'Yes, sir,' they said.
'I am not afraid of their failing you in seamanship,' he went on. 'No. It is navigation that may lay you both by the lee. Now these,' he said, picking up the young gentlemen's workings, the papers that both oldsters and youngsters were required to hand to the Marine sentry at the cabin door every day as soon as they had fixed the ship's noon position, 'these are all very well, and it so happens that they are reasonably accurate. But they are worked out by rule of thumb, and I am afraid that if you were asked any fine points of theory- and examining captains are doing so more and more nowadays -you would be all to seek. Honey, suppose you know the ship's leeway and her rate of sailing by the log, how do you find the angle of correction to lay off the course she has made good?'
Honey looked aghast, and said he believed he could find it out, sir, if he were allowed paper and time. Maitland thought he might do the same: the rule was in Norie.
'I dare say you could,' said Jack. 'But the whole point is that if you come up against a Tartar you are not allowed to look into Norie, nor are you given time or paper. You have to sing out straight away that as the ship's rate is to the sine of the angle of leeway, so the leeway is to the sine of the angle of correction. Now I do not suppose that we shall have a great deal to do this run, so if you like to come here in the afternoons we will try to polish your navigation in its finer points.'
When they had gone he noted down some particularly knotty points to do with oblique and right ascension -points that had arisen when he was talking to Sextant Dudley, a scientific captain who despised mere seamen and who might easily appear on the examining board together with Jack's closer friends- and then he went on deck. The Surprise was already half way down Kutali bay, wafting along to the windward of her convoy like a superlatively elegant swan with a band of common and in some cases rather dirty goslings. All her passengers were gazing at the scene, and although he knew it so well Jack caught some of his first astonishment in their admiration: the vast sweep of the bay, filled with small craft and trabaccoloes, the prodigious shore-line of mountains plunging straight into deep water, the close-packed fortified town rising from the harbour at an angle of forty-five degrees and shining in the sun - pink roofs, white walls, light grey ramparts, green copper domes- and beyond it higher mountains still, their sides sometimes bare, sometimes dark with forest, and their peaks tangled in the thin vaporous white clouds.
'Now, sir,' he said to Major Pollock, 'now you can see where we began. At the corner of the mole over there we set up an extraordinarily massive double holdfast and ran a line straight up over the lower ramparts, over the middle town, and so to the citadel itself. We bowsed it as taut as a fiddle-string, and with props clapped on just before and just after the passage of the most delicate places, the guns ran up as sweetly as kiss your hand. That was the first stage. The second I cannot show you very clearly from here because of the dead ground behind the castle crag, but there where it rises again, on the swelling green below those light-coloured bluffs, do you see, you can make out the line of the buried aqueduct, following the contour. Though now I come to think about it, perhaps first of all I should give you some notion of the political side. It was tolerably complex.'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mowett, 'but I believe the Bey has put off.'
'Damme, so soon?' said Jack, taking his telescope. 'You are quite right, though: and there is that dear Pope with him. Begin the salute. These were my allies in this affair,' he said to Pollock as the gunner came hurrying aft with his salamander, 'and I believe I shall have to break off for a while, particularly as I see half a dozen other boats getting ready to follow them.'
The Surprise's salute had not finished before the Turks began blazing away from a battery a little to the south of the lower town; they had done very well out of the French artillery in Marga, both in guns and ammunition, and in their cheerful Turkish way they sent the occasional round-shot skipping across the water among the fishing-boats. Within minutes the Christians in the citadel, who had done rather better, joined in with their twelve-pounders. Heavy smoke drifted across Kutali from below and from above: the mountains sent the echoes to and fro across the bay; and in the intervals the sharper crack of muskets, pistols and fowling-pieces could be heard. The Surprise was a most uncommonly popular ship among the Kutaliotes, she having preserved them from two rapacious tyrannical beys and having provided them with the means of preserving what in fact amounted to their independence. She had not done so out of disinterested benevolence: it arose from her campaign against the French: but the result was much the same and so was the good will.
The virtual rulers of the little state came beaming up the side to the full ceremonial welcome of bosun's calls, Marines presenting arms, bareheaded officers in their best coats, the ruffle of the drum; and Sciahan Bey, a short, broad-shouldered, scarred and grizzled Turkish warrior, skipped over to Jack with his arms spread wide and kissed him on both cheeks, immediately followed by Father Andros, which so pleased the Surprises that they uttered a discreet but universal cheer.
'Where is the Pullings?' asked Father Andros in Italian, looking about.
For a moment Jack could not recall the Italian for being made a commander so he made a dart at the Greek. 'Promotides,' he said, pointing upwards. But seeing that they looked shocked and grieved and that the priest crossed himself in the Orthodox manner, he tapped his epaulettes, crying 'No, no. Him capitano - pas morto- elevato in grado,' and raising his voice 'Dr Maturin. Pass the word for the Doctor.'
In the pause the priest called down into the boat for a petrified little girl who stood in the bows, not daring to sit, starched, frizzled and powdered almost out of humanity, carrying a bunch of roses as large as herself. It was something of a task getting her aboard, since she passionately resisted any motion at parting her from the flowers or any that might ruffle her stiff crimson dress; but it was accomplished at last and with her eyes fixed on Father Andros she went through her address to Jack, reluctantly yielding her bouquet at the end. While this was going on the Surprise had come to an anchor, and the clewing up of the maintopsail revealed Dr Maturin at the crosstrees, an extraordinarily elevated post for him. Much of the afternoon he had spent sitting in the broad, comfortable platform of the maintop in the hope of seeing a spotted eagle, one of the great prizes of this coast, and his patience had been rewarded with no less than two, playing together and flying so low that he could almost look into their eyes; but the topsail kept shutting out his view, and with the combined energy of frustration and delight he swarmed slowly up to this bold eminence, his gaze constantly turned towards the sky. There in the crosstrees he had indeed had a glorious sight of the birds; but they had vanished long ago, circling up and up into the sky until at last they were lost among the wispy clouds; and since then he had been horribly puzzled to get down again. The more he contemplated the void below the more impossible it seemed that he should ever have reached these vile cross-trees and the more convulsively he grasped the heel of the topgallantmast and any rope that offered. He was aware that if he instantly and with a firm manly resolution let himself dangle, perhaps with eyes closed, then his questing feet would most probably find a hold; but this awareness did him little practical good- it led to no decisive action, only to endless reflections about the imbecility of human will and the true nature of vertigo.