Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

The tall gentleman looked taller than usual when Stephen, carrying his 'cello, found him in the cabin. "There you are, Stephen," he cried, his strong, stern face lightening. "I thought it was Turnbull. Forgive me a few minutes, will you? I must have a word with him. Take Grant's observations into the stern gallery; they will interest you - he speaks of the birds."

Stephen took the slim, neatly-written book and sat with it in a swinging chair out on the splendid kind of balcony that overhung the sea. It was an account of a voyage of discovery made by a sixty-ton brig, the Lady Nelson, which sailed from England to the Cape and then to New Holland by way of the Bass Strait, under the command of Lieutenant James Grant, RN, in 1800, taking eleven months to do so.

From time to time he heard Jack's or rather the Captain's voice, cold, distant, and full of authority. It was not raised, but it had remarkable carrying power: remarkable crushing power, too. Mr Turnbull had not sailed with Captain Aubrey before and at first he tried to defend himself against the charge of brutality, incompetence, and ungentlemanly behaviour; but very soon his voice was heard no more, and his very large, deeply displeased Captain told him in the clearest possible manner that none but a fool started, struck, beat or abused hands for not knowing their duty when those hands could not conceivably

know it, having only just gone to sea; that any officerlike man knew the names of all the people in his watch; that it was quite as easy to call out 11crapath as You, sir; and that no gentleman used foul language when a lady was within earshot - any whore's bully on Portsmouth Point could outdo Mr Turnbull in that line. Discipline and a taut ship were one thing: bullying and an unhappy ship were another. The hands would always respect an officer who was a seaman, without having to be knocked about: but how could Mr Turnbull hope for their respect when they were treated to the spectacle of the headsalls trimmed as Captain Aubrey had seen them trimmed this afternoon?Words on the proper trimming of headsails followed: Mr Turnbull might do well to remember the difference between a sail bowsed tight as a board and a sail with a belly in it, that could draw. It was some years since Stephen had heard Jack reprove one of his officers, and he was much struck by the remarkable advance in efficacity, by the impersonal, God-like, severe authority that could not possibly be feigned or assumed by any man who did not naturally possess it. It was the kind of wigging that Lord Keith might have delivered, or Lord Collingwood: few others had the same awful qualitv.

"There, Stephen," said Jack's more familiar voice close behind his back. "That is over and done with. Come and have a glass of grog."

"It is indeed an interesting account," said Stephen, waving the book. "The writer has sailed the very waters that we are to traverse; and he is not an unobservant man, though what birds he can mean by haglets I cannot tell. Is he anv kin to our Mr Grant?"

"The man himself. He had the Lady, Nelson. That is why I was required to take him,"said Jack, with a shade of displeasure crossing his face. "Because of his experience, you know. But he did not go as high south as I intend to go; he kept pretty close to the thirty-eighth parallel, whereas I mean to go well into the forties - you remember

the dear old Surprise, Stephen, and the westerlies down there?"

Stephen had the clearest recollection of dear old Surprise in the roaring forties; and he closed his eyes: yet on the other hand, those were the albatross latitudes. "Tell me,"he said, having thought, "how does it come about thatMr Grant was not promoted for this feat? For feat it was, sure, with so small a ship?"

"She was a b"'9, Stephen,"said Jack. "A brig. But a feat it was, as you say, particularly as she was one of those vile things with sliding keels; and after that wicked Polychrest I never wish to see another as long as I live. As for promotion," he went on evasively, "why, promotion is a tricky affair at the best of times, and I believe Grant contrived to get the wrong side of the civilians, both over there and at home. He fouled their hawse, and they cut his cable: perhaps he may not have all the tact in the world. I think there was some other cause of dissatisfaction too, because at one time he was put at the bottom of the lieutenants' list, and that is why I was able to have Tom Pullings as my premier, he being now senior to Grant. But be damned to all that," he cried, reaching for his violin, his sea-going fiddle, for his precious Amati was not to be exposed to the tropical heat, the antarctic cold. "Killick! Killick, there! Bear a hand."

Killick's voice could be heard coming nearer: 'No peace, no bleeding peace in this barky," and as the door opened, "Sir?"

"Toasted cheese for the Doctor, half a dozen muttonchops for me, and a couple of bottles of the Hermitage. D'ye hear me there? Now, Stephen, give me an A."

They tuned their strings, that pleasant tentative wailing, and as they tuned he said, "What do you say to our old Corelli in C major?"

"With all my heart," said Stephen, poising his bow. He paused, and fixed Jack's eye with his own: they both nodded: he brought the bow down and the 'cello broke

into its deep noble song, followed instantly by the piercing violin, dead true to the note. The music filled the great cabin, the one speaking to the other, both twining into one, the fiddle soaring alone: they were in the very heart of the intricate sound, the close lovely reasoning, and the ship and her burdens faded far, far from their minds.

CHAPTER FOUR

Every day at noon, when the sky was clear, the Leopard fixed her position by the sun; and every day the sun climbed higher in the south. As the crucial moment approached, the moment when it should cross the meridian, hercaptain, her master, all the watch-keeping officers, and all the young gentlemen would train their instruments, hold their breath, bring the sun's limb to the horizon, and record the result. The master would report, "Noon, sir', to the officer of the watch; the officer of the watch would cross the quarterdeck to the Captain, take off his hat, and say, "Noon, sir, if you please', and the Captain, who knew it perfectly well from his own sextant, even if he had not heard the master's voice a few yards from him, would say, "Make it twelve, Mr Babbington' (or Grant or Turnbull, as the case might be) thus setting the boundary between one naval day and the next.

Jack's reading generally agreed with the master's and Grant's to within a few seconds, but sometimes, when Mr Larkins's morning whet had bleared his eye, there was a discrepancy, and in that case Jack preferred his own observation to appear in the log. To a knowing eye that harsh, laconic record, usually concerned with nothing but figures and the occasional disaster, betrayed something like ecstasy in its steady sequence of 'Clear weather, fresh breezes', of splendid distances run, often as much as two hundred nautical miles a day, and in the rapidly diminishing longitude. "42'5'N, 12"41'W--37'31'N, 14'49'W--34-17'N, 15-3'W-32-17'N, 15'27'W.' At this point they left Madeira broad on the starboard beam at noon, and the next day they also passed by the Dry Salvages. Stephen gazed wistfully at them from the main

top: once he would have begged Jack to stop the ship, to abandon this wild, unthinking race into the south-south-west, and to allow him a pause, if only for half a day, to look into the insect and arachnid population of these interesting rocks; but now he saved his breath. He saved it too when the loom of the Canaries crept along the eastern horizon hour after hour, the Peak of Teneriffe soaring white far over there to larboard: he knew from long, sad experience that once the steady naval routine, with its sense of unremitting urgency, had started, no plea of his would make the slightest difference.