He had not been into the coffee-house that morning because it was a question either of paying for a cup of coffee or of paying for a boat to row him out to the Sophie, and he had therefore been unavailable for the midshipman, who now came running along behind him.
‘Dr Maturin?’ asked young Mowett, and stopped short, quite shocked by the pale glare of reptilian dislike. However, he delivered his message; and he was relieved to find that it was greeted with a far more human look.
‘Most kind,’ said Stephen. ‘What do you imagine would be a convenient time, sir?’
‘Oh, I suppose about six o’clock, sir,’ said Mowett.
‘Then at six o’clock I shall be at the Crown steps,’ said Stephen. ‘I am very much obliged to you, sir, for your diligence in finding me out.’ They parted with a bow apiece, and Stephen said privately, ‘I shall go across to the hospital and offer Mr Florey my assistance: he has a compound fracture above the elbow that will call for primary resection of the joint. It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,’ he added, smiling with anticipation.
Cape Mola lay on their larboard quarter: the troubled blasts and calms caused by the heights and valleys along the great harbour’s winding northern shore no longer buffeted them, and with an almost steady tramontana at north by east the Sophie was running fast towards Italy under her courses, single-reefed topsails and topgallants.
‘Bring her up as close as she will lie,’ said Jack. ‘How near will she point, Mr Marshall? Six?’
‘I doubt she’ll do as well as six, sir,’ said the master, shaking his head. ‘She’s a little sullen today, with the extra weight for’ard.’
Jack took the wheel, and as he did so a last gust from the island staggered the sloop, sending white water along her lee rail, plucking Jack’s hat from his head and streaming his bright yellow hair away to the south-south-west. The master leapt after the hat, snatched it from the seaman who had rescued it in the hammock-netting and solicitously wiping the cockade with his handkerchief he stood by Jack’s side, holding it with both hands.
‘Old Sodom and Gomorrah is sweet on Goldilocks,’ murmured John Lane, foretopman, to his friend Thomas Gross: Thomas winked his eye and jerked his head, but without any appearance of censure – they were concerned with the phenomenon, not with any moral judgment. ‘Well, I hope he don’t take it out of us too much, that’s all, mate,’ he replied.
Jack let her pay off until the flurry was over, and then, as he began to bring her back, his hands strong on the spokes, so he came into direct contact with the living essence of the sloop: the vibration beneath his palm, something between a sound and a flow, came straight up from her rudder, and it joined with the innumerable rhythms, the creak and humming of her hull and rigging. The keen clear wind swept in on his left cheek, and as he bore on the helm so the Sophie answered, quicker and more nervous than he had expected. Closer and closer to the wind. They were all staring up and forward: at last, in spite of the fiddle-tight bowline, the foretopgallantsail shivered, and Jack eased off. ‘East by north, a half north,’ he observed with satisfaction. ‘Keep her so,’ he said to the timoneer, and gave the order, the long-expected and very welcome order, to pipe to dinner.
Dinner, while the Sophie, as close-hauled on the larboard tack as she could be, made her offing into the lonely water where twelve-pound cannon-balls could do no harm and where disaster could pass unnoticed: the miles streamed out behind her, her white path stretching straight and true a little south of west. Jack looked at it from his stern-window with approval: remarkably little leeway; and a good steady hand must be steering, to keep that furrow so perfect in the sea. He was dining in solitary state – a Spartan meal of sodden kid and cabbage, mixed – and it was only when he realized that there was no one to whom he could impart the innumerable observations that came bubbling into his mind that he remembered: this was his first formal meal as a captain. He almost made a jocose remark about it to his steward (for he was in very high spirits, too), but he checked himself. It would not do. ‘I shall grow used to it, in time,’ he said, and looked again with loving relish at the sea.
The guns were not a success. Even with only half a cartridge the bow-chaser recoiled so strongly that at the third discharge the carpenter came running up on deck, so pale and perturbed that all discipline went by the board. ‘Don’t ee do it, sir!’ he cried, covering the touch-hole with his hand. ‘If you could but see her poor knees – and the spirketting started in five separate places, oh dear, oh dear.’ The poor man hurried to the ring-bolts of the breeching. ‘There. I knew it. My clench is half drawn in this poor thin old stuff. Why didn’t you tell me, Tom?’ he cried, gazing reproachfully at his mate.
‘I dursen’t,’ said Tom, hanging his head.
‘It won’t do, sir,’ said the carpenter. ‘Not with these here timbers, it won’t. Not with this here deck.’
Jack felt his choler rising – it was a ludicrous situation on the overcrowded fo’c’sle, with the carpenter crawling about at his feet in apparent supplication, peering at the seams; and this was no sort of a way to address a captain. But there was no resisting Mr Lamb’s total sincerity, particularly as Jack secretly agreed with him. The force of the recoil, all that weight of metal darting back and being brought up with a twang by the breeching was too much, far too much for the Sophie. Furthermore, there really was not room to work the ship with the two twelve-pounders and their tackle filling so much of what little space there was. But he was bitterly disappointed: a twelve-pound ball could pierce at five hundred yards: it could send up a shower of lethal splinters, carry away a yard, do great execution. He tossed one up and down in his hand, considering. Whereas at any range a four-pounder…
‘And was you to fire off t’other one,’ said Mr Lamb with desperate courage, still on his hands and knees, ‘your wisitor wouldn’t have a dry stitch on him: for the seams have opened something cruel.’
William Jevons, carpenter’s crew, came up and whispered, ‘Foot of water in the well,’ in a rumble that could have been heard at the masthead.
The carpenter stood up, put on his hat, touched it and reported, ‘There’s a foot of water in the well, sir.’
‘Very well, Mr Lamb,’ said Jack, placidly, ‘we’ll pump it out again. Mr Day,’ he said, turning to the gunner, who had crawled up on deck for the firing of the twelve-pounders (would have crept out of his grave, had he been in it), ‘Mr Day, draw and house the guns, if you please. And bosun, man the chain-pump.’
He patted the warm barrel of the twelve-pounder regretfully and walked aft. He was not particularly worried about the water: the Sophie had been capering about in a lively way with this short sea coming across, and she would have made a good deal by her natural working. But he was vexed about the chasers, profoundly vexed, and he looked with even greater malignance at the main-yard.
‘We shall have to get the topgallants off her presently, Mr Dillon,’ he observed, picking up the traverse-board. He consulted it more as a matter of form than anything else, for he knew very well where they were: with some sense that develops in true seamen he was aware of the loom of the land, a dark presence beyond the horizon behind him – behind his right shoulder-blade. They had been beating steadily up into the wind, and the pegs showed almost equal boards – east-north-east followed by west-north-west: they had tacked five times (Sophie was not as quick in stays as he could have wished) and worn once; and they had been running at seven knots. These calculations ran their course in his mind, and as soon as he looked for it the answer was ready: ‘Keep on this course for half an hour and then put her almost before the wind – two points off. That will bring you home.
‘It would be as well to shorten sail now,’ he observed. ‘We will