Jack finished his wine, stretched, and came on deck. As soon as he appeared, blinking in the sunlight, Davidge said ‘Sir, Mr Bulkeley wants to know where the hands can hoist the wedding garland.’
‘Wedding garland?’ said Jack; and glancing into the waist of the ship he saw several men from Oakes’s division gazing up. As he looked they mutely raised the traditional set of hoops, all decked out with ribbons and streamers. Where indeed was it to go? If Oakes had been a seaman it would have gone to the mast he belonged to; if he had commanded the ship, then to the maintopgallant stay; but in this case? ‘Hoist it to the foretopgallant masthead,’ he called down, and walked slowly aft. That garland had not been made during this last half hour. The streamers were not even very fresh. The infernal buggers had known what he would do – had foretold his decision – had made game of him. ‘God damn them all to Hell: I must be as transparent as a piece of glass,’ he said, but without particular anger. In any case his mind was diverted by the sight of Dr Maturin showing Reade a series of extraordinarily exact and rapid steps from an Irish dance. ‘There,’ he
said, ‘that is a way we have of tripping it at a marriage; but you must never wave your arms or show any emotion, far less hoot aloud, as some unhappy nations do: a most illiberal practice. Here is the Captain himself, who will tell you that hallooing as you dance is not at all genteel.’
‘It is an odd thing,’ said Jack, when Reade had withdrawn, ‘but I seem to bring no news in this ship. The hands have had the garland ready pretty well since we weighed, and here you are showing young Reade how to dance at a wedding, though it was arranged only ten minutes ago. I doubt whether I shall even be able to astonish Mr Martin, when I ask him to officiate. He dines with us today, as I am sure you recall.’
‘How I wish he may not be late: my belly fairly groans for its food. Though that may be the effect of terror. You have noticed the ship pursuing us, I make little doubt? A ship flying a man-of-war’s pennant?’
‘I pass over your calling a cutter a ship, but allow me to object to your pursuing. To be sure, she is sailing approximately the same course; and to be sure, she would probably like to speak to us. But she may very well be putting into a bay on the north-western side, the leeward side, of Norfolk Island on some official business; and although she is alleged to be wearing a pennant I believe I may safely ignore her. I have no time for gossiping, and we are sufficiently far apart for it not to be offensively obvious, not court-martial obvious; and we shall certainly stay far enough ahead until nightfall.’
‘Can we not outsail her? Run clean away?’
‘Of course not, Stephen. How can you be so strange? Both vessels are moving through the water at much the same pace, but whereas we, as a ship, a square-rigged ship, can only come up to within six points of the wind, she can come up to five; so all things being equal she must overhaul us in the long run – unless of course we put before the wind, which would put us far out of her reach but which would also be a clear proof of criminal evasion. If she is still there in the morning – if she has not run into the lee of Norfolk Island
– and if there is no extraordinary change in the weather, I shall have to heave to. To stop,’
he added, for a person who could call a cutter a ship after so many years at sea might need even simpler terms explained. ‘But by that time Oakes’s companion will be a free woman, Martin having done her business with book, bell and candle.”
‘You would never be forgetting Padeen, I am sure?’ said Stephen in a low voice.
‘No,’ said Jack, smiling. ‘I am not. We have no Judases aboard, I believe; and even if we had it would be a bold cutter-commander who would find him in my ship.” For some minutes he studied the Eclair, the cutter in question, through his glass. She was well handled, and she might in fact be moving a little faster than the Surprise as well as lying closer to the wind; and her pennant was now quite certain when she came about: but she could not reach him by nightfall and the likelihood of her running beyond Norfolk Island into the main ocean was very small indeed even if she was in pursuit of him. He closed the telescope and said ‘It is a very surprising thing, you know, the power of a young woman that sits quiet, self-contained and modest, looking down, answering civil – not like a booby, mark you, Stephen – civil, but not very much. A man could not speak chuff to such a girl, without he was a very mere Goth. Old Jarvey could not speak chuff to such a girl.’
‘It is my belief, brother, that your misogyny is largely theoretical.’
‘Ay,’ said Jack, shaking his head. ‘I love a wench, it is true; but a wench in her right place.
Come, Stephen, we must shift our clothes. Tom and Martin will be with us in five minutes.’
In five minutes Captain Pullings in all his glory and Mr Martin in a good black coat walked into the great cabin: they were at once offered drinks to whet their appetite (a wholly unnecessary form at this time of the day) and as the bell struck they took their places at table. For the first part of dinner both sailors tried to make both medical men understand, really understand, why a craft that came up to within five points of the wind must eventually overtake another, moving at the same speed but coming up only six points, it being understood that they were both sailing close-hauled. After the roast mutton had gone away, a very mere skeleton, Jack in desperation sent for Reade and told him to ask Mr Adams for some bristol card and to cut out two isosceles triangles, the one with an apex of 135°, the other of 112°30′.
By the time triangles came the cloth had been drawn and Jack would have traced lines showing the direction of the wind and the turning points in port on the gleaming mahogany had Killick not cried out ‘Oh sir, no sir, if you please: let me stretch lengths of white marline.’
The marline stretched, Jack said ‘Now, gentlemen, the wind is blowing right down the middle, from the Doctor’s waistcoat to mine; the parallel lines on either side show approximately where the vessels go about, beating up into it, towards him. Now I lay the six-pointer’s triangle on the left-hand line with its base at right angles to the wind: 1 trace the ship’s course, close-hauled, as far as the right-hand line, where she goes about; and I mark the place with a piece of bread. I do the same for each leg until I reach the turning-point of the sixth leg, marked with this dead weevil. Now I take the cutter’s five-point triangle; I do the same; and as you see the cutter’s fourth leg coincides almost exactly with the frigate’s sixth. The distance made good to windward is pretty well four to three in favour of the fore-and-aft rig.’
‘It cannot be denied,’ said Stephen, looking closely at the weevil. ‘But my head is more fully convinced than my heart – such a fine tall ship, that has run down so many enemies of superior force.’
‘Would a trigonometrical proof please you more?’ asked Tom Pullings.
Stephen shook his head and privately drew the weevil towards his plate. ‘I looked into a book on trigonometry once,’ said Martin. ‘It was called A Simple Way of Resolving All Triangles, invaluable for Gentlemen, Surveyors, and Manners, carefully adapted for the Meanest Understanding: but I had to give it up. Some understandings are even meaner than the author imagined, it appears.’
‘At least we all understand this capital port,’ said Stephen. ‘A glass of wine with you, sir.’
‘By all means,’ said Martin, bowing over his plate. ‘It is indeed capital port; but this must be my very last. I have a ceremony to perform within the hour, as you know, and I should not wish to mumble and stumble my way through it.’
After dinner Stephen, who attended no services but funerals, retired to the sick-berth where Owen told him about his voyages to the mainland and islands of north-western America for furs and thence across by the Sandwich Islands, particularly Hawaii, to Canton, or sometimes home by way of the Horn or the Straits, with perhaps a stop at Mas Afuera for seal skins. And about other parts of the South Seas he had been to, especially Easter Island, which Stephen found more interesting than the rest, above all because of the prodigious figures on their exactly-dressed stone platforms, set up by an unknown people who had also left records on wooden tablets, inscribed in an unknown script and an unknown tongue. Owen was an intelligent, clear-headed man, who took pleasure in