Blue At The Mizzen Part 7

The eastern nightjar had begun its song again, its churr, apparently without ever drawing breath; and by way of distracting his mind from the sorrow, Stephen counted the pulse of his heart: he had reached seventy-five before the bird stopped. The lights were on the edge of the wood, and he was aware that Christine had been weeping.

On the way up she took his arm, and in the house they sat down to a curiously delicious supper based on African vegetables that he did not know, and eggs, with a tolerable white wine; then came the almond pudding, followed by a capital madeira.

Pus.h.i.+ng the plates aside she showed him the astonis.h.i.+ng skin of Caprimulgus longipennis and told him about the power of those particular feathers as ju-ju in local belief. 'The longer I live in Africa,' she observed when they were drinking the wretched coffee and some excellent rum, 'and the more I know about Africans, the nearer I come to a sort of diffused pantheism.'

Reverting to this a little later, when her spirits had revived somewhat, she said, 'I know my divinity angers missionaries to a quite surprising degree, and upon the whole I do not care for them either, not very much. But sometimes a missionary is also a naturalist, and if he is far away in the bush he may have wonderful opportunities. I am sure you have heard of the Congo peac.o.c.k?'

'Indeed, I have often heard tell of him; but I have never known him described by a credible witness.'

'Well,' she said, feeling in a drawer, 'I do not say that this is proof positive,' - holding out a green feather - 'but it was given me by a very old - Franciscan, I think, a Catholic in any event - who died here before he could take s.h.i.+p, and who told me without the least pomp or showing away that he had plucked it from the back of a recently dead peac.o.c.k in the Congo: I forget the name of the district, but the bird lived in open woodland.'

'Dear me, Christine,' he said, caressing the feather, 'you have amazed and delighted me three times today. The elephantine heron; the wildly eccentric, more than improbable nightjar, and now the fabled Congo peac.o.c.k, on whose existence I shall now pledge my soul. I am sorry that you do not choose to marry me, but I thoroughly understand your... what shall I say? Disinclination.'

A surprising length of time, of emotional time, had pa.s.sed between their standing in the hide, the s.p.a.ce of his declaration, and the present, with its entirely different context. She smiled, drank a little more rum, patted his knee, and said, 'Tell me, Stephen, if I had accepted your dear, dear proposal, how should you have managed the purely material side of the union? You have spoken of your daughter. How old is she?'

'I am ashamed to say I cannot tell. Quite young, sure: nowhere near p.u.b.erty.'

'Then again you are engaged with your friend on a distant and I presume important voyage?'

'To be sure,' said Stephen, looking wretchedly from side to side. 'Yet I was not entirely thoughtless. Believe me," he said earnestly, 'I was not entirely selfish. I had a very pretty solution: my idea was that you should go to England, there to stay with Sophie Aubrey, a charming woman and a very old friend, who has two girls and a son, who looks after Brigid, my daughter, and who lives in a large house in Dorset with quant.i.ties of friends all round and a most respectable body of servants. And then, it appeared to what I can only diffidently call my mind - in other words the embodiment of my wishes - that I should return from the sea, and that together we should plot the course of our days: England, Ireland, France or Spain, or any combination according to your choice.'

'Dear me, dear me,' she said with a sigh: and hearing the minute voice of Stephen's watch, 'was that a clock somewhere? Can it be twelve?'

He plucked it from his waistcoat. 'Yes, twelve it is, by the s.h.i.+p's exact noon observation of the sun.'

'Oh what a pretty thing. Will it chime again?'

It chimed again, and Stephen asked, 'Do you like it?'

'I think it is perfectly beautiful. Is it what they call a repeater?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'I have never seen one before.' She was clearly fascinated.

He put it back into her hand, showed her the b.u.t.tons to be pressed, and said, 'There, my dear. It is yours: a very slight acknowledgement of the delights you have given me today.'

'Oh, what nonsense, Stephen dear,' she said, repressing a smile. 'Of course I cannot possibly accept such a present: though I return a hundred thousand thanks for the intention.' She put it gently on the table, stood up, and said, 'Come, it is already late. Let me show you to your room.'

It was a fine large airy place and the window framed the declining moon. She drew the curtain and said, 'I am afraid you brought no night-clothes, Stephen. Should you like one of my gowns?'

'Lord, no, my dear: I am perfectly happy to lie in my skin, like Adam before the fall.'

'Well, good night, Stephen, There is water, and a towel. There is soap. I do hope you will sleep well.'

'Good night, my dear. I shall be up before the sun, since I mean to walk up and over to rejoin my s.h.i.+p; so please forgive me if I take my leave now.'

Long he lay on the flat of his back, head supported by both hands and above all by his sense of the weakening of Christine's absolute resistance; he turned the events of a singularly varied day in his mind; and a great way off two, three and even four different nightjars churred at their various pitches.

In spite of their earlier farewell, Christine joined him for breakfast. 'I am so sorry I grieved you,' she said, looking at him uneasily, after the first civilities.

'I had no notion of your far more grievous reasons,' he replied. 'It was deeply impercipient. But before I go, please let me say that as I see it marriage does not necessarily mean possession; far, far less dominance.'

'Stephen, I would not hurt you for the world. You are going on a long and I hope very fruitful voyage: may I turn the whole thing over in my mind while you are away? And with the blessing I may come round - come back - to thinking and feeling like an ordinary woman. But, my dear,' after a long, long pause, 'you are not to feel in the slightest degree bound: no, not the very least degree." Stephen bowed; and having poured him more coffee she went on hesitantly, 'Did you not say that the Aubreys lived in Dorsets.h.i.+re? I am going to cousins next month who live near Bridport; and if I can be of any use in carrying letters, either of you have but to command.'

'That would be wonderfully kind. I know that Captain Aubrey has a heap of paper, written small; and I have not done badly. But tell me - though this is a personal question, which I detest - do you find it easy to travel?'

'Lord, yes. I often go back. I may take Jenny, but I can perfectly well go alone: I find that men, particularly seamen, are particularly kind to women on their own; and a single trunk does very well. A big, roomy Portuguese Guineaman touches here next month. She will put me down at the Pool, as usual, and the agents will carry me and my trunk to Grillon's, where I generally stay, and after a day or two of shopping I shall take a post-chaise down: it is as simple as that.'

'Of course. I had always known of women travelling to and from India by themselves, but from some imbecility of mind West Africa seemed infinitely more remote. If I may, I shall send up our packets directly, for tomorrow we shall sail.'

'Good-bye, dear Stephen,' she said in the doorway.

'Good-bye, dear Christine: G.o.d bless.'

He walked away from the house a little after sunrise with no more than a dissatisfied or inquisitive look from the dogs in the outer yard: a clear, cool morning, and a little flock of bulbuls flew over him as he sat down half-way up the hill to gaze out over the water: the duck were no longer moving, but the flamingos were busy, and he liked to think that behind the mangrove-belt he could just make out the monstrous form of that improbable great heron, Ardea goliath.

Rising, he climbed the hill: but with a rather languid step - even a short time at sea made walking on the unyielding ground quite arduous for a while - but his heart glowed with sanguine hope.

Yet for all his meditations on the possibility of a happy future and his rehearsing of the wonders he had seen the day before, his stomach kept up its peevish cry, above all at the scent of coffee wafting from the southern gate. Christine's servants, though devoted and so trustworthy that she could leave the house without a qualm, lacked one prime virtue: they could not make coffee. The household drank tea, and this morning's thin brownish wash (saved from yesterday) was a special concession to the guest, poor soul. Once he was inside the walls he walked straight to a decent-looking place at the corner of the market-square, called for a pot, and heard Jacob's voice saying 'Dear colleague, I wish you a very good morning indeed. May I join you?'

Stephen replied that nothing would give him more pleasure; and after a few preliminaries Jacob said, 'If you were not my superior officer, I should venture to say that you push discretion much too far in not asking me what I am doing, what I think I am about, why am I here, and who is looking after our patients; but you are my superior officer, so without any comment I shall voluntarily tell you that two other men-of-war came in shortly after you left with Square and the girl. Their captains paid their duty-calls early, and in the afternoon we began a three-sided compet.i.tion - games of cricket, a boxing-match, and races between the various boats: they intend doing the whole dreary thing over again today on an even larger scale, together with bouts of raising and lowering masts and sails and even of gunfire, for G.o.d's sake, all against a stop-watch. I cannot bear it, so I escaped at the earliest possible moment. I get in the way, I am pushed and blamed and even cursed: and as for patients, we have no patients, no bed-ridden patients, all the sick having declared themselves whole. No patients, other than a youth from the Erebus whom your young friend Hanson struck to the ground with a murderous blow. It is only in fact a pa.s.sing concussion, but his s.h.i.+pmates feign infinite concern and swear that if it prove fatal they will keelhaul the Lion of the Atlas, as they call our champion, with his own intestines. The zeal and animation which fills these three s.h.i.+ps, with the various exhibitions of maritime skill, pa.s.ses all understanding: most of the officers are as deeply concerned as the men; but I must say that Captain Aubrey seems somewhat oppressed, and if he did not have official business ash.o.r.e I think he might succ.u.mb.' He poured more coffee, plucked off another six inches of soft bread, and looking attentively at his old friend, asked, 'Stephen, are you satisfied with the Captain's health?'

'His physical health?'

'Can the two be separated?'

'On occasion, yes: but to be sure, in general the two are very intimately connected.'

'His light seems to have gone out.'

'His wife has used those very words.'

'Whereas yours, if I may say so, Stephen, glows like a moderately resplendent sun. I hope, my dear, you do not dislike my speaking in this way?' - they had as usual lapsed back into the French of their youth - 'But we have, after all, known one another a great many years.'

'We have indeed, Amos. No: I do not dislike it at all, in you: and I shall try to make the dimming - which I perfectly admit - more comprehensible. As far as the Royal Navy is concerned, I, for one, am attached, loosely attached, to the service: he is literally of it, and success or failure in the Navy is and always has been of paramount importance. He has risen high: he is a post-captain near the top of the list. But he is at that stage when some members of the group with approximately the same seniority are selected for flag-rank as rear-admiral of the blue. By no means all can be chosen: those who are not chosen, those who are pa.s.sed over, are colloquially or by way of derision known as yellow admirals, admirals of a non-existent squadron. And that is the end of the poor man's hopes: there is no return to eligibility. Merit has something to do with this vital step, yet influence has more - political and family influence have more, sometimes much more; and Jack Aubrey has not always been politically wise. He is very much afraid of picking up the Gazette in the next few months and of seeing men junior to himself being given their flag, a blue flag to be hoisted at the mizzen, if my memory serves: a piece of bunting extraordinarily important to a man who has pursued it with such ardour for so many years. And now that we are no longer at war, now that there is virtually no chance of his distinguis.h.i.+ng himself, it is understandable that his light should at least grow dim: there is the real possibility that it should go out entirely. And there is nothing that can restore it, nothing but that piece of cloth. Nothing.' A pause, and he went on, 'The malady, the state of mind, is called flag-sickness in the Navy, and it affects almost all ambitious post-captains as they approach the decisive period. I have rarely seen it close at hand, since all my service has been under one commander, but I have often spoken of it to my colleagues, and they agree in saying that those affected - that is to say, all but the few officers whose achievements, family connexions or immediate political influence make their promotion sure -suffer from anxiety, loss of appet.i.te and joie de vivre, while often the essentially masculine functions are disturbed, so that medical men have observed either a virtual impotence or an unwholesome activity. Here there is nothing so extreme; but there is an oppression: little or no music, and he will play chess, cards or backgammon only out of complaisance.'

They returned to their coffee and sat considering for a while. Then Stephen said, 'Amos, at one time there were several Syrians and Armenians here: men of business, agents. Do you know any at present? It is of no vital importance, but I should like to know about a large Portuguese Guineaman bound for England, a vessel in which a lady, a friend of mine, is to take pa.s.sage.'

'Dear me, yes,' said Amos, amused. 'Is not my own cousin Lloyd's representative in this port? Shall I take you to him?'

Stephen felt for his watch - no watch of course, but a jet of delight: and a church clock told him that it was nine. 'You are very good. But would he, or one of his clerks, undertake so small a commission? I only wish to fill her cabin with flowers, or rather to have it so filled. And since we sail tomorrow and the Guineaman does not touch here for a great while, clearly the flowers must be procured by proxy.'

'I am quite certain that he would be delighted. Another pot?'

'Thank you, but I believe I should go down as soon as we have seen your amiable cousin.'

'I shall come with you, if I may: your seniority, your austere countenance, may be something of a protection against rude mirth; and in any case this morning they mean to renew their pugilism, so we may have serious casualties to attend to.'

The two medicos, their errand happily accomplished, set off from the mole during a lull in the roaring aboard Surprise, the calls of 'Break him and tear him, mate', and the dull sound of impa.s.sioned blows given and received. Some of their friends gave them a hand up the side. 'Thank you, Mr. Hanson,' said Stephen, safely on deck. 'But,' he went on, looking at the youth, 'I am afraid you have been in the wars.' Certainly he had one eye thoroughly blacked, and there was dried blood on his lower face; while one ear was visibly swelling.

'Oh, sir,' replied Hanson, with a cheerful and full-toothed smile, 'it was only a little sparring.'

'Still, you had better come below and let me put a st.i.tch or two in that eyebrow.'

Sitting there on a stool while the needle was preparing, Hanson explained that his adversary, a master's mate from Hector, though heavy and a thoroughly game chicken, had no notion of the long straight left to the throat. Not to the point, sir, but to the throat. Nothing settled your cove quicker than a determined blow to the throat.

'I should think not, indeed,' said Stephen. 'Now pray lean over, and do not start away at the p.r.i.c.k: there. Well done. Are you to fight again?'

'Not until after dinner, sir: and he is said not to be truly wicked.'

'Yet even so, should he aim a blow at your head, you would be well advised to avert this eyebrow and face him crabwise. Now I must go and see the Captain. In the cabin, I presume?'

'Yes, sir: and thank you very much for your care of me.'

Captain Aubrey was indeed in the cabin, leaning over some bundles of official papers tied with black tape or red. 'There you are,' he cried, raising his head with a smile; and having looked attentively at Stephen's face he went on, 'I do hope you have had some really prodigious good news?'

'I have, too,' said Stephen. 'Not quite so prodigious as I could have wished, since the lady, not surprisingly, declined my proposal; but she did say she would consider it while we were away. And she did offer to carry our letters back to England. She is going to visit cousins near Bridport: so may I beg you, dear Jack, to write to Sophie urging her to invite Mrs. Wood? I should very much like her to become well-acquainted not only with Sophie and her children but also with my Brigid: it would give me the utmost pleasure if they were to love one another.'

'There is no reason why they should not. I am quite sure that Sophie, bless her, and Mrs. Wood could not fail to get along famously; while Brigid is a dear, affectionate little creature, and she is grateful for quite a little kindness and attention. My girls, being older, do not regard her as much as they should... I have often thought of mentioning it; but as Sophie says, rating has never yet begot tenderness. And they tend to be somewhat jealous... it is delicate ground to venture on. A stranger can sometimes do more than either parent. I have no doubt that Brigid and Mrs. Wood will be friends: after all, I do know Mrs. Wood quite well, and I esteem her immensely - admire her too, if I may say so. Should Sophie ask her to stay until we come back? We have quant.i.ties of room, now that Clarissa is married and gone.'

'That would be more than kind, but she also means to go up to Northumberland to see her brother Edward, my particular friend, a natural philosopher whom you must have seen from time to time at the meetings of the Royal Society; and I doubt if she would choose to leave her African house for so long. She travels with singular ease, quite alone or with just one or two servants. She means to take the Gaboon next month, a comfortable Portuguese Guineaman she has sailed in before, which will take her to London, carrying at least some of our letters: there she will stay a few days and then head south in a post-chaise. Purely between ourselves, I may add that she is rather wealthy.'

'So much the better: it does ease travelling so. Lord, Stephen, I am so pleased with what you tell me. You will take a gla.s.s of wine, will you not?'

'If you please. I should be very happy to drink a gla.s.s of wine with you, my dear. But first, Jack, let me say that a Government packet is leaving at high tide the day after tomorrow, and if it could carry your letter to Sophie together with one of mine, I should be most singularly obliged.'

Jack touched the bell, and without much surprise he saw the door instantly fly open, showing an ugly, inquisitive face vainly attempting to conceal a grin. 'Killick,' he said, 'what have we got in the net under the counter?'

'Three of hock, sir, and half a dozen of champagne.'

'Rouse out a couple of champagne, will you, and light along my best writing-paper and a fresh ink-pot.'

'Aye-aye, sir: champagne it is. Paper, best. Which Mr. Hanson is now stripping for his fight with that dogged Polyphemus reefer.'

'Should you like to watch, Stephen, just for a round or two?' asked Jack.

'Certainly: and you will tell me about the finer points. But do not let us cause the wine to lose what coolness it may have.'

On the fo'c'sle, by a gross abuse of cordage, equipment and stanchions, a tolerable ring had been improvised. Both young men were in their corners, listening to their battered old seconds' advice. Then at the bell they leapt up, toed the imaginary line in the middle, and set about one another with a singular ferocity. This was the light-weight final bout and each burned to win it for his own s.h.i.+p - for himself too, but this was less evident. Polyphemus, burly and thick, liked to close and batter ribs, chest and if possible flanks. Young Surprise, more agile, kept his distance, throwing in some very pretty lefts at Polyphemus' bleeding face. But for three gasping rounds he could not hit the stolid youth's chin hard enough to throw his head back. Jack's and Stephen's whispered prayers and audible advice had no effect until the fifth round, when Polyphemus, with lowered guard, sought to avoid a shocking blow on his nose, jerked back, head and all, exposed his throat and received the final, disabling, choking blow.

Jack congratulated both gasping, exhausted combatants, awarded the minute silver cup; then learnt that Polyphemus had crushed Surprise in the pulling race for cutters round the port; and all hands cheerfully adjourned for a general feast (provided by Surprise) at which Harding presided, the Captain being taken up with paper-work, seeing that they were now to weigh at the height of flood.

CHAPTER SIX.

'We therefore commit his body to the deep,' said Captain Aubrey, 'to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the Sea shall give up her dead) and the life of the world to come, through Our Lord Jesus Christ; who at His coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself...' and Harding, the first lieutenant, gave the watching bosun a barely perceptible nod. As all hats whipped off, the hatch-cover tilted, shooting its burden into the advancing roller, which swallowed it with barely a sign; and Henry Wantage, master's mate, sank instantly, sewn into his hammock with four round shot at his feet.

'I went through those words not ten days out of Freetown,' said Jack in the cabin, 'and I have said them after many an action, G.o.d knows: yet they move me every time, so that I am like to stumble towards the end. Particularly for poor Wantage, who had such a wretched time of it in Funchal.'

Stephen poured him more coffee. 'Sure,' he said, 'and I grieved for those two sad, wasted yellow-fever boys: to the end I thought Jacob and I might save them: but it was not to be.'

'Apart from a really uncommon b.l.o.o.d.y action, I do not remember to have seen a mids.h.i.+pmen's berth so mauled. We have only one master's mate, and at present poor old Mr. Woodbine is scarcely fit to stand a watch.' He pondered, drank more coffee, and rang the bell. 'Pa.s.s the word for Mr. Hanson,' he said.

'Mr. Hanson it is, sir,' replied Killick; and the name resounded through the s.h.i.+p 'Sir?' asked the boy, the very young man, who had obviously been weeping.

'Sit down, Mr. Hanson,' said Jack. 'A little while ago Mr. Adams pointed out to me that you have an uncommon amount of sea-time against your name.'

'Yes, sir. My Uncle was good enough to enter me on the books of Phoenix and some other s.h.i.+ps before I was breeched.'

'Just so. Many captains do the same: the result is that although you are still quite young you are legally senior to most of the people in the berth. And since your navigation is better than most of theirs I am going to take advantage of your nominal service to appoint you master's mate. Mr. Daniel is older than you, and perhaps more able: but with your sea-time he cannot be promoted over your head, and I am sure he has enough experience of the service to accept the apparent injustice without bearing you any ill-will. You and he will be a great support to Mr. Woodbine. You will take poor Mr. Wantage's place in the last dog watch today.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you very much, sir,' said Horatio, looking confused, embarra.s.sed, far from happy.

'Cut along, then: and tell the berth that I have issued those words as a direct order. You may not like it, and they may not like it: but you will have to give them a feast on the last day of the month. If you choose to invite Ringle's mates, I shall give them a bottle of wine apiece, for the honour of the s.h.i.+p: it is the custom, you know.' When Horatio had gone, Jack said, 'That is a good boy. He don't like it; and they won't like it. But I do not think they will tear him to pieces, now that he has shown what he is made of. In any case John Daniel would not allow it; he has real authority in the berth, although he has not been aboard very long.'

The appointment was indeed received with some murmuring in the berth: but it was greeted with general approval by the lower deck, which set an even higher value on physical courage than on the finer points of seamans.h.i.+p - not that Mr. Hanson was so deficient in them, either.

'My dear Christine,' wrote Stephen on page seventeen of the serial letter that would be sent to Dorset from Rio de Janeiro or by the good offices of the first homeward-bound s.h.i.+p they met, 'I think it would please you to watch the formation of a community so close-packed and eventually so tight-knit as the crew of a s.h.i.+p, above all of a man-of-war, which has so many more people to serve the guns, and a far more rigid hierarchy. Remarkably strong and lasting friends.h.i.+ps are formed, particularly on very long voyages; but even in a commission so recent as ours the process is evident. Young Hanson, whom I have mentioned before, is, I understand from Jack, really talented as far as the mathematics are concerned, and Mr. Daniel, a master's mate, has helped him in their practical application to the guidance of the s.h.i.+p's course - even to determining her exact position on the trackless ocean, for all love. They have become close companions, which could scarcely have been the case on land, their origins, nurture, and manner of speech being so very far apart. When we were in Freetown they were inseparable, wandering about together, taking the bearings of capes and headlands, the height of towers, minarets, fortifications and so on, together with depths and tides. And now, since Mr. Woodbine's health failed him two or three weeks from the Guinea coast, the two have been devotedly attentive to the s.h.i.+p's motions - longitude, lat.i.tude and the like - throughout the long course of unpredictable, varying winds that torment the mariner in the Gulf - until at last we reached the blessed north-east trade, before which we are now bounding at a rate of I think ten knots in the hour; and now they can draw breath at last.

'There are few things more pleasing to see than that rise and growth of a natural, spontaneous liking, sometimes, indeed often, (as in this case), accompanied by similar tastes, abilities and studies: but by no means always, nor by an equality in age, and it would give me the liveliest pleasure to find you and Brigid friends. A very little notice on your part would overcome her timidity, and I know you would not find her wanting in affection, though it has been somewhat damped: the older girls do not show her much kindness, and although I do not advance this as anything more than a conjecture, I have the impression that they regard her as an intruder. And since infant emotions are rarely disguised with any skill I believe I may say that their mother's attentions and her kindnesses to Brigid quite certainly excite their jealousy, that most corrosive of pa.s.sions, and the most unhappy. There, my dear, I hear the imperious bell - our life is ruled by bells - that marks the beginning of my rounds, and if I do not go at once I shall have sour disapproving looks - not perhaps from Amos Jacob, but certainly from Poll Skeeping and her mate, from all the patients, straightened in their cots, their sheets smoothed tight, their modest comforts hidden, and their faces washed, and not improbably from the s.h.i.+p's two cats, who came secretly aboard at Freetown, and who have grown wholly accustomed to the rigour of naval life, disliking the slightest variation - worthy, scrupulous cats, who regularly visit their little trays of ashes, set out in the galley by the equally severe and righteous cook. My dear, farewell for a moment..."

'My dear, the moment is pa.s.sed,' he wrote, squaring up to his desk, braced against the frigate's rhythmic heave and roll, 'and I am happy to tell you of a real improvement in the master's health: he has eaten, and retained, two copious meals, the first of fresh flying-fish, the second of a moderately rich lobscouse. This may be connected with the s.h.i.+p's much more even pace, her greater speed, and the general air of satisfaction aboard - the brisk (though warm) and lively air. But I do not like to mention any of these factors, the master being a through-and-through mariner, choleric, and convinced of his own diagnosis: incipient leprosy, overcome by total abstinence from salt, alcohol, tobacco. I wish I could convey the delight of a well-found, well-handled man-of-war, sailing with all reasonable sail abroad, a steady, urgent wind coming in over her larboard quarter, her prow (or I think I should say cut.w.a.ter) throwing a fine sheet of spray to leeward with each even measured pitch: there is a generally-diffused happiness aboard; and since this is a make-and-mend day, the front part of the vessel is littered with hands busy, some with shears, many more with needles, cutting out their lengths of duck and sewing the pieces together, making their hot-weather clothes with wonderful dexterity. And each time the log is heaved they pause, ears c.o.c.ked for the mids.h.i.+pman's report to the officer of the watch. "Nine knots and two fathoms, sir, if you please," croaks little Mr. Wells, whose voice is breaking at last; and a discreet wave of mirth and satisfaction ripples over the forecastle, while ten knots is greeted with such thumping on the deck, such enthusiasm, that the officer of the watch desires the mate of the watch to attend to "that G.o.d-d.a.m.ned bellowing and trampling, like a herd of drunken heifers mad for the bull.'"

In the comparative silence that followed (comparative, for the beautifully steady wind, the working of the s.h.i.+p and the voice of the sea itself, did not give a d.a.m.n for the mate of the watch) Stephen abandoned his desk and walked with a reasonably seamanlike pace to the taffrail, which he leaned upon, watching the interminable wake stretching away and away in a turbulent, right true line, and the s.h.i.+p's steady companion, always there just this side of the turbulence, a blue shark, larger than most: all this with the top of his mind, while the rest of it was concerned with Christine, her West African birds, her grace, her frankness, her singularity; while another part of it took notice of a fiddle being tuned in the cabin immediately below him and then the tentative beginning of an adagio obviously adapted from one of his own 'cello suites, but graver by far. Mixed feeling: pleasure that Jack was playing, and playing so well: sorrow that what he played was so unlike the Jack Aubrey he knew, bold, sanguine, enterprising, with a face made for laughter or at the very least for smiling.

A shadow behind him cut his reflection short, and turning he said, 'Mr. Woodbine, I am happy to see you afoot. How do you do?'

'Tolerable, sir, tolerable. Abstinence, if not carried to superst.i.tious extremes, does it, believe you me. So you are contemplating on that old shark, I presume?'

'Just so, Master: he is not alone, not by any manner of means: yet he keeps his station just under the counter - he has a scar just behind, or abaft, his dorsal fin, that is as clear as a visiting-card; and although I suspect that there are at least half a score of his brethren in the darkness of our hull, they do not presume to make their appearance: nor will they, unless we offer them blood.'

'But tell me, Doctor, how do you suppose they know about blood? For they do, even fish's blood, as I have seen time and again.'

'Why, as you are aware, they have gills: more gills than most of their kind. Immense, immense quant.i.ties of water enter that vast mouth and shoot out by those gills, which are lined with a tissue not unlike that with which our noses are furnished. There, I believe, lies the explanation.'

'Come, sir, what are you about?' cried Killick. 'Which the gunroom's dinner is almost on table, and you in your ordinary everyday old slops. Captain has been ready and trimmed this last gla.s.s, before ever he touched his fiddle.'

With real concern Stephen observed that the master was wearing his best coat, distinguished from the others by the absence of grease. 'So we entertain the Captain?' he cried.

'Which I told you so at breakfast. Sir,' replied Killick, with a very exactly dosed insolence.

'To think that I very nearly forgot,' said Stephen, who, although he often, even usually, ate in the cabin, was ex-officio a member of the gunroom mess and therefore one of the hosts on this occasion. Killick sniffed. 'Now then, what do you think you are about?' he called out angrily, addressing one of the cook's mates, who came staggering aft over the living deck, a bucket in either hand.