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

Cape CŽpet lay broad on the beam, and slinging his telescope he hoisted himself into the ratlines - they sagged under his weight - and climbed grunting into the maintop. The topmen were expecting him, and they had arranged a studdingsail for him to sit on. ‘Thankee, Rowland,’ he said, ‘uncommon parky, hey? Hey?’ and sank down upon it with a final grunt, resting his glass on the aftermost upper deadeye of the topmast shrouds and training it on Cape CŽpet: the signal-​station leapt into view, bright and clear, and to its right the eastern half of the Grande Rade with five men-​of-​war in it, seventy-​fours, three of them English. Hannibal, Swiftsure and Berwick: they were exercising their crews at reefing aboard the Hannibal, and quantities of people were creeping up the rigging of the Swiftsure, landmen under training, perhaps. The French nearly always had these captured ships in the outer Rade; they did it to annoy, and they always succeeded. Twice every day it vexed him to the heart, for every morning and every afternoon he went aloft to peer into the Rade. This he did partly out of professional conscience, although there was not the slightest likelihood of their coming out unless they had thick weather and such a gale of wind that the English fleet would be blown off station; and partly because it was some sort of exercise. He was growing fat again, but in any case he had no intention of getting out of the way of running up and down the rigging, as some heavy captains did: the feel of the shrouds under his hands, the give and spring of live rigging, the heave and swing on the roll as he came over into the top made him deeply happy.

The rest of the anchorage was coming into view, and with a frown Jack swung his glass to inspect the rival frigates: seven of them still, and only one had moved since yesterday. Beautiful ships: though in his opinion they over-​raked their masts.

Now the moment was coming. The church tower was almost in line with the blue dome, and he focused with renewed attention. The land hardly seemed to move at all, but gradually the arms of the Petite Rade opened, and there was the inner harbour, a forest of masts, all with their yards across, all in apparent readiness to come out and fight. A vice-​admiral’s flag, a rear-​admiral’s, a commodore’s broad pennant: no change. The arms were closing; they glided imperceptibly together, and the Petite Rade was closed.

Jack shifted his aim until the Faro hill came into sight, then the hill behind it, and he searched the road for the little inn where he and Stephen and Captain Christy Pallire had eaten and drunk such a capital dinner not so very long ago, together with another French sea-​officer whose name he forgot. Precious hot then: precious cold now. Wonderful food then - Lord, how they had stuffed! precious short commons now. At the thought of that meal his stomach gave a twinge: the Lively, though she considered herself the wealthiest ship on the station and conducted herself with a certain reserve towards the paupers in company, was as short of fresh provisions, tobacco, firewood and water as the rest of the fleet, and because of a murrain among the sheep and measles in the pigsty even her officers’ stores were being eked out with the wicked old salt horse of his ‘young gentleman’ days, while all hands had been eating ship’s biscuits for a great while now. There was a small shoulder of not altogether healthy mutton for Jack’s dinner: ‘Shall I invite the officer of the watch?’ he wondered. ‘It is some time since I had anyone to the cabin, apart from breakfast.’ It was some time, too, since he had spoken to anyone on a footing of real equality or with any free exchange of minds. His officers - or rather Captain Hamond’s officers, for Jack had had no hand in choosing or forming them - entertained him to dinner once a week in the gunroom, and he invited them quite often to the cabin, almost always breakfasting with the officer and midshipman of the morning watch; but these were never very cheerful occasions. The gentlemanly, but slightly Benthamite, gunroom were strict observers of the naval etiquette that prevented any subordinate from speaking to his captain without being spoken to first; and they had grown thoroughly used to Captain Hamond, to whose mind this was a congenial rigour. And then again they were a proud set of men- most of them could afford to be - and they had a horror of the ingratiating manoeuvres, the currying of favour that was to be seen in some ships, or any hint

of it: once they had had an overpliable third lieutenant wished upon them, and they had obliged him to exchange into the Achilles within a couple of months. They carried this attitude pretty high, and without disliking their temporary commander in the very least - indeed they valued him exceedingly both as a seaman and a fighting captain -they unconsciously imposed an Olympian role upon him; and at times the silence in which he lived made him feel utterly forlorn. At times only, however, for he was not often idle; there were duties that even the most perfect first lieutenant could not take off his hands, and then again in the forenoon he supervised the midshipmen’s lessons in his cabin. They were a likeable set of youngsters, and even the Godlike presence of the captain, the severity of their schoolmaster, and the scrubbed, staid example of their elders could not repress their cheerfulness. Even hunger could not do so, and they had been eating rats this last month and more, rats caught in the bowels of the ship by the captain of the hold and laid out, neatly skinned, opened and cleaned, like tiny sheep, in the orlop, for sale at a price that rose week by week, to reach its present shocking rate of fivepence a knob.

Jack was fond of the young, and like many other captains he took great care of their professional and social education, of their allowances, and even of their morals; but his constancy at their lessons was not entirely disinterested. He had been a stupid boy at figures in his time, badly taught aboard, and although he was a natural-​born seaman he had only managed to pass for lieutenant by feverish rote-​learning, the interposition of Providence, and the presence of two friendly captains on the board. In spite of his dear friend Queenie’s patient explanations of tangents, secants and sines, he had never had a really firm grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry; his navigation had been a plain rule-​of-​thumb progress from A to B, plane-​sailing at its plainest; but fortunately the Navy had always provided him, as it provided all other commanders, with a master learned in the art. Yet now, perhaps affected by the scientific, hydrographic atmosphere on the Lively, he studied the mathematics, and like some other late-​developers he advanced at a great pace. The school-​master was an excellent teacher when he was sober, and whatever the midshipmen may have made of his lessons, Jack profited by them: in the evenings, after the watch was set, he would work lunars or read Grimble on Conic Sections with real pleasure, in the intervals between writing to Sophie and playing on his fiddle. ‘How amazed Stephen will be,’ he reflected. ‘How I shall come it the philosopher over him: and how I wish the old soul were here.’

But this question of whether he should invite Mr Randall to dinner was still in suspense, and he was about to decide it when the captain of the top coughed significantly. ‘Beg parding, your honour,’ he said, ‘but I think Naiad’s seen something.’ The Cockney voice came strangely from his yellow face and slanting eyes; but the Lively had been in Eastern waters for years and years, and her crew, yellow, brown, black and nominally white, had worked so long together that they all spoke with the accent of Limehouse Reach, Wapping or Deptford Yard.

High Bum was not the only man to have caught the flurry of movement on the deck of the next in line ahead. Mr Randall junior swarmed inwards from his spray-​soaked post on the sprit-​sail yardarm and ran skipping along the deck towards his messmates: his seven-​year-​old pipe could be heard in the top as he cried, ‘She’s rounding the point! She’s rounding the point!’