Sophie woke instantly and saw the little frigate whole, full on, newly painted, her yards exactly square, her sails furled in the bunt. She might have been waiting for the King (or now alas the Prince Regent) to come aboard with a covey of admirals, holding her breath as she did so; and of course her people had been watching for the fine green coach driven by a lady.
A splendid lady she was, too, and they would have received her, the Captain, the Doctor and his wife with all the restrained formality allowable in a private vessel – in effect a yacht, an ocean-going yacht. But Brigid, that intrepid sailor (she had crossed the Channel in the Ringle), burst free from all control and darted over the brow to greet and even embrace her former shipmates, ruining what modest ceremony they had proposed.
She delighted in small-craft, ships and the sea; she had picked up and retained an extraordinary number of sailor’s words from her first voyage and her second, in an English packet that brought her back from Valencia, and all these she explained to George in a high clear voice, hurrying him fore and aft.
‘Welcome aboard, sir,’ said Harding. ‘What a lovely vessel. Is she as weatherly as she looks?’
‘She will lie almost as close as the dear Ringle over there,’ replied Jack, nodding towards the tender, laid up over the water. ‘And she too despises leeway. I am sorry to have to leave the schooner.’ Harding looked at him; but questioning one’s superior officers was not encouraged in the Navy, not even in so marginally naval a vessel as this, with women and children all over the deck, and no Marines.
By way of acknowledging his first lieutenant’s restraint Jack said, ‘But the blue cutter has been coppered, and if we step her mast six inches forward I think she will do very well.’
With his fortune restored, Stephen had passed the word to give the ship all she could wish; and Jack, easier now with his most recent prize, had filled those gaps that only a seaman could perceive, adding among other things Manilla cordage, blocks of the very first quality, full suits of sails for all weathers, cut by an artist in excellent canvas.
Their leading wind was still with them and the glass beautifully steady as they cast off, took in fresh milk and vegetables, warped out into the harbour, spread their snowy wings and swept out on the ebbing tide.
‘That’s the main-brace,’ cried Brigid, as they trimmed the sails for a perfect departure. ‘No, booby – at the end of the yard.’ She was hoarse with explanation and George, though he admitted her superiority, had been growing a little sullen; but now, as the Surprise met the heave and roll of the sea and her bow-wave built up and up, tearing down her side with the most exhilarating sound in the world, all his sweetness and candour returned and he swore he should go up to the masthead as soon as the hands were not so busy.
In fact his father, knowing that George was afflicted neither with giddiness nor seasickness, took him up shortly
after; up, if not to the very head of the mast itself then at least to the topmast crosstrees, going by way of the maintop and placing his feet from below: from this height, the day being fine and clear, George could see for about fifteen miles, a vast expanse of glittering sea to larboard, with some shipping, and the English coast stretching away and away to starboard. ‘If you look aft you will see the Wight,’ said Jack, moving about with the ease of a spider – an enormous spider, truly, but benevolent. George’s look of ecstasy touched his heart: and presently he said, ‘Some people don’t quite like being up here, just at first.’
‘Oh sir,’ cried George, ‘I don’t mind it: and if I may I shall go right up to the very top.’
‘God love you,’ said Jack laughing. ‘You shall quite soon, but not until you are perfectly at home up to the crosstrees. There is St Alban’s Head, and Lulworth beyond. We are making about eight knots and steering south-south-west, so about dinner-time you may see Alderney and perhaps the tip of Cape La Hague in France.’
George laughed with joy, and repeated, ‘Cape La Hague, in France.’
When at last he could be prised off the crosstrees and so down through the maintop and by way of the ladder-like shrouds, he slid the last few feet to the deck by the topmast breast-backstay like his father. Dusting his hands he looked up at Jack with a glowing face and said, ‘Oh sir, I shall be a sailor too. There is no better life.’
There was nothing in the rest of this not inconsiderable voyage to change his opinion. The almost unvarying topgallant breeze from the north-east carried them along at between seven and ten knots day after day, and although they handed topgallants by night and sometimes took a reef in the topsails, it often looked as though they should reach the island in a week. Yet once or twice the wind hauled forward and the children had the pleasure of watching the frigate beat up tack upon tack, which she did with wonderful ease and fluency, for not only was she as handy as a ship could well be, but her people were right seaman who had
known her for years and years, often in very furious seas indeed.
Only once did the wind fail them entirely, and that was
a barely disguised blessing, for all hands were able to watch
a school of dolphins feeding eagerly upon a school of green-
boned garfish, a school that dwindled as they watched. Then,
George and his father having swum from the jolly-boat, they all gazed at a turtle, apparently asleep, just under the stern.
‘It cannot be eaten. Oh, it cannot be eaten, sure,’ said Brigid, looking very earnestly at Stephen: she loved the turtle, and she had heard of turtle soup.
‘Never in life,’ said Stephen. ‘Never in life, my dear: he is a hawksbill.’
That evening hands sang and danced upon the forecastle until the watch was set, ending a day that might have been designed to steal a boy’s heart away. George had been twice to the maintop crosstrees with Bonden; and the only thing wanting for perfection was a whale.
Yet an island stretching broad this side of the horizon
•next morning was a reasonable compensation for a whale:
an island with tall mountains in the middle, tipped with snow, although down here it was shirt-sleeves weather, even at breakfast. On the larboard quarter there was another island, perhaps fifteen miles away, and on the bow some others, long rocky thin affairs that the hands told them were the Desertas. Yet though the name had its charm, they had eyes for nothing but Madeira itself, which came nearer and nearer, the coast, often sheer cliff, moved steadily from left to right. ‘Oh how I wish Padeen was here,’ said Brigid. ‘He dearly loves a cliff.’
‘Somebody has to guard the house, with all the men away,’ said George. ‘Padeen is strong enough to tear a lion in two. And someone had to take the coach home with the groom.’
The Surprise passed through a squadron of Portuguese men-of-war, those jellyfish with a kind of crest well above the surface, by which they are said to sail along, directing their course by the frightfully poisonous stinging tentacles that dangle a great way below. ‘Was you to swim among
those creatures, Master George,’ said Joe Plaice, who had sailed with Jack all over the world, ‘you would have died in screaming agony, being brought aboard maimed something horrible, though dead.’ He laughed, and added, ‘Worse nor sharks, seeing it lasts longer,’
and laughed again at the reflection, which he repeated.
But this damped no spirits: Funchal harbour was opening, a bay full of shipping with a small fort on an island rock, and then the town sweeping up behind it, white-washed houses one above another to a great height, with palm-trees bursting green among them, then vineyards and fields of sugar-cane rising higher still, and mountains beyond them.
Stephen came and stood on the forecastle too – the women were busy packing below in their usual rather disappointing way – and with his glass he showed the children not only oranges and lemons, but also quantities of bananas among the sugar-canes, and the inhabitants of the island, dressed in the Madeiran manner, wonderfully strange and gratifying to an untravelled eye.
Over to starboard Jack and Harding gazed at the ships and vessels in the harbour. A fair number of merchantmen and many, many fishing-boats, but what really interested them were the British men-of-war. ‘Pomone, thirty-eight,’ said Jack with absolute certainty, he having captured her in the Mauritius campaign. ‘Wrangham has her now, I believe.’