Master and Commander. Patrick O’Brian
‘No, no, Mr Dillon … no,’ said Jack, smiling. Then reflecting that it was scarcely fair to leave this on his lieutenant’s shoulders he added, ‘I shall come on deck in two minutes.’
In fact, he was there in less than one, just in time to hear the ominous rending crack. ‘Up sheets!’ he cried. ‘Hands to the jears. Tops’l clewlines. Clap on to the lifts. Lower away cheerly. Look alive, there.’
They looked alive: the yard was small; soon it was on deck, the sail unbent, the yard stripped and everything coiled down.
‘Hopelessly sprung in the slings, sir,’ said the carpenter sadly. He was having a wretched day of it. ‘I could try to fish it, but it would never be answerable, like.’
Jack nodded, without any particular expression. He walked across to the rail, put a foot on to it and hoisted himself up into the first ratlines; the Sophie rose on the swell, and there indeed lay Cape Mola, a dark bar three points on the starboard beam. ‘I think we must touch up the look-out,’ he observed. ‘Lay her for the harbour, Mr Dillon, if you please. Boom mainsail and everything she can carry. There is not a minute to lose.’
Forty-five minutes later the Sophie picked up her moorings, and before the way was off her the cutter splashed into the water; the sprung yard was already afloat, and the boat set off urgently in the direction of the wharf, towing the yard behind like a streaming tail.
‘Well, there’s the fleet’s own brazen smiling serpent,’ remarked bow oar, as Jack ran up the steps. ‘Brings the poor old Sophie in, first time he ever set foot on her, with barely a yard standing at all, her timbers all crazy and half the ship’s company pumping for dear life and every man on deck the livelong day, dear knows, with never a pause for the smell of a pipe. And he runs up them old steps smiling like King George was at the top there to knight him.’
‘And short time for dinner, as will never be made up,’ said a low voice in the middle of the boat.
‘Silence,’ cried Mr Babbington, with as much outrage as he could manage.
‘Mr Brown,’ said Jack, with an earnest look, ‘you can do me a very essential service, if you will. I have sprung my mainyard hopelessly, I am concerned to tell you, and yet I must sail this evening – the Fanny is in. So I beg you to condemn it and issue me out another in its place. Nay, never look so shocked, my dear sir,’ he said, taking Mr Brown’s arm and leading him towards the cutter. ‘I am bringing you back the twelve-pounders – ordnance being now within your purview, as I understand – because I feared the sloop might be over-burthened.’
‘With all my heart,’ said Mr Brown, looking at the awful chasm in the yard, held up mutely for his inspection by the cutter’s crew. ‘But there is not another spar in the yard small enough for you.’
‘Come, sir, you are forgetting the Généreux. She had three spare foretopgalantyards, as well as a vast mound of other spars; and you would be the first to admit that I have a moral right to one.’
‘Well, you may try it, if you wish; you may sway it up to let us see what it looks like. But I make no promise.’
‘Let my men take it out, sir. I remember just where they are stowed. Mr Babbington, four men. Come along now. Look alive.’
‘’Tis only on trial, remember, Captain Aubrey,’ called Mr Brown. ‘I will watch you sway it up.’
‘Now that is what I call a real spar,’ said Mr Lamb, peering lovingly over the side at the yard. ‘Never a knot, never a curl: a French spar I dare say: forty-three foot as clean as a whistle. You’ll spread a mainsail as a mainsail on that, sir.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Jack impatiently. ‘Is that hawser brought to the capstan yet?’
‘Hawser to, sir,’ came the reply, after a moment’s pause.
‘Then heave away.’
The hawser had been made fast to the middle of the yard and then laid along it almost to its starboard extremity, being tied in half a dozen places from the slings to the yardarm with stoppers – bands of spun yarn; the hawser ran from the yardarm up to the top-block at the masthead and so down through another block on deck and thence to the capstan; so as the capstan turned the yard rose from the water, sloping more and more nearly to the vertical until it came aboard quite upright, steered carefully end-on through the rigging.
‘Cut the outer stopper,’ said Jack. The spun yarn dropped and the yard canted a little, held by the next: as it rose so the other stoppers were cut, and when the last went the yard swung square, neatly under the top.
‘It will never do, Captain Aubrey,’ called Mr Brown, hailing over the quiet evening air through his trumpet. ‘It is far too large and will certainly carry away. You must saw off the yardarms and half the third quarter.’
Lying stark and bare like the arms of an immense pair of scales, the yard certainly did look somewhat over-large.
‘Hitch on the runners,’ said Jack. ‘No, farther out. Half way to the second quarter. Surge the hawser and lower away.’ The yard came down on deck and the carpenter hurried off for his tools. ‘Mr Watt,’ said Jack to the bosun. ‘Just rig me the brace-pendants, will you?’ The bosun opened his mouth, shut it again and bent slowly to his work: anywhere outside Bedlam brace-pendants were rigged after the horses, after the stirrups, after the yard-tackle pendants (or a thimble for the tackle-hook, if preferred): and none of them, ever, until the stop-cleat, the narrow part for them all to rest upon, had been worked on the sawn-off end and provided with a collar to prevent them from drawing in towards the middle. The carpenter reappeared with a saw and a rule. ‘Have you a plane there, Mr Lamb?’ asked Jack. ‘Your mate will fetch you a plane. Unship the stuns’l-boom iron and touch up the ends of the stop-cleats, Mr Lamb, if you please.’ Lamb, amazed until he grasped what Jack was about, slowly planed the tips of the yard, shaving off wafers until they showed new and white, a round the size of a halfpenny bun. ‘That will do,’ said Jack. ‘Sway her up again, bracing her round easy all the time square with the quay. Mr Dillon, I must go ashore: return the guns to the ordnance-wharf and stand off and on for me in the channel. We must sail before the evening gun. Oh, and Mr Dillon, all the women ashore.’
‘All the women without exception, sir?’
‘All without their lines. All the trollops. Trollops are capital things in port, but they will not do at sea.’ He paused, ran down to his cabin and came back two minutes later, stuffing an envelope into his pocket. ‘Yard again,’ he cried, dropping into the boat.
‘You will be glad you took my advice,’ said Mr Brown, receiving him at the steps. ‘It would certainly have carried away with the first puff of wind.’
‘May I take the duettoes now, sir?’ asked Jack, with a certain pang. ‘I am just about to fetch the friend I was speaking of – a great musician, sir. You must meet him, when next we are in Mahon: you must allow me to present him to Mrs Brown.’
‘Should be honoured – most happy,’ said Mr Brown.
‘Crown steps now, and give way like heroes,’ said Jack, returning at a shambling run with the book: like so many sailors he was rather fat, and he sweated easily on shore. ‘Six minutes in hand,’ he said, peering at his watch in the twilight as they came in to the landing. ‘Why, there you are, Doctor. I do hope you will forgive me for ratting on you this afternoon. Shannahan, Bussell: you two come with me. The others stay in the boat. Mr Ricketts, you had better lie twenty yards off or so, and deliver them from temptation. Will you bear with me, sir, if I make a few purchases? I have had no time to send for anything, not so much as a sheep or a ham or a bottle of wine; so I am afraid it will be junk, salt horse and Old Weevil’s wedding cake for most of the voyage, with four-water grog to wet it. However, we can refresh at Cagliari. Should you like the seamen to carry your dunnage down to the boat? By the way,’ he added, as they walked along, with the sailors following some way behind, ‘before I forget it, it is usual in the service to draw an advance upon one’s pay upon appointment;