these waters. From an island to windward, laid down as Kungit by Horsburgh and Fungit by Muffit, came two large Malay proas. They had outriggers, and with the wind on their beam they came up very fast: presently it could be seen that their long slim hulls were crowded with men, surprising numbers of men even for such an enterprise.
Their intentions were perfectly obvious, piracy being a way of life in these parts; and although ships the size of the Diane were rarely attacked it had happened on occasion, sometimes with success. ‘Mr Richardson,’ called Jack. ‘Sir?’ came the answer.
‘Stand by to run out the guns as brisk as can be when I give the word. The hands are to keep out of sight.’
The proas separated, one on the frigate’s larboard quarter, the other to starboard, and they approached cautiously, spilling their wind as they came. The tension mounted.
The gun-teams crouched by their pieces, as motionless as cats. But no, it was not to be: the proas hesitated, decided that this was a real man-of-war, not a merchant disguised, hauled their wind and were gone: a universal sigh along the gundeck, and the handspikes were laid aside.
For some reason this stilled the Old Buggers’ complaints for the following days, which was just as well, since just under the equator the Diane had to leave the Indiamen’s course and sail into uncharted shallow seas, traversed only by proas or junks, which drew almost no water at all, whereas the frigate, with her present stores, drew fifteen feet nine inches abaft:
perhaps they were dimly aware of the gravity aboard, an atmosphere in which querulous words might meet with a short answer.
Yet even so Jack was glad to be rid of them at the end of the voyage, a voyage indeed that ended in beauty. After a night of ghosting along the parallel under close-reefed topsails, the lead going all the time, dawn showed the perfect landfall, a large, unmistakable volcanic island directly to leeward, with a fine breeze to carry them in.
Jack kept to his reefed topsails, however. He wanted to give the Malays long warning of his arrival; he wanted the ship and the mission to have plenty of time for their preparations; he
also meant to have his breakfast in comfort.
This he accomplished, together with Stephen, Fielding and
young Harper; and when it was over they returned to the crowded quarterdeck, where Fox and his companions and all
the officers were gazing at Pulo Prabang, now very much nearer. They gazed in silence, and apart from the sigh of the breeze in the rigging the only sound in the ship was the measured chant of the man in the chains: ‘By the deep, twelve. By the deep, twelve. And a half, twelve.’ To be sure, it was an arresting sight. The island stretched wide across the field of vision, most of it dark green with forest, the truncated cone of the central volcano soaring up in a pure line beyond the level of the trees; there were other peaks, lower, less distinct and perhaps much older, in the interior, but they could only be made out by attentive inspection, whereas the craters they were approaching, the crater in the sky and the crater at sea-level, could not conceivably be missed or mistaken. The second was an almost perfect circle a mile across, and its wall rose ten and even twenty feet above the surface; here and there a palm-tree could be seen, but otherwise the ring was unbroken except in one place, the gap towards which the ship was heading. Though it is true that on the landward side it was obscured by the long slow accumulation of earth and silt, the delta of the river on which the town was built.