Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian

  From the sky forward there was a guttural shriek—a man falling from the yard, grabbing at air, almost motionless for a flash of time, head back, strained madly up; then falling, faster, faster, faster. He hit a backstay. It bounced him clear of the side and he splashed into the sea by the mizzen-chains.

  'Man overboard!' shouted a dozen hands, flinging things into the water and running about.

  'Mr Goodridge, bring her to the wind, if you please,' said Jack, kicking off his shoes and diving from the rail. 'How fresh—perfect!' he thought as the bubbles rushed thundering past his ears and the good taste of clean sea filled his nose. He curved upwards, looking at the rippled silver underside of the surface, rose strongly out of the water, snorting and shaking his yellow head, saw the man floundering fifty yards away. Jack was a powerful rather than a graceful swimmer, and he surged through the water with his head and shoulders out, like a questing dog, fixing the point in case the man should sink He reached him—starting eyes, inhuman face belching water, stretching up, the terror of the deep (like most sailors he could not swim)—circled him, seized him by the root of his pigtail and said, 'Easy, easy, now, Bolton. Hold up.' Bolton writhed and grasped with convulsive strength. Jack kicked him free and bawled right into his ear, 'Clasp your hands, you fool. Clasp your hands, I say. There's a shark just by, and if you splash he'll have you.'

  The word shark went home even to that terrified, half-drunk, water-logged mind. Bolton clasped his hands as though the force of his grip might keep him safe: he went perfectly rigid: Jack kept him afloat, and there they lay, rising and falling on the swell until the boat picked them up.

  Bolton sat confused, obscurely ashamed and stupid in the bottom of the boat, gushing water; to cover his confusion he assumed a lumpish catalepsy, and had to be handed up the side. 'Carry him below,' said Jack. 'You had better have a look at him, Doctor, if you would be so kind.'

  'He has a contusion on his chest,' said Stephen, coming back to where Jack stood dripping on the quarterdeck, drying as he leaned on the rail and enjoyed the progress of the work on the running rigging. 'But no ribs are broken. May I congratulate you upon saving him? The boat would never have come up in time. Such promptitude of mind—such decision! I honour it.'

  'It was pretty good, was it not?' said Jack. 'This is capital, upon my word,'—nodding to the mainmast—'and at this rate we shall have the bentincks bent tomorrow. Did you smoke that? I said, the bentincks bent. Ha, ha, ha!'

  Was he making light of it out of coxcombery, fanfaronade? From embarrassment? No, Stephen decided. It was as genuine as his mirth at his ignoble tiny pun, or adumbration of a pun, the utmost limit of naval wit.

  'Was you not afraid,' he asked, 'when you reflected upon the shark—his notorious voracity?'

  'Him? Oh, sharks are mostly gammon, you know: all cry and no wool. Unless there's blood about, they prefer galley leavings any day. On the West Indies station I once went in after a jolly and dived plump on to the back of a huge great brute: he never turned a hair.'

  'Tell me, is this a matter of frequent occurrence with you? Does it in no way mark an epocha in your life, at all?'

  'Epocha? Why, no; I can't say it does. Bolton here must make the twenty-second since I first went to sea: or maybe the twenty-third. The Humane chaps sent me a gold medal once. Very civil in them, too; with a most obliging letter. I pawned it in Gibraltar.'

  'You never told me this.'

  'You never asked. But there is nothing to it, you know, once you get used to their grappling. You feel good, and worthy—deserve well of the republic, and so on, for a while, which is agreeable, I don't deny; but there is really nothing to it—it don't signify. I should go in for a dog, let alone an able seaman: why, if it were warm, I dare say I should go in for a surgeon, ha, ha, ha! Mr Parker, I think we may rig the sheets tonight and get the stump of the mizzen out first thing tomorrow. Then you will be able to priddy the deck and make all shipshape.'

  'It is all ahoo at present, sir, indeed,' said the first lieutenant. 'But I must beg your pardon, sir, for not receiving you aboard in a proper fashion just now. May I offer my congratulations?'

  'Why thank you, Mr Parker: an able seaman is a valuable prize. Bolton is one of our best upper-yardsmen.'

  'He was drunk, sir. I have him in my list.'

  'Perhaps we may overlook it this once, Mr Parker. Now the sheers can go with one foot here and the other by the scuttle, with a guy to the third hoop of the mainmast.'

  In the evening, when it was too dark to work but too delightful to go below, Stephen observed, 'If you make it your study to depreciate rescues of this nature, will you not find that they are not valued? That you get no gratitude?'

  'Now you come to mention it, I suppose it is so,' said Jack. 'It depends: some take it very kind. Bonden, for example. I pulled him out of the Mediterranean, as I dare say you remember, and no one could be more sensible of it. But most think it no great matter, I find. I can't say I should myself, unless it was a particular friend, who knew it was me, and who went in saying "Why, damn me, I shall pull Jack Aubrey out." No. Upon the whole,' he said, reflecting and looking wise, 'it seems to me, that in the article of pulling people out of the sea, virtue is its own reward.'

  They lapsed into silence, their minds following different paths as the wake stretched out behind and the stars rose in procession over Portugal.

  'I am determined at last,' cried Stephen, striking his hand upon his knee, 'I am at last determined—determined, I say—that I shall learn to swim.'

  'I believe,' said Jack, 'that by the setting of the water tomorrow, we shall have our bentincks drawing.'

  'The bentincks draw, the bentincks draw, the bentincks draw fu' weel,' said Mr Macdonald.

  'Is the Captain pleased?' asked Stephen.

  'He is delighted. There is no great wind to try them, but she seems much improved. Have you not remarked her motion is far more easy? We may have the pleasure of the purser's company once more. I tell you, Doctor, if that man belches of set purpose just once again, or picks his teeth at table, I shall destroy him.'

  'That is why you are cleaning your pistols, I presume. But I am glad to hear what you tell me, about these sails. Perhaps now we shall hear less of selvagees and booms—the inner jib, the outer jib—nay, to crown all, the jibs of jibs, God forbid. Your mariner is an honest fellow, none better; but he is sadly given to jargon. Those are elegant, elegant pistols. May I handle them?'

  'Pretty, are they not?' said Macdonald, passing the case. 'Joe Manton made them for me. Do these things interest you?'

  'It is long since I had a pistol in my hand,' said Stephen. 'Or a small-sword. But when I was younger I delighted in them—I still do. They have a beauty of their own. Then again, they have a real utility. In Ireland, you know, we go out more often than the English do. I believe it is the same with you?'

  Macdonald thought it was, though there was a great difference between the Highlands and the rest of the kingdom; what did Dr Maturin mean by 'often'? Stephen said he meant twenty or thirty times in a twelvemonth; in his first year at the university he had known men who exceeded this. 'At that time I attached a perhaps undue importance to staying alive, and I became moderately proficient with both the pistol and the small-sword. I have a childish longing to be at it again. Ha, ha—carte, tierce, tierce, sagoon, a hit!'

  'Should you like to try a pass or two with me on deck?'

  'Would that be quite regular? I have a horror of the least appearance of eccentricity.'

  'Oh, yes, yes! It is perfectly usual. In the Boreas I used to give the midshipmen lessons as soon as I had finished exercising the Marines; and one or two of the lieutenants were quite good. Come, let us take the pistols too.'

  On the quarterdeck they foined and lunged, stamping, crying 'Ha!' and the clash and hiss of steel upon steel seduced the midshipmen of the watch from their duty until they were banished to the heights, leaving their happier friends to watch the venomous wicked dart and flash entranced.

 
'Stop, stop! Hold—belay, avast,' cried Stephen, stepping back at last. 'I have no breath—I gasp—I melt.'

  'Well,' said Macdonald, 'I have been a dead man these ten minutes past. I have only been fighting speeritually.'

  'Sure, we were both corpses from very early in the battle.'

  'Bless us all,' said Jack, 'I had no notion you were such a man of blood, dear Doctor.'

  'You must be uncommon deadly when you are in practice,' said Macdonald. 'A horrid quick murdering lunge. I should not care to go out with you, sir. You may call me pudding, and I will bear it meekly. Do you choose to try the pistols?'

  Jack, watching from his side of the quarterdeck, was wholly amazed: he had no idea that Stephen could hold a sword, nor yet load a pistol, still less knock the pips out of a playing-card at twenty paces: yet he had known him intimately. He was pleased that his friend was doing so well; he was pleased at the respectful silence; but he was a little sad that he could not join in, that he stood necessarily aloof—the captain could not compete—and he was obscurely uneasy. There was something disagreeable, and somehow reptilian, about the cold, contained way Stephen took up his stance, raised his pistol, looked along the barrel with his pale eyes, and shot the head off the king of hearts. Jack's certainties wavered; he turned to look at his new bentincks, smoothly filled, drawing to perfection. Finisterre would be under their lee by now, some sixty leagues away; and presently, about midnight, he would alter course eastward—eastward, for Ortegal and the Bay.

  Just before eight bells in the first watch Pullings came on deck, pushing a yawning, bleary-eyed Parslow before him.

  'You are a good relief, Mr Pullings,' said the master. 'I shall be right glad to turn in.' He caught the yawn from the midshipman, gaped enormously and went on, 'Well, here you have her. Courses, main and fore tops'ls, forestays'l and jib. Course nor-nor-east, to be altered due east at two bells. Captain to be called if you sight any sail. Oh, my dear cot, how she calls. A good night to you, then. That child could do with a bucket of water over him,' he added, moving towards the hatchway.

  Deep in his sleep Jack was aware of the changing watch—sixty men hurrying about in a ship a hundred and thirty feet long can hardly do so in silence—but it did not stir him more than one point from the deepest level of unconsciousness; it did not bring him half so near the surface as the change of course, which followed one hour later. He swam up, between sleeping and waking, knowing that his body was no longer lying in the same relationship to the north. And that the Polychrest was going large: the quick nervous rise and fall had given way to a long, easy glide. No roaring or calling out on deck. Pullings had put her before the wind with a few quiet remarks: all wool and no cry: how fortunate he was to have that good young fellow. But there was something not quite right. The sails had been trimmed, yet feet were pattering about at a great rate: through the open skylight he caught quick excited words, and he was fully awake, quite prepared for the opening of his door and the dim form of a midshipman beside his cot.

  'Mr Pullings' duty, sir, and he believes there is a sail on the larboard bow.'

  'Thank you, Mr Parslow. I shall be with him directly.'

  He reached the glow of the binnacle as Pullings came sliding down a backstay from the top, thump on to the quarterdeck. 'I think I picked 'un out, sir,' he said, offering his telescope. 'Three points on the larboard bow, maybe a couple of mile away.'

  It was a darkish night: an open sky, but hazy at the edges, the great stars little more than golden points and the small ones lost; the new moon had set long ago. When his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could make out the horizon well enough, a lighter bar against the black sky, with Saturn just dipping now. The wind had veered a trifle northerly; it had strengthened, and white water flecked the rise of every swell. Several times he thought he had the topsails of a ship in his glass, but every time they dissolved, never to reappear.

  'You must have good eyes,' he said.

  'She fired a gun, sir, and I caught the flash; but I did not like to call you till I had made certain sure. There she is, sir, just under the sprits'l yard. Tops'ls: maybe mizzen t'garns'l. Close-hauled, I take it.'

  'By God, I am getting old,' thought Jack, lowering the glass. Then he saw her, a ghostly flash that did not dissolve—vanished, but reappeared in the same place. A whiteness that the glass showed as a pale bar—topsails braced up sharp so that they overlapped. And a hint of white above: the mizzen topgallant. She was on the starboard tack, close hauled on the fresh north-westerly breeze, probably heading west-south-west or a little south of it. If she had fired a gun, just one gun, it meant that she had consorts—that she was tacking and that they were to do the same. He searched the darkness eastward, and this time he saw one, perhaps two, of those dim but lasting wafts. On this course their paths would intersect. But for how long would the remote unknown hold on to his present tack? No great while, for Cape Ortegal lay under his lee, an iron-bound coast with cruel reefs.

  'Let us haul our wind, Mr Pullings,' he said. And to the helmsman, 'Luff up and touch her.'

  The Polychrest came up and up; the stars turned, sweeping an arc in the sky, and he stood, listening intently for the first flutter of canvas that would mean she was as close to the wind as she would lie. The breeze blew on his left cheek-bone now; a dash of spray came over the rail to wet his face, and forward the leech of the foretopsail began to shake.

  Jack took the wheel, eased her a trifle. 'Sharp that bow-line, there,' he called. 'Mr Pullings, I believe we can come up a trifle more. See to the braces and the bowlines.'

  Pullings ran forward over the pale deck: a dark group on the forecastle heaved, 'One, two, three, belay,' and as he came aft so ropes tightened, yards creaked round an extra few inches. Now she was trimmed as sharp as she could be, and gradually Jack heaved on the spokes against the strong living pressure, bringing her head closer, closer to the wind. The pole-star vanished behind the maintopsail. Closer, still closer: and that was her limit. He had not believed she could do so well. She was lying not far from five points off the wind, as opposed to her old six and a half, and even if she made her usual extravagant leeway she could still eat the wind out of the stranger, so long as she had a very careful hand at the wheel and paid great attention to her trim: and he had the feeling she was sagging less, too. 'Thus, very well thus,' he said to the helmsman, looking into his face by the binnacle light. 'Ah, it is Haines, I see. Well, Haines, you will have to oblige me with a double trick at the wheel: this calls for a right seaman. Dyce, do you mind me, now? Not a hair's breadth off.'

  'Aye, aye, sir. Dyce it is.'

  'Carry on, Mr Pullings. Check all breechings and shot-racks. You may shake out a reef in the maintopsail if the breeze slackens. Call me if you find any change.'

  He went below, pulled on his shirt and breeches and lay down on his cot, leafing through Steel's Navy List: but he could not rest, and presently he was on the quarterdeck again, pacing the lee side with his hands behind his back, a glance over the dark sea at every turn.

  Two ships, perhaps three, tacking by signal: they might be anything—British frigates, French ships of the line, neutrals. But they might also be enemy merchantmen, slipping out by the dark of the moon: a hint of incautious light as the second rose on the swell made merchantmen more probable; and then again, it was unlikely that men-of-war should straggle over such an expanse of sea. He would get a better idea as the sky lightened; and in any case, whether they tacked or not, he would have the weather-gage at dawn—he would be up-wind of them.

  He watched the side, he watched the wake: leeway she was making, of course; but it was distinctly less. Each heave of the log showed a steady three knots and a half: slow, but he wanted nothing more—at this point he would have reduced sail if she had been moving faster, for fear of finding himself too far away by morning.

  Far over the sea on the Polychrest's quarter a flash lit up the sky, and more than a heartbeat later he heard the boom: they were tacking again. Now he and the un
known were sailing on parallel courses, and the Polychrest had the weather-gage at its most perfect: she was directly in the eye of the wind from the leading ship of the three—the third was a certainty now, and had been so this last half hour.

  Eight bells. It would be light before very long. 'Mr Pullings, keep the watch on deck. In main and mizzen topsails. Mr Parker, good morning to you. Let the galley fires be lit at once, if you please: the hands will go to breakfast as soon as possible—a substantial breakfast, Mr Parker. Rouse up the idlers. And then you may begin to clear the ship for action: we will beat to quarters at two bells. Where are the relief midshipmen? Quartermaster, go cut down their hammocks this instant. Pass the word for the gunner. Now, sir,'—to the appalled Rossall and Babbington—'what do you mean by this vile conduct? Not appearing on deck in time for your watch? Nightcaps, dirty faces, by God! You are unwashed idle lubbers, both of you. Ah, Mr Rolfe, there you are: how much powder have you filled?'

  The preparations went smoothly ahead, and each watch breakfasted in turn. 'Now you'll see summat, mates,' said William Screech, an old Sophie, as he rammed down his meal—cheese and portable soup. 'Now you'll see old Goldilocks cut one of his capers over them forringers.'

  'It's time we see summat,' said a landsman. 'Where are all these golden dollars we were promised? It has been more kicks than ha'pence, so far.'

  'They are a-lying just to leeward, mate,' said Screech. 'All you got to do, is to mind your duty and serve your gun brisk, and bob's your uncle Dick.'

  'I wish I was at home with my old loom,' said a weaver, 'golden dollars or no golden dollars.'

  Now the galley fires were dowsed in stench and hissing: the fearnought screens appeared at the hatchways: Jack's cabin vanished, Killick hurrying his belongings to the depths and the carpenters taking away the bulkheads: the gun-room poultry went clucking below in their coops: and all this while Jack stared out over the sea. The eastern sky was showing a hint of light by the time the bosun came to report a difficulty in his puddening—did the Captain wish it to be above the new clench or below? This question took no great consideration, but when Jack had given his answer and could look over the side again, the stranger was there as clear as he could desire: on the dull silver of the sea her hull showed black as it rose, something under a mile away on the starboard quarter. And behind her, far to leeward, the two others. They were no great sailors, that was clear, for although they had a fine spread of canvas abroad they were finding it hard to come up with her: she had hauled up her courses to let them close the distance, and now they were perhaps three parts of a mile from her. One seemed to be jury-rigged. Tucking his glass into his bosom, he climbed to the maintop. At the first glance he took, once he had settled firmly and had brought the leading ship into focus, he pursed his mouth and uttered a silent whistle. A thirty-two-, no, a thirty-four-gun frigate, no less. At the second he smiled, and without taking his eye from the telescope he called, 'Mr Pullings, pray come into the top. Here, take my glass. What do you make of her?'