Blue at the Mizzen Patrick O'Brian

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Jacob sitting on the Crown's veranda, smoking a hubble-bubble.Both Stephen and Jack were used to Jacob's sudden appearances and disappearances: Jack put it down to his being a naturalist as well as a medical man - he had once found Jacob gazing with affection at a remarkably fine plant of henbane, whose qualities he explained with much the same vigour and with an approval almost amounting to enthusiasm as Stephen might have used - a naturalist who could come and go as he pleased.'How happy I am to see you, Dr.Jacob; I trust you are tolerably recovered?"'Perfectly recovered, I thank you: a mere blood-letting, sir.''I am heartily glad of it," he said, sitting wearily down on the step.'I dare say Maturin has told you of our misfortune?''Yes, sir: and I told him where they had gone.''Over the Lines, I suppose?"'No, sir: they traversed the entire Rock and dropped down to Catalan Bay, where the fishermen packed them all into three boats and took them across to the Spanish shore under San Roque and there landed them.It cost two and a half ounces of silver each."'Pray, how did you find out?"'Why, I asked a fisherman, sir.''Sir,' said Harding, 'forgive me for interrupting, but the muster you called for will take place at noon, if that is convenient.''Perfectly convenient.Make it so, Mr.Harding: and if you pass by the bar, please ask them to bring a jug of very cold sangria, with at least four glasses.'The muster was not a very cheerful occasion, to be sure - the inevitable first name to be called was answered by a heavy, embarrassed silence, and a capital R was placed by Anderson's name, R for run, one of the very few deserters Jack had known as a commanding officer - but he had not asked for numbers, and judging by his officers' tone he had expected things to be much worse.Most of the old and valuable Surprises were there: he greeted each by name -'Well, Joe, and how are you coming along?' 'Davies, I am happy to see you; but you must take that head of yours to the Doctor' - and they answered with such evident and personal good will that it cancelled the absence of many a good seaman, to say nothing of waisters and members of the afterguard.This oddly heartening muster took place aboard a docked ship, her bows in an impossible position to allow carpenters - hypothetical carpenters - to deal with some of the sprung butts; and it ended with Harding's most agreeable words, 'Sir, Mr.Daniel tells me that Ringle has just made her number.''I am very glad to hear it,' said Jack.'Mr.Reade will no doubt have a message for Lord Keith: please leave word that when he has delivered it, I should be happy if he would dine with me.In the meantime, let us look at the wreck of the bows with Chips.'There they stood, or rather crouched, right forward and what ordinarily would have been far below: by now their eyes were used to the darkness, and by what light the lanterns could be induced to shed they gazed at the breast-hooks - at the horrible gashes round the breast-hooks - and sighed.'Listen, Chips,' said Jack to the carpenter, 'I think you know perfectly well that the yard is going to do nothing to all this for a long, long time.Have any of your fellow-carpenters on the commercial side both the timber and the skill to allow us to put to sea and creep to Funchal, to da Souza's place?''Well, sir,' said the carpenter, 'I do know a little firm of private shipwrights just below Rosia Bay - I sailed as mate with the top man once, and the other day he showed me some lovely wood in his yard.But they are what you might call carriage-trade, and very expensive.And to do anything here, in the royal yard, they would have to come surreptitious, and sweeten many a palm.''Can you give me any sort of a figure?''It would not be less than ten guineas a day, I am afraid; and the wood on top.''Well, Chips, pray lay it on,' said Jack.'And pray tell your friends that they shall have a handsome present if upon their conscience we can swim before the new moon.'He and Stephen left the ship and walked along the mole, gazing eastward at the white spread of Ringle's sails as she beat against the wind, making good progress; and in this total privacy Jack said, 'I think I have made up my mind.It is very probable that Chips's friends will patch her up well enough for us to hope to reach Madeira and a pretty good yard, which should see us home.''Home, brother?''Why, yes: to Seppings' yard in the first place, the best yard in the kingdom, that practically rebuilt her.And in the second place, to gather an adequate crew, a crew of real seamen.Our South American caper absolutely calls for a strong crew, even without paying any attention to our engagements with the Chileans.Surveying, really surveying these coasts - but then you know about the weather and the tides of the Horn - requires truly able seamen aboard the surveyor's ship.''It was the world's pity that those wretched fellows ran off.''Yes, it was: by the time we had rounded the Horn, the bosun and his mates, to say nothing of the officers' efforts and my own, might have turned the rag-tag and bob-tail half into something like real seamen.I do not really blame them, however.We had nothing much to offer them except for hard work, short commons and hard lying - no possibility of prizes and no home leave.It is true that once even indifferent seafarers are no longer in demand - which will be in a month or two - and once their money is spent, which is likely to be sooner by far, a berth in Surprise might be something to be envied.But as far as we are concerned, I am pretty sure of being able to pick up enough truly able-bodied seamen paid off from King's ships with the corning of peace to form a strong crew, capable of fighting the ship.At present we can handle her with those good souls who have stayed, but we could not fight her.You do not seem quite happy, brother?''It is the Chileans who worry me.All this - the present repair, the dillying in Madeira - all this will take a whole almanac of time: and the Chileans are in a high revolutionary fervour, eager for immediate or almost immediate results.Will they wait?''They have no choice.It is not every day that Government fits out a man-of-war to chart their waters, and do little acts of kindness on the way.''Well, I hope you are right, my dear.But do not forget that they are foreigners.''To be sure, that is very much against them, poor souls.Yet from what you have told me, they have been very steadily set upon independence for many years now.Nothing very flighty or enthusiastic in that, I believe? When we are in London, or elsewhere for that matter, should you like me to speak to the heads of the mission and put the case to them in plain seamanlike terms? They could not fail to be convinced.'CHAPTER TWOTo a casual observer it would have seemed difficult if not impossible to carry on an affair in so small and tight-knit a community as Gibraltar; yet it was done or attempted to be done by those who did not mind mixing levity and love, done on a quite surprising scale; and when Lord Barmouth's current mistress, an exceptionally vicious woman who hated Isobel, told him that she and Jack Aubrey met daily in a hayloft or at the house of a complaisant friend, it did not surprise him very much.He by no means wholly believed it: an affectionate, easy familiarity was not at all surprising in those who had been children together.Yet he did not like having it said - where horns were concerned he far preferred giving to receiving or even appearing to receive - and although no one had ever questioned his courage in battle, domestic war was another matter entirely [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne