His eyes ranged over the busy harbour: the light was so nearly horizontal that all the masts and yards assumed a strange importance, and the little skipping waves sent back a blinding sparkle.
‘No, no,’ they said. ‘Over by the sheer-hulk. The felucca has just masked her. There – now do you see her?’
He did indeed. He had been looking far too high and his gaze had swept right over the Sophie as she lay there, not much above a cable’s length away, very low in the water. He leant both hands on the rail and looked at her with unwinking concentration. After a while he borrowed the telescope from the officer of the watch and did the same again, with a most searching minute scrutiny. He could see the gleam of an epaulette, whose wearer could only be her captain: and her people were as active as bees just about to swarm. He had been prepared for a little brig, but not for quite such a dwarfish vessel as this. Most fourteen-gun sloops were between two hundred and two hundred and fifty tons in burthen: the Sophie could scarcely be more than a hundred and fifty.
‘I like her little quarter-deck,’ said the officer of the watch. ‘She was the Spanish Vencejo, was she not? And as for being rather low, why, anything you look at close to from a seventy-four looks rather low.’
There were three things that everybody knew about the Sophie: one was that unlike almost all other brigs she had a quarter-deck; another was that she had been Spanish; and a third was that she possessed an elm-tree pump on her fo’c’sle, that is to say, a bored-out trunk that communicated directly with the sea and that was used for washing her deck – an insignificant piece of equipment, really, but one so far above her station that no mariner who saw it or heard of this pump ever forgot it.
‘Maybe your quarters will be a little cramped,’ said the first lieutenant, ‘but you will have a quiet, restful time of it, I am sure, convoying the trade up and down the Mediterranean.’
‘Well…’ said James Dillon, unable to find a brisk retort to this possibly well-intentioned kindness. ‘Well…’he said with a philosophical shrug. ‘You’ll let me have a boat, sir? I should like to report as early as I can.’
‘A boat? God rot my soul,’ cried the first lieutenant, ‘I shall be asked for the barge, next thing I know. Passengers in the Burford wait for a bumboat from shore, Mr Dillon; or else they swim.’ He stared at James with cold severity until the quartermaster’s chuckle betrayed him; for Mr Coffin was a great wag, a wag even before breakfast.
‘Dillon, sir, reporting for duty, if you please,’ said James taking off his hat in the brilliant sun and displaying a blaze of dark red hair.
‘Welcome aboard, Mr Dillon,’ said Jack, touching his own, holding out his hand and looking at him with so intense a desire to know what kind of man he was, that his face had an almost forbidding acuity. ‘You would be welcome in any case, but even more so this morning: we have a busy day ahead of us. Masthead, there! Any sign of life on the wharf ?’
‘Nothing yet, sir.’
‘The wind is exactly where I want it,’ said Jack, looking for the hundredth time at the rare white clouds sailing evenly across the perfect sky. ‘But with this rising glass there is no trusting to it.’
‘Your coffee’s up, sir,’ said the steward.
‘Thank you, Killick. What is it, Mr Lamb?’
‘I haven’t no ring-bolts anywheres near big enough, sir,’ said the carpenter. ‘But there’s a heap on ’em at the yard, I know. May I send over?’
‘No, Mr Lamb. Don’t you go near that yard, to save your life. Double the clench-bolts you have; set up the forge and fashion a serviceable ring. It won’t take you half an hour. Now, Mr Dillon, when you have settled in comfortably below, perhaps you will come and drink a cup of coffee with me and I will tell you what I have in mind.’
James hurried below to the three-cornered booth that he was to live in, whipped out of his reporting uniform into trousers and an old blue coat, reappearing while Jack was still blowing thoughtfully upon his cup. ‘Sit down, Mr Dillon, sit down,’ he cried. ‘Push those papers aside. It’s a sad brew, I’m afraid, but at least it is wet, that I can promise you. Sugar?’
‘If you please, sir,’ said young Ricketts, ‘the Généreux’s cutter is alongside with the men who were drafted off for harbour-duty.’
‘All of ’em?’
‘All except two, sir, that have been changed.’
Still holding his coffee-cup, Jack writhed from behind the table and with a twist of his body out through the door. Hooked on to the larboard main-chains there was the Généreux’s boat, filled with seamen, looking up, laughing and exchanging witticisms or mere hoots and whistles with their former shipmates. The Généreux’s midshipman saluted and said, ‘Captain Harte’s compliments, sir, and he finds the draft can be spared.’
‘God bless your heart, dear Molly,’ said Jack: and aloud, ‘My compliments and best thanks to Captain Harte. Be so good as to send them aboard.’
They were not much to look at, he reflected, as the whip from the yardarm hoisted up their meagre belongings: three or four were decidedly simple, and two others had that indefinable air of men of some parts whose cleverness sets them apart from their fellows, but not nearly so far as they imagine. Two of the boobies were quite horribly dirty, and one had managed to exchange his slops for a red garment with remains of tinsel upon it. Still, they all possessed two hands; they could all clap on to a rope; and it would be strange if the bosun and his mates could not induce them to heave.
‘Deck,’ hailed the midshipman aloft. ‘Deck. There is someone moving about on the wharf.’
‘Very good, Mr Babbington. You may come down and have your breakfast now. Six hands I thought lost for good,’ he said to James Dillon with intense satisfaction, turning back to the cabin. ‘They may not be much to look at – indeed, I think we must rig a tub if we are not to have an itchy ship – but they will help us weigh. And I hope to weigh by half-past nine at the latest.’ Jack rapped the brass-bound wood of the locker and went on, ‘We will ship two long twelves as chase-pieces, if I can get them from Ordnance. But whether or no I am going to take the sloop out while this breeze lasts, to try her paces. We convoy a dozen merchantmen to Cagliari, sailing this evening if they are all here, and we must know how she handles. Yes, Mr … Mr…?’
‘Pullings, sir: master’s mate. Burford’s long-boat alongside with a draft.’
‘A draft for us? How many?’
‘Eighteen, sir.’ And rum-looking cullies some of ’em are, he would have added, if he had dared.
‘Do you know anything about them, Mr Dillon?’ asked Jack.
‘I knew the Burford had a good many of the Charlotte’s people and some from the receiving ships as drafts for Mahon, sir; but I never heard of any being meant for the Sophie.’
Jack was on the point of saying, ‘And there I was, worrying about being stripped bare,’ but he contented himself with chuckling and wondering why this cornucopia should have poured itself out on him. ‘Lady Warren,’ came the reply, in a flash of revelation. He laughed again, and said, ‘Now I am going across to the wharf, Mr Dillon. Mr Head is a businesslike man and he will tell me whether the guns are to be had or not within half an hour. If they are, I will break out my handkerchief and you can start carrying out the warps directly. What now, Mr Richards?’
‘Sir,’ said the pale clerk, ‘Mr Purser says I should bring you the receipts and letters to sign this time every day, and the fair-copied book to read.’
‘Quite right,’ said Jack mildly. ‘Every ordinary day. Presently you will learn which is ordinary and which is not.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Here are the receipts for the men. Show me the rest another time.’
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