‘I do not. You are much given to sleep these days, I find; and sure your tedious anxious careworn endless weeks or even God forbid months in that vile penal colony required a deal of reparation ; but you are to consider that sleep and fatness go hand in hand, like fas and nefas – think of the autumn dormouse, the hibernating hedgepig – and I should be sorry if you were to grow even heavier. Perhaps you should confine yourself to one single dish of toasted cheese before turning in. I smell it coming.’
‘Some other time certainly,’ said Jack. ‘But tonight is Guy Fawkes’ Eve, and must in common decency be celebrated to the full. Anything else would be close to treason, tasting of rank Popery – oh Lord, Stephen, I am laid by the lee again. I am so sorry.’
The extraordinary smoothness of the sea and the consequent immobility of his cot gave the sleeping Captain Aubrey a very strong impression of being at home, an impression so strong and a sleep so profound, his whole body limp and relaxed, that even the double swabbing of the deck and flogging it dry (this being a saluting-day) did not pierce through to his ordinary consciousness. Nor was it easy for Reade to wake him when he came bounding down at six bells to tell him that the ship had been pierced.
‘Captain Pullings’ duty, sir, and the ship’s side has been pierced below the waterline just abaft of Wilful Murder. He thought you might like to know.’
‘Are we making water?’
‘Not exactly, sir. It was a swordfish, and his sword is still plugging the hole.”
‘When you have finished playing off your humours on me, Mr Reade, you may go and tell the Doctor. I suppose the fish was not taken up?’
‘Oh but he was, sir. Awkward Davies flung a harping-iron into him so hard it went right through his head. They are trying to get a bowline round his tail.’
Awkward Davies was rated able because he had followed Captain Aubrey into ship after ship whatever Jack might do and because the Surprise carried no landsman or ordinary seamen, but he possessed no seamanlike ability whatsoever apart from being able to throw the harping-iron with frightful strength, a skill that he had never been able to exercise in any commission for the last ten or twelve years. By the time Jack came on deck the swordfish, slow to acknowledge death, had at last ceased lashing; the bowline had been passed; and a gang from the afterguard, entirely directed by Davies, who would allow nobody, officer or not, to have any part in it, was gently raising the fish from the sea, brilliant in the early sun, its grey dorsal fin hanging down.
‘He is one of the histiophori,’ said Stephen, standing there in his nightshirt. ‘Probably pulchellus.’
‘Can he be ate?’ asked Pullings.
‘Of course he can be ate. He eats better by far than your common tunny.’
‘Then we shall be able to have our feast at last,’ said Pull-ings. ‘I have been growing so shamefaced this last fortnight and more I could hardly meet her eye, a bride and all. Good morning, sir,’ he cried, seeing Jack standing at the hances. ‘We have caught a fish, as you see.’
‘I caught him, sir,’ cried Davies, a big, powerful, swarthy man, usually withdrawn, dark and brooding but now transfigured with joy. ‘I caught him. Handsomely there, you goddam swabs. I flung the iron right through his goddam head, ha, ha, ha!’
‘Well done, Davies. Well done upon my word. He must weigh five hundred pounds.’
‘You shall have his tail and belly, sir: you shall blow out your kite with his tail and belly.’
Chapter Four
‘At least the ship has steerage-way,” said Jack, taking off his shirt and trousers and placing them in the hammock-netting well clear of the trail of shining scales. ‘I do so loathe plunging into the accumulated filth of two, no, three days and nights. Ain’t you coming?’
‘With your leave I shall attend to the anatomy of this noble fish – Mr Martin, how do you do? – before the slightest change sets in.’
‘You can’t have the deck above half an hour, Doctor,’ said Pullings. ‘This is a saluting-day, you know, and everything has to be tolerable neat.’
‘Mr Reade, my dear,’ said Stephen, ‘may I beg you to run – to jump – downstairs and bid Padeen bring me the large dissecting-case, and then go forward and tell the little girls to bear a hand, to lend a hand; but in their old, dirty pinafores.’
Their old, dirty pinafores had already been put to soak; new pinafores were out of the question: they came aft naked, as naked as worms, their small black figures exciting no comment, since they were in and out of the water much of the day in this calm weather.
They were valuable assistants, with their little neat strong hands, their total lack of squeamishness -they would seize a ligament with their teeth if need be – their ability to hold almost as well with their toes as their fingers, and their eagerness to please. Padeen was useful too in heaving on the very heavy parts, and even more in warding off Davies, the ship’s cook, the gunroom cook, the captain’s cook, the ship’s butcher, and all their respective mates, who were urgent to have their pieces out of the sun and into the relatively cool part of the ship or the salting-tubs; for swordfish was like mackerel in these latitudes, mate, prime before sunset, poor-John the second day, and rank poison the third.
But with all their dispatch – and the seamen hurried off with their prizes the moment they were released by the anatomists – they were not hasty enough for Pullings. He had already sent the gunroom’s compliments to Mr and Mrs Oakes and would be honoured by their presence at dinner, while Jack had accepted even before diving: the first lieutenant therefore had to set everything in train for a feast that would make up for the long delay, and at the same time he had to prepare the ship, dressed all over, for the grave ritual of saluting the Fifth of November. He and the bosun had of course laid aside great quantities of bunting and streamers, but they knew very well that nothing could be sent aloft until everything below was so clean that a maiden could eat her dinner off of it – until all guns and their carriages were spotless, until what little unpainted brass the ship possessed outshone the sun, until a whole catalogue of tasks had been carried out, all of them calling for great activity.
Early in these strenuous preparations Stephen handed the fishy little girls over the side, and having seen them thoroughly dipped, and having learnt from Jemmy Ducks that their divisional pinafores were ready for the ceremony, he hurried aft, drawn by the scent of coffee, to have breakfast with Jack, who had also invited West and Reade: it was a pleasant meal, yet with so much to be done none of the sailors lingered.
Stephen followed them on deck, but at the sight of the turmoil he retired to his cabin, and there, having smoked a small paper cigar out of the scuttle, he sat to his desk, reflected for a while and then wrote ‘My dearest love, when I was a child and had to have my paper ruled for me I used to begin my letters “I hope you are quite well. I am quite well.” There the Muse would often leave me; yet even so, as a beginning it has its merits. I hope you are very well indeed, and as happy as ever can be. Come in,’ he cried. Killick opened the door, laid Stephen’s best uniform, cocked hat and sword on the table with a significant look, nodded, and walked off. ‘When last I sat at this desk,’ continued Stephen, ‘I was
telling you, if I do not mistake, about Mrs Oakes: but I think I never described her. She is a slim, fair-haired young woman, a little less than the average size, with a slight figure, grey-blue eyes, and an indifferent complexion that I hope will be improved by steel and bark.
Her chief claim to beauty is an excellent, unstudied carriage, not unlike yours. As for her face – but where faces are concerned, what can description do? All I will say is that hers reminds me of an amiable young cat: no whiskers, no furry ears, to be sure, but something of the same triangularity, poise, and sloping eyes. Its expression, though modest, is open and friendly, indeed markedly friendly, as though she were eager if not for downright affection then at least for general liking. This, or even both, she has certainly acquired; and a curious proof of the fact is that whereas some time ago all hands were intensely eager to know what crimes or misdemeanours had brought her to Botany Bay, she is now no longer troubled with any of the ill-bred hints that she at one time dismissed with a firmness that I admired – I believe that the very curiosity itself has died away, she being accepted as a person belonging to the ship. The question of guilt or reprobation is quite left aside.