could not but acknowledge the justice of this, and Jack, having gained his point, instantly proposed taking a turn while breakfast was preparing.
If he had wished to display the naval might of England at its greatest advantage, he could not have chosen a better day: the vast fleet against Carthagena and the Spanish main was fitting out, as well as their own squadron, and men-of-war of every rate lay at Spithead, with transports among them, and tenders and ships’ boats perpetually coming and going, their white sails on the sea answering to the scraps of white cloud that were passing easily over the pure blue sky. The royal dockyard, the greatest in the world, reared its astonishing forest of masts in even more profusion than usual, and although the day was a holiday in the civilian part of the town, the yard echoed and re-bellowed with the din of hammers. The clear, sharp air from the sea mingled with the smell of tar, paint and cordage from the dockyard and with a certain spirituous mixture of brandy and rum that emanated from the town in general.
Jack pointed out their own squadron over at St Helen’s, too far to be distinguished without a glass; he pointed out the Royal George, a three-decker with a hundred guns, and all the other rates, from the first right down to the Salamander, a bomb-ketch of eight guns (and those of the smallest kind); he defined a ship of the line and a frigate, a ship, a barque and a brig, and he would have defined a great deal more had he not been interrupted by the sound of cheering. It was the Lively, a sloop of war, coming out of the harbour: she glided down to within a few yards of them; her gaff-topsail took the breeze, her close-hauled mainsail filled with a huge smooth curve, and she heeled away, running faster and faster, as though she herself made the wind; it was as pretty a sight as could be imagined – new paint, new canvas, gleaming decks and shining brass; her new commander’s pride and joy – and the long wake straight as she sailed so tightly for the green island over the water.
‘How did you like that, Toby?’ asked Jack, when the cheering had died away. Tobias did not reply, but he slowly gnashed his teeth, and his white face showed a flush of delight.
On the way back to the Crown Jack pointed out a vice-admiral of the blue and two post-captains, and he thought it was well to profit by Tobias’ present nautical enthusiasm to impress upon him the necessity for a due respect for rank.
‘You cannot conceive,’ he said, earnestly spreading butter upon his toast in the coffee-room of the Crown, ‘my dear Toby, you cannot conceive the gulf between a captain and a mere person.’ He went on in this strain, while Tobias ate four boiled eggs out of a napkin; but he doubted whether he was doing much good, and for some pensive moments he envisaged the consequences of Tobias’ turning upon the commodore with reasons in favour of a democratic management of the squadron. However, his mind, saturated with buttered toast and coffee, did not dwell for long upon this, and with a sudden grin he said, ‘It is infernal good luck, by the way, that we don’t sail directly: you would have had to put up with purser’s slops and whatever we could have bought at Madeira, or wherever it is we water. But now we can fill you a sea-chest in a decent sort of way.’ Jack, like all his relatives on his father’s side, was impatient of ready money; solvency, with gold jingling in his pocket, seemed to him a thoroughly unnatural condition; and few things gave him a more lively pleasure than spending. The thought of spending a considerable amount, very quickly, and upon Tobias, filled him with such an agreeable sense of anticipation that he whistled aloud. Jack had a true and melodious whistle, but it was rather loud indoors, and a yellow-faced lieutenant at the next table put his hand to his forehead and glared at them with pure hatred. ‘But,’ said Jack, glancing at the clock, ‘we had better report first; besides, that will enable you to find out what you will need in the way of saws and knives and so on.’
They walked down to the water and called for a boat. ‘Wager,’ said Jack, stepping neatly in. ‘Easy,’ he said, picking Tobias out of the bottom and setting him upright. Tobias had stepped in while the boat was rising, and (as it has happened to so many landsmen) he had ignominiously doubled up at the knees. ‘It was the wave,’ Jack explained.
‘Was it indeed?’ said Tobias. ‘The billow? I shall grow accustomed to them in time, no doubt.’
It was a long pull, but the morning was so splendid, the fleet and its activities so absorbing, that for more than half of the way they sat silent: when the Wager was well in sight, Jack bade the waterman bear away for the head of the squadron, and so come down to her, she lying in the last berth but one.
‘But you said go straight for the store-ship first,’ said the waterman.
Jack had been thinking of the Wager by the same plain shameful name, but it stung him exceedingly to hear anyone else say it, and he desired the waterman very passionately to stow his gab and to attend to his duty. The waterman, who had been cursed by admirals before Jack was born, took this with provoking calm, only observing that ‘it would be an extra fourpence, and twopence for the oaths.’
‘Store-ship,’ muttered Jack. ‘Damn your eyes.’ But as they came abreast of St Helen’s church, where the commodore lay, and turned to pass down the line, his spirits revived: it was a beautiful line of ships, and he explained them to Tobias as they passed. ‘The Centurion,’ he said, ‘she’s a sixty-gun ship, do you see? A fourth rate. Damn it, Toby, that’s where we should be, alongside of Keppel and Ransome. Look, going along by the hances, there’s the commodore – do you see him, Toby? He is pointing down into the waist.’
‘I see him,’ said Toby, looking attentively at the august form of Mr Anson. ‘Shall we pull off our hats, and wave?’
‘No, no,’ cried Jack, for the Centurion was no distance away at all, and he could even hear the commodore’s voice. ‘Give way,’ he called to the boatman, and he hastily drew Tobias’ attention to the Gloucester, the next in line, and then to the Severn, both fifty-gun ships. ‘Who commands the Severn now?’ he asked the boatman.
‘Captain Legge,’ said the boatman. ‘A lord’s son. The honourable Legge, as they say. You can do anything you please if you are a lord’s son’ – spitting virtuously into the sea. ‘If I was a lord’s son,’ said the boatman, ‘do you think as I should be a-sitting here, toiling and moiling all day long?’
‘Do you moil a great deal?’ asked Tobias.
‘Like a porpoise, governor; and likewise toil. But was I a lord’s son, I should sit a-taking of my ease in a cutter with pink taffety sails: because why? Because honest worth has no countenance these days.’
‘Captain Legge was with Admiral Vernon at Porto Bello,’ said Jack. ‘He was in the Pearl then. And there is the Pearl: ain’t she elegant?’ She was, indeed; and she had the aura of a famous victory about her still. When Jack had looked long enough at her, he added, ‘Forty. She is one of the old forty-gun ships, but she is a very fine sailer on a wind, they say – will outsail anything. Captain Mitchel has her now. The sloop lying inside her is the Tryall: belongs to us.’
‘But you described a sloop as a vessel with one mast and a sail out behind,’ objected Tobias, seeing two undeniable and very tall masts before him, and a square rig.
‘Ah, she’s only called a sloop,’ said Jack. ‘It is perfectly logical really – we do not mean that she is a sloop.’ He did not elucidate this statement, but looked fixedly towards the Wager, which they were now approaching. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said, after a few moments, and he glanced anxiously at Tobias to see whether he would be disappointed: but to Tobias the Wager looked very much like any other ship. She was about a hundred feet long, as opposed to the hundred and fifty of the fourth rates, and she had but a single row of gun-ports; but still she was a high and beautiful ship, far beyond anything that Tobias had aspired to. Searching for something
