Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘How pleasant it is to see the sun,’ he called over the taffrail, later in the afternoon.

‘Eh?’ said Stephen, looking up from a tube thrust deep into the water.

‘I said how pleasant it was to see the sun,’ said Jack, smiling down at him there in the barge - smiling, too, with general benevolence. He was warm through and through after months of English drizzle; the mild wind caressed him through his open shirt and old canvas trousers; behind him the work was going steadily along, but now it was a matter for expert hands, the bosun, his mates, the quartermasters and forecastlemen; the mere hauling on ropes was over, and the mass of the crew forward were making cheerful noises - with this day’s rational work, with no cleaning and no harassing, the feeling aboard had changed. The charming weather and the extra allowance of rum had also helped, no doubt.

‘Yes,’ said Stephen. ‘It is. At a depth of two feet, Fahrenheit’s thermometer shows no less than sixty-​eight degrees. A southern current, I presume. There is a shark following up, a shark of the blue species, a carcharias. He revels in the warmth.’

‘Where is he? Do you see him? Mr Parslow there, fetch me a couple of muskets.’

‘He is under the dark belly of the ship. But no doubt he will come out presently. I give him gobbets of decayed flesh from time to time.’

From the sky forward there was a guttural shriek -a man falling from the yard, grabbing at air, almost motionless for a flash of time, head back, strained madly

up; then falling, faster, faster, faster. He hit a backstay. It bounced him clear of the side and he splashed into the sea by the mizen-​chains.

‘Man overboard!’ shouted a dozen hands, flinging things into the water and running about.

‘Mr Goodridge, bring her to the wind, if you please,’ said Jack, kicking off his shoes and diving from the rail. ‘How fresh - perfect!’ he thought as the bubbles rushed thundering past his ears and the good taste of clean sea filled his nose. He curved upwards, looking at the rippled silver underside of the surface, rose strongly out of the water, snorting and shaking his yellow head, saw the man floundering fifty yards away. Jack was a powerful rather than a graceful swimmer, and he surged through the water with his head and shoulders out, like a questing dog, fixing the point in case the man should sink He reached him -starting eyes, inhuman face belching water, stretching up, the terror of the deep (like most sailors he could not swim)- circled him, seized him by the root of his pigtail and said, ‘Easy, easy, now, Bolton. Hold up ‘.

Bolton writhed and grasped with convulsive strength Jack kicked him free and bawled right into his ear, ‘Clasp your hands, you fool. Clasp your hands, I say There s a shark just by, and if you splash he’ll have you.’

The word shark went home even to that terrified, half-​drunk, water-​logged mind. Bolton clasped his hands as though the force of his grip might keep him safe: he went perfectly rigid: Jack kept him afloat, and there they lay, rising and falling on the swell until the boat picked them up.

Bolton sat confused, obscurely ashamed and stupid in the bottom of the boat, gushing water; to cover his confusion he assumed a lumpish catalepsy, and had to be handed up the side. ‘Carry him below,’ said Jack. ‘You had better have a look at him, Doctor, if you would be so kind.’

‘He has a contusion on his chest,’ said Stephen, coming back to where Jack stood dripping on the quarterdeck, drying as he leaned on the rail and enjoyed the progress of the work on the running rigging. ‘But no ribs are broken. May I congratulate you upon saving him? The boat would never have come up in time. Such promptitude of mind -such decision! I honour it.’

‘It was pretty good, was it not?’ said Jack. ‘This is capital, upon my word,’ - nodding to the mainmast - ‘and at this rate we shall have the bentincks bent tomorrow. Did you smoke that? I said, the bentincks bent. Ha, ha, ha!’

Was he making light of it out of coxcombery, fanfaronade? From embarrassment? No, Stephen decided. It was as genuine as his mirth at his ignoble tiny pun, or adumbration of a pun, the utmost limit of naval wit.

‘Was you not afraid,’ he asked, ‘when you reflected upon the shark - his notorious voracity?’

‘Him? Oh, sharks are mostly gammon, you know: all cry and no wool. Unless there’s blood about, they prefer galley leavings any day. On the West Indies station I once went in after a jolly and dived plump on to the back of a huge great brute: he never turned a hair.’

‘Tell me, is this a matter of frequent occurrence with you? Does it in no way mark an epocha in your life, at all?’

‘Epocha? Why, no; I can’t say it does. Bolton here must make the twenty-​second since I first went to sea:

or maybe the twenty-​third. The Humane chaps sent me a gold medal once. Very civil in them, too; with a most obliging letter. I pawned it in Gibraltar.’

‘You never told me this.’

‘You never asked. But there is nothing to it, you know, once you get used to their grappling. You feel good, and worthy - deserve well of the republic, and so on, for a while, which is agreeable, I don’t deny; but there is really nothing to it - it don’t signify. I should go in for a dog, let alone an able seaman: why, if it were warm, I dare say I should go in for a surgeon, ha, ha, ha! Mr Parker, I think we may rig the sheets tonight and get the stump of the mizzen out first thing tomorrow. Then you will be able to priddy the deck and make all shipshape.’

‘It is all ahoo at present, sir, indeed,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘But I must beg your pardon, sir, for not receiving you aboard in a proper fashion just now. May I offer my congratulations?’

‘Why thank you, Mr Parker: an able seaman is a valuable prize. Bolton is one of our best upper-​yardsmen.’

‘He was drunk, sir. I have him in my list.’

‘Perhaps we may overlook it this once, Mr Parker. Now the sheers can go with one foot here and the other by the scuttle, with a guy to the third hoop of the mainmast.’

In the evening, when it was too dark to work but too delightful to go below, Stephen observed, ‘If you make it your study to depreciate rescues of this nature, will you not find that they are not valued? That you get no gratitude?’

‘Now you come to mention it, I suppose it is so,’ said Jack. ‘It depends: some take it very kind. Bonden, for example. I pulled him out of the Mediterranean, as I dare say you remember, and no one could be more sensible of it. But most think it no great matter, I find. I can’t say I should myself, unless it was a particular friend, who knew it was me, and who went in saying “Why, damn me, I shall pull Jack Aubrey out.” No. Upon the whole,’ he said, reflecting and looking wise, ‘it seems to me, that in the article of pulling people out of the sea, virtue is its own reward.’

They lapsed into silence, their minds following different paths as the wake stretched out behind and the stars rose in procession over Portugal.

‘I am determined at last,’ cried Stephen, striking his hand upon his knee, ‘I am at last determined - determined, I say - that I shall learn to swim.’

‘I believe,’ said Jack, ‘that by the setting of the water tomorrow, we shall have our bentincks drawing.’

‘The bentincks draw, the bentincks draw, the bentincks draw fu’ weel,’ said Mr Macdonald.

‘Is the Captain pleased?’ asked Stephen.

‘He is delighted. There is no great wind to try them, but she seems much improved. Have you not remarked her motion is far more easy? We may have the pleasure of the purser’s company once more. I tell you, Doctor, if that man belches of set purpose just once again, or picks his teeth at table, I shall destroy him.’