They were a sadly diminished band. Although some of course were in hospital, naval prison or military guardhouse, many, far too many had been drafted away. Yet for all that, Jack had fought with extraordinary fury for his older shipmates and his best seamen, sometimes going so far as substitution, misrepresentation and downright falsehood when he was absolutely forced to give up a certain number, and now, as they crossed over, there was scarcely one he had not known for years. Some indeed had served in his very first command, the fourteen-gun brig Sophie; and among the rest there were hardly any boys, no landsmen and no ordinary seamen. They were all able, and many of them might have been rated quartermaster in a flagship: at least as far as skill was concerned. They looked at him with mild affection as they went by, and he looked at them with profound disgust. Never, never had he seen such a squalid crew: crapulous, down-at-heel, frowsty. Mowett and Rowan and the master's mates laboured heroically keeping them busy through much of the day, but it would have been inhuman to deny them all liberty, and worse than inhuman ? contrary to custom. And if this liberty were to go on much longer . . . Davis had not answered his name, twice repeated.
'Has Davis run?' asked Jack eagerly. Davis was his Old Man of the Sea, a dark, powerful, dangerous fellow who insisted upon volunteering or being transferred into any ship Captain Aubrey commanded; and nothing, nothing, would induce him to desert.
'I am afraid not, sir,' said Mowett. 'He only took some Scotch soldiers' kilts away from them, and they have laid him up in their guard-room."
Much the same kind of fate accounted for the temporary absence of three more Surprises. Far graver was the real difference between this muster and the last, no less than eleven men having been taken to hospital, four with Malta fever, four with the great pox, two with limbs broken in drunken falls, and one pierced with a Maltese knife, while a twelfth was in prison, waiting trial for a rape. There were no desertions, however, although several merchant vessels had been in and out: the Surprises were mostly steady men-of-war's men, and they belonged to a happy ship.
'Well, at least I have all the figures,' said Jack, sighing and shaking his head.
It was just as well that he had got them then, for he had scarcely finished his notes and uttered the wish that the frigate might have a chaplain - 'Someone to reclaim them - the fear of Hell-fire might do better than the cat -anything to stop this wasting away'- when a midshipman arrived, at the double, requiring his presence aboard the Commander-in-Chief.
Thanking Heaven that he had put on a good uniform for the muster, Jack said, 'Captain Pullings, would you be so very kind as to take my place? I was just going to see our people at the hospital. Mr Mowett, carry on. Bonden, my gig. Youngster,' - to the flagship's midshipman, who had come across in a dghaisa - 'come along with me. It will save you fourpence.'
As the gig sped across the Grand Harbour Jack said 'I thought the Admiral was ashore.'
'So he is, sir,' said the boy in his high clear treble, 'but he said he would be aboard long before I found you, and longer still before you put on your breeches.' The gig's crew grinned, and bow-oar uttered a strangled hoot. 'But I did not even go to the lady's house,' the boy went on in perfect innocence, 'because one of our bargemen said he had seen you putting off at Nix Mangiare steps for the dockyard, and I found you first go!"
Going up the Caledonia's side, Jack noticed with satisfaction that the gathering of officers on the quarterdeck was far more impressive than was called for by the arrival of a mere post-captain: clearly the Admiral had .not yet returned. Indeed, the Caledonia's bell had time to be struck twice while Jack was talking to her commander before the Admiral's barge was seen to shove off and come racing out, pulling double-banked as though for a wager. The whole quarterdeck stiffened: the bosun's mates wetted their calls, the Marines straightened their stocks, the sideboys put on their white gloves. The Admiral came aboard in style: hats flew off, and Marines presented arms with a ringing unanimous stamp and clash, while their officer's sword cut a gleaming curve in the sunlight and the bosun's calls wailed over all. Sir Francis touched his own hat, glanced about the quarterdeck, caught sight of Jack's bright yellow hair and called out 'Aubrey! Now that is what I call brisk. Good: very good. I had not looked for you this hour and more. Come along with me.' He led the way to the great cabin, waved Jack to an elbow-chair, settled behind a broad, paper-lined desk and said 'First I must tell you that Worcester is condemned. She should never have been attempted to be repaired: it was a damned job to firk money out of Government. The new surveyors I have brought with me say that without she is completely rebuilt she can never take her place in the line of battle, and she ain't worth it; we have already spent far, far too much on her. So since we are in need of one, I have ordered her to be converted into a sheer-hulk.'
Jack had been expecting this; and since he had the Surprise for the present and the firmly-promised Blackwater for the future he was not much concerned, particularly as the Worcester was one of the few ships he had known that he never could love or even esteem. He bowed, saying 'Yes, sir.'
The Admiral looked at him with approval, and said 'How is Surprise coming along?'
'Pretty well, sir. I went over her this morning, and barring mishaps she should be ready for sea in thirteen days. But, sir, unless I am given a very large draft of men I shall not have hands enough to work her. We have been bled white.'
'You have enough to work a moderate ship?'
'Oh yes, sir: enough to work and fight any sloop in the list.'
'And I dare say most of them are seamen? I dare say you kept the hands that had served with you in other missions?' said the Admiral, taking the list Jack brought from his pocket. 'Yes,' he said, cocking it to the light and holding it at arm's length, 'scarcely a man that is not rated able. Now that is just what I want.' He searched among the folders on his desk, opened one, and said with his rare smile, 'I believe I may be able to put you in the way of a plum. You deserve one, after turning the French out of Marga.' He looked through the papers for some minutes, while Jack gazed out of the stern-windows at the vast sunlit Grand Harbour with the Thunderer, 74, wearing red at the mizen, gliding towards St Elmo under topsails before the west-north-west breeze, bearing Rear-Admiral Harte away to the blockading squadron and its everlasting watch on the French fleet in Toulon.
'Plum?' he thought. 'How I should love a plum. But there are precious few left in the Mediterranean: can he be topping it the ironical comic?'
'Yes,' said the Admiral, 'turning the French out of Marga was a capital stroke. Now,' - taking a chart from the folder and speaking in quite another tone, in the rapid, urgent, emphatic way that came naturally to him when any naval undertaking was in hand - 'bring your chair over here and look at this. Have you ever been in the Red Sea?'
'Only as far as Perim, sir.'
'Well, now, here is the island of Mubara. Its ruler has some galleys and an armed brig or two; he is obnoxious to the Sublime Porte and to the East India Company, and it was thought he could be quietly deposed by a small force arriving unexpectedly, the Company providing an eighteen-gun ship-rigged sloop and the Turks a suitable body of troops and a spare ruler. The sloop is there, lying at Suez with a small crew of lascars and conducting herself as a merchantman, and the Turks are ready with their soldiers. It was thought that Lord Lowestoffe would go out, travelling overland with a party of seamen, and carry out the operation some time next month. But Lowestoffe is sick, and in any case a new situation has arisen. The French want a base for the frigates they have and plan to have in the Indian Ocean and although Mubara is rather far to the north it is a great deal better than nothing. They offered the ruler - his name is Tallal, and he has always been a friend of theirs- gunners and engineers to fortify his harbour, together with a present of gewgaws. But Tallal was not interested in gewgaws: hard cash was what he wanted, and a very great deal of it. Indeed, his demands have increased at every interview. I say, his demands have increased at every interview.'