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to the Surprise, drove before the wind. 'I can't swim,' roared the pilot, and Jack, looking up from his precious hygrometer, cyanograph and the rest, grasped the situation at once.
    Flinging off his coat, he plunged straight over the side, striking the purser as he rose again and driving him down breathless a good four fathoms, into quite dim water. This however gave time for entering ropes to be shipped and for a line with a man-harness hitch to be passed down, so that when Jack - a practised hand - brought Standish's head clear of the water, the purser could be hauled aboard and the Captain could walk up the steps of his ship at his ease.
    He found Standish sitting on a carronade-slide and gasping while the surgeons examined his wound. 'Nothing at all,' said Stephen. 'A mere superficial tear. Mr Martin will sew it up in a trice.'
    'I am most exceedingly obliged to you, sir,' said the purser, standing up and fairly pouring blood from the superficial tear.
    'My dear sir, I beg you will not think of it,' replied Jack, shaking his bloody hand. Leaning over the rail he called out to the pilot, who was clawing up into the wind, 'All's well', and ran below, where a furious Killick was waiting with a towel, a dry shirt and trousers. 'And these here woollen drawers, sir,' he said. 'You done it again - you are always a-doing of it - but this time you will catch your death, without you put on these woollen drawers. Who ever heard of dipping his bare arse off of the Eddystone? It is worse than the North Pole: far worse.'
    Standish had been led right aft to be stitched in a really good light, and they were swabbing his blood from the deck, the slide and even the metal of the carronade. Opinion among the foremast hands was quite strongly against the purser.
    'A pretty beginning,' said Awkward Davies, who like many other Surprises had been rescued by Jack Aubrey but who very much disliked sharing this distinction. 'Nothing could bring worse luck.'
    'He has ruined the Captain's fine pantaloons with his nasty blood,' said a forecastleman. 'It never comes out.'
    'Now he is being sick,' observed old Plaice.
    'Mr Martin is handing him below.'
    Standish and his perfectly proper, indeed absolutely called for, expression of gratitude having disappeared, faintly belching, Jack returned to the quarterdeck and said to Stephen, 'Let me show you my splendid hygrometer. Here are spare blades, at the side of the case, do you see - uncommon neat. And wonderfully sensitive, much more so than the whalebone kind. Should you like to breathe upon it? What a piece of luck poor Standish did not bring it over in his pocket. That would have damped its spirit, I believe.' Jack laughed heartily, showed Stephen the cyanoscope, and walked him away to the taffrail, where he said quietly, 'I wish you had been here a little while ago. The Orkneymen sang out in a most surprising manner. I had never heard them before, what with the refitting, the coppering, the quarter-davits, and they being kept busy in the hold; but before we get under way again I think it can be repeated, and I should like you to tell me what you make of their cadences.'
    The Surprise had been lying to all this time, although the pilot-cutter was now no more than a speck beyond the Eddystone and the ships of the line had altered course to enter the Sound; and many a questioning glance had been cast at her captain. He now walked forward and said, 'Mr Davidge, I am not quite pleased with the foretopsailyard; pray let it be eased off and settled a trifle more snug. Then we may get under way again, setting the foretopgallant: the course south-west by south. I should like to see it done by Macaulay and his mates,' he added, 'with the after-guard tailing on.'
    The usual cries, pipes and running feet, and then after a moment's pause that outlandish song:
    Heisa, heisa,
    Vorsa, vorsa,
    Vou, you.
    One long pull,
    More power,
    Young blood.
    More mud.
    'I believe they may have it from the Hebrides,' said Stephen.