Patrick O'Brian - The Thirteen Gun Salute

'He has ruined the Captain's fine pantaloons with his nasty blood,' said a forecastleman. 'It never comes out.'

'Now he is being sick,' observed old Plaice.

'Mr Martin is handing him below.'

Standish and his perfectly proper, indeed absolutely called for, expression of gratitude having disappeared, faintly belching, Jack returned to the quarterdeck and said to Stephen, 'Let me show you my splendid hygrometer. Here are spare blades, at the side of the case, do you see - uncommon neat. And wonderfully sensitive, much more so than the whalebone kind. Should you like to breathe upon it? What a piece of luck poor Standish did not bring it over in his pocket. That would have damped its spirit, I believe.' Jack laughed heartily, showed Stephen the cyanoscope, and walked him away to the taffrail, where he said quietly, 'I wish you had been here a little while ago. The Orkneymen sang out in a most surprising manner. I had never heard them before, what with the refitting, the coppering, the quarter-davits, and they being kept busy in the hold; but before we get under way again I think it can be repeated, and I should like you to tell me what you make of their cadences.'

The Surprise had been lying to all this time, although the pilot-cutter was now no more than a speck beyond the Eddystone and the ships of the line had altered course to enter the Sound; and many a questioning glance had been cast at her captain. He now walked forward and said, 'Mr Davidge, I am not quite pleased with the foretopsailyard; pray let it be eased off and settled a trifle more snug. Then we may get under way again, setting the foretopgallant: the course south-west by south. I should like to see it done by Macaulay and his mates,' he added, 'with the after-guard tailing on.'

The usual cries, pipes and running feet, and then after a moment's pause that outlandish song:

Heisa, heisa,

Vorsa, vorsa,

Vou, you.

One long pull,

More power,

Young blood.

More mud.

'I believe they may have it from the Hebrides,' said Stephen. 'It is not unlike the seal-singing of those parts; or indeed some I have heard in the far, far west of Ireland, on Belmullet, where the phalarope lives.'

Jack nodded. He was considering the fact that 'more mud' had replaced the wild shriek, and that the blocks had not clashed together with the haulers' zeal. He would go into that with Stephen later, and ask him whether it was a deformation of Gaelic. Or Norse? An expression of opinion? In any event, it had a strange beauty. For the moment there was the foretopgallant to be set.

More orders, more piping, more running feet: hands racing aloft. The cry 'Let fall, let fall,' and the topgallant billowed loose; they sheeted it home and the Orkneymen clapped on to the halliards. The sail rose, filling round and taut as the yard moved up and the men sang

Afore the wind, afore the wind

God send, God send

Fair weather, fair weather,

Many prizes, many prizes.

The naval Surprises might not hold with shanties in general but they thoroughly approved of this one, above all its sentiment; and with ship swinging to the true south-west by west and gathering speed, all those forward of the quarterdeck repeated

Many prizes,

many prizes.

Chapter 2

Fair weather, fair weather bore the Surprise right out beyond the chops of the Channel, to the lonely waters Jack preferred for priddying the decks and making all ship-shape and man-of-war fashion before he turned south for Portugal. It was not that as a letter of marque he feared any pressing of his hands, nor incivility on the part of any considerable King's ship; for in the first place he had his protection from the Admiralty and in the second those few senior officers in the home or Mediterranean fleets who might hive offered to treat the Surprise as a common privateer - obliging Aubrey to lie to, to come up under their lee, bring his papers aboard, justify his existence, answer questions and so on - knew that now he was a member of parliament he was likely to be restored to the list. But on the one hand he preferred to avoid the invitations of even the well-inclined (apart from intimate friends) and the slight awkwardness of their reception of him as a mere civilian; and on the other he would as soon do without the nuisance of the busy unrated vessels of the smaller kind commanded by lieutenants or even by master's mates. They could be dealt with, of course, but it was a time-wasting bore, an irritation.

The frigate therefore sailed into a vast unfrequented pool, traversed by whales and creatures of the deep and by young boobies in the season of the year, but by little else: its centre bay far to the south of Cape Clear in Ireland, and here, if the day should prove as peaceful as they hoped, the Surprises meant to carry on with their titivating and above all to deal with the piebald blackstrake. The weather was ideal: a dying air from the south-west and the remains of a long easy southern swell, but barely a ripple on the surface. It was one of those early mornings when there is no horizon, when sea and sky blend imperceptibly in a nameless band of colour that strengthens to pale blue at the zenith; and many hands thought they might have a little fishing over the side before they started on the blackstrake - this was a most promising time for codlings.

But before that they were to have breakfast; and presently eight bells, the bosun's call, the general hurrying about and banging of mess-kids told Stephen that they were in the act of taking it. His own would come soon, when Jack smelt the coffee, the toast and the frying bacon. Aubrey had stayed up until the middle watch, studying Humboldt's observations and working out the best form to record his own, and now as usual he was sleeping right through the din that followed eight bells - nothing but a change of wind, the cry of 'Sail ho!' or the smell of breakfast would wake him.

Had he been sailing alone as captain of the Surprise he would have enjoyed no less than three apartments of his own, the great cabin right aft, a noble room flooded with light from the stern-window that stretched across almost its whole width, and just forward of that much the same amount of space divided down the middle into the coach on the larboard side and the bed-place on the starboard. But since he was not alone he and Stephen shared the great cabin and Stephen had the coach to himself. As the frigate's surgeon, Maturin also had a cabin below, a stuffy little hole which, like those of the other officers, opened on to the gunroom: he used it on occasion, when Jack, the other side of the frail partition, snored beyond all bearing; but at present, in spite of a steady volume of sound, he was sitting there with his papers, chewing a few cocaleaves.

He had woken not long since from a most unusually explicit and vivid erotic dream; they had become increasingly frequent of late, with the laudanum dying even in its remotest lingering effects, and the vehemence of his desire quite distressed him. 'I am becoming a mere satyr,' he said. 'Where should I be without my coca-leaves? Where indeed?'

He reached out for the letters the pilot had brought and read them again. The bank regretted that it appeared to have no trace of the vouchers mentioned in his esteemed communication of the seventh ultimo; it would be obliged if Dr Maturin's verbal instructions to Mr McBean might be confirmed in writing, a necessary formality without which the business could not proceed; it was concerned to say that the requested dispatch of guineas to Mrs Maturin had not yet been able to be effected, the premium for gold now having risen from five to six shillings in the pound and Dr Maturin's direct written consent, naming this increased sum, being required for the transaction; and awaiting the favour of his further instructions it begged to have the honour of remaining his most humble obedient etc. 'Buggers,' said Stephen, using a word that he had quite often heard aboard but that rarely came to his mind as a term of reproach. A little surprised at himself, he took up the small heavy parcel that had been delivered at the same time. He had recognized the hand when first he saw the address, and in any case the sender's name was written on the back - Ashley Pratt, a surgeon and fellow member of the Royal Society who had for some time laid himself out to be agreeable. Stephen could not like him. It was true that Sir Joseph Banks thought highly of Pratt and often entertained him; but Sir Joseph's judgment of a plant or a beetle was more to be relied upon than his judgment of a man; his general kindness sometimes led him into acquaintances that his friends regretted and his general obstinacy confirmed him in them. Stephen had seen something of an obsequious, bullying fellow named Bligh, a naval officer alas, whose government of New South Wales had ended in very great discredit for everyone concerned; yet Banks still countenanced the man. Stephen was fond of Sir Joseph and he thought him an excellent president of the Society, but he did not feel that judgment was his most outstanding quality - indeed Stephen disliked almost everything he had ever heard about the management of the colony, generally looked upon as Banks's child. And though Pratt was a fashionable and no doubt fairly able surgeon, Stephen would never trust him with a popliteal aneurism, having seen what he had done to a patient in Baits. However, it was benevolent in Pratt to send him this present, a peculiarly strong magnet or combination of magnets designed to extract splinters of cannon-ball from wounds, particularly from wounded eyes: Pratt had praised the device at their last meeting.