landmen and boobies stood about with their baggage, some watching the work with an interested air, offering comments, others gaping vacantly about, gazing into the sky as though they had never seen it before. One or two had even edged on to the holy quarter-deck.
‘What in God’s name is this infernal confusion?’ cried Jack. ‘Mr Watt, this is a King’s ship, not the Margate hoy. You, sir, get away for’ard.’
For a moment, until his unaffected blaze of indignation galvanized them into activity, the Sophie’s warrant officers gazed at him sadly: he caught the words ‘all these people…’
‘I am going ashore,’ he went on. ‘By the time I come back this deck will present a very different appearance.’
He was still red in the face as he went down into the boat after the midshipman. ‘Do they really imagine I shall leave an able-bodied man on shore if I can cram him aboard?’ he said to himself. ‘Of course, their precious three watches will have to go. And even so, fourteen inches will be hard to find.’
The three-watch system was a humane arrangement that allowed the men to sleep a whole night through from time to time, whereas with two watches four hours was the most they could ever hope for; but on the other hand it did mean that half the men had the whole of the available space to sling their hammocks, since the other half was on deck. ‘Eighteen and six is twenty-four,’ said Jack, ‘and fifty or thereabout, say seventy-five. And of those how many shall I watch?’ He worked out this figure in order to multiply it by fourteen, for fourteen inches was the space the regulations allowed for each hammock: and it seemed to him very doubtful whether the Sophie possessed anything like that amount of room, whatever her official complement might be. He was still working at it when the midshipman called, ‘Unrow. Boat your oars,’ and they kissed gently against the wharf.
‘Go back to the ship now, Mr Ricketts,’ said Jack on an impulse. ‘I do not suppose I shall be long, and it may save a few minutes.’
But with the Burford’s draft he had missed his chance: other captains were there before him now and he had to wait his turn. He walked up and down in the brilliant morning sun with one whose epaulette matched his own – Middleton, whose greater pull had enabled him to snap up the command of the Vertueuse, the charming French privateer that would have been Jack’s had there been any justice in the world. When they had exchanged the naval gossip of the Mediterranean, Jack remarked that he had come for a couple of twelve-pounders.
‘Do you think she’ll bear them?’ asked Middleton. ‘I hope so. Your four-pounder is a pitiful thing: though I must confess I feel anxious for her knees.’
‘Well, I hope so, too,’ said Middleton, shaking his head. ‘At all events you have come on the right day: it seems that Head is to be placed under Brown, and he has taken such a spite at it that he is selling off his stock like a fishwife at the end of the fair.’
Jack had already heard something of this development in the long, long squabble between the Ordnance Board and the Navy Board, and he longed to hear more; but at this moment Captain Halliwell came out, smiling all over his face, and Middleton, who had some faint remains of conscience, said, ‘You take my turn. I shall be an age, with all my carronades to explain.’
‘Good morning, sir,’ said Jack. ‘I am Aubrey, of the Sophie, and I should like to try a couple of long twelves, if you please.’
With no change in his melancholy expression, Mr Head said, ‘You know what they weigh?’
‘Something in the nature of thirty-three hundredweight, I believe.’
‘Thirty-three hundredweight, three pounds, three ounces, three pennyweight. Have a dozen, Captain, if you feel she will bear them.’
‘Thank you: two will be plenty,’ said Jack, looking sharply to see whether he were being made game of.
‘They are yours, then, and upon your own head be it,’ said Mr Head with a sigh, making secret marks upon a worn, curling parchment slip. ‘Give it to the master-parker and he will troll you out as pretty a pair as ever the heart of man could desire. I have some neat mortars, if you have room.’
‘I am extremely obliged to you, Mr Head,’ said Jack, laughing with pleasure. ‘I wish the rest of the service were run so.’
‘So do I, Captain, so do I,’ cried Mr Head, his face growing suddenly dark with passion. ‘There are some slack-arsed, bloody-minded men – flute-playing, fiddle-scraping, present-seeking, tale-bearing, double-poxed hounds that would keep you waiting about for a month; but I am not one of them. Captain Middleton, sir: carronades for you, I presume?’
In the sunlight once more Jack threw out his signal and, peering among the masts and criss-crossed yards, he saw a figure at the Sophie’s masthead bend as though to hail the deck, before disappearing down a backstay, like a bead sliding upon a thread.
Expedition was Mr Head’s watchword, but the master-parker of the ordnance wharf did not seem to have heard of it. He showed Jack the two twelve-pounders with great good will. ‘As pretty a pair as the heart of man could desire,’ he said, stroking their cascabels as Jack signed for them; but after that his mood seemed to change – there were several other captains in front of Jack – fair was fair – turn and turn about – them thirty-sixes were all in the way and would have to be moved first – he was precious short of hands.
The Sophie had warped in long ago and she was lying neatly against the dock right under the derricks. There was more noise aboard her than there had been, more noise than was right, even with the relaxed harbour discipline, and he was sure some of the men had managed to get drunk already. Expectant faces – a good deal less expectant now – looked over her side at her captain as he paced up and down, up and down, glancing now at his watch and now at the sky.
‘By God,’ he cried, clapping his hand to his forehead. ‘What a damned fool. I clean forgot the oil.’ Turning short in his stride he hurried over to the shed, where a violent squealing showed that the master-parker and his mates were trundling the slides of Middleton’s carronades towards the neat line of their barrels. ‘Master-parker,’ called Jack, ‘come and look at my twelve-pounders. I have been in such a hurry all morning that I do believe I forgot to anoint them.’ With these words he privately laid down a gold piece upon each touch-hole, and a slow look of approval appeared on the parker’s face. ‘If my gunner had not been sick, he would have reminded me,’ added Jack.
‘Well, thankee, sir. It always has been the custom, and I don’t like to see the old ways die, I do confess,’ said the parker, with some still-unevaporated surliness: but then brightening progressively he said, ‘A hurry, you mentioned, Captain? I’ll see what we can do.’
Five minutes later the bow-chaser, neatly slung by its train-loops, side-loops, pommelion and muzzle, floated gently over the Sophie’s fo’c’sle within half an inch of its ideal resting-place: Jack and the carpenter were on all fours side by side, rather as though they were playing bears, and they were listening for the sound her beams and timbers would make as the strain came off the derrick. Jack beckoned with his hand, calling ‘Handsomely, handsomely now.’ The Sophie was perfectly silent, all her people watching intently, even the tub-party with their buckets poised, even the human chain who were tossing the twelve-pound round shot from the shore to the side and so down to the gunner’s mate in the shot-locker. The gun touched, sat firm: there was a deep, not unhealthy creaking, and the Sophie settled a little by the head. ‘Capital,’ said Jack, surveying the gun as it stood there, well within its chalked-out space. ‘Plenty of room all round – great oceans of room, upon my word,’ he said, backing a step. In his haste to avoid being trodden down, the gunner’s mate behind him collided with his neighbour, who ran into his, setting off a chain-reaction in that crowded, roughly triangular space between the foremast and the stem that resulted in the maiming of one ship’s boy and very nearly in the watery death of another. ‘Where’s the bosun? Now, Mr Watt, let me see the tackles rigged: you want a hard-eye becket on that block. Where’s the breeching?’
‘Almost ready, sir,’ said the