Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

'I quite agree, sir,' said Fielding; and then seeing that Captain Aubrey did not intend to be more specific he asked Do you mean to rig church tomorrow, sir?'

I think not,' said Jack It may be that things are best left to themselves, so let us content ourselves with divisions and the Articles for this bout. At least until we are in open water.

And I do not think we will beat to quarters either. The hands could do with something of a rest.' Then after a pause, 'Let us take a glass below as soon as the cabin exists again.'

The cabin bulkheads, the cabin furniture, the Captain's fiddle, the miniature of Sophie and everything that could interfere with the action of the guns - with the clean sweep fore and aft that ships under Jack Aubrey's command adopted almost every evening of their lives - had been struck down below at the first beat of quarters. Now they were being restored with extraordinary speed by the young carpenter and his crew - practised hands indeed - and within five minutes there was a Christian room again, with sherry and biscuits set out on a tray.

Jack said 'I think of promoting Conway, Oakes and Miller. Have you any observations?'

'Conway has always been an outstanding young fellow, of course,' said Fielding. 'And Oakes and Miller behaved well in the recent heavy weather.'

'So I noticed. I know very well they are far from perfect, but we do need reefers. Can you suggest any other foremast hands that would do better?'

'No, sir,' said Fielding after some consideration. 'Honestly speaking, I cannot.'

The naval idea of rest might have dismayed many a landsman. Hammocks were piped up half an hour earlier than usual and during breakfast the bosun roared down the main hatchway, 'D'ye hear there, fore and aft? Clean for muster at five bells: duck frocks and white trousers,' while his mates farther forward cried 'D'ye here, there? Clean shirt and shave for muster at five bells,' calls almost as familiar in a man-of-war as a cock-crow in a farmyard.

From the end of breakfast the ship was in a state of strong, directed and habitual activity: all hands, apart from the few still-beardless boys, shaved, using either their own razors or submitting to the Nutmeg's barber, while all those with pigtails sought out their tie-mates for a mutual combing and replaiting. There was a great deal of dry holy-stoning of the deck, a great deal of washing hands and faces in basins by the scuttle-butt, and the spotless frocks and trousers, washed last Thursday in a close-reefed topsail gale, made their appearance, often adorned with ribbons along the seams, together with broad-brimmed sennit hats with the ship's name already embroidered on their bands. At the same time the Marines polished, pipeclayed and brushed what they had not polished, pipeclayed and brushed on Saturday evening; and of course all bags were brought up and arranged in pyramids on the booms. Those officers who could had waited until the last moment before changing into their best uniforms, yet even so they were coming to a slow boil before Richardson said to Bennett, the mate of the watch, 'Beat to divisions,' and Bennett, turning to the drummer, said 'Beat to divisions.' At the first stroke of the generale the Marines filed aft, right aft, clump clump, and to the sound of martial cries they formed in ranks across the ship with Welby at their head, attended by his non-commissioned officers and the drummer, while the seamen ran to their appointed stations, in single rows along the rest of the quarterdeck, the gangways and the forecastle, their officers and midshipmen calling out 'Toe the line, there. Oh you wicked lubbers, toe the line.' When they had been reduced to some sort of order, the officer of each division reported to Fielding that his men were present, properly dressed and clean, sir. Fielding stepped across the deck to Jack, took off his hat and said, 'All the officers have reported, sir.'

'Very well, Mr Fielding,' said Jack. 'Then we will go round the ship, if you please.'

This they did, starting as usual with the Marines; then came the afterguard and waisters - one division in the Nutmeg -under Mr Warren and Bennett; the gunners, under Mr White, for want of a quarterdeck officer, and Fleming; and the foretop-men, under Richardson and Reade. These were the youngest, most agile and most highly decorated members of the ship's company; they took a harmless delight in being fine and many were thickly tattooed as well as being ribboned and embroidered fore and aft. Conway was among them, a cheerful young man with bright blue seams to his trousers; so were Oakes and Miller, less cheerful but obviously bearing up quite well - they had even ventured upon a little pink piping round the edges of their frock. They had been growing steadily less cadaverous at each muster; their pimples had diminished. Then came the forecastlemen, older, experienced hands under Seymour; yet even among these men, who in some cases had been at sea for forty years, there was not one who had made the circumnavigation, not one who had foreseen the gained day; and they too retained some of that unusual elation of spirits.

At each division the officer saluted, the men whipped off their hats, smoothed their hair and stood fairly straight; Jack walked along the line, looking attentively at each man, each well-known face. This was something of a feat when there was a sea running, for there was a strongly-held conviction that since the Nutmeg, though small, was ship-rigged and commanded by a post-captain, she should be considered a frigate, and that the hands should line the gangways regardless of the fact that this left precious little room for a portly captain to pass, still less to inspect, a portly foremast hand.

Presently this stage was over, and having inspected the spotless galley with its shining coppers Jack and his first lieutenant passed aft along the empty berth-deck, each berth ornamented with pictures, gleaming pots, Javan peacock-feathers, and a candle on the largest chest; they looked at the cable-tiers, the store-rooms, and eventually they came to the sick-berth, where Stephen, Macmillan and a newly-acquired loblolly boy received them, reported on the five obstinate cases of Batavia pox and the one broken collarbone - a sheet-anchor man who was so pleased by his gained day that he undertook to show his mates how to dance the Irish trot poised on the fore-jeer bitts.

The Captain returned to the quarterdeck and the brilliant sunshine. The Marines carried arms with a fine clash and stamp, all officers saluted, all the seamen's hats came off. 'Very well, Mr Fielding,' he said. 'We will content ourselves with the Articles, and then contemplate dinner.'

The sword-rack lectern and the boards containing the Articles were at hand: Jack ran through the familiar text at a canter, and ending with "All other crimes not capital, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act or for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea," he carried on 'Mr Fielding, as there is some little time before eight bells, you may take in the royals and haul down the flying jib.'

For his own part he had a couple of hours and more in which to contemplate dinner: but the pause was worse for his guests, Richardson and Seymour, because the gunroom ordinarily dined well before the cabin and the midshipmen's mess even earlier, at noon itself.

However, it was a meal worth waiting for. Jack's cook Wilson had excelled himself with a fish soup, made mostly of prawns bought from a passing proa, and a roast saddle of mutton, followed by a variety of puddings; and the pale sherry they drank throughout had not suffered at all from at least three crossings of the equator. How they got it all down in a temperature of eighty degrees in an almost saturated atmosphere, and they wearing stout broadcloth, was a wonder to Stephen: all three were now lashing into the baked rice pudding, he observed, the treacle tart, the boiled sago God preserve them, the Shrewsbury cakes, with every appearance of cheerful appetite. Though a discerning eye, very well accustomed to Jack Aubrey's face, could make out that quite another mood underlay the Captain's jovial manner.