‘Sir,’ whispered the gunroom steward in Pullings’ ear, ‘cook says if we don’t eat our swordfish steaks this selfsame minute he will hang himself. I have been signalling your honour this last half glass.”
The steaks arrived in style, the dishes covering the middle of the table, while in the intervals and at the corners there were small bowls of such things as dried peas beaten into a paste with a marline-spike and flavoured with turmeric, and white sauce beautified with cochineal. Davies’ dreadful whiskered face could be seen in the doorway, leering in: he had arranged all the dishes by hand. Martin was an accomplished anatomist, and Stephen noticed that he helped Mrs Oakes to some particularly tender pieces with great complaisance. He also noticed that Reade was filling his glass every time the wine came within reach.
‘I had no idea that swordfish could be so very good,’ said Clarissa, above the sound of knives and forks.
‘I am so happy you like it, ma’am,’ said Pullings. ‘May I pour you a glass of wine?’
‘Just half a glass, Captain, if you please. I long to hear the rest of Earl Howe’s battle.’
After a decent reluctance, and encouragement by most of the table, West said ‘I am afraid I have been far too long-winded; but now rather than try to describe the whole battle, I shall only say that when their line was perfectly clear, the Admiral rearranged our heavy ships to match theirs, and so we bore down, each to steer for her opposite number, break their line and engage her independently from to leeward. Well, some did, and some did not; but everyone knows we took six of them, sunk one, crippled many more, and lost none of our own, though it was nip and tuck at times, they fighting with such spirit. So having said that, may I just speak of a few things I saw? For I was on the quarterdeck, acting as our first lieutenant’s runner, and some of the time I stood quite close to the Admiral’s chair – you must understand, ma’am, that Lord Howe was a very ancient gentleman, seventy, if I do not mistake, and he sat there in a wooden elbow-chair. Now
our opposite number was of course the French admiral’s flagship, the Montagne of a hundred and twenty guns, and her next astern was the Jacobin, of eighty. They started firing at half past nine, but as the wind was blowing from us to them, their smoke rolled away to leeward; so we could see them perfectly well, and the Admiral, setting topgallants and fore-course, aimed for the gap between them, meaning to pass through, luff up on the Montagne’s starboard side and fight her yardarm to yardarm; but when we were within pistol-shot, the Jacobin, disliking the idea of being raked by our starboard guns as we broke through the line ahead of her, began to move up into the Montagne’s lee.
“Starboard,” calls the Admiral, in spite of the Jacobin’s being in the road. “My lord, you will be foul of the French ship if you don’t take care,” says Mr Bowen, the master – the master, ma’am, handles the ship in battle. “What’s that to you, sir?” cries the Admiral. “Starboard.”
“Damned if I care, if you don’t,” says old Bowen but not very loud. “I’ll take you near enough to singe your black whiskers.” He clapped the helm hard astarboard and the ship just scraped through, the Montagne’s ensign brushing the Charlotte’s shrouds and the Charlotte’s bowsprit grazing the Jacobin’s as she flinched away; and then lying on the Montagne’s quarter we raked her again and again, at the same time battering the Jacobin with our starboard broadside. We mauled them terribly – blood gushing from the scuppers
– but presently we lost our foretopmast – chaos forward – and they were able to make sail from us into the great bank of smoke to leeward. The rest of their line was breaking too, and the Admiral threw out the signal for a general chase. After that everything grew more confused of course, but I remember very well that late in the afternoon I received my only wound. The first lieutenant had just jumped down into the waist, and the Admiral said to me “Go and tell Mr Cochet to make the forecastle guns stop firing at that ship: she is the Invincible.” I went down, and we ran forward. “Stop firing at Invincible,” says Mr Cochet.
“But she’s not Invincible. She’s a French ship that has been firing at us all along,” said Mr Codrington, and Mr Hale agrees. “I know that,” says Mr Cochet. “Let’s have a shot.” The gun was run in, sponged, loaded, run out: he pointed it just so, waited for the roll, waited again, and fired. The shot went home. And as the smoke cleared,’ said West, with a sideways glance at Jack, ‘there was the Admiral. “God damn you all,” he cries, hitting Mr Hale – he thought Hale had fired the shot – with the flat of his sword. “God damn you all,”
fetching me a swipe on the top of my head. Then the ship, hauling her wind, showed her French colours, and Cochet, to save the Admiral’s face, said “She is painted just like the Invincible” but …”
For some time now, as the veracity left West’s account, the ship had been heeling more and more: to counteract the lean those to windward, those on Pullings’ right, braced their feet against the stretcher; but Reade’s legs were too short to reach it and he slid quietly under the table, his eyes shut, his face pale. Stephen glanced at Padeen, who lifted the boy out and carried him away as easily as he might have carried off the folded cloth when it was drawn. There was no fuss, no comment; and West did not pause in his narrative.
Jack listened with half an ear, grateful for the sound but wishing that it might be replaced with something of greater interest. He was not a censorious man; he did not mind West’s fiction, which he recognized as being composed for Mrs Oakes’ benefit, any more than he minded Reade’s collapse; but West was ordinarily the soul of truth, and his fiction was poor, embarrassingly poor, as well as far, far too long. It was with some relief therefore that he saw the long-expected messenger from the quarterdeck appear in the doorway.
The gunner’s mate looked into the gunroom and its formal array, hesitated for a moment,
and then strode aft as if he were going into action. ‘Gunner’s duty, sir,’ he said, very loud, bending over Jack, ‘and the breeze is freshening. May he reduce sail?’
‘Certainly, Melon. Tell him I am very glad to hear it and that I desire he will use his own judgment.”
‘Aye aye, sir. Is very glad to hear it, and desires he . . .’
‘Will use his own judgment.’
‘Will use his own judgment it is, sir.’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said Jack to the table at large. ‘We have been creeping over a mill-pond far too long, and the hands have been idle all this time.’ A childhood memory to do with Satan and idle hands floated there, but he could not quite fix it and ended with the unuttered words ‘Not only the hands, neither, God damn the wicked dogs.’
It was some time since he had dined with the gunroom. The last occasion had been rather a dull afternoon – Davidge and West were always indifferent company, their conversation either shop or twice-told tales, and Martin was always constrained when he was there –
but a perfectly acceptable, traditional afternoon in a well-run ship.
Now the difference was very great. He could only guess at the causes: the effects, to a man who had spent most of his life at sea, were perfectly evident – the gunroom, as a civilized community, was almost at an end. But much more than their social comfort was at stake. Without good feeling between the officers, effective, willing co-operation was impossible, and without co-operation a ship could not be run efficiently: ill-blood in wardroom or gunroom was always perceived on the forecastle and it always upset the hands – apart from anything else each set of men had their own particular loyalty. And this ill-blood seemed to run in many directions: there was not only the obvious dislike between West and Davidge, but a series of other currents that seemed to affect Pullings as well and even Martin.
At present however there was this fine new flow of talk, initiated, he recalled, by Mrs Oakes – ‘I shall always honour her for saving the feast from sinking with all hands’ – and even the sullen Davidge had grown quite voluble.
Jack had missed the beginning while he reflected upon the situation, upon its possible causes and remedies, upon the ship’s inner voice, now increasingly urgent in spite of sails having been taken in, and upon his own duties as a guest, and when he heard Stephen say ‘ “O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea,” ‘ he called down the table ‘What was that, Doctor? Are you talking about the income-tax?’