'We are bounding along at a fine pace, are we not? At a rate of knots, I make no doubt. See how the table leans.'
'Pretty well. We have spread everything she can carry, perhaps even a little more than is quite wise; but I felt so hell-fire hipped and mumpish in the channel with that parcel of God-damned lubbers, nearly missing my tide, that I longed for a breath of fresh air. Try one of these toasted slices of breadfruit: they eat well with coffee. The chief's sister sent me a net-full, dried.' He slowly ate a piece of crisp breadfruit, drank out his cup, and said, 'Yet, you know, it has not made quite the difference I had reckoned on. Perhaps it will be better presently, when we bring the breeze abaft the beam.'
The breeze, as he had foreseen, came abaft the beam late in the forenoon watch; the Surprise spread her weather studdingsails, and by the time the hands were piped to dinner she was running at eight knots three fathoms: fresh air in plenty, brilliant sun, and the taste of salt from the fine spindrift.
The officers on the quarterdeck watched their captain pace fore and aft as he had paced fore and aft uncounted times, but they remained silent, over there to leeward, and the men at the wheel and the quartermaster beside them stood unnaturally stiff as he passed by.
'Captain Pullings, if you please,' he said, after he had walked his measured mile. 'A word with you.'
In the cabin Pullings said 'I am glad you told me to come, sir. I was going to ask you to do the gun-room the honour of dining with us tomorrow, it being Sunday.'
'That is very kind in you, Tom,' he said, looking him right in the eye, 'but I must decline invitations to the gun-room at present. This is not a fling at you, however.'
'I am afraid the last time was not all we could have wished,' said Pullings, shaking his head.
'No, Tom,' said Jack after a considerable pause. 'The ship is falling to pieces. Where there is ill-will, really strong ill-will, in the gun-room a ship falls to pieces, even when she has a company like this. I have known it again and again. So have you.'
'Yes, by God,' said Tom.
'I had thought of remedying it, at least to some extent, by making Oakes acting-lieutenant.'
'Oh no, sir!' cried Pullings: he flushed, and his dreadful scar showed livid across his face.
'It would add to the number at your table and make rudeness, gross incivility, less easy; it would put him on an even footing, which would prevent any officer from riding him and so angering the hands in Oakes's division; he would stand his own watch, which would make him independent. He is quite seaman enough, for blue-water sailing.'
'Yes, sir,' said Pullings; and then barely audible in his embarrassment and protesting that he did not mean to carry tales or inform on anyone, he said 'But that would mean Mrs Oakes messing with us.'
'Of course. That is a part of my argument.'
'Well sir . . . some of the officers are sweet on Mrs Oakes.'
'I dare say they are—a very amiable young woman.'
'No, sir. I mean serious—bloody serious—cut-your-throat serious—fucking serious . . .'
'Oh.' Jack Aubrey was taken aback entirely. 'But you surely do not mean that last word literally?'
'No, sir. It is just my coarse way of speaking: I beg pardon. But so serious that if she were there at the table day after day . . .'
After a silence Jack said 'The husband is always the last to know, they say. I am talking of myself, as being married to the barky, you understand. The sods. But I am sure she never gave them any encouragement. Well, Tom, thank you for letting me know: I see things in a new light now. Yes, indeed. Now passing on to the shameful bungling this morning, I shall speak to the officers concerned but there were also some hands who behaved ill: sullen and unwilling: neglect of duty. You must prepare a list and I must deal with them; a damned unpleasant business.' He walked over to his chart-table and measured off the distance yet to run to Moahu. 'We must pull them together before there is any question of action,' he said. 'Tom, will you dine with me and the Doctor tomorrow? And perhaps I might ask Martin and the Oakeses.'
'Thank you, sir. I should be very happy.'
'I shall look forward to it, too. And Tom, pray tell West and Davidge that I wish to see them.'
They were both expecting the summons. Jack had left the unmooring to them while he and Pullings finished their business with Wainwright below, and he had come on deck to find an everyday manoeuvre being shockingly bungled. But they had not expected this degree of cold fury nor the far-reaching nature of his observations. 'I am speaking to you about your public life,' he said. 'You know perfectly well that public ill-will stirs up division and brings discredit on a ship: you also know that officers' disagreements in wardroom or gun-room are public, since the mess servants tell their mates directly, so that they affect the whole ship's company even if they are kept under hatches, since any officer with a division has a following among the hands in his charge. But you have not even attempted to keep things under hatches. You are openly, blatantly, rude to one another, and you ride Oakes in a way that causes great resentment among his men, whom he looks after very well. Obviously, since your messmates are not talebearers, I have had no idea of your conduct in the gun-room; but you cannot deny that I have given you many a hint, aye and many an open check these last weeks about your rudeness and incivility on deck. One result of all this ill-feeling, division and contention was today's disgraceful exhibition when I came on deck and found you wrangling like a couple of fish-fags and the ship looking like Bartholomew fair: and all this in the presence of the Daisy's master and her people. I can only thank God there was no King's ship by. Imagine such a state of affairs in action! Another result was that you disgraced the ship in your entertainment to Mrs Oakes and her husband: you, both of you, West and Davidge, made your dislike of one another staringly obvious. You showed no respect for your guests in what was essentially a public function. For my own part I have just declined Captain Pullings' invitation for tomorrow.'
'I was half stunned at the time, sir,' said Davidge.
'No doubt you presented your excuses to Oakes the next morning?' said Jack. Davidge reddened, but made no reply. 'As for your personal, private disagreements I have nothing to say. But I do absolutely insist upon your keeping up public appearances, officerlike outward appearances: in the gun-room when any hands are present, on deck at all times. I say nothing about my report to the Admiralty, but I do promise you this: unless I find you have taken great notice of my words by the time we have dealt with Moahu, by God you shall sow what you have reaped, and I shall supersede you by two of the master-mariners from before the mast. We have at least a score. That will do.'
'Dearest Sophie,' he wrote, 'A captain worth his name knows a great deal about his ship, her capabilities, her stores, her weaknesses and so on; and common daily observation shows him his people's seamanship and fighting qualities: but he lives so far from his officers and men that unless he listens to tale-bearers there is a great deal he does not know. These last weeks I have been worried by the obvious ill-will in the gun-room and its bad effects on discipline; I had both directly and indirectly told them to be more civil, but only this morning did Tom, horribly confused at informing on his messmates, tell me the reason for this ill-will. I had thought it the usual weariness of a long commission with the same faces, the same jokes, perhaps sharpened by some foolish raillery carried too far, losses at cards, chess, arguments—but all this carried much farther than I should ever have let it go. I am much to blame. Yet this morning, just before I called them in to reprove them for the horrible mess they had made of unmooring the ship, Tom let me know that they hated one another because of Mrs Oakes; and that it would not do to give Oakes an order as acting-lieutenant, because with her at the table their rivalry might well break bounds.
'It is a shame that such a modest, well-conducted woman should be so persecuted, and kept to the dismal solitary messing of the midshipmen's berth; I am sure she has given no encouragement, even in the most harmless usual shipboard way, has never said "
Pray do up this button for me; my fingers are all thumbs," or "I hope you do not think my tucker too low." No. And at a most discreditable dinner the gun-room gave for her, with half her hosts as mute as fishes, she kept things going most courageously. I do like courage in a woman. By the way, I was quite mistaken about Stephen, when I feared he might be too fond: they went for a walk in the country yesterday and came back so pleased and affectionate together, carrying some extraordinary flowers and a bag of Stephen's birds and beetles. I have a mind to ask her and her husband to dine tomorrow, to mark the point; but I am not sure. I was so angered by seeing the ship exposed and mishandled this morning that I have little heart for entertaining; and Oakes himself, though a tolerable seaman, is a shocking drag. I shall ask Stephen: he is examining her in his cabin at this minute.'
Although Jack and Stephen had played some deeply satisfying music that evening, Stephen sitting with his feet braced against the heel of the ship on a batten shipped for the purpose and Jack standing to play his fiddle, the Captain woke early in the morning watch on Sunday with the humiliation of his ship's disgrace still strong in his mind, and a clear recollection of Wainwright's silent astonishment and tactfully averted eyes when they came on deck. The wind had begun dropping through the middle watch, as some inner recorder told him, and he was not at all surprised to find the ship ghosting along under limp, dew-soaked sails over a grey sea with barely a ripple on the heavy swell from the south.
'Good morning, Mr Davidge,' he said, taking the log-board from its place. 'Good morning, Mr Oakes.'
'Good morning, sir,' said Davidge. 'Good morning, sir,' said Oakes.
Although there were stars and even their reflexions in the west, the eastern sky was light enough for him to read the board: and from what the sky to starboard told he saw the calm would not last.
'Have any sharks been seen?' he asked.
Davidge hailed the lookout: no sharks, no sharks at all, sir.
'I will just peep under the counter, sir,' said Oakes. 'Sometimes we have a messmate there.' A moment later he called 'All clear, sir.'
'Thankee, Mr Oakes,' said Jack. He walked to the gangway stanchions, hung his shirt and trousers over the ridge-rope, breathed deep and dived deeper. The bubbles hissed past him, his whole weight changed; and the water was cool enough to be wonderfully refreshing. He swam powerfully for half a mile, and turning he contemplated the ship, her trim, her perfect lines, as she rose and fell, sometimes disappearing altogether in the trough of the swell. The sun had now turned the whole sky blue, light blue, and he could feel its warmth on the back of his neck. Yet even so some blackness remained; he did not rejoice with the whole of his being. The abiding fury was wholly dissipated however when within twenty yards of the frigate he caught sight of Mrs Oakes leaning over the quarterdeck rail, far aft.
'Heavens,' he cried inwardly. 'I may be seen naked,' and he instantly dived, swimming as fast and far as he could on one breath.
He need not have feared nor held his breath to so near bursting-point: already Oakes was running in one direction to shield her eyes and Killick, with a towel, in the other, to shield his person.
Killick, seeing his captain's approach from afar, had also timed his first breakfast with particular care, rather as a keeper obliged to live in the same cage with a testy omnipotent lion might time his gobbets of horseflesh to the very first stroke of the zoological bell.
For once Stephen shared this first breakfast. He had been so much taken up with encoding that he had not looked at a tenth part of his botany specimens nor even at all his birds and their parasites with anything like really close attention, and the thought of them brought him out of his cot at first light with that almost trembling or rather bubbling excitement he had known from very early days—his first sight of St Dabeoc's heath when he was seven, of a dell filled with Gold of Pleasure the next year, and of the Pyrenean desman (that rare ill-natured cousin to the shrew) only a few weeks after that!
'I was very near offering Mrs Oakes a dreadful spectacle just now,' said Jack after a pause in which they each drank two cups of coffee. 'I was swimming back—was within pistol-shot—when I noticed her there at the rail. Had she looked my way she must have beheld a naked man.'
'That would have been very shocking, indeed,' said Stephen. 'Pray pass the breadfruit toast.' He remembered an earlier occasion on which Mrs Oakes had in fact beheld a naked man, through the scuttle of the cabin in which she had been examined, perfectly unmoved. Jack was standing in a boat, giving directions about the recovery of a hawser cut by the sharp coral rock and on the point of diving himself; and she contemplated him with a detached interest: 'Captain Aubrey would be considered a fine figure of a man even in Ireland, would he not?' she asked. 'But surely he has been most dreadfully cut about?'
'I should scarcely like to number the wounds I have sewn up and dressed, or the musket and pistol balls I have extracted,' said Stephen. 'You are to observe, ma'am, that they are all honourably in front; except for those that are behind.'
That was long before their walk in Annamooka: indeed it was the first time he had distinctly seen anything unusual in her attitude towards men, an almost clinical attitude that disconcerted him to some degree, since neither her face nor her everyday behaviour was marked by any irregularity of life. He was still thinking of her when Jack said 'Speaking of Mrs Oakes, it is long since I heard her howling on Martin's viola: or Martin himself, for that matter.'
'I believe I understood him to say that the neck was out of order: or possibly the head. How does it come about, do you suppose, that so few people play it? For a score that make their attempts upon a fiddle not more than one, nay less, tries the viola. Yet it has or can have the sweetest voice.'
'I cannot tell, I am sure. Perhaps they are less easy to come by. Perhaps they are even more difficult to master: think how rare it is to find a player of the very first rate, fit to answer a violin like Cramer or Kreutzer in say Mozart's . . . Come in. Come in and sit down, Tom,' he called, pouring him a cup of coffee.
'Thank you, sir. It was only that I forgot to ask whether you meant to rig church today.'
'Yes,' said Jack, his face clouding again. 'Yes, certainly: there is nothing like church for bringing a sense of order into things. But only the penitential psalms and the Articles.'
Church by all means, with awnings over the quarterdeck; yet before church came the ceremony of divisions, the formal inspection of all hands lined up under their divisional officers, and of their quarters. It was, as Jack had observed, one of a commander's best opportunities for taking the ship's company's pulse. As he passed along the ranks he looked eye-to-eye at every seaman, petty officer and warrant officer aboard; and he would be a dull fellow if the expression or lack of expression on these scores of well-washed, new-shaven faces did not give him some notion of the ship's general temper.
This worked both ways: the Surprises also gauged the state of their captain's mind; and his progress, accompanied by Pullings and by each divisional officer in turn, left gloom and dismay behind. In spite of his bathe, in spite of his breakfast and in spite of the fine steady breeze there was still a great deal of anger and resentment in his heart. The ship had been mishandled, made to look ridiculous—all that unofficer-like, unseamanlike swearing and shouting and noise in the course of an everyday manoeuvre that the old Surprise would have carried through without the slightest fuss and with little more than the single order 'Unmoor ship'—would have carried it through like a man-of-war rather than a slapdash privateer. It was a desecration; and very strong displeasure emanated from him as he walked along. He smiled only once, and that was when he came to the gunner's division, where Mr Smith was attended by Reade, making his first official appearance since his accident. 'I am happy to see you again, Mr Reade,' he said. 'You have the Doctor's leave I am sure?'
'Oh yes, sir: he declared I was quite fit for—' began Reade: but here his voice, which had just started to break, soared out of control before he brought out 'light duties' in a d
eep croak.
'Very good. But even so you must take care. We do not have so very many seamen aboard.'
On to Oakes and the foretopmen, a division that had always been the most cheerful in the ship and that was now the most disturbed. Guilt accounted for some part of their trouble as it did for their more than usually high perfection of cleanliness and Sunday dress—gestures towards averting wrath—but there was also something more that he could not define. He walked along past them with a grave face and none of the small remarks that so often attended divisions. On to the forecastle-men and so to Jemmy Ducks and his charges. 'How they shoot up,' he reflected. 'Perhaps Fanny and Charlotte will be as long in the leg by now.' Although he looked at them kindly and asked them how they did, they gazed up with even more anxiety than usual. In their very remote Melanesian small childhood formal gatherings had sometimes ended in human sacrifice—a reasonable foundation for uneasiness—but in addition to this they were more exactly in tune with the people's mood than their captain; and so, raising upon the foundation to an uncommon height, they quavered as they replied.
In the empty sick-berth Stephen and Martin sat carefully in their good clothes, listening to the sound of Padeen putting the last touches of polish and exact order to the surgical instruments. Breaking the silence Martin said in a low tone, 'I owe you a fuller explanation for my conduct yesterday. I did not go with you and Mrs Oakes because for some time now I have felt—how shall I put it?—an inclination, a growing inclination for her that it would be criminal to indulge. I felt I must avoid her company even at the cost of a falseness and incivility that I do assure you, Maturin, I very much regret.'
'Never in life, my dear Martin,' said Stephen, shaking him by the hand. 'Sure, it is better to flee than to burn; and from the mere philosophical, as opposed to the moral, point of view, we covered rather more ground.'