Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

Early in the blow a lee-​lurch, laying the Polychrest on her beam-​ends, had shot the dazed first lieutenant down the main hatchway, damaging his shoulder, and he had spent the rest of the time in his cot, with the water washing about it often enough, and in great pain. Jack was sorry for the pain, in an abstract way, though it seemed fair that one so fond of inflicting agony should feel a touch of it, but he was heartily glad of Parker’s absence - the man was incompetent, incompetent for such a situation as this. He was conscientious, he did his duty as he understood it; but he was no seaman.

The master, Pullings, Rossall, the senior master’s mate, the bosun and the gunner were seamen; so were a dozen of the hands. Babbington and Allen, another oldster, were shaping well; and as for the rest of the people, they at least knew what they were to haul upon at the word of command. This long week’s blow, when they were close on foundering twice a day and when everybody knew it, had crammed a deal of training into a short time - short when measured by the calendar rather than by mortal dread.

Training in manoeuvres of every kind, but particularly in the use of the pumps: they had not stopped for an hour since the second day of the blow.

Now as they sailed up the Channel, passing Selsey Bill with a light air on the quarter and topgallantsails set, with the galley fires lighted at last and a hot dinner in their bellies, he felt that they might not be disgraced when the Polychrest reached her station; and she would reach it now, he was sure, even if she had to tide it all the way - no unlikely event, with this wind dying on him She would not be disgraced he was short-​handed, of course, and there were seventeen men in the sick-​bay - two hernias, five bad falls with broken bones, and the rest the usual wounds from falling spars or blocks or ropes crossing a hand or leg. One landsman, an unemployed glover from Shepton Mallet, had been lost overboard, and a thief from the Winchester assizes had gone raving, staring, barking mad off Ushant: yet on the other hand, sea-​sickness had vanished, and even the quota-​men from the inland gaols could walk about the deck without much danger to themselves or others. The crew were a poor-​looking set, upon the whole, but when he had had time to exercise them at the guns, it was not impossible that he might make a passable man-​of-​war out of the Polychrest. He knew her tolerably well now: he and the master (he had a great esteem for Mr Goodridge) had worked out a sail-​plan that made the most of what qualities she possessed, and when he could alter her trim to bring her by the head and rake her masts she might do better; but he could not love her. She was a mean-​spirited vessel, radically vicious, cross-​grained, laboursome, cruel in her unreliability; and he could not love her. She had disappointed him so often when even a log canoe would have risen to the occasion that his strong natural affection for his command had dwindled quite away. He had sailed in some rough old tubs, ponderous things with no perceptible virtue to the outsider, but he had always been able to find excuses for them - they had always been the finest ships in the history of the Navy for some particular quality - and this had never happened to him before. The feeling was so strange, the disloyalty so uncomfortable, that it was some time before he would acknowledge it; and when he did -he was pacing the quarterdeck after his solitary dinner at the time - it gave him such uneasiness of mind that he turned to the midshipman of the watch, who was clinging motionless to a stanchion, and said, ‘Mr Parslow, you will find the Doctor in the sick-​bay. .

‘Find him yourself,’ said Parslow.

Was it possible that these words had been uttered? Jack paused in his stride. From the rigid blankness of the quartermaster, the man at the wheel, and the gunner’s mates busy with the aftermost port carronade, and from the mute writhing of the midshipmen on the gangway, it was clear that they had.

‘I tell you what it is, Goldilocks,’ went on Parslow, closing one eye, ‘don’t you try to come it high over me, for I’ve a spirit that won’t brook it. Find him yourself.’

‘Pass the word for the bosun’s mate,’ said Jack. ‘Quartermaster, Mr Parslow’s hammock, if you please.’ The bosun’s mate came running aft, his starter in his hand. ‘Seize the young gentleman to the gun in my cabin.’

The young gentleman had released his hold on the stanchion; he was now lying on the deck, protesting that he should not be beaten, that he should dirk any man who presumed to lay a hand upon him - he was an officer. The bosun’s mate picked him up by the small of the back: the sentry opened and closed the cabin door. A startled cry and then some treble oaths that made the grinning quarterdeck stretch its eyes, the whole punctuated by the measured thump of a rope’s end; and then Mr Parslow, sobbing bitterly, was led out by the hand. ‘Lash him into his hammock, Rogers,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Pullings, Mr Pullings, the grog for the midshipmen’s berth is stopped until further orders.’

That evening in his cabin he said to Stephen, ‘Do you know what those blackguards in the midshipmen’s berth did to young Parslow?’

‘Whether or no, you are going to tell me,’ observed Stephen, helping himself to rum.

‘They made him beastly drunk and then sent him on deck. Almost the first day they might have turned in for their watch below, the first time they are not up to their knees in water, they can think of nothing better to do than to make a youngster drunk. They shall not do it again, however. I have stopped their grog.’

‘It would be as well if you were to stop the whole ship’s grog. A most pernicious custom, a very gross abuse of animal appetite, a monstrous aberration - half a pint of rum, forsooth! I should not have a quarter of the men under my care, was it not for your vile rum. They are brought down with their limbs, ribs, collar-​bones shattered, having fallen from the rigging drunk - diligent, stout, attentive men who would never fall when sober. Come, let us pour it secretly away.’

‘And have a mutiny on our hands? Thank you very kindly. No: I should rather have them three sheets in the wind now and again, but willing to do their duty the rest of the time. Mutiny. It makes your blood run cold to think of it. Men you have worked with right through the commission and liked, growing cold and secret; no jokes, no singing out, no good wilt; the ship falling into two camps, with the undecided men puzzled and wretched in between. And then the shot-​rolling by night.’

‘Shot-​rolling?’

‘They roll shot along the deck in the night-​watches, to let you know their mind, and maybe to catch an officer’s legs.’

‘As for mutinies in general,’ said Stephen, ‘I am all in favour of ‘em. You take men from their homes or their chosen occupations, you confine them in insalubrious conditions upon a wholly inadequate diet, you subject them to the tyranny of bosun’s mates, you expose them to unimagined perils; what is more, you defraud them of their meagre food, pay and allowances - everything but this sacred rum of yours. Had I been at Spithead, I should certainty have joined the mutineers. Indeed, I am astonished at their moderation.’

‘Pray, Stephen, do not speak like this, flattering about the service; it makes me so very tow. I know things are not perfect, but I cannot reform the world and run a man-​of-​war. In any case, be candid, and think of the Sophie - think of any happy ship.’

‘There are such things, sure; but they depend upon the whim, the digestion and the virtue of one or two men, and that is iniquitous. I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.’