Master and Commander. Patrick O’Brian
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is, to be sure: I see that a clerk is a very necessary member of the ship’s company. That reminds me, I have appointed a young man – he will be coming aboard today. I am sure you will ease him into his duties, Mr Ricketts. He seems willing and competent, and he is nephew to Mr Williams, the prize-agent. I think it is to the Sophie’s advantage that we should be well with the prize-agent, Mr Ricketts?’
‘Indeed it is, sir,’ said the purser, with deep conviction.
‘Now I must go across to the dockyard with the bosun before the evening gun,’ said Jack, escaping into the open air. As he set foot upon deck so young Richards came up the larboard side, accompanied by a Negro, well over six feet tall. ‘Here is the young man I was telling you about, Mr Ricketts. And this is the seaman you have brought me, Mr Richards? A fine stout fellow he looks, too. What is his name?’
‘Alfred King, if you please, sir.’
‘Can you hand, reef and steer, King?’
The Negro nodded his round head; there was a fine flash of white across his face and he grunted aloud. Jack frowned, for this was no way to address a captain on his own quarter-deck. ‘Come, sir,’ he said sharply, ‘haven’t you got a civil tongue in your head?’
Looking suddenly grey and apprehensive the Negro shook his head. ‘If you please, sir,’ said the clerk, ‘he has no tongue. The Moors cut it out.’
‘Oh,’ said Jack, taken aback, ‘oh. Well, stow him for’ard. I will read him in by and by. Mr Babbington, take Mr Richards below and show him the midshipmen’s berth. Come, Mr Watt, we must get to the dockyard before the idle dogs stop work altogether.’
‘There is a man to gladden your heart, Mr Watt,’ said Jack, as the cutter sped across the harbour. ‘I wish I could find another score or so like him. You don’t seem very taken with the idea, Mr Watt?’
‘Well, sir, I should never say no to a prime seaman, to be sure. And to be sure we could swap some of our landmen (not that we have many left, being as we’ve been in commission so long, and them as was going to run having run and most of the rest rated ordinary, if not able…’ The bosun could not find his way out of his parenthesis, and after a staring pause he wound up by saying, ‘But as for mere numbers, why no, sir.’
‘Not even with the draft for harbour-duties?’
‘Why, bless you, sir, they never amounted to half a dozen, and we took good care they was all the hard bargains and right awkward buggers. Beg pardon, sir: the idle men. So as for mere numbers, why no, sir. In a three-watch brig like the Sophie it’s a puzzle to stow ’em all between-decks as it is: she’s a trim, comfortable, home-like little vessel, right enough, but she ain’t what you might call roomy.’
Jack made no reply to this; but it confirmed a good many of his impressions, and he reflected upon them until the boat reached the yard.
‘Captain Aubrey!’ cried Mr Brown, the officer in charge of the yard. ‘Let me shake you by the hand, sir, and wish you joy. I am very happy to see you.’
‘Thank you, sir; thank you very much indeed.’ They shook hands. ‘This is the first time I have seen you in your kingdom, sir.’
‘Commodious, ain’t it?’ said the naval officer. ‘Rope-walk over there. Sail-loft behind your old Généreux. I only wish there were a higher wall around the timber-yard: you would never believe how many flaming thieves there are in this island, that creep over the wall by night and take away my spars: or try to. It is my belief they are sometimes set on it by the captains; but captains or not, I shall crucify the next son of a bitch I find so much as looking at a dog-pawl.’
‘It is my belief, Mr Brown, that you will never be really happy until there is not a King’s ship left in the Mediterranean and you can walk round your yard mustering a full complement of paint-pots every day of the week, never issuing out so much as a treenail from one year’s end to the next.’
‘You just listen to me, young man,’ said Mr Brown, laying his hand on Jack’s sleeve. ‘Just you listen to age and experience. Your good captain never wants anything from a dockyard. He makes do with what he has. He takes great care of the King’s stores: nothing is ever wasted: he pays his bottom with his own slush: he worms his cables deep with twice-laid stuff and serves and parcels them so there is never any fretting in the hawse anywhere: he cares for his sails far more than for his own skin, and he never sets his royals – nasty, unnecessary, flash, gimcrack things. And the result is promotion, Mr Aubrey; for we make our report to the Admiralty, as you know, and it carries the greatest possible weight. What made Trotter a post-captain? The fact that he was the most economical master and commander on the station. Some men carried away topmasts two and three times in a year: never Trotter. Take your own good Captain Allen. Never did he come to me with one of those horrible lists as long as his own pennant. And look at him now, in command of as pretty a frigate as you could wish. But why do I tell you all this, Captain Aubrey? I know very well you are not one of these spendthrift, fling-it-down-the-kennel young commanders, not after the care you took bringing in the Généreux. Besides, the Sophie is perfectly well found in every possible respect. Except conceivably in the article of paint. I might, at great inconvenience to other captains, find you some yellow paint, a very little yellow paint.’
‘Why, sir, I should be grateful for a pot or two,’ said Jack, his eye ranging carelessly over the spars. ‘But what I really came for was to beg the favour of the loan of your duettoes. I am taking a friend on this cruise and he particularly desires to hear your B minor duetto.’
‘You shall have them, Captain Aubrey,’ said Mr Brown. ‘You shall most certainly have them. Mrs Harte is transcribing one for the harp at the present moment, but I shall step round there directly. When do you sail?’
‘As soon as I have completed my water and my convoy is assembled.’
‘That will be tomorrow evening, if the Fanny comes in: and the watering will not take you long. The Sophie only carries ten ton. You shall have the book by noon tomorrow, I promise you.’
‘I am most obliged, Mr Brown, infinitely obliged. Good night to you, then, and my best respects wait on Mrs Brown and Miss Fanny.’
‘Christ,’ said Jack, as the shattering din of the carpenter’s hammer prised him from his hold on sleep. He clung to the soft darkness as hard as he could, burying his face in his pillow, for his mind had been racing so that he had not dropped off until six – indeed, it was his appearance on deck at first light, peering at the yards and rigging, that had given rise to the rumour that he was up and about. And this was the reason for the carpenter’s untimely zeal, just as it was for the nervous presence of the gun-room steward (the former captain’s steward had gone over to the Pallas) hovering with what had been Captain Allen’s invariable breakfast – a mug of small beer, hominy grits and cold beef.
But there was no sleeping; the echoing crash of the hammer right next to his ear, ludicrously followed by the sound of whispering between the carpenter and his mates, made certain of that. They were in his sleeping-cabin, of course. Jets of pain shot through Jack’s head as he lay there. ‘’Vast that bloody hammering,’ he called, and almost against his shoulder came the shocked reply, ‘Aye aye, sir,’ and the tip-toe pittering away.
His voice was hoarse. ‘What made me so damned garrulous yesterday?’ he said, still lying there in his cot. ‘I am as hoarse as a crow, with talking. And what made me launch out in wild invitations? A guest I know nothing about, in a very small brig I have scarcely seen.’ He pondered gloomily upon the extreme care that should be taken with shipmates – cheek by jowl – very like marriage – the inconvenience of pragmatic, touchy, assuming companions – incompatible tempers mewed up together in a box. In a box: his manual of seamanship – and how he had conned it as a boy, poring over the impossible equations.
Let the angle YCB, to which the yard is braced up, be called the trim of the sails, and expressed by the symbol b. This is the complement of the angle DCI. Now CI:ID = rad.:tan. DCI = I:tan. DCI = |: cotan. b. Therefore we have finally |: cotan.