Patrick O'Brian - H.M.S. Surprise

‘How wide is it?’

‘Why, not above a mile or so - point-​blank range from either side.’

‘The next time we go up the Mediterranean,’ said Stephen, ‘I shall swim it.’

‘I am sure you will. If one hero could, I am sure another can.’

‘Look, look! Surely that is a tern, just above the horizon,’ cried Stephen.

‘Where away?’

‘There, there,’ said Stephen, releasing his hold to point. He sank at once, bubbling; but his pointing hand remained above the surface. Jack seized it, heaved him inboard and said, ‘Come, let us dart up the stern-​ladder. I can smell our coffee, and we have a busy morning ahead of us.’ He took the painter, pulled the boat up to the frigate’s stern, and guided the ladder into Stephen’s grasp.

The bell struck; and at the pipe of the bosun’s call the hammocks came flying up, close on two hundred of them, to be stowed with lightning rapidity into the nettings, with their numbers all turned the same way; and in the rushing current of seamen Jack stood tall and magnificent in a flowered silk dressing-​gown, looking sharply up and down the deck. The smell of coffee and bacon was almost more than he could bear, but he meant to see this operation through: it was by no means as brisk as he could wish, and some of those hammocks were flabby, dropsical objects. Hervey would have to start using a hoop again. Pullings, who had the morning watch, was forward, causing a hammock to be re-​lashed in an un-​Sunday tone of voice - he was obviously of the same opinion. It was Jack’s usual custom to invite the officer of the morning watch and one of the youngsters to breakfast with him, but this was to be a particularly social day later on, and Callow, the squeaker in question, had burst out into an eruption of adolescent spots, enough to put a man off his appetite. Dear Pullings would certainly forgive him.

An eddy in the tide brought a civilian staggering over the quarterdeck. This was Mr Atkins, the envoy’s secretary, an odd little man who had already given them a deal of

trouble - strange notions of his own importance, of the accommodation possible in a small frigate, and of seagoing customs; sometimes high and offended, sometimes over-​familiar.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said Jack.

‘Good morning, Captain,’ cried Atkins, falling into step as Jack started his habitual pacing - no idea of the sacrosanctity of a captain, and in spite of his before-​breakfast shrewishness Jack could hardly tell him of it himself. ‘I have good news for you. His Excellency is far better today - far better than we have seen him since the beginning of the trip. I dare say he will take the air presently. And I think I may venture to hint,’ he whispered, taking Jack’s reluctant arm and breathing into his face, ‘that an invitation to dinner might prove acceptable.’

‘I am delighted to hear that he is better,’ said Jack, disengaging himself. ‘And I trust that we may soon have the pleasure of his company.’

‘Oh, you need not be anxious - you need not make any great preparations. H.E. is quite simple - no distance or pride. A plain dinner will do very well. Shall we say today?’

‘I think not,’ said Jack, looking curiously at the little man by his side. ‘I dine with the gunroom on Sunday. It is the custom.’

‘But surely, Captain, surely no previous engagement can stand in the way - His Majesty’s direct representative!’

‘Naval custom is holy at sea, Mr Atkins,’ said Jack, turning away and raising his voice. ‘Foretop, there. Mind what you are about with that euphroe. Mr Callow, when Mr Pullings comes aft, be so good as to give him my compliments, and I should be glad if he would breakfast with me. I hope you will join us, Mr Callow.’

Breakfast at last, and the tide of Jack’s native good humour rose. They were cramped, the four of them, in the coach - the great cabin had been given over to Mr Stanhope - but confinement was part of naval life, and easing himself round in his chair he stretched his legs, lit his cigar and said, ‘Tuck in, youngster. Don’t mind me. Look, there is a whole pile of bacon under that cover; it would be a sad shame to sent it away.’

In the agreeable pause that followed, broken only by the steady champ of the midshipman’s jaws as he engulfed twenty-​seven rashers, they heard the cry pass through the ship. ‘D’ye hear there, fore and aft? Clean for muster at five bells. Duck frocks and white trousers. D’ye hear there, clean shirt and a shave at five bells.’ They also heard, clear through the thin cabin bulkhead, the metallic voice of Mr Atkins, apparently haranguing his chief, and Mr Stanhope’s quiet replies. The envoy was a remote, gentle, grey man, very well-​bred, and it was a wonder that he should ever have attached such a bustling fellow to his service; Mr Stanhope had been ill when he came aboard, had suffered abominably from sea-​sickness as far as Gibraltar, then again right down to the Canaries; and he relapsed in the heavy swell of the doldrums, when the Surprise, log-​like on the heaving sea, often seemed to be about to roll her masts out. This relapse had been accompanied by a fit of the gout which, flying to his stomach, had kept him in his cabin. They had seen very little of the poor gentleman.

‘Tell me, Mr Callow,’ said Jack, partly out of a wish not to hear too much and partly to make his guest welcome, ‘how is the midshipman’s mess coming along? I have not seen your ram this week or more.’ The ancient creature palmed off upon the unsuspecting caterer as a hogget had been a familiar sight, stumping slowly about upon the deck.

‘Pretty low, sir,’ said Callow, withdrawing his hand from the bread-​barge. ‘We ate him in seventy north, and now we are down to the hen. But we give her all our bargemen, sir, and she may lay an egg.’

‘You ain’t down to millers, then?’ said Pullings.

‘Oh yes we are, sir,’ cried the midshipman. ‘Threepence, they have reached, which is a God-​damned - a crying shame.’

‘What are millers?’ asked Stephen.

‘Rats, saving your presence,’ -said Jack. ‘Only we call ‘em millers to make ‘em eat better; and perhaps because they are dusty, too, from getting into the flour and peas.’

‘My rats will not touch anything but the best biscuit, slightly moistened with melted butter. They are obese; their proud bellies drag the ground.’

‘Rats, Doctor?’ cried Pullings. ‘Why do you keep rats?’

‘I wish to see how they come along - to watch their motions,’ said Stephen. He was in fact conducting an experiment, feeding them with madder to see how long it took to penetrate their bones, but he did not mention this. His was a secretive mind; the area of reticence had grown and grown and now it covered the globular, kitten-​sized creatures that dozed through the hot nights and blazing days in his storeroom.

‘Millers,’ said Jack, his mind roaming back to his famished youth. ‘In the aftermost carline-​culver of the larboard berth there is a hole where we used to put a piece of cheese and catch them in a noose as they poked their heads out on their way along the channel to the bread-​room. Three or four a night in the middle watch we used to catch, on the Leeward Islands station. Heneage Dundas’ - nodding to Stephen - ‘used to eat the cheese afterwards.’

‘Was you a midshipman in the Surprise, sir?’ cried young Callow, amazed, amazed. If he had thought about it at all, he would have supposed that post-​captains sprang fully armed from the forehead of the Admiralty.

‘indeed I was,’ said Jack.

‘Good heavens, sir, she must be very, very old. The oldest ship in the fleet, I dare say.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ’she is pretty old, too. We took her early in the last war - she was the French Unite - and she was no chicken then. Could you manage another egg?’