During this somewhat withdrawn period Captain Aubrey, with the help of Adams, nominally his clerk but in fact the frigate’s purser as well, and a highly efficient secretary, caught up with his paperwork and advanced well into the dreadful maze of legal papers.
He also spent more time than usual writing to Sophie, and he began his Tuesday’s sheet (the fourth) with a detailed plan for increasing the Ashgrove Cottage plantations from the southern edge of Fonthill Lane right down to the stream, with timber, then chestnut coppice, so useful for staves, and alders at the bottom, always leaving room, however, to cast a fly. He had had this scheme in mind, maturing for a great while, but it was only now that he had the leisure and tranquillity of mind to deal with it: he did the subject justice, going on at some length about the virtues of the ash, beech and durmast oak that would delight their great-grandchildren and even drawing a creditable view of the wood in its prime. Then came a pause while he sat reflecting and gently chewing his pen; this was a habit of his boyhood, and he found the taste of ink favourable to composition; but as it had very often happened in the past, his chewed pen was too much weakened to do its duty and he had to mend it, very carefully paring off the sides with a razor he kept for the
purpose and squaring its end with a clipper. The pen now traced an elegant treble clef and he went on ‘Our unlikely marriage seems to be answering quite well. Oakes is more serious and attentive to his duty than he was, and I have rated him master’s mate, which will be an advantage to him in his next berth. And Mrs Oakes is well-liked by the people and the officers. Little Reade is quite devoted to her – it is pretty to see how kind she is to him and the little girls – while Stephen and the other officers so often sit with her on the quarterdeck that it is a positive saloon. For a variety of reasons such as Humboldt’s measurements and the estate papers I am rarely there except where the management of the ship is concerned, and I hardly know what they talk about; but Tom at any rate rattles away famously, laughing in a way that would astonish you, he being so shy in company.
No: at present I am rather out of things, as captains so often are, yet I do see that she is very popular with them – so much so that I wonder the gunroom has not yet given her the feast that is her due as a bride. Though I believe it was their intention to sway away on all top ropes, to do the thing handsomely, with a hecatomb among their livestock; only their sheep died, their fowls had the pip, and as we could not put into Fiji for hogs, contrary winds obliging us to bear away for Tonga, she may be a mother before ever she sits down to the banquet, unless they will be content with a plain sea-pie accompanied by dog’s-body and followed by boiled baby. She does not take it ill, however, but sits there tatting away, listening to their stories; and her presence adds to the gaiety of the ship. Not only the quarterdeck’s, either: when the hands are turned up to dance on the forecastle in the evening they know very well she is there and they skip higher and sing sweeter. She certainly adds to the gaiety of the ship. I only wish she may not add too much. In your ear alone I will say that I am a little afraid for Stephen, who is so very often there. It is not that she is a raving beauty in any way -would never set Troy on fire. She is quite well-looking, however, with fair hair and grey eyes, in spite of a rather pale face and a slight figure; nothing really remarkable, though she does hold her head very well. On the other hand she is cheerful, has unaffected good manners – neither missish nor eager to put herself forward – agreeable company and a great change from the ordinary well-worn gunroom round. And of course a woman, if you understand me, is a woman; and in this case the only one for hundreds of miles. “Oh Stephen is in no danger,” I hear you cry. “Stephen is so high-minded and philosophical that he is in no danger.” Very true: I know no one more sober or temperate or less likely to play the fool; yet these feelings may come upon a man before he is aware, and even the wisest can go astray – he told me himself that St Augustine was not always quite the thing where young women were concerned – and I should be very sorry if it were to happen to him.’
Some inner clock told Jack that in a few minutes he would hear two bells in the first dogwatch; and in fact before he had closed his writing-desk there was Mr Bentley the carpenter and his mates breathing at the door, waiting to hurry in with mallets and unship all bulkheads, all doors, to destroy all privacy and make the great cabin indistinguishable from the rest of the upper deck – the famous clean sweep fore and aft in full readiness for battle that had been carried out aboard the Surprise almost every day at sea ever since he first had the delight of commanding her. On the necks of the carpenters there breathed Killick, Killick’s mate and the far more powerful Padeen, ready to seize all portable property and strike it down below, and at what could only just be called a decent distance behind them the crews of the four twelve-pounders stood on one another’s toes, fidgeting to get at their guns.
Jack put on his coat, walked quickly through them and ran up the companion-ladder.
There on the windward or at least the starboard side of the barricade stood Pullings, the officer of the watch, with the drummer close at hand. The quartermaster at the con uttered the Royal Navy’s ritual cry of ‘Turn the glass and strike the bell’ to a wholly imaginary Marine: having done so he turned it himself and hurried forward to the belfry.
At the second stroke Jack said ‘Captain Pullings, beat to quarters.’
There were the usual repetitions, followed by the usual thundering of the drum, the usual muffled rushing sound of bare feet running fast to their action-stations, the usual report of
‘All present and sober, if you please, sir’ relayed to the captain, and Jack stood contemplating the silent, attentive deck, the crews grouped in their invariable pattern round their guns, the match-tubs sending up their smoke, the whole fighting-machine ready for instant action.
Nothing could have been more improbable. The whole towering array of canvas, from courses to skyscrapers, hung limp, sagging in the bunt; the smoke rose straight from the tubs; and both to larboard and to starboard there were unruffled mirror-pools of sea, miles in length and breadth, oddly purple in the declining sun. And nowhere, in the cloudless sky or on the smooth disk of enormous ocean, was there anything that moved, living or dead.
In the silence Dr Maturin’s harsh voice could just be heard telling a very deaf dyspeptic seaman that his disorder was ‘the remorse of a guilty stomach”, that he must chew every mouthful forty times, and ‘abjure that nasty grog’.
‘Well, Captain Pullings,’ said Jack at last, ‘since tomorrow is a saluting-day we will just rattle them in and out half a dozen times. Then let us take in the flying kites and topgallants and give the rest of the day to the King.’
The King, poor gentleman, had been very fond of the infant Mozart, sitting by him at the pianoforte and turning the pages of his score, and perhaps he would have liked the pieces they played that evening, all as purely Mozartian as love of the great man could make them; for although there were no canonical violin and ‘cello duets to be played, a bold mind could transcribe those for violin and viola as well as a variety of songs, the fiddle taking the voice and the ‘cello something resembling the accompaniment, while boldness on quite another scale could wander among the operas, stating various passages in unison and then improvising alternately upon the theme. It might not have pleased everybody – it certainly angered Killick – but it gave them the greatest pleasure; and when they laid down their bows after their version of Sotto ipini Jack said ‘I can think of nothing in its particular way so beautiful or moving. I heard La Salter-ello and her younger sister sing it when I was a master’s mate, just before I passed for lieutenant: Sam Rogers – a drunken whoremaster if ever there was one, God rest his soul – was sitting next to me in the silent house and you could absolutely hear the tears pittering on his knee. Lord, Stephen, joy makes me sleepy. Don’t you find joy makes you sleepy?’