Patrick O'Brian - The Truelove

At the second stroke Jack said 'Captain Pullings, beat to quarters.'

There were the usual repetitions, followed by the usual thundering of the drum, the usual muffled rushing sound of bare feet running fast to their action-stations, the usual report of 'All present and sober, if you please, sir' relayed to the captain, and Jack stood contemplating the silent, attentive deck, the crews grouped in their invariable pattern round their guns, the match-tubs sending up their smoke, the whole fighting-machine ready for instant action.

Nothing could have been more improbable. The whole towering array of canvas, from courses to skyscrapers, hung limp, sagging in the bunt; the smoke rose straight from the tubs; and both to larboard and to starboard there were unruffled mirror-pools of sea, miles in length and breadth, oddly purple in the declining sun. And nowhere, in the cloudless sky or on the smooth disk of enormous ocean, was there anything that moved, living or dead.

In the silence Dr Maturin's harsh voice could just be heard telling a very deaf dyspeptic seaman that his disorder was 'the remorse of a guilty stomach", that he must chew every mouthful forty times, and 'abjure that nasty grog'.

'Well, Captain Pullings,' said Jack at last, 'since tomorrow is a saluting-day we will just rattle them in and out half a dozen times. Then let us take in the flying kites and topgallants and give the rest of the day to the King.'

The King, poor gentleman, had been very fond of the infant Mozart, sitting by him at the pianoforte and turning the pages of his score, and perhaps he would have liked the pieces they played that evening, all as purely Mozartian as love of the great man could make them; for although there were no canonical violin and 'cello duets to be played, a bold mind could transcribe those for violin and viola as well as a variety of songs, the fiddle taking the voice and the 'cello something resembling the accompaniment, while boldness on quite another scale could wander among the operas, stating various passages in unison and then improvising alternately upon the theme. It might not have pleased everybody - it certainly angered Killick - but it gave them the greatest pleasure; and when they laid down their bows after their version of Sotto ipini Jack said 'I can think of nothing in its particular way so beautiful or moving. I heard La Salterello and her younger sister sing it when I was a master's mate, just before I passed for lieutenant: Sam Rogers - a drunken whoremaster if ever there was one, God rest his soul - was sitting next to me in the silent house and you could absolutely hear the tears pittering on his knee. Lord, Stephen, joy makes me sleepy. Don't you find joy makes you sleepy?'

'I do not. You are much given to sleep these days, I find; and sure your tedious anxious careworn endless weeks or even God forbid months in that vile penal colony required a deal of reparation ; but you are to consider that sleep and fatness go hand in hand, like fas and nefas - think of the autumn dormouse, the hibernating hedgepig - and I should be sorry if you were to grow even heavier. Perhaps you should confine yourself to one single dish of toasted cheese before turning in. I smell it coming.'

'Some other time certainly,' said Jack. 'But tonight is Guy Fawkes' Eve, and must in common decency be celebrated to the full. Anything else would be close to treason, tasting of rank Popery - oh Lord, Stephen, I am laid by the lee again. I am so sorry.'

The extraordinary smoothness of the sea and the consequent immobility of his cot gave the sleeping Captain Aubrey a very strong impression of being at home, an impression so strong and a sleep so profound, his whole body limp and relaxed, that even the double swabbing of the deck and flogging it dry (this being a saluting-day) did not pierce through to his ordinary consciousness. Nor was it easy for Reade to wake him when he came bounding down at six bells to tell him that the ship had been pierced.

'Captain Pullings' duty, sir, and the ship's side has been pierced below the waterline just abaft of Wilful Murder. He thought you might like to know.'

'Are we making water?'

'Not exactly, sir. It was a swordfish, and his sword is still plugging the hole."

'When you have finished playing off your humours on me, Mr Reade, you may go and tell the Doctor. I suppose the fish was not taken up?'

'Oh but he was, sir. Awkward Davies flung a harping-iron into him so hard it went right through his head. They are trying to get a bowline round his tail.'

Awkward Davies was rated able because he had followed Captain Aubrey into ship after ship whatever Jack might do and because the Surprise carried no landsman or ordinary seamen, but he possessed no seamanlike ability whatsoever apart from being able to throw the harping-iron with frightful strength, a skill that he had never been able to exercise in any commission for the last ten or twelve years. By the time Jack came on deck the swordfish, slow to acknowledge death, had at last ceased lashing; the bowline had been passed; and a gang from the afterguard, entirely directed by Davies, who would allow nobody, officer or not, to have any part in it, was gently raising the fish from the sea, brilliant in the early sun, its grey dorsal fin hanging down.

'He is one of the histiophori,' said Stephen, standing there in his nightshirt. 'Probably pulchellus.'

'Can he be ate?' asked Pullings.

'Of course he can be ate. He eats better by far than your common tunny.'

'Then we shall be able to have our feast at last,' said Pullings. 'I have been growing so shamefaced this last fortnight and more I could hardly meet her eye, a bride and all. Good morning, sir,' he cried, seeing Jack standing at the hances. 'We have caught a fish, as you see.'

'I caught him, sir,' cried Davies, a big, powerful, swarthy man, usually withdrawn, dark and brooding but now transfigured with joy. 'I caught him. Handsomely there, you goddam swabs. I flung the iron right through his goddam head, ha, ha, ha!'

'Well done, Davies. Well done upon my word. He must weigh five hundred pounds.'

'You shall have his tail and belly, sir: you shall blow out your kite with his tail and belly.'

Chapter Four

'At least the ship has steerage-way," said Jack, taking off his shirt and trousers and placing them in the hammock-netting well clear of the trail of shining scales. 'I do so loathe plunging into the accumulated filth of two, no, three days and nights. Ain't you coming?'

'With your leave I shall attend to the anatomy of this noble fish - Mr Martin, how do you do? - before the slightest change sets in.'

'You can't have the deck above half an hour, Doctor,' said Pullings. 'This is a saluting-day, you know, and everything has to be tolerable neat.'

'Mr Reade, my dear,' said Stephen, 'may I beg you to run - to jump - downstairs and bid Padeen bring me the large dissecting-case, and then go forward and tell the little girls to bear a hand, to lend a hand; but in their old, dirty pinafores.'

Their old, dirty pinafores had already been put to soak; new pinafores were out of the question: they came aft naked, as naked as worms, their small black figures exciting no comment, since they were in and out of the water much of the day in this calm weather. They were valuable assistants, with their little neat strong hands, their total lack of squeamishness -they would seize a ligament with their teeth if need be - their ability to hold almost as well with their toes as their fingers, and their eagerness to please. Padeen was useful too in heaving on the very heavy parts, and even more in warding off Davies, the ship's cook, the gunroom cook, the captain's cook, the ship's butcher, and all their respective mates, who were urgent to have their pieces out of the sun and into the relatively cool part of the ship or the salting-tubs; for swordfish was like mackerel in these latitudes, mate, prime before sunset, poor-John the second day, and rank poison the third.