Treason's Harbour by Patrick O’Brian Read Free Book Online Page A

confined space with tobacco-smoke and the human fug they were used to between-decks. Since the ship was in the hands of the dockyard mateys they could devote much of their time to wasting their substance and destroying their health, and this they did in the company of a crowd of women who gathered at the gates, some of them seasoned old warhorses from the time of the Knights but many surprisingly young - squat, thick girls of a kind rarely seen anywhere but in the neighbourhood of naval or military barracks.
    It was this thin crew, dissolute and frowzy, that was waiting for Jack when he had listened with what patience he could command to the lying excuses of those who should have been attending to the frigate and who were not doing so. The seamen were assembled as though for the usual inspection aboard, toeing lines chalked out to represent the seams of Surprise's deck as accurately as possible, each division under its own officers and midshipmen. The frigate's Marines had been returned to their barracks as soon as she was docked, so there were no redcoats, no ritual shouting and stamping and presenting arms as Captain Aubrey approached: only William Mowett, her present first lieutenant, who stepped forward, took off his hat and said, in the rather quiet, conversational, unmilitary voice of one afflicted with a severe headache, 'All present and sober, sir, if you please.'
    Sober perhaps, at least by naval standards, though some were swaying as they stood and most smelt strongly of the drink - sober perhaps, but unquestionably squalid, reflected Jack as he passed his shipmates in review: familiar faces, some of them known to him ever since his first command or even earlier, and nearly all looking more puffy, blotched, and generally unhealthy than ever before. In the Ionian the Surprise had taken a Frenchman with some chests of silver coin aboard, and rather than wait for the slow process of the prize-court Jack had ordered an immediate sharing-out. It was not strictly legal and it meant that he would be liable for the whole if the prize were not condemned; but it had a piractical directness that encouraged the crew far more than a larger sum in the remote, prudential future, as he knew with absolute certainty. Each man received the equivalent of a quarter's pay, laid down in Maria Theresa dollars on the capstan-head, and at the time this had caused a great deal of quiet satisfaction; but the sum had evidently not lasted - no sum would ever have outlasted the hands' appetite for fun ashore, and it was clear that some were already selling their clothes. Jack knew very well that if he were to give the order 'On end bags' it would be seen that instead of a well-found crew the Surprise had a pack of threadbare paupers with nothing but their holy shore-going rig (never worn at sea) and only just enough in the way of slops to protect them from the gentlest Mediterranean weather. He had done what he could to keep them occupied, but apart from small-arms exercise for all hands and chipping roundshot there was little they could be set to in the nautical line; and although cricket and expeditions to see the island where St Paul was wrecked, his ship being caught on a lee-shore with a nasty gregale blowing, did something, they could not really compete with the pleasures of the town. 'Deboshed, improvident fish,' he muttered, passing down the line with a stern and even righteous expression. And their officers were not much better, either: Mowett and Rowan, the other lieutenant, had both been to the Sappers' ball, and they had evidently competed in drinking deep by land, just as they competed in versemanship by sea; and both were suffering from the effects. Adams the purser and the two master's mates, Honey and Maitland, had been to the same party, and the same pall of liverish heaviness hung over them; while Gill, the master, looked ready to hang himself - this however was his usual expression. Indeed, the only cheerful, alert, creditable