Patrick O'Brian - The Truelove

For some time now, as the veracity left West's account, the ship had been heeling more and more: to counteract the lean those to windward, those on Pullings' right, braced their feet against the stretcher; but Reade's legs were too short to reach it and he slid quietly under the table, his eyes shut, his face pale. Stephen glanced at Padeen, who lifted the boy out and carried him away as easily as he might have carried off the folded cloth when it was drawn. There was no fuss, no comment; and West did not pause in his narrative.

Jack listened with half an ear, grateful for the sound but wishing that it might be replaced with something of greater interest. He was not a censorious man; he did not mind West's fiction, which he recognized as being composed for Mrs Oakes' benefit, any more than he minded Reade's collapse; but West was ordinarily the soul of truth, and his fiction was poor, embarrassingly poor, as well as far, far too long. It was with some relief therefore that he saw the long-expected messenger from the quarterdeck appear in the doorway. The gunner's mate looked into the gunroom and its formal array, hesitated for a moment, and then strode aft as if he were going into action. 'Gunner's duty, sir,' he said, very loud, bending over Jack, 'and the breeze is freshening. May he reduce sail?'

'Certainly, Melon. Tell him I am very glad to hear it and that I desire he will use his own judgment."

'Aye aye, sir. Is very glad to hear it, and desires he...'

'Will use his own judgment.'

'Will use his own judgment it is, sir.'

'I am very glad to hear it,' said Jack to the table at large. 'We have been creeping over a mill-pond far too long, and the hands have been idle all this time.' A childhood memory to do with Satan and idle hands floated there, but he could not quite fix it and ended with the unuttered words 'Not only the hands, neither, God damn the wicked dogs.'

It was some time since he had dined with the gunroom. The last occasion had been rather a dull afternoon - Davidge and West were always indifferent company, their conversation either shop or twice-told tales, and Martin was always constrained when he was there - but a perfectly acceptable, traditional afternoon in a well-run ship.

Now the difference was very great. He could only guess at the causes: the effects, to a man who had spent most of his life at sea, were perfectly evident - the gunroom, as a civilized community, was almost at an end. But much more than their social comfort was at stake. Without good feeling between the officers, effective, willing co-operation was impossible, and without co-operation a ship could not be run efficiently: ill-blood in wardroom or gunroom was always perceived on the forecastle and it always upset the hands - apart from anything else each set of men had their own particular loyalty. And this ill-blood seemed to run in many directions: there was not only the obvious dislike between West and Davidge, but a series of other currents that seemed to affect Pullings as well and even Martin.

At present however there was this fine new flow of talk, initiated, he recalled, by Mrs Oakes - 'I shall always honour her for saving the feast from sinking with all hands' - and even the sullen Davidge had grown quite voluble.

Jack had missed the beginning while he reflected upon the situation, upon its possible causes and remedies, upon the ship's inner voice, now increasingly urgent in spite of sails having been taken in, and upon his own duties as a guest, and when he heard Stephen say ' "O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," ' he called down the table 'What was that, Doctor? Are you talking about the income-tax?'

'Not at all, at all. We were discussing duels and when they were, by general consent, permissible, when they were universally condemned, and when they were absolutely required. Mrs Oakes asked whether the military code did not oblige the officer who was beaten by Earl Howe to ask for satisfaction, a blow being an intolerable affront, and we all said no, because he was a very old gentleman and therefore allowed to be a little testy, because his immense deserts excused him almost anything, and because he could be said to have asked pardon by patting the lieutenant on the shoulder and saying "Well, so she ain't Invincible after all." '

'I am so ashamed,' said Clarissa. 'I lived very much out of the world when I was young, and that was one of my two pieces of fashionable wisdom. The other was that if you paid for anything in a shop with a bank-note you must always clearly state its value, so that there may be no argument about the change.'

'How I wish I had been taught that when I was a boy,' said Jack. 'Bank-notes did not often come my way, but the first decent prize-money I ever saw had one in it, a ten-pounder on Child's, no less; and the damned - I beg pardon, ma'am -the shabby fellow at the Keppel's Knob gave me change for five, swearing there was not a tenner in the house - I might look in the till if I wished, and if I found a tenner there I might have it all. But Doctor, how did the Spartan dog come in.'

'It seemed to me to express the state of mind of a deeply injured furious duellist when he plunges his sword into the opponent's bowels.'

'May I cut you a trifle of pudding, ma'am?' asked Pullings, moved by the association of ideas.

Clarissa might decline, but Captain Aubrey, feeling that he must do honour to the gunroom's feast, already tolerably damped, held out his plate; and now for the first time he realized with a pang that a third slice was going to be more of a labour than a delight: non sum qualis eram drifted up from those remote years when he was flogged into at least a remote, nodding acquaintance with Latin; the rest he could not recall. It might have had nothing to do with pudding at all, but the effect was the same.

'Mr Martin,' he asked, 'what is the Latin for pudding, for a pudding of this kind?'

'Heavens, sir, I cannot tell,' said Martin. 'What do you say, Doctor?'

'Sebi confectio discolor,' said Stephen. 'Will I pour you a glass of wine, colleague?'

'I beg your pardon, sir," said Davidge, standing between Jack and Pullings, 'but it will be eight bells in two minutes and Oakes and I must relieve the gunner.'

'Lord,' cried Pullings, 'so you must. How time flies! But you must drink to the bride and bridegroom first. Come, gentlemen, bumpers if you please, and no heel-taps. Here's to the bride' - bowing to Clarissa - 'and here's to the happy man,' bowing to Oakes.

They all rose, and swaying on the roll they cried Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay, stretched out their glasses to Clarissa, crying Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay again, and then to Oakes, with a final cheer in which all the seamen servants joined, a fine deep roar.

When the party had broken up, Stephen took Padeen forward and they emptied Reade with a powerful emetic, undressed him, cleaned him, and put him back into his hammock, still three parts drunk and very unhappy. Stephen sat with him for a while after Padeen had carried off the basin, dirty clothes and dressings: Reade had the whole starboard midshipmen's berth to himself, immediately opposite the Oakeses, and very spacious it looked under the swinging lantern. The Surprise had from early times been a law unto herself as far as berthing was concerned, and now that she carried no Marines and a smaller body of seamen, the carpenter, bosun and gunner had taken advantage of the elbow-room to move themselves into cabins right forward, private triangular snugs, so that now the two midshipmen's berths were comparatively isolated, with the gunroom bulkhead and the ladder to the upper deck aft, the great screened-off space where the crew slept forward, and nothing in the broad passage between them but the captain's pantry, a stout erection the height of the 'tween decks, seven feet across and five fore and aft.