But whereas they were ordinarily followed by the bosun’s pipe to dinner and a wholehearted Bedlam of cries and trampling feet and thumping mess-kids, now there was a total silence, all hands looking attentively aft. ‘Carry on, Mr West,’ said Jack. ‘Away aloft,’
cried West, and the mass of the frigate’s people raced up the shrouds on either side in a swift and even flow. ‘Lay out, lay out,’ called West, and they ran out on the yards. When the last light young fellow was right at the end of the starboard foretopgallant yardarm, holding on by the lift, Jack stepped forward and in a voice to be heard in Heaven he uttered the words ‘Three cheers for the King.’
‘You must pull off your hat and call out Huzzay,’ whispered Pullings into Stephen’s ear: the Doctor was staring about him in a very vacant manner.
Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay: the cheers pealed out like so many rolling broadsides, and after the last nothing could be heard but Sarah and Emily, beside themselves with glee, who huzzayed on and on, ‘Huzzay, huzzay for Guy Fawkes’, very shrill, until Jemmy Ducks suppressed them.
‘Mr Smith,’ said Jack, ‘carry on.’ And the gunner in his good black Presbyterian-elder’s coat stepped forward with a red-hot poker in his hand: the salute, beginning with Jack’s own brass bow-chaser, came solemnly aft on either side at exact five-second intervals, the gunner pacing from one to the other with the ritual words ‘If I wasn’t a gunner I wouldn’t be here: fire seven.” When he had reached ‘fire seventeen’ he turned aft and took off his hat. Jack returned his salute and said ‘Mr West, the hands may be piped to dinner.’
A last wild long-drawn cheer, and before the white clouds of smoke had rolled a cable’s length to leeward the usual midday hullaballoo rose to a splendid pitch.
‘By land, in the northern parts of Ireland, I have seen the fifth of November celebrated with fireworks,’ observed Stephen.
‘Nothing can exceed the cannon’s noble roar,’ said the gunner. ‘Squibs and burning tar-barrels, even sky-rockets at half a crown apiece, is mere frippery in comparison of a well-loaded gun.’ Since he was to take the afternoon watch, thus releasing the whole gunroom for their feast, he was now on the quarterdeck, and turning to Jack he said ‘Well, sir, me and my mate will take our bite now, with your leave, and be on deck in half a glass. Are there any special instructions?’
‘No, Mr Smith: only that I am to be told of any considerable change in the breeze and of course of any sail or land.’
Half a glass went by and then apart from the gunner and his mate and the men at the wheel, the quarterdeck was empty. Stephen and Padeen had carried up two dozen of a pale sherry that had survived the voyage to Botany Bay, entrusting them to the gunroom steward: Stephen had spoken of Mrs Oakes’s wish to poor anxious Pullings, had shown the gunroom steward’s mate an unusually elegant way of folding napkins, had proposed decorating the table with seaweed, producing examples, and had been desired by all his messmates, their differences temporarily overlooked, to go and watch for his Latham’s albatross until four bells. There really was not room for so many people to mill about in so confined a space; besides, it consumed what little fresh air there was – Martin had already gone into the mizen-top, carrying his silk stockings in his pocket.
Stephen wandered aft to where the Captain was taking his ease in the great cabin, stretched out on the stern-window locker with one foot in a basin of water.
‘Do you suffer, brother?’ he asked, ‘or is this part of the Navy’s superstitious horror of the unclean?’
‘I suffer, Stephen,’ said Jack, ‘but moderately. Do you remember how I stood on the dumb-chalder when Dick Richards and I cleared the Nutmeg’s rudder?’
‘The dumb-chalder. Sure I think of it constantly: it is rarely from my mind.’
‘Well, it gave me a shrewd knock, and I limped for weeks. And just now I caught my ankle against the linch-pin there, hitting it in just the same place. How I roared!’
‘I am sure you did. Will I look at it, now?’
Stephen took the foot in his hands, considered it, pressed it, heard the catch of breath, and said ‘It is a little small piece of the external malleolus, trying to come out.’
‘What is the external malleolus?’
‘Nay, if you can oppress me with your dumb-chalders, I can do the same with my malleoli.
Hold still. Should you like me to take it out now? I have a lancet over there, among the seaweed.’
‘Perhaps we might wait until after the feast,’ said Jack, who very much disliked being cut in cold blood. ‘It feels much better now. I put a great deal of salt into the water.’
Stephen was used to this; he nodded, mused for a while, and said ‘So the gunner has the watch. Tell me, Jack, is it not very amazingly strange that a gunner should have a watch?’
‘Oh Lord, no. In a frigate it is unusual, of course, but in many a sloop with only one lieutenant, many an unrated ship, it is quite common for a steady, experienced bosun or gunner to stand his watch. And in our case there is an embarras de choix. I said there is an embarras de choix.’
‘I am sure of it,’ said Stephen absently.
‘So many of our Shelmerstonians understand navigation and have even commanded vessels of their own that if the whole quarterdeck were wiped out -‘
‘God forbid.’
‘God forbid – they could still carry the barky home.’
‘That is a great comfort to me. Thank you, Jack. Now I believe I shall go and read for a while.’
In the coach Stephen spread out his authorities, Wiseman, Clare, Petit, van Swieten, John Hunter. They were prolix about men, but although they had little to say about women they all agreed that there was no diagnosis more difficult than in those cases where the physician was confronted with a deep-seated, atypical, chronic infection. He was still reading Hunter with the closest attention when the bell told him he must join his messmates to welcome the gunroom’s guests.
The gunroom was almost silent, in a state of high anxiety, with West and Adams both frowning at their watches. ‘There you are, Doctor,’ cried Tom Pullings. ‘I was afraid we might have lost you – that you might have taken a tumble down the ladder like poor Davidge here, or fallen out of the top, like Mr Martin – do you think the table looks genteel?’
‘Uncommon genteel,’ said Stephen, glancing up and down its geometrical perfections. He noticed Davidge standing by the far end, his hand to his head: Davidge caught his eye, stretched his mouth in a smile and said ‘I took a toss down the companion-ladder.’
‘The bride sits on my right hand, in course,’ said Pullings, ‘and then Martin, then you, and then Reade. Mr Adams at the foot. The Captain on my left, then Davidge – you are all right, Davidge, ain’t you?’
‘Oh yes. It was nothing.’
‘Then West, and then Oakes on Mr Adams’ right. What do you think of that, Doctor?’
‘A capital arrangement, my dear,’ said Stephen, reflecting that Davidge’s nothing was a damned heavy, turgid, uncomfortable one, a dark swelling from his left temple to his cheekbone.
‘I do wish they would come,’ said Pullings, ‘the soup is sure to spoil,’ and West looked at his watch again. The door opened; Killick walked in, said to Pullings Two minutes, sir, if you please,’ and took up his place against the side, behind Jack’s chair.
Martin edged his way round and with a decently restrained triumph he said ‘Do not beat me, Maturin, but I have seen your bird.’
‘Oh,’ cried Stephen, ‘have you indeed? And I wearing out the day watching. Are you sure?’
‘There can be no doubt, I am afraid. Yellow, blue-tipped bill, a strong dark eyebrow, a confiding expression, and black feet. He was within ten yards of me.’
‘Well, who ever said the world was fair? But I am sorry to hear that you fell out of the top.’
‘That was a base slander. In my hurry to come down and tell you my foot made a trifling slip and I hung for a moment or two by my hands, perfectly safe, perfectly in control, and if the well-meaning John Brampton had not heaved me up by main force I should have regained the platform with ease. In any event I came down entirely unaided.’
Stephen sniffed and said ‘Please to describe the bird.’
‘Well,’ said Martin and then stopped to turn and bow to Captain Aubrey: the gunroom welcomed their guest, pressed him to take a whet; Davidge once again explained that he