Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

For form’s sake he invited Parker to join their deliberations, but the first lieutenant was more concerned with his paintwork and gold-​leaf than with getting the ship to move faster through the water. He did not seem to understand what they were driving at, and presently they forgot his presence, though they listened politely to his plea for a larger crow-​foot to extend a double awning - ‘In the Andromeda, Prince William always used to say that his awning gave the quarterdeck the air of a ballroom.’ As he spoke of the dimensions of the heroic euphroe that suspended this awning and the number of cloths that went into the awning itself, Jack looked at him curiously. Here was a man who had fought at the battle of the Saintes and in Howe’s great action, and yet still he thought his yard-​blacking more important than sailing half a point closer to the wind. ‘I used to tell him it was no use racing one mast against the other in reefing topsails until the people at least knew how to lay aloft: I was wasting my breath. Very well, gentlemen,’ he said aloud, ‘let us make it so. There is not a moment to lose. We could not ask for better weather, but who can tell how long it will last?’

The Polychrest, fresh from the yard, was reasonably well supplied with bosun’s and carpenter’s stores; but in any event, Jack’s intention was rather to cut down than to add. She had always been crank and overmasted, so that she lay down in a capful of wind; and her foremast had always been stepped too far aft, because of her original purpose in life, which made her gripe even with her mizen furled - made her do a great many other unpleasant things too. In spite of his fervent longing, he could do nothing about the stepping without official consent and the help of a dockyard, but he could do something to improve the mast by raking it forward and by a new system of stays, jibe and staysails; and he could make her less crank by stubbing her topmasts, striking topgallants, and setting up bentincks, triangular courses that would not press her down in the water so much and that would relieve her top-​hamper.

This was work he understood and loved; for once he was not in a tearing hurry, and he paced about the deck, seeing his plan take form, going from one group to the

next as they prepared the spars, rigging and canvas. The carpenter and his mates were in the waist, their saws and adzes piling up heaps of chips and sawdust between the holy guns - guns that lay still today for the first time since he had hoisted his pennant; the sailmaker and his two parties spread over the forecastle and the greater part of the quarterdeck, canvas in every direction; and the bosun piled his coils of rope and his blocks in due order, checking them on his list, sweating up and down to his store-​room, with no time to knock the hands about or even to curse them, except as a mechanical, unmeaning afterthought.

They worked steadily, and better than he had expected:

his three pressed tailors squatted there cross-​legged, very much at home, plying needle and palm with the desperate speed they had learnt in the sweat-​shop, and an out-​of-​work nailmaker from Birmingham showed an extraordinary skill in turning out iron rings from the armourer’s forge: ‘Crinkum-​cankum, round she goes’, a twist of his tongs, a knowing triple rap with his hammer, and the glowing ring hissed into a bucket.

Eight bells in the afternoon watch, and the sun pouring down on the busy deck. ‘Shall I pipe the hands to supper, sir?’ asked Pullings.

‘No, Mr Pullings,’ said Jack. ‘We shall sway up the maintopmast first. Proper flats we should look, was a Frenchman to heave in sight,’ he observed, looking up and down the confusion. The foremast was clothed already, with a fine potential spread of canvas but little drawing, for want of stays; the jury-​mizen still wore its little odd lateen, to give steerage-​way; but the massive topmast was athwart the gangways, and this, together with the rest of the spars littering the deck, and all the other activities, made it almost impossible to move about - quite impossible to work the ship briskly. There was no room, although the boats were towing astern and everything that could be moved below had disappeared. She was making an easy three knots in the quartering breeze, but any emergency would find her helpless. ‘Mr Malloch, there. Is your hawser to the capstan?’

‘All along, sir.’

‘Hands to the capstan, then. Are you ready at the word, there for’ard?’

‘Ready, aye ready, sir.’

‘Silence, fore and aft. Heave. Heave handsomely.’ The capstan turned, the hawser tightened. It led from the capstan through a block on deck to another block on the mainmast head, thence to the head of the topmast, down to the square fid-​hole in its heel, and so back to the topmast head, where it was made fast; bands of spun-​yarn held it to the mast at intervals, and as it tightened so it began to raise the head. The topmast, a great iron-​hooped column of wood some forty feet long, lay across the waist, its ends protruding far out on either side; as its head rose, so Jack called orders to the party on the other side to ease its heel in over the rail, timing each heave to the roll. ‘Pawl, there. Stand to your bars. Heave. Heave and rally. Pawl.’ The mast tilted up, nearer and nearer to the vertical. Now it was all inboard, no longer sloping but perfectly upright, swaying with the roll, an enormous, dangerous pendulum in spite of the controlling guys. Its head pointed at the

trestle-​trees, at the block high on the mainmast: the men in the top guided it through them, and still it rose with the turning of the capstan, to pause with its heel a few feet above the deck while they put on the cap. Up again, and they cut the spun-​yarn as it reached the block: another pause, and they set the square over the mainmast head, banging it down with a maul, a thump-​thump-​thump that echoed through the silent, attentive ship.

‘They must be getting the cap over,’ said Stephen’s patient in the sick-​bay, a young topman. ‘Oh, sir, I wish I was there He’ll splice the mainbrace for sure - it was night on eight bells when you come below.’

‘You will be there presently,’ said Stephen. ‘but none of your mainbrace, none of your nasty grog, my friend, until you learn to avoid the ladies of Portsmouth Point, and the fireships of the Sally-​Port. No ardent spirits at all for you. Not a drop, until you are cured. And even then, you would be far better with mild unctuous cocoa, or burgoo’

‘Which she told me she was a virgin,’ said the sailor, in a low, resentful tone.

The mast rose up and up, the thrust coming from nearer and nearer to the fid-​hole as the spun-​yarn bands were cut in succession. They had Cast off the hawser in favour of the top-​rope; they had got the topmast shrouds over, the stays and the backstays; and now the top-​tackle was swaying it up with a smooth, steady motion interrupted only by the roll of the ship. A hitch at this point - the top-​rope parting, a block-​spindle breaking - might be fatal. The last cautious six inches, and the fid-​hole appeared above the trestle-​trees. The captain of the top waved his hand:

Jack cried ‘Pawl, there.’ The captain of the top banged home the long iron fid, cried ‘Launch ho’, and it was done. The topmast could no longer plunge like a gigantic arrow down through the deck, down through the ship’s bottom, and send them all to their long account. They eased the top-​rope and the mast settled on its fid with a gentle groan, firmly supported below, fore, aft, and on either side.

Jack let out a sigh, and when Pullings reported ‘Main-​topmast swayed up, sir,’ he smiled. ‘Very good, Mr Pullings,’ he said. ‘Let the laniards be well greased and bowsed taut, and then pipe to supper. The people have worked well, and I believe we may splice the mainbrace.’