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

‘Is that why you were looking so mumchance?’

‘I was displeased with my neighbours, too.’

‘The nymphs in green? Delightful girls.’

‘It is clear you have been a great while at sea, to call those sandy-​haired coarse-​featured pimply short-​necked thick-​fingered vulgar-​minded lubricious blockheads by such a name. Nymphs, forsooth. If they were nymphs, they must have had their being in a tolerably rank and stagnant pool: the wench on my left had an ill breath, and turning for relief I found her sister had a worse; and the upper garment of neither was free from reproach. Worse lay below, I make no doubt. “La, sister,” cries the one to the other, breathing across me - vile teeth; and “La, sister,” cries the other. I have no notion of two sisters wearing the same clothes, the same flaunting meretricious gawds, the same tortured Gorgon curls low over their brutish criminal foreheads, it bespeaks a superfetation of vulgarity, both innate and studiously acquired And when I think that their teeming loins will people the East. Pray pour me out another cup of coffee. Confident brutes ‘He might have added that these young ladies had instantly started to talk to him about a Mrs. Villiers of Bombay who had just reached Calcutta - the Doctor must have heard of her in Bombay? - she was nothing but an adventuress, how dreadful - they had seen her at the Governor’s, dressed very outrŽe; not at all good-​looking; they wondered at the reports - people were obliged to receive her and pretend not to know, because her gentleman-​friend -say protector’, sister - was vastly important, lived in the highest style, quite princely - it was said she was ruining him. He was a vastly genteel creature - tall - such an air and address, you would almost think he was one of us -he had looked at Aggie in such a particular way! They both tittered into their balled-​up grubby handkerchiefs, slapping one another behind his bowed back.

He was turning it over in his mind whether to say, ‘These women spoke malignantly about Diana Villiers, which angered me: I asked her to marry me in Bombay, and I am to have her reply in Calcutta. I have meant to tell you this for some time: candour required such a statement earlier. I trust you will forgive my apparent lack of candour,’ when Jack said, ‘Well, and so you did not altogether like them, I collect? I am sorry for it. My neighbour and I agreed wonderfully well - Muffit, I mean. The girl my other side was a ninnyhammer: no bosom. I thought these girls with no bosoms were exploded long ago. I took to him amazingly; a thorough-​going seaman, not at all the usual Company’s commander - not that I mean to imply they are not seamen; but they are rather pianissimo, if you know what I mean.’

‘I know what pianissimo means.’

‘He has exactly my idea about stepping the royal-​mast abaft the topgallant with its heel on the top-​cap; he actually has it rigged so, as I dare say you noticed, and swears it gives him an extra knot in moderate airs. I am determined to try it. He is an excellent fellow: he promised to put our packet aboard a pilot-​boat the moment he was in soundings.’

‘I wish you may have desired Sophie to come to Madeira,’ muttered Stephen.

‘And he has some notions of gunnery, too, which is rare enough even in the Navy. He does his best to exercise his people, but he is most pitifully equipped, poor fellow.’

‘There seemed to me a formidable array of guns. More than we possess, if I do not mistake.’

‘They were not guns, my poor Stephen. They were cannonades.’

‘What are cannonades?’

‘Why, they are cannonades - medium eighteens. How can I explain. You know a carronade, I am sure?’

‘Certainly I do. The short thing on slides, ignoble in its proportions, that throws an immense ball. I have noticed several about the ship.’

‘What a lynx you are, upon my honour: nothing escapes you. And clearly you know a cannon, a great gun? Well now, conceive of an unlucky bastard cross between the two, something that weighs a mere twenty-​eight hundredweight and jumps in the air and breaks its breeching every time you offer to fire it, and that will not strike true at five hundred yards, no not at fifty, and there you have your cannonade. But even if the Company had some notion of its own interests and gave him real guns, who is to fire them off? He would need three hundred and fifty men, and what has he got? A hundred and forty, most of them cooks and stewards: and Lascar cooks and stewards at that. Dear Lord above, what a way to trundle six millions about the world! Yet he has sound views on stepping a royal; I am determined to try it, if only on the foremast.’

Two days later the Surprise, alone on a misty heaving sea, was trying it. The carpenter and his crew had wrought all morning, and now, dinner having been cut short, the long mast was swaying up through the intricate tracery of the rigging. This was a delicate task in a heavy swell, and Jack had not only heaved to but he had stopped the midday grog: he wanted no fuddled enthusiasm heaving on the top-​rope, and he knew very well that the delay would stimulate zeal - that no one would put up with a moment’s dawdling - that no man would presume to pause to gasp in the oppressive, thundery heat for fear of what his mates would do.

Up and up it went, and peering with half-​closed eyes into the glare of the covered sun, he guided it inch by inch, co-​ordinating the successive heaves with the pitching of the ship The last half foot, and the whole ship’s company held its breath, eyes fixed on the heel of the mast It crept a little higher, the new top-​rope creaking in the block and sending down a cloud of shakings then with a jerk and a shudder along its whole length the heel lifted over the top-​cap.

‘Handsomely, handsomely!’ cried Jack. A trifle more: at the masthead the bosun flung up his hand. ‘Lower away.’ The top-​rope slackened; the heel of the mast settled down inside the step; and it was done.

The Surprises let out a universal sigh. The maintopsail and forecourse dropped like the curtain at the end of a harrowing drama; they were sheeted home, and the bosun piped belay. The frigate answered at once, and as he felt the way on her jack gazed up at the new royal-​mast, rigidly parallel with the topgallant and rising high above with a splendid promise of elastic strength: he felt a dart of pure joy, not merely because of the mast, nor because of the sweet motion of the ship - his own dear ship - nor yet because he was afloat and in command. It was a plenitude of being -’On deck, there,’ called the lookout in a hesitant, deprecating howl. ‘Sail on the larboard bow’ Two maybe.’

Hesitant, because reporting the China fleet for a third time was absurd; deprecating, because he should have done so long ago, instead of staring at the perilous drama of the mast.

His hail excited little interest, or none: grog was to be served out the moment the mast was secured and the yard across. Willing hands, well ahead of orders, were busy with the two pair of shrouds, the stoppings on the yard; impatient men were waiting in the crosstrees ready to clap on the braces. However, Jack and his first lieutenant looked attentively at the hazy ships, looming unnaturally large some four miles ahead and growing rapidly clearer as the frigate sailed towards them - she was making five knots already on the steady north-​east wind.

‘Who is that old-​fashioned fellow who carries his mizentopmast staysail under the maintop?’ said Stourton. ‘I believe I can make out two more behind them. I am astonished they should have come up with us so soon; after all .

‘Stourton - Stourton,’ cried Jack, ‘it is Linois. Haul your wind! Hard a-​port, hard over. Let fall the maincourse, there. Strike the pendant. Forestaysail: maintopgallant. Marines, Marines, there: clap on to the mainbrace. Bear a hand, bear a hand. Mr Etherege, stir up your men.’