‘The young are notoriously fickle.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. But it is disappointing. Look, the sun is about to touch the sea.’ When the last orange rim had gone and the rays alone were shooting up into the lemon-coloured haze, she said ‘I suppose a sea-captain’s life must be a very lonely one. Of course it is different for Captain Aubrey with you aboard, but for most of them, cooped up with nobody to talk to … Do many take their wives or mistresses to sea?’
‘Wives are uncommon – almost unheard-of on long voyages, I believe. And mistresses are in general disapproved of by everyone, from the Lords of the Admiralty to the ordinary seamen. They take away from an officer’s character and his authority.’
‘Do they really? Yet neither seamen nor naval officers are famous for chastity.’
‘Not by land. Yet at sea a different set of rules comes into play. They are neither particularly logical nor consistent, but they are widely understood and observed.’
‘Really? Really?’ she asked leaning forward with intense interest: then she sighed and shook her head, saying ‘But then, as you are aware, I know so little about men – men in the ordinary sense, in ordinary everyday life: men by day rather than by night.’
Chapter Eight
Monday dawned pure and fair, lighting the starboard watch as they worked aft, cleaning the deck with wetted sand, then with holystones, and then with swabs. The sun heaved up as they neared the capstan, on which West was sitting, his trousers rolled up to keep them from the flowing tide: sunrise was usually the moment for a certain amount of discreet cheerfulness and ancient witticisms such as ‘Here we are again, shipmates!’ and ‘Are you happy in your work?’ But nothing was to be heard today apart from the conscientious grating of the stones, the clash of buckets, and a few low warnings: ‘Watch out for sweepings under that old grating, Joe.’ And this in spite of the brilliance of the day, the ship’s fine long easy pace, slanting across the swell with a lively rise, and of the favourable easterly breeze that ruffled the sea, bringing an exquisite freshness with it.
At seven bells hammocks were piped up and the larboard watch came running on deck in the most exemplary manner, each carrying his tight, exactly-lashed cylinder, which the quartermaster stowed in the nettings, numbers uppermost, with the meticulous regularity usual before an admiral’s inspection. There was no merriment among the larbowlines either: none at their first appearance in the sunlight, none half an hour later, when all hands were piped to breakfast.
The old Surprises, that is to say those who had sailed with Captain Aubrey in earlier commissions, naturally messed together, even though this entailed the often disagreeable and sometimes dangerous company of Awkward Davies; and they listened in silence to his description of the skipper’s coming on deck at first light, his good morning to Mr West, cold enough to freeze his balls off – ‘Just as well too,’ said Wilson – his gazing sternly to windward, and his pacing fore and aft in his nightshirt, like a lion seeking whom he might devour.
‘They can do nothing to me,” said Plaice. ‘I only done what my officer told me to do. “Belay there, Plaice, God damn your eyes” says he. So I belayed, though I knew it would bring us by the lee. Then “Let go, let go, forward there. Let go, Plaice, God damn your limbs,” calls t’other, so I let go. It would have been mutiny else. I am as innocent as a drove of lambs.’
With some difficulty Padeen said that God had never created a more beautiful morning nor a more propitious wind: it would soften the heart of Hector or Pontius Pilate himself.
Padeen was esteemed for his kindness in the sick-berth and for his cruel hard times in Botany Bay; he was also thought to have absorbed wisdom from the Doctor, and some people took comfort from his words.
It was a flimsy sort of comfort, however, and it quite disappeared a little before six bells in the forenoon watch, when the officers and midshipmen appeared on the quarterdeck in their uniforms and cocked hats, wearing swords or dirks. Pull-ings gave orders to rig the grating, and Mr Adams came hurrying up the companion-ladder with the Articles of War.
As soon as the sixth bell had struck, the bosun’s mates piped All hands to witness punishment and the frigate’s people flocked aft in a confused body, from which there arose a sense of collective guilt.
‘All women below,’ called Captain Aubrey. Sarah and Emily disappeared, and Pullings, at his side, said ‘Mrs Oakes is already with the Doctor, sir.’
‘Very well. Carry on, Captain Pullings.’
In her present state the Surprise carried no master-at-arms and Pullings himself called the wrongdoers from the throng, stating the crime of each to the Captain as he advanced. The first was Weightman. ‘Insolence and inattention to duty, sir, if you please.”
‘Have you anything to say for yourself?’ asked Jack.
‘Not guilty, your honour, upon my sacred oath,” said the butcher.
‘Have any of his officers anything to say for him?’ He waited for a moment: the breeze sang through the rigging: the officers looked into vacancy. ‘Strip,’ said Jack, and Weightman slowly took off his shirt. ‘Seize him up.’ The quartermasters tied Weightman’s wrists to the grating rather above shoulder-height and cried ‘Seized up, sir.’
Adams passed the Articles. Jack, followed by the officers and midshipmen, took off his hat; he then read ‘ “No person in or belonging to the fleet shall sleep upon his watch, or negligently perform the duty imposed on him, or forsake his station, upon pain of death or such other punishment as the circumstances of his case shall require.” Twelve strokes.’
And to the senior bosun’s mate, ‘Vowles, do your duty.”
Vowles drew the cat from its red baize bag, phlegmatically took up his stance, and as the ship reached the height of her roll he laid on the first stroke. ‘Oh my God,’ cried Weightman, enormously loud.
Mrs Oakes and Stephen looked up. ‘There is punishment carrying out forward,’ he said.
‘Some of the people behaved amiss in pulling up the anchor.’
‘So Oakes told me,’ she replied, listening to the successive shrieks with no apparent emotion. ‘How many does the Captain usually give?’
‘I have never known him give more than a dozen, and rarely so many. Flogging is uncommon in ships under his command.’
‘A dozen? Lord, that would make them stare in New South Wales. There was a horrible parson, a magistrate, who only dealt in hundreds. Dr Redfern hated him.’
‘I know it, my dear. So did I. Breathe deep, will you now, and hold it. Very well. That will do,’ he said at last. ‘You may put your clothes on again.’
‘You say that in just the same tone as dear Dr Redfern,’ said Clarissa from under the folds of her blue cotton dress: and emerging, ‘How I adored that man when he told me that I was neither pregnant nor . . . nor diseased. I might well have been both. I had been raped often enough.’
‘I am so sorry; so very sorry,’ said Stephen.
‘For some girls it would have been dreadful: it meant little to me, so long as there were no consequences.’
Flogging was indeed rare in Jack Aubrey’s commands, but this time the ship had been outraged and humiliated and he punished severely, flogging seven and stopping grog right and left. Of those who were seized up, none called out except for Weightman; but none came away unmarked. As each was cast loose, Padeen stepped forward, tears streaming down his face, and sponged his shipmate’s back with vinegar, while Martin swabbed the wheals with lint and passed the man’s shirt, a gesture much appreciated. All this was done with the customary man-of-war formality – charge, response, evidence of character, attenuating circumstances, Captain’s decision, relevant Article, sentence, punishment –
and although the later sentences never exceeded six strokes, the whole took up a great deal of time which Stephen and Clarissa, for their part, spent in talking quite placidly about men in general, everyday men in their ordinary life.
The last of those to be beaten presented an unusual case. He was James Mason, a bosun’s mate; he was a good seaman, and the officer spoke in his favour. But his offence had been very gross – direct disobedience – and Jack had him brought to the grating. ‘In view of what your officers say, it will only be half a dozen/ he said. ‘Mr Bulkeley, do your duty.’ It was of course the bosun’s duty to flog his mates, but the occasion very rarely arose: Bulkeley had not been called upon to officiate for years; he had lost the habit; and taking the cat from Vowles he stood there for a moment, combing its bloody tails through his fingers in a sad state of indecision. He was fond of young James, they got along well together; but the ship’s company was watching most attentively and he must not be seen to favour his mate. No, indeed: and his first blow jerked a great gasp out of Mason, rock of fortitude though he was. When he was cast loose he staggered for a moment, wiped his face, and cast a reproachful look at the bosun, the embarrassed, confused and uneasy bosun.