Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

On deck the foretopmen had set the elm-tree pump a-wheezing, while the fo'c'slemen washed the fo'c'sle with the fresh sea-water they pumped, the maintopmen washed the starboard side of the quarter-deck and the quarter-deck men all the rest, grinding away with holystones until the water ran like thin milk from the admixture of minute raspings of wood and caulking, and the boys and the idlers – the people who merely worked all day – heaved at the chain-pumps to clear the night's water out of the bilges, and the gunner's crew cosseted the fourteen four-pounders; but none of this had had the electrifying effect of the racing feet.

'Is it some emergency?' wondered Stephen, working his way with rapid caution out of his hanging cot. 'A battle? Fire? A desperate leak? And are they too much occupied to warn me – have forgotten I am here?' He drew on his breeches as fast as he could and, straightening briskly, he brought his head up against a beam with such force that he staggered and sank on to a locker, cherishing it with both hands.

A voice was speaking to him. 'What did you say?' he asked, peering through a mist of pain.

'I said, "Did you bump your head, sir?"'

'Yes,' said Stephen, looking at his hand: astonishingly it was not covered with blood – there was not even so much as a smear.

'It's these old beams, sir' – in the unusually distinct, didactic voice used at sea for landmen and on land for half-wits – 'You want to take care of them; for – they – are -very – low.' Stephen's look of pure malevolence recalled the steward to a sense of his message and he said, 'Could you fancy a chop or two for breakfast, sir? A neat beefsteak? We killed a bullock at Mahon, and there's some prime steaks.'

'There you are, Doctor,' cried Jack. 'Good morning to you.. I trust you slept?'

'Very well indeed, I thank you. These hanging cots are a most capital invention, upon my word.'

'What would you like for breakfast? I smelt the gun-room's bacon on deck and I thought it the finest smell I had ever smelt in my life – Araby left at the post. What do you say to bacon and eggs, and then perhaps a beefsteak to follow? And coffee?'

'You are of my way of thinking entirely,' cried Stephen, who had great leeway to make up in the matter of victuals 'And conceivably there might be onions, as an antiscorbutic 'The word onions brought the smell of them frying into his nostrils and their peculiarly firm yet unctuous texture to his palate he swallowed painfully 'What's afoot?' he exclaimed, for the howling and the wild rushing, as of mad beasts, had broken out again.

'The hands are being piped down to breakfast,' said Jack carelessly. 'Light along that bacon, Killick. And the coffee. I'm clemmed.'

'How I slept,' said Stephen. 'Deep, deep, restorative, roborative sleep – none of your hypnogogues, none of your tinctures of laudanum can equal it. But I am ashamed of my appearance. I slept so late that here I am, barbarously unshaved and nasty, whereas you are as smug as a bridegroom. Forgive me for a moment.

'It was a naval surgeon, a man at Haslar,' he said, coming back, smooth, 'who invented these modern short arterial ligatures: I thought of him just now, as my razor passed within a few lines Of my external carotid. When it is rough, surely you must get many shocking incised wounds?'

'Why, no: I can't say we do,' said Jack. 'A matter of use, I suppose. Coffee? What we do get is a most plentiful crop of bursten bellies – what's the learned word? -and pox.'

'Hernia. You surprise me.'

'Hernia: exactly so. Very common. I dare say half the idlers are more or less ruptured: that is why we give them the lighter duties.'

'Well, it is not so very surprising, now that I reflect upon the nature of a mariner's labour. And the nature of his amusements accounts for his pox, of course. I remember to have seen parties of seamen in Mahon, wonderfully elated, dancing and singing with sad drabble-tail pakes. Men from the Audacious, I recall, and the Thaлton: I do not remember any from the Sophie.'

'No. The Sophies were a quiet lot ashore. But in any case they had nothing to be elated about, or with. No prizes and so, of course, no prize-money. It's prize-money alone lets a seaman kick up a dust ashore, for precious little does he see of his pay. What do you say to a beefsteak now, and another pot of coffee?'

'With all my heart.'

'I hope I may have the pleasure of introducing my lieutenant to you at dinner. He appears to be a seamanlike, gentlemanly fellow. He and I have a busy morning ahead of us: we must sort out the crew and set them to their duties – we must watch and quarter them, as we say. And I must find you a servant, as well as one for myself, and a cox'n too. The gun-room cook will do very well.'

'We will muster the ship's company, Mr Dillon, if you please,' said Jack.

'Mr Watt,' said James Dillon. 'All hands to muster.'

The bosun sprung his call, his mates sped below roaring 'All hands', and presently the Sophie's deck between the mainmast and the fo'c'sle was dark with men, all her people, even the cook, wiping his hands on his apron, which he balled up and thrust into his shirt. They stood rather uncertainly, over to port, in the two watches, with the newcomers huddled vaguely between them, looking shabby, mean and bereft

'All hands for muster, sir, if you please,' said James Dillon, raising his hat

'Very well, Mr Dillon,' said Jack. 'Carry on.'

Prompted by the purser, the clerk brought forward the muster-book and the Sophie's lieutenant called out the names. 'Charles Stallard.'

'Here sir,' cried Charles Stallard, able seaman, volunteer from the St Fsorenzo, entered the Sophie 6 May 1795,

then aged twenty. No entry under Straggling, none under Venereals, none under Cloaths in Sick Quarters: had remitted ten pounds from abroad obviously a valuable man He stepped over to the starboard side

'Thomas Murphy'

'Here, sir,' said Thomas Murphy, putting the knuckle of his index finger to his forehead as he moved over to join

Stallard – a gesture used by all the men until James Dillon reached Assei and Assou, with never a Christian-name between them: able seamen, born in Bengal, and brought here by what strange winds? And they, in spite of years and years in the Royal Navy, put their hands to their foreheads and thence to their hearts, bending quickly as they did so.

'John Codlin. William Witsover. Thomas Jones. Francis Lacanfra. Joseph Bussell. Abraham Vilheim. James Courser. Peter Peterssen. John Smith. Giuseppe Laleso. William Cozens. Lewis Dupont. Andrew Karouski. Richard Henry and so the list went on, with only the sick gunner and one Isaac Wilson not answering, until it ended with the newcomers and the boys – eighty-nine souls, counting officers, men, boys and marines.

Then began the reading of the Articles of War, a ceremony that often accompanied divine service and that was so closely associated with it in most minds that the faces of the crew assumed a look of devout blankness at the words, 'for the better regulating of his Majesty's navies, ships of war, and forces by sea, whereon under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety and strength of his kingdom chiefly depend; be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that from and after the twenty-fifth day of December, one thousand seven hundred and forty-nine, the articles and orders hereinafter following, as well in time of peace as in time of war, shall be duly observed and put in execution, in manner hereinafter mentioned', an expression that they retained throughout, unmoved by 'all flag officers, and all persons in or belonging to his Majesty's ships or vessels of war, being guilty of profane oaths, cursings, execrations, drunkenness, uncleanliness, or other scandalous actions, shall incur such punishment as a court-martial shall think fit to impose'. Or by the echoing repetition of 'shall suffer death'. 'Every flag-officer, captain and commander in the fleet who shall not… encourage the inferior officers and men to fight courageously, shall suffer death… If any person in the fleet shall treacherously or cowardly yield or cry for quarter – being convicted thereof by the sentence of a court-martial, shall suffer death. Every person who through cowardice shall in time of action withdraw or keep back… shall suffer death… Every person who through cowardice, negligence or disaffection shall forbear to pursue any enemy, pirate, or rebel, beaten or flying… shall suffer death… If any officer, manner, soldier or other person in the fleet shall strike any of his superior officers, draw, or offer to draw, or lift up any weapon… shall suffer death If any person in the fleet shall commit the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery or sodomy with man or beast, he shall be punished with death.' Death rang through and through the Articles; and even where the words were utterly incomprehensible the death had a fine, comminatory, Leviticus ring, and the crew took a grave pleasure in it all; it was what they were used to – it was what they heard the first Sunday in every month and upon all extraordinary occasions such as this They found it comfortable to their spirits, and when the watch below was dismissed the men looked far more settled.