quiet night of it,’ he said. ‘The breeze has settled into the south-south-east, and steering east by north a half north we have it rather better than one point free: double-reefed topsails and courses.’ He walked into the quarter-gallery, dried himself, and came out saying, ‘And if the barometer don’t lie, we shall have it for a good while yet – long forecast, long last, you know. A squall took my hat, a damned good Lock’s hat, but a breeze like this is welcome to it – would be welcome to have a dozen more, and with gold lace on, too.
I have rarely been so happy to see the glass sinking, with promise of more to come.’
‘You conceal your joy with wonderful skill, brother.”
‘Nay, but I am happy, uncommon happy. Perhaps I may look a little hipped, and feel it too, having over-eaten at your splendid feast, but at the same time I promise you I am extremely pleased with this blow. It may carry us as far as the Friendly Islands: in any event I mean to drive the ship and keep all hands busy night and day, very busy indeed.
No idle hands. No goddam mischief … It is your turn to begin, I believe.’
By now the solid crash of the seas on the frigate’s starboard bow and her motion had both become more steady, and the sweep of white water along her upper-works came at regular intervals: to ears accustomed to all the sounds of a five-hundred-ton ship being urged through a rough sea at nine knots by the force of the wind, the rattle and roll of dice was now clear enough, together with the cries of ‘Ace and trey,’ ‘Deuce and cinq,’ ‘Aces, by God!’ But after a while Stephen said ‘Brother, your mind is not on the game.’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I beg pardon. I am stupider than usual tonight. I had thought it universally true that however much dinner you had eaten, there was always room for pudding. But now,’ – looking down and shaking his head – ‘I find it ain’t the case. I took a third piece out of compliment to Tom Pullings, and it is with me still. Not that I mean the least fling against your glorious feast, of course – a noble spread upon my word. Poor dear Tom had an anxious time of it, however. He would have been lost without Mrs Oakes talking away in that good-natured fashion. How I blessed her! And it was she that set West in motion.’
‘West: aye, West. Tell me, Jack, how much of his account was historically accurate?”
‘All the first part, until they were bearing down in line abreast, though the sequence was a little muddled and though he did not say enough about the Charlotte’s breaking the French line on the twenty-eighth. But then – well, perhaps it was a little fanciful. One tells such things to ladies, you know, like the black fellow in the play, in Venice Preserved: he rattled away, too, about fields and floods.’ He looked thoughtfully at Stephen, hesitated, and said no more.
Stephen said nothing either for a while, but then observed, ‘Pudding. Sure, it starts with pudding or marchpane; then it is the toss of a coin which fails first, your hair or your teeth, your eyes or your ears; then comes impotence, for age gelds a man without hope or reprieve, saving him a mort of anguish.’
When Stephen had set off for his evening rounds Jack brought out his half-finished sheet and carried on with his letter to Sophie: ‘The gunroom has at last been able to give its long-overdue feast for the Oakeses, thanks to a providential sword-fish. He was prime eating – have never tasted a better – and with him we drank a capital light dry sherry of Stephen’s, as sound as a nut though it has crossed the Line and both tropics at least twice. Yet I am afraid the party was heavy going, and poor Tom Pullings had but a sad time of it. He is never very happy, as you know, when he is obliged to take the head of a table, having, as he says himself, no genteel conversation. It began badly, with at least
three officers doing themselves no credit, though it is true that after a while West gave us a long account of the First of June. Martin, to be sure, was properly hospitable, so was Adams, and so of course was Stephen when he thought of it; but we should have been nowhere without Mrs Oakes, who talked away nobly, never letting that deadly silence descend; and it must have been uphill work with three dumb sullen unsmiling faces opposite her. I smirked and drank wine all round and topped it the agreeable as much as I could, but as you know very well, my dear, I am not much gifted that way, particularly as I began to be oppressed by a set of shockingly unpleasant ideas. I did my best to help things along by perpetually passing dishes, helping people to more, pouring wine, and eating and drinking until I could no more: but what with nausea and the growth of these notions I was a pretty dismal companion by the end of the meal. For they did grow, increasing from a faint half-serious suspicion to something not far short of certainty.
‘It is the very Devil that I cannot speak to Stephen about his messmates. I was in great hopes just now when he asked me whether West’s account of the battle was to be taken literally. I had hoped I might lead on from that to the present situation, but when I found that he only wanted to know whether it was sound history I did not dare. If I had asked him, in effect, to peach on his fellow-officers even ever so slightly, he would have brought me up with a round turn – such a round turn! He has a greater contempt for informers than anyone I have ever met. Not that I really want him to peach but rather to give me the benefit of his lights: he knows more about the gunroom and more about mankind in general than I do, being such a very deep old file: but how to separate peaching and the lights is more than I can tell.
‘For some time now, being taken up with writing notes for Helmholtz fair, and some pieces of my own, and dealing with estate papers (by the way, Martin has accepted the two vacant livings and is to have Yarell when it falls in) – I have kept rather to myself, apart from music and backgammon with Stephen; yet from odd words and exchanges on the quarterdeck, or rather from their tone, I had gathered that there was a certain amount of ill-feeling in the gunroom. But I had no notion of how much or how quickly it had developed until this afternoon. Can you imagine three what are ordinarily called gentlemen sitting in a row at a full-dress dinner with guests and never opening their mouths but to eat? It is true that Oakes, though a young fellow of some family and a passable seaman, is completely devoid of the graces and that Davidge had fallen down the companion-ladder. But it was not enough to explain the situation. In any case the livid bruise on the side of his head was like none I have ever seen given by a fall of that kind: it was much more like a blow with a mallet or a man’s fist. And gradually it came to seem more and more probable to me that either Oakes or West had in fact hit him – a very heavy blow indeed, almost a knock-out blow. Why, of course, I cannot be sure; but this appears to me to be the explanation: nobody would call Mrs Oakes very pretty, but she is certainly good company.
‘As for her having been a convict, which once caused such interest, it is neither here nor there: aboard ship, and I believe it is the same in prison – it certainly was in the Marshalsea, as you know very well, my dear – once you have been shut up together for some time, original differences scarcely matter. In the Surprise it is less obvious, because we are nearly all more or less white, but in the Diane there were black, brown and yellow men, Christians, Jews, Mahometans, heathens. We had barely doubled the Cape (though far to the south) before one took no notice – they were all blue with cold anyhow, and they
were all Dianes. In the same way Mrs Oakes is now a Surprise, or close on; and as I say kind, good-natured, con-versible, and a good listener, interested in their stories of the sea; and it so happens that they are all, except for Davidge, tolerably hideous. Most women would recoil from them, but she in her good nature does not. Cousin Diana told me long ago that there was a coxcomb to be found in almost every man, even the most unlikely; and these fellows I believe have misinterpreted her kindness as liking of quite another kind and have grown absurdly jealous of one another. It is not only absurd but where West and Davidge are concerned it is also extraordinarily unwise. They both long to be reinstated in the Service – it is their dearest wish – and having done well hitherto in the Surprise they are in a fair road to it: but they have to have my good word, their captain’s good word, and my parliamentary influence behind them. What captain is going to speak well of officers who cannot command their passions better than this, let alone use his interest with the Ministry for them? During dinner they were talking about duels – Mrs Oakes had started that hare with the best of intentions, I am sure – and Davidge, coming out of his heavy stupidity, spoke very eagerly about the impossibility of putting up with an affront.