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

He drifted into a reverie, seeing trim rows of cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks; stout and well-​grown, untouched by caterpillars, wireworms, leatherjackets or the dread onion-​fly; a trout-​stream at the bottom of the garden with good pasture along its banks, and on the good pasture a mild pair of cows, Jersey cows. Following the stream down he saw the Channel at no great distance, with ships upon it; and through the temperate haze upon this sea he was conscious of Stephen smiling at him.

‘Will you tell me what you were musing upon, now?’ said Stephen. ‘It must have been rarely pleasant.’

‘I was thinking about marriage,’ said Jack, ‘and the garden that goes with it.’

‘Must you have a garden when you are married?’ cried Stephen. ‘I was not aware.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jack. ‘I had provided myself with a prize, and my cabbages were already springing up in rank and file. I don’t know how I shall bear to cut the first. Stephen,’ he cried, suddenly breaking off, ’should you like to see a relic of my youth? I had hoped to show it to you when we were alongside the sheer-​hulk, but you did not turn up; however, I have preserved it. The sight will raise your heart.’

‘I should be happy to see a relic of your youth,’ said Stephen, and they walked on to the calm deck, calm with the peace of Sunday afternoon, calm and placidly crowded. The awning rigged for church was rigged still; and beneath its shade the gunroom officers, Mr Stanhope’s people, and most of the midshipmen took their ease, or as much of it as they could; for now that church was over, the cabin’s, the coach’s, the gunroom’s and the berth’s hencoops and smaller livestock, including Mr Stanhope’s nanny-​goat had reappeared, and since there was little air to temper the fiery sun - the Surprise was running before the wind - they were all crowded into the shade. Yet at the same time the officer of the watch took his ritual turns fore and aft with a telescope under his arm, while the mate and the midshipman of the watch paced all the quarterdeck that was available on the other side, the timoneer stood at the wheel, the quartermaster conned the ship, two boys, the duty-​messengers, stood meek as mice, though often trodden upon, in their due places, and an eager young Bombay mongoose threaded busily among them all, frightening the hens. Jack paused to compliment Mr White on his sermon (a strongly-​worded confutation of Arminianism) and to inquire for Mr Stanhope, who had managed to take a little dry toast and broth, and who hoped to recover his sea-​legs in a day or two.

Followed by Stephen, he moved forward along the gangway, filled with seamen in their Sunday rig - many a splendid Indian handkerchief - some gazing over the hammock-​cloths at the empty sea or conversing with their mates in the chains, some walking up and down, revelling in idleness; and so to the forecastle, which was deeply packed with men: for not only was it too hot to stay below, but a game was in progress, the ancient country game of grinning through a horse-​collar, with a prize for who should be the most hideous. The collar was the hoop through which hammocks had to be passed, and the probable winner, to judge from the infinite mirth, was the loblolly boy, the surgeons’ lay assistant. A weak head for figures had undone him as a butcher in the Bahamas, but he was a firm hand at the operating-​table, and no mean dissector. Ordinarily he remained at a certain distance from the unlearned, but now, with Sunday’s grog and the stirring of his youth, he was grinning like a Goth, amaranthine-​purple with the strain. Grinning, that is to say, until his suffused eyes met Stephen’s, when its face resolved itself into a reasonable shape, assumed a sickly look between greeting and confusion, simpered unhappily, but lacked the quickness to remove itself from the hoop.

Silently as a ghost, and unseeing, Jack climbed slowly up the foremast shrouds, thrust his head through the lubber’s hole, heard the click of dice - the deadly, illegal, fifty-​strokes-​at-​the-​gangway dice - and the horrified cry ‘It’s the skipper.’ He looked down to guide Stephen’s hands, and when at last he heaved himself into the top the men were standing in a huddle, mute by the larboard dead-​eyes: they were used to an unnaturally active captain, but the foretop - and of a Sunday! - and through the lubber’s hole! - it passed human belief. Faster Doudle, the only one whose wits could stand the strain, had swept the dice into his mouth: he stood now fixing the horizon with an absent gaze, a strikingly criminal expression on his face. Jack gave them a remote passing look and a smile, said ‘Carry on, carry on,’ and sat down on a studdingsail to haul Stephen through, in spite of his peevish cries of ‘perfectly capable of coming up - have repeatedly mounted by the futtock-​shrouds - scores of times - pray do not encumber me with your needless solicitude.’

Once up, he, too, sat upon the studdingsail, and gasped for a while: he put enormous effort into climbing, and now the sweat was running down his meagre cheeks. ‘So this

- this is the foretop,’ he observed. ‘I have been into the mizentop, and the maintop, but never here. It is very like the others; very like indeed. The same ingenious arrangements of caps, double masts, and those round things - have you noticed, my dear sir, that it is virtually identical with the rest?’

‘An odd coincidence, ain’t it?’ said Jack. ‘I do not believe I have ever heard it remarked upon before.’

‘And is your relic here?’

‘Why, no; not exactly. It is a little higher up. You do not mind going a little higher up?’

‘Not I,’ said Stephen, glancing aloft to where the topmast soared, up and up through the brilliant diffused light, the only straight object in a billowy whiteness criss-​crossed with curving ropes. ‘You mean to the next story, or stage? Certainly. Then in that case I shall take off my coat, breeches, stockings. Lambswool stockings at three and nine the pair, are not to be hazarded lightly.’ As he sat unfastening his knee-​buckles he stared heavily at the men by the rail. ‘Faster Doudle,’ he said, ‘has my rhubarb answered? How are your bowels, my good friend? Show me your tongue.’

‘Oh, not on Sunday, Doctor,’ said Jack. Faster Doudle was a valuable upper-​yard man; he had no wish to see him at the gangway. ‘You are forgetting that today is Sunday. Mellish, take great care of the Doctor’s wig. Put the watch and the money into it, and the handkerchief on top. Come now: clap on to the shrouds, Doctor, not the ratlines, and always look up, not down. Take it easy; and I will follow you and place your feet.’

Up and up they went, passing the lookout perched on the yardarm, who assumed an attitude of intense vigilance. Still higher; and Jack swarmed round the mast, up into the cross-​trees, and heaved Stephen’s now submissive body into place, passed a line round it, and called upon him to open his eyes.

‘Why, this is superb,’ he cried, convulsively hugging the mast. They were poised high above the surface of the sea; and all that was visible of the distant, narrow deck through the topsails and courses seemed peopled with dolls, foreshortened dolls that moved with disproportionate strides, their feet reaching too far in front and too far behind. ‘Superb,’ he said again. ‘How vast the sea has become! How luminous!’

Jack laughed to see his evident pleasure, his bright and attentive wondering eye, and said, ‘Look for’ard.’

The frigate had no headsails set, the wind being aft, and the taut lines of the forestays plunged slanting down in a clean, satisfying geometry; below them the ship’s head with its curving rails, and then the long questing bowsprit, reaching far out into the infinity of ocean: with a steady, measured, living rhythm her bows plunged into the dark blue water, splitting it, shouldering it aside in dazzling foam.