but slightly Benthamite, gun-room were strict observers of the naval etiquette that prevented any subordinate from speaking to his captain without being spoken to first; and they had grown thoroughly used to Captain Hamond, to whose mind this was a congenial rigour. And then again they were a proud set of men – most of them could afford to be – and they had a horror of the ingratiating manoeuvres, the currying of favour that was to be seen in some ships, or any hint of it: once they had had an overpliable third lieutenant wished upon them, and they had obliged him to exchange into the Achilles within a couple of months. They carried this attitude pretty high, and without disliking their temporary commander in the very least – indeed they valued him exceedingly both as a seaman and a fighting captain – they unconsciously imposed an Olympian role upon him; and at times the silence in which he lived made him feel utterly forlorn. At times only, however, for he was not often idle; there were duties that even the most perfect first lieutenant could not take off his hands, and then again in the forenoon he supervised the midshipmen’s lessons in his cabin. They were a likeable set of youngsters, and even the Godlike presence of the captain, the severity of their schoolmaster, and the scrubbed, staid example of their elders could not repress their cheerfulness. Even hunger could not do so, and they had been eating rats this last month and more, rats caught in the bowels of the ship by the captain of the hold and laid out, neatly skinned, opened and cleaned, like tiny sheep, in the orlop, for sale at a price that rose week by week, to reach its present shocking rate of fivepence a knob.
Jack was fond of the young, and like many other captains he took great care of their professional and social education, of their allowances, and even of their morals; but his constancy at their lessons was not entirely disinterested. He had been a stupid boy at figures in his time, badly taught aboard, and although he was a natural-born seaman he had only managed to pass for lieutenant by feverish rote-learning, the interposition of Providence, and the presence of two friendly captains on the board. In spite of his dear friend Queenie’s patient explanations of tangents, secants and sines, he had never had a really firm grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry; his navigation had been a plain rule-of-thumb progress from A to B, plane-sailing at its plainest; but fortunately the Navy had always provided him, as it provided all other commanders, with a master learned in the art. Yet now, perhaps affected by the scientific, hydrographic atmosphere on the Lively, he studied the mathematics, and like some other late-developers he advanced at a great pace. The schoolmaster was an excellent teacher when he was sober, and whatever the midshipmen may have made of his lessons, Jack profited by them: in the evenings, after the watch was set, he would work lunars or read Grimble on Conic Sections with real pleasure, in the intervals between writing to Sophie and playing on his fiddle. ‘How amazed Stephen will be,’ he reflected. ‘How I shall come it the philosopher over him: and how I wish the old soul were here.’
But this question of whether he should invite Mr Randall to dinner was still in suspense, and he was about to decide it when the captain of the top coughed significantly. ‘Beg parding, your honour,’ he said, ‘but I think Naiad’s seen something.’ The Cockney voice came strangely from his yellow face and slanting eyes; but the Lively had been in Eastern waters for years and years, and her crew, yellow, brown, black and nominally white, had worked so long together that they all spoke with the accent of Limehouse Reach, Wapping or Deptford Yard.
High Bum was not the only man to have caught the flurry of movement on the deck of the next in line ahead. Mr Randall junior swarmed inwards from his spray-soaked post on the sprit-sail yardarm and ran skipping along the deck towards his messmates: his seven-year-old pipe could be heard in the top as he cried, ‘She’s rounding the point! She’s rounding the point!’
The Niobe appeared as though by magic from the midst of the overlapping Hyères islands, tearing along under courses and topsails and throwing a fine white bow-wave. She might be bringing something in the way of food, something in the way of prizes (all the frigates had agreed to share), and in any case she meant a break from this extreme monotony; she was heartily welcome. ‘And here’s the Weasel,’ piped the infant child.
The Weasel was a big cutter, the messenger that plied all too rarely from the fleet to the inshore frigates. She too would almost certainly be bringing stores, news of the outside world – what a happy combination!
The cutter was under a perfect cloud of sail, heeling over at forty-five degrees; and the squadron, hove-to off Giens, cheered as they saw her fetch the Niobe’s wake and then cross to windward, with the obvious intention of making a race of it. Topgallants and an outer jib broke out aboard the frigate, but the fore-topgallant split as it was sheeted home, and before the agitated Niobes could bunt up the Weasel was on her starboard beam, wronging her cruelly, taking the wind right out of her sails. The Niobe’s bow-wave diminished and the cutter shot past, cheering madly, to the delight of one and all. She had the Lively’s number flying – orders aboard for Lively – and she came down the line, rounding to under the frigate’s lee, her enormous mainsail flapping, cracking like a shooting-gallery. But she made no motion towards launching a boat: lay there with her captain bawling through the wind for a line.
‘No stores?’ thought Jack in the top, frowning. ‘Damn this.’ He put a leg over the side, feeling for the futtockshrouds: but someone had seen a familiar purple bag handing up through the cutter’s main-hatch, and there was a cry of ‘Post’. At this word Jack leant out for the backstay and shot down on deck like a midshipman, forgetting his dignity and laddering his fine white stockings. He stood within a yard of the quartermasters and the mate of the watch as the two bags came jerking across the water. ‘Bear a hand, bear a hand there,’ he called out; and when at last the bags were inboard he had to make a strong effort to control his impatience while the midshipman passed them solemnly to Mr Randall, and while Mr Randall brought them across the quarterdeck, took off his hat, and said, ‘Weasel from the flag, sir, if you please.’
‘Thank you, Mr Randall,’ said Jack, carrying them with a fair show of deliberation into his cabin. Here he raped the seals of the post-bag with furious haste, whipped off the cord and riffled through the letters: three covers directed to Captain Aubrey, H.M.S. Lively, in Sophie’s round but decided hand, fat letters, triple at the very least. He thrust them into his pocket, and smiling he turned to the little official bag, or satchel, opened the tarred canvas, the oiled-silk inner envelope and then the small cover containing his orders, read them, pursed his lips and read them again. ‘Hallows,’ he called. ‘Pass the word for Mr Randall and the master. Here, letters to the purser for distribution. Ah, Mr Randall, signal Naiad, if you please – permission to part company. Mr Norrey, be so good as to lay me a course for Calvette.’
For once there was no violent hurry; for once that ‘jading impression of haste, of losing not a minute, forsooth’ of which Stephen had complained so often, was absent. This was the season of almost uninterrupted northerly winds in the western Mediterranean, of the mistral, the gargoulenc and the tramontane, all standing fair for Minorca and the Lively’s rendezvous; but it was important not to arrive off the island too soon, not to stand off and on arousing suspicion; and as Jack’s orders, with their general instructions ‘to disturb the enemy’s shipping, installations and communications’ allowed him a great deal of latitude, the frigate was now stretching away across the Gulf of Lyons for the coast of Languedoc, with as much sail as she could bear and her lee rail vanishing from time to time under the racing white water. The morning’s gunnery practice – broadside after broadside into the unopposing sea – and now this glorious rushing speed in the brilliant sun had done away with the cross looks and murmurs of discontent of the day before – no stores and no cruise; these damned orders had cheated them of their little cruise at the very moment they had earned it, and they cursed the wretched Weasel for her ill-timed antics, her silly cracking-on, her passion for showing away, so typical of those unrated buggers. ‘Was she had come along like a Christian not a Turk, we should have been gone halfway to Elba,’ said Java Dick. But this was yesterday, and now brisk exercise, quick forgetfulness, the possibility of something charming over every fresh mile of the opening horizon, and above
