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the wind was blowing, and though utterly indifferent to his state themselves, they did not wish Fox and his Old Buggers to see their Captain mother-naked.
After quarters that evening, when for the first time since the Sultan’s visit the Diane’s guns spoke out in earnest, achieving their three broadsides in a fairly creditable four minutes and twenty-three seconds, and after the bulkheads had been replaced, Jack said to his steward, ‘Killick, I am asking His Excellency and the suite to dinner: not tomorrow, because I mean to spread out, but the day after. Five gentlemen, Mr Fielding, the Doctor and myself. You had better get the sherry and claret over the side, towing deep, right early; and let us have a fine blaze of silver. And I should like a word with my cook and Jemmy Ducks.’
By a logic clear to all seafaring men, turtles came under the heading of poultry as far as their care and well-being were concerned, and Jemmy Ducks said that he had never seen a brisker nor so likely a creature than the larger of the two in his charge; the other seemed ‘timid, rather bashful like’. As for the little Java geese, he had four prime birds, fairly yearning for the spit; and four birds would be plenty for eight gents with quite enough over for manners. The Captain’s cook, a one-legged black man from Jamaica, said with a flashing smile that if there was one thing he really could send up to table fit for King George himself, it was a goose; and turtles of course came as natural to him as kiss my hand, he having been weaned on calipash and calipee.
‘That was very satisfactory,’ said Jack. ‘I should have been sorry to keep the matter hanging for any length of time.’ And having written the invitation and sent it off he said,
‘Since we cannot have our music, what do you say to a hand at piquet? It is years since we played.’
‘I should be very happy.’
Happy in a sense, since he always, invariably, with the utmost regularity skinned Jack Aubrey, as he skinned most others at this game, and although the money was now of no significance, it was still a pleasure to see his point of five outdo Jack’s by a single
pip, his tierce major triumph over a tierce minor, and Jack’s eagerly announced septième beaten down by the almost unheard-of huitième; yet in another sense unhappy –
uneasy at the sight of all this luck slipping away in trivialities. For although there was skill in the game for sure, this kind of success was all luck; and if a man had only a given amount for his whole share, it was a shame to fritter away so much as a pugil.
‘What is a pugh?’ asked Jack, to whom he had made this observation.
‘It is a physical term, a fair and just return for all your poops and garstrakes, and it means as much as you can pick up between your thumb and first two fingers: dried herbs and the like. Jesuits’ bark, for example.’
‘I have always heard that a Jesuit’s bark is worse than his bite,’ said Jack, his blue eyes slits of mirth in his fine red face. ‘Come in,’ he called.
It was Edwards, extremely unhappy. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said, and then, addressing Jack, ‘His Excellency’s compliments, sir, and would it be possible to diminish the noise on the forecastle? He finds it break in upon his work.’
‘Does he, indeed?’ said Jack, cocking his ear forward. ‘I am sorry to hear that.’ This was the last dog watch, and the hands had been turned up to dance and sing: not that they needed any encouragement, not that they would not have danced and sung without the pipe, but the pipe made the whole thing legal, not to be checked for any ordinary reason. ‘That must be Simmons’s tromba marina,’ he said, catching the distinctive note, a note that could scarcely be missed, an immensely loud deep brassy hoot marking the end of a measure in the dance and followed by a confused cheering and two more hoots.
‘Have you ever seen a tromba marina, Mr Edwards?’ he asked, to ease the young man’s woe.
‘Never,
sir.’
‘It is a very singular instrument, a kind of prism of three thin planks about a fathom long with a string stretched over a curious bridge – it is played with a bow, though you would never think so from the sound. If you would like to see one, go along forward with the midshipman. A carpenter’s mate
knocked it together the other day.’ He rang his bell and to Seymour he said, ‘My compliments to Mr Fielding and the merriment on the forecastle is to diminish by half.’
‘I would have sworn that was an answer to my note,’ he said, returning to his disastrous game.
In fact the answer did not appear until well on in the next forenoon watch, when he came from the masthead in a long controlled glide down the maintopgallant backstay. The Diane had been on her cruising-ground for some hours now, and each mast had its lookout; in this clear weather they could survey seven hundred square miles of sea, but so far they had seen nothing at all, not so much as a proa or a drifting palm-trunk: a pale cobalt dome of sky, darkening imperceptibly as it came down to the sharp horizon and the true azure of the great disk of ocean – two pure ideal forms, and the ship between them, minute, real, and incongruous.
‘Sir, there is a note for you in your cabin, if you please,’ said Fleming.
‘Thank you, Mr Fleming,’ said Jack. ‘Pray let me have it, together with my sextant.’
While they were coming he looked at the log-board: between four and five knots with this rather stronger breeze, just one point free. ‘Very little leeway, Mr Warren,’ he observed.
‘Almost none at all, sir,’ said the master. ‘I paid particular attention each time the log was heaved.’
The note and the sextant came. He slipped the paper into his pocket, stepped over to the starboard hances and brought the sun down to the horizon. The corrections for the time short of noon were clear in his mind; he applied them to his reading and nodded. The Diane was certainly on her true parallel.
He found Stephen in the cabin, working over a musical score by the strong light of the stern-window. ‘We are on our true parallel,’ he said, and opened the note. ‘Well, I’m for ever damned alive,’ he said in quite a surprised tone of voice and passed the unfolded sheet.
Mr Fox presents his compliments to Captain Aubrey, whose invitation to dinner on Wednesday he has received but which pressure of woi* prevents him and his suite from accepting.
‘Well,’ said Stephen, ‘I had not thought a man of his education could be so gross.
Tell me, brother, were you very severe?’
‘Not at all. The only time I spoke a little sharp was when he asked me whether I knew I was addressing His Majesty’s direct representative, and I told him that though he might represent the King by land, I represented him by sea – that under God I was sole captain aboard.’
A pause. ‘Killick,’ called Jack. ‘Killick, there.’
‘Now what?’ cried Killick with real indignation. He was wearing a frock and gloves that shed powdered chalk at every movement; and there was a long pause before he added the necessary ‘Sir.’
‘Killick has been polishing the silver,’ observed Stephen.
‘And only half done and my mates always needing an eye on them, heavy handed hoaves liable to scratch it something cruel.’ Killick took a passionate delight in silver and for this dinner he had brought out the rarely-used best service, much tarnished in spite of its green baize.
‘Pass the word for Mr Fielding,’ said Jack: and to his first lieutenant, ‘Mr Fielding, pray sit down. I have a damned awkward request to make of you and the gunroom. The position is this: I had invited the envoy and his colleagues to dine with me tomorrow: foolishly I took their consent for granted and here is poor Killick in a cloud of powdered chalk, while my cook is working double tides at two or even three courses and God knows how many removes. But this morning I find that I had counted my geese without laying their eggs – that I had killed my geese – that is to say, pressure of work prevents Mr Fox and his people from dining with me tomorrow. So what I should like to do, with your permission, is to invade the gunroom and feast among friends. It is a damned left-handed kind of an invitation, yet. .
Left-handed it might have been, but it was an unusually happy and successful one. The gunroom table blazed from a great gilt tureen at its foot to the golden