Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

‘To tell you the truth, dear Commodore, I should prefer the Locatelli. There is something truly dispassionate and as it were geometrical in the trio that touches me, in something of the same manner as your paper on nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, considered from the navigator’s point of view, in the Transactions. But before that, may I beg Dr Maturin to show me his horn? Then while I am listening, being at the same time in physical contact with the problems posed by this improbable tooth, perhaps intuition may lead me to the solution, as it has done on three or four very happy occasions.’

Jack Aubrey had spoken of coffee, and to be sure it was as inevitable as the setting of the sun; but at present the stronger constitutions were still engaged with the remains of the spotted dog, and all hands were still drinking madeira- most emphatically all hands, since Killick, his mate and the boy, third class, who helped him in the background, were very fond of this ancient and generous wine and had perfected a way of substituting a full for a half-emptied decanter at the end of each passing: the dwarvish third-class boy wafted the first decanter out, emptied it entirely into tumblers which the three then drained in hurried gulps as opportunity offered.

Stephen had been aware of their motions for some little while - he was, in any case, well acquainted with Killick’s tendency to finish anything that was left and indeed to encourage the leaving, though rarely to this remarkable extent: Stephen had little to say about it on moral grounds, but it appeared to him that the third-class boy, a weedy little villain of about five feet, was very near his limit - he had had more opportunity than the other two and of course much less stamina. It was therefore something of a relief to Stephen when the last decanter, which had furnished the loyal toast, was removed, and Jack, Mr Wright and Jacob looked expectantly at him. ‘Killick,’ he said, ‘pray be so good as to step into my cabin and bring the bow-case hanging behind the door.’

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ cried Killick, paler than Stephen could have wished, and apt to stare. ‘Bow-case it is.’

But bow-case it was not. Killick had seen fit to take the horn out and now he could be seen for a moment in the light of the open door, making antic gestures with its point at the third-class boy, who was draining the last of the wine. ‘Oh, oh,’ cried the boy, choking, and he plunged forward in a paroxysm of adolescent drunkenness, spewing improbable jets of madeira, grasping Killick’s knees and bringing him down. He fell flat on the deck, holding the horn close to his chest. It broke in the middle with a sharp crack, sending off a long sliver that shot into the great cabin.

These things took place in the coach, the small apartment forward and to larboard, generally used on such occasions. Jack strode through it over the two bodies, calling very loud and clear for his bosun, swabbers and the master-at-arms.

Bonden took in the situation at once and in a cold, silent fury he ran the now speechless Killick away forward, while the master-at-arms dragged the limp wretched boy to the nearest pump. The swabbers, old hands at this job, set to without a word: and with extraordinary speed - no comments whatsoever - the frigate’s people cleaned up, cleared away, and even before the deck was quite dry, restored the cabin to a wholly clean and civilized condition.

Mr Wright was sitting on the broad locker that ran across the Surprise’s great cabin, just by the sweep of stern windows, when Stephen came back, carrying his ‘cello and the scores. The old gentleman had the pieces of narwhal horn carefully arranged by his side, the broken parts set together and the eighteen-inch splinter laid so exactly in place that at first sight the horn looked whole. ‘Dear Dr Maturin,’ he said, ‘I fear you must be grievously distressed.’

‘No, sir,’ said Stephen. ‘I do not mind it.’

Wright hesitated for a moment and then went on, ‘But believe me, this is one of the few things I can do really well. The providential splinter has shown me the nature of the inner substance; the breaks are perfectly clean; and I have a cement that will knit them so firmly that the tooth will retain all its original strength: a cement that would make dentists’ fortunes, were it less noxious. Pray let me take it home with me, will you?’

‘I should be infinitely obliged to you, sir, but ...’

‘I used to do the same for Cousin Christine’s skeletons many years ago. And while you are playing I shall muse with the other half of my mind on the lower shaft, in which those whorls and spirals are so startlingly obvious. A very extraordinary puzzle indeed.’

‘You mean to play, Stephen?’ Jack murmured in his ear.

‘Why, certainly.’

‘Bonden,’ called Jack, ‘place the music stand and light along my fiddle, d’ye hear me, there?’

‘Aye-aye, sir: music stands and light along the fiddle it is.’

Chapter Four

Once again the thunder roared from the saluting batteries as Jack Aubrey’s squadron made its painful and dangerous way out of Mahon harbour: short boards down the narrow Cala de San Esteban against an irregular gusting southerly breeze and what tide the Mediterranean could summon up at its worst. A small squadron now, since Briseis, Rainbow and Ganymede had been sent off to protect the eastern trade and Dover was still escorting the Indiamen on their homeward run.

Ringle, leading the way, was nimbler and brisk in stays, as became a schooner of her class, and she was tolerably at home in such waters; so was Surprise, handled by a man who had sailed her for the finest part of his life at sea and who loved her dearly - a ship, furthermore, that was blessed with an uncommonly high proportion of truly able seamen, thoroughly accustomed to her ways and to her captain’s. Not that theirs was a happy lot as the channel grew even narrower, the cries of ‘Hands about ship’ more frequent, and the recently-shipped Marines (at least one in each gun-crew) more awkward still: for in common decency the batteries’ salutes to the broad pennant had to be returned, returned exactly: and this called for wonderful activity.

Yet the sufferings of the Surprises, though severe and often commented upon, were not to be compared to those of the Pomones, a huddled-together ship’s company with a

captain who had never commanded a post-ship before, a disgruntled first lieutenant and a new second lieutenant - he was now officer of the watch - who did not know a single

man aboard and whose orders were often confused, often misunderstood and sometimes shouted down by exasperated, frightened bosun’s mates, far too busy with their starters: and all this in an unhandy, heavily-pitching frigate with far too much sail set forward, pressing down her forefoot.

The Commodore and his officers watched from the quarterdeck: often and often their faces assumed the appearance of whistling and their heads shook with the same grave, foreboding motion. Had it not been for the frenzied zeal of Pomone’s aged gunner and his mates she would never have contributed a tenth part of her share of salutes, and even so she cut but a wretched figure.

‘Shall I ever be able to use her heavy broadside in the Adriatic?’ murmured Jack to himself. ‘Or anywhere else, for that matter? Three hundred blundering hopeless grass combing buggers, for all love,’ he added, as the Pomone very, very nearly missed stays, her jib-boom brushing the pitiless rock.

Unlikely though it had seemed at times, even the Cala de San Esteban had an end: first Ringle cleared the point, stood on and brought the wind abaft the beam; and she was followed by the others. Yet although against probability he had escaped shipwreck, young Captain Vaux (a deeply conscientious officer) did not, like some of his shipmates, give way to relief and self-congratulation. ‘Silence, fore and aft,’ he cried in a voice worthy the service, and in the shocked hush he went on, ‘Mr Bates, let us take advantage of the guns being warm and the screens being rigged and make the signal Permission to fire a few rounds.’