The group finished, Stephen put a small lead weight upon the place and said "I trust you had an agreeable evening."
"Very agreeable indeed, thank you. The chief did the thing handsomely, uncommon handsomely: and then n.o.body ran, there were no harsh words, the only fighting was in play, and we ate like aldermen - such turtle, Stephen! But I am afraid Bonden and Davies will need your attention in the morning; and Emily was sick."
"What happened to them?"
"Bonden boxed with an islander, and his nose is knocked sideways: Davies was cruelly wrenched and twisted in wrestling; and somebody told Emily how the kava she had drunk was made."
"Then she is now wiser than I am."
"Why, they sit round an enormous pot, chewing kava-root, and when it is chewed enough they spit it in, going on until there are gallons of it; and then they let it ferment. The notion made her vomit; though it is true she had already eaten an extraordinary amount of sugar-cane, and was already looking green about the gills."
"She may survive."
"I am just going to write Sophie something of a letter before turning in. Have you any message?"
"Love, of course. I had hoped to write to Diana, but I doubt I shall have time for anything more than the briefest note."
"Then I shall not keep you a moment longer," said Jack, moving over to a table at the far end of the broad cabin. Their pens scratched away bell after m.u.f.fled bell: at one point Stephen heard Jack tiptoe off to his sleeping cabin; and slowly the first code turned into the perhaps impenetrable second.
At last, when his eyes could not bear the darting from one page to another any more, he took off his spectacles, covered his eyes with his hands and pressed hard for several minutes. While he was in this state of coruscating darkness he heard the bosun"s pipe and his fine determined voice "All hands unmoor ship. All hands, there. Tumble up, tumble up, you dormice," and when he took his hands away he saw the first hint of coming day on the sh.o.r.e.
With a fresh urgency he receded the words. "How it can be accomplished I do not know, but I shall try to get her back to England with another copy of this: may I rely upon you to protect her? Little do I know of the law, but although she is now married to a naval officer I fear she may be molested as having returned before her time. She has already given us this piece of information, one of the most valuable that has ever come into our hands; she is potentially a valuable source of more, if handled with extreme discretion; and in any event I have a great kindness for her. Immunity would be politically sound; privately obliging. Lastly, my dear J, may I beg you to send the enclosed scribble down to my wife?"
All this last hour there had been confused roaring and bawling, beyond the reach of his concentrated attention. Now as he ranged his papers the cry of "Heave and awash" came from forward: the cabin was already full of light. Mr Adams knocked at the door: "Captain"s compliments, sir, and if you have anything for Sydney, we should wrap it now. I have his own dispatch still open, and as soon as Mr Wainwright has seen us through the channel he will take it back to the Daisy."
"Will you clap on to that G.o.d-d.a.m.n catfall, there? Are you asleep?" asked Captain Aubrey, very strong and clear, very far from pleased.
Dr Maturin and Mr Adams looked at one another, startled: they had both of them heard many more orders than were usual in unmooring ship, more, louder and angrier, but none so severe as this; and in a low tone Stephen, waving his last sheet, said "Let us allow the ink to dry, and I am with you."
They wrapped, sealed, taped, tied and sealed again: Oakes came below to ask if they were ready. "In four minutes," they said; and when they came on deck they found Captain Aubrey looking at his watch, Mr Wainwright poised by the gangway and his boat"s crew looking anxiously up. Hurried farewells and the whaleboat shoved off: the Surprise filled her fore-topsail, and holding her breath she weathered the outermost spur of the reef.
Stephen stood right aft, watching Annamooka diminish astern, and then, quite small now, swing steadily round until it was abreast as the Surprise crossed that clearly-marked line in the sea, that sudden change from aquamarine to royal blue, which marked the limit of the local tides and breezes on the one hand and the steady wind from the east-south-east on the other; the long even turn, in which the ship was accompanied by three moulting man-of-war birds, brought the wind upon the beam, and Captain Aubrey, having increased sail steadily until she was under topgallants, gave the course north-north-east a half east and went below, leaving a nervous silence behind him.
His breakfast was ready, but although two places were laid his usual companion was not there. "Which he is still in the sick-berth," said Killick, "setting Davies and Bonden to rights. I could fetch him in a moment." Jack shook his head and poured himself a cup of coffee. "Infernal lubbers," he muttered to himself.
In point of fact Stephen was rolling pills in the dispensary and listening with half an ear to Martin"s reasons for having deserted him in favour of Falconer. They were untrue; and Martin, feeling that they did not persuade, plunged deep into circ.u.mstantial detail, which diminished him in Stephen"s opinion. He was not much opposed to falsehood in itself nor offended by its skilful use; but one of Martin"s most amiable characteristics had been an ingenuous candour.
In the sick-berth itself, where Bonden and Davies were lying in as much comfort as could be expected, medical art having done what little it could, visitors had come below to tell them how lucky they were to have escaped the wrath on deck. "I never seen him so wexed since he came back to the barky off the Dry Tortugas and found Mr Babbington had let her get a foul hawse," said Plaice.
"A round turn and an elbow it was," said Bonden in the voice of one with a very heavy cold or a nose newly broken, "an horrible sight. He choked poor Mr Babbington off till he nearly cried, quite pitiful to see."
"But that was nothing to this," said Archer. "That was ignorance and folly, the fruit of youth as the Bible says. This was ill-will between the oakapples and the rest, and it very nearly made us miss our tide. I shouldn"t wonder if he flogged the whole ship"s company, come Monday, with bosun touching up his mate."
"My conscience is quite clear, any gate," said Williams.
"That will be a great comfort to you when you get a b.l.o.o.d.y shirt on Monday, mate."
"He had the smiting-line set up seven times before he was satisfied: swore something cruel."
"Smiting-line, ha, ha. You"ll grow acquainted with a smiting-line come Monday," said Awkward Davies with his rare grating laugh.
Martin, abandoning justification as unprofitable and feeling shy of telling Maturin about his expedition with Dr Falconer, turned to the frightful din of the early morning, oaths such as he had never heard, objurgations. "You were no doubt asleep with b.a.l.l.s of wax in your ears," he said, "otherwise you could not have failed to hear the thunder of the captains and the shouting. It appears that the manoeuvres were so ill-executed that Captain Aubrey became uneasy for his tide - that in another five minutes the land-breeze would have headed us. I wonder that an officer of his experience ..."
"Be so good as to pa.s.s me the quicksilver. We shall be needing it soon, no doubt. You know as well as I do that it is the one true specific for the pox."
Martin reached the bottle across, and looking anxiously at Stephen he said "I hope I have not offended you?"
"As far as I am concerned Captain Aubrey is wholly infallible in the conduct of a ship. Pray tell me about your walk with Dr Falconer."
"It was not nearly so successful as I had hoped. While we were taking a short cut over a tumble of black rocks, Dr Falconer fell, twisted his ankle and broke his spy-gla.s.s. We could not go on, neither could we go back until the extreme pain had diminished, so we sat there on the rocks in the sun, talking about volcanoes; for this formation, it seems, was of recent igneous origin. Presently we decided to eat and above all to drink; but it was found that although we had collecting-bags, nets and specimen-cases in plenty, the knapsack and the bottles had been left behind. He desired me to go to some palms right down by the sh.o.r.e and bring back some coconuts; and when at last I came back empty-handed in spite of my most earnest endeavours to climb even the most oblique of the little grove, he was surprisingly impatient.
"Yet in time he recovered his equanimity and told me at length about the frequent volcanic activity in these regions. He believes there is an intimate connexion between eruptions, particularly submarine eruptions, and those great waves that devastate so many sh.o.r.es, wrecking ships and drowning thousands; and he was exceedingly put out by having to leave Moahu before he had climbed the volcano there, since he had hoped to establish a relation between its intermittent rumbling and the level of the sea. He had made his way up a far more important, far more active volcano in the Sandwich Islands, one of many; and I heard a great deal about scoriae, ashes, incandescent dust, the various forms of lava, lapilli and vitreous pumice. You will remember that Dr Falconer has an unusually loud voice: it seemed louder still under that torrid sun, and perhaps there was an effect of echo. We saw no birds, apart from two very distant b.o.o.bies and a common sooty tern. Yet on our slow and halting return, which took us through gentler, more shaded country, I found him more interesting: he spoke of the importance of volcanoes to the Polynesians. Apart from anything else they are visible G.o.ds, and sacrifices are often made to them in the hope of evading the usual fate of the poor and lowly-born, whose souls are slowly eaten by the evil spirits who dwell inside the craters."
"Why, Stephen, there you are!" cried Jack, his grim face breaking into a smile. "I have kept half a pot of coffee for you, but I am sure you could do with another, having watched so late. Your eyes are as red as a ferret"s. Killick! Killick, there. Another pot for the Doctor."
"We are bounding along at a fine pace, are we not? At a rate of knots, I make no doubt. See how the table leans."
"Pretty well. We have spread everything she can carry, perhaps even a little more than is quite wise; but I felt so h.e.l.l-fire hipped and mumpish in the channel with that parcel of G.o.dd.a.m.ned lubbers, nearly missing my tide, that I longed for a breath of fresh air. Try one of these toasted slices of breadfruit: they eat well with coffee. The chief"s sister sent me a net-full, dried." He slowly ate a piece of crisp breadfruit, drank out his cup, and said, "Yet, you know, it has not made quite the difference I had reckoned on. Perhaps it will be better presently, when we bring the breeze abaft the beam."
The breeze, as he had foreseen, came abaft the beam late in the forenoon watch; the Surprise spread her weather studdingsails, and by the time the hands were piped to dinner she was running at eight knots three fathoms: fresh air in plenty, brilliant sun, and the taste of salt from the fine spindrift.
The officers on the quarterdeck watched their captain pace fore and aft as he had paced fore and aft uncounted times, but they remained silent, over there to leeward, and the men at the wheel and the quartermaster beside them stood unnaturally stiff as he pa.s.sed by.
"Captain Pullings, if you please," he said, after he had walked his measured mile. "A word with you."
In the cabin Pullings said "I am glad you told me to come, sir. I was going to ask you to do the gunroom the honour of dining with us tomorrow, it being Sunday."
"That is very kind in you, Tom," he said, looking him right in the eye, "but I must decline invitations to the gunroom at present. This is not a fling at you, however."
"I am afraid the last time was not all we could have wished," said Pullings, shaking his head.
"No, Tom," said Jack after a considerable pause. "The ship is falling to pieces. Where there is ill-will, really strong ill-will, in the gunroom a ship falls to pieces, even when she has a company like this. I have known it again and again. So have you."
"Yes, by G.o.d," said Tom.
"I had thought of remedying it, at least to some extent, by making Oakes acting-lieutenant."
"Oh no, sir!" cried Pullings: he flushed, and his dreadful scar showed livid across his face.
"It would add to the number at your table and make rudeness, gross incivility, less easy; it would put him on an even footing, which would prevent any officer from riding him and so angering the hands in Oakes"s division; he would stand his own watch, which would make him independent. He is quite seaman enough, for blue-water sailing."
"Yes, sir," said Pullings; and then barely audible in his embarra.s.sment and protesting that he did not mean to carry tales or inform on anyone, he said "But that would mean Mrs Oakes messing with us."
"Of course. That is a part of my argument."
"Well sir ... some of the officers are sweet on Mrs Oakes."
"I dare say they are - a very amiable young woman."
"No, sir. I mean serious - b.l.o.o.d.y serious - cut-your-throat serious - f.u.c.king serious ..."
"Oh." Jack Aubrey was taken aback entirely. "But you surely do not mean that last word literally?"
"No, sir. It is just my coa.r.s.e way of speaking: I beg pardon.
But so serious that if she were there at the table day after day . . ."
After a silence Jack said "The husband is always the last to know, they say. I am talking of myself, as being married to the barky, you understand. The sods. But I am sure she never gave them any encouragement. Well, Tom, thank you for letting me know: I see things in a new light now. Yes, indeed. Now pa.s.sing on to the shameful bungling this morning, I shall speak to the officers concerned but there were also some hands who behaved ill: sullen and unwilling: neglect of duty. You must prepare a list and I must deal with them; a d.a.m.ned unpleasant business." He walked over to his chart-table and measured off the distance yet to run to Moahu. "We must pull them together before there is any question of action," he said. "Tom, will you dine with me and the Doctor tomorrow? And perhaps I might ask Martin and the Oakeses."
"Thank you, sir. I should be very happy."
"I shall look forward to it, too. And Tom, pray tell West and Davidge that I wish to see them."
They were both expecting the summons. Jack had left the unmooring to them while he and Pullings finished their business with Wainwright below, and he had come on deck to find an everyday manoeuvre being shockingly bungled. But they had not expected this degree of cold fury nor the far-reaching nature of his observations. "I am speaking to you about your public life," he said. "You know perfectly well that public ill-will stirs up division and brings discredit on a ship: you also know that officers" disagreements in wardroom or gunroom are public, since the mess servants tell their mates directly, so that they affect the whole ship"s company even if they are kept under hatches, since any officer with a division has a following among the hands in his charge. But you have not even attempted to keep things under hatches. You are openly, blatantly, rude to one another, and you ride Oakes in a way that causes great resentment among his men, whom he looks after very well. Obviously, since your messmates are not talebearers, I have had no idea of your conduct in the gunroom; but you cannot deny that I have given you many a hint, aye and many an open check these last weeks about your rudeness and incivility on deck. One result of all this ill-feeling, division and contention was today"s disgraceful exhibition when I came on deck and found you wrangling like a couple of fish-f.a.gs and the ship looking like Bartholomew fair: and all this in the presence of the Daisy"s master and her people. I can only thank G.o.d there was no King"s ship by. Imagine such a state of affairs in action! Another result was that you disgraced the ship in your entertainment to Mrs Oakes and her husband: you, both of you, West and Davidge, made your dislike of one another staringly obvious. You showed no respect for your guests in what was essentially a public function. For my own part I have just declined Captain Pullings" invitation for tomorrow."
"I was half stunned at the time, sir," said Davidge.
"No doubt you presented your excuses to Oakes the next morning?" said Jack. Davidge reddened, but made no reply. "As for your personal, private disagreements I have nothing to say. But I do absolutely insist upon your keeping up public appearances, officerlike outward appearances: in the gunroom when any hands are present, on deck at all times. I say nothing about my report to the Admiralty, but I do promise you this: unless I find you have taken great notice of my words by the time we have dealt with Moahu, by G.o.d you shall sow what you have reaped, and I shall supersede you by two of the master-mariners from before the mast. We have at least a score. That will do."
"Dearest Sophie," he wrote, "A captain worth his name knows a great deal about his ship, her capabilities, her stores, her weaknesses and so on; and common daily observation shows him his people"s seamanship and fighting qualities: but he lives so far from his officers and men that unless he listens to tale-bearers there is a great deal he does not know. These last weeks I have been worried by the obvious ill-will in the gunroom and its bad effects on discipline; I had both directly and indirectly told them to be more civil, but only this morning did Tom, horribly confused at informing on his messmates, tell me the reason for this ill-will. I had thought it the usual weariness of a long commission with the same faces, the same jokes, perhaps sharpened by some foolish raillery carried too far, losses at cards, chess, arguments - but all this carried much farther than I should ever have let it go. I am much to blame. Yet this morning, just before I called them in to reprove them for the horrible mess they had made of unmooring the ship, Tom let me know that they hated one another because of Mrs Oakes; and that it would not do to give Oakes an order as acting-lieutenant, because with her at the table their rivalry might well break bounds.
"It is a shame that such a modest, well-conducted woman should be so persecuted, and kept to the dismal solitary messing of the midshipmen"s berth; I am sure she has given no encouragement, even in the most harmless usual shipboard way, has never said "Pray do up this b.u.t.ton for me; my fingers are all thumbs," or "I hope you do not think my tucker too low." No. And at a most discreditable dinner the gunroom gave for her, with half her hosts as mute as fishes, she kept things going most courageously. I do like courage in a woman. By the way, I was quite mistaken about Stephen, when I feared he might be too fond: they went for a walk in the country yesterday and came back so pleased and affectionate together, carrying some extraordinary flowers and a bag of Stephen"s birds and beetles. I have a mind to ask her and her husband to dine tomorrow, to mark the point; but I am not sure. I was so angered by seeing the ship exposed and mishandled this morning that I have little heart for entertaining; and Oakes himself, though a tolerable seaman, is a shocking drag. I shall ask Stephen: he is examining her in his cabin at this minute."
Although Jack and Stephen had played some deeply satisfying music that evening, Stephen sitting with his feet braced against the heel of the ship on a batten shipped for the purpose and Jack standing to play his fiddle, the Captain woke early in the morning watch on Sunday with the humiliation of his ship"s disgrace still strong in his mind, and a clear recollection of Wainwright"s silent astonishment and tactfully averted eyes when they came on deck. The wind had begun dropping through the middle watch, as some inner recorder told him, and he was not at all surprised to find the ship ghosting along under limp, dew-soaked sails over a grey sea with barely a ripple on the heavy swell from the south.
"Good morning, Mr Davidge," he said, taking the log-board from its place. "Good morning, Mr Oakes."
"Good morning, sir," said Davidge. "Good morning, sir," said Oakes.
Although there were stars and even their reflexions in the west, the eastern sky was light enough for him to read the board: and from what the sky to starboard told he saw the calm would not last.
"Have any sharks been seen?" he asked. Davidge hailed the lookout: no sharks, no sharks at all, sir. "I will just peep under the counter, sir," said Oakes. "Sometimes we have a messmate there." A moment later he called "All clear, sir."
"Thankee, Mr Oakes," said Jack. He walked to the gangway stanchions, hung his shirt and trousers over the ridge-rope, breathed deep and dived deeper. The bubbles hissed past him, his whole weight changed; and the water was cool enough to be wonderfully refreshing. He swam powerfully for half a mile, and turning he contemplated the ship, her trim, her perfect lines, as she rose and fell, sometimes disappearing altogether in the trough of the swell. The sun had now turned the whole sky blue, light blue, and he could feel its warmth on the back of his neck. Yet even so some blackness remained; he did not rejoice with the whole of his being. The abiding fury was wholly dissipated however when within twenty yards of the frigate he caught sight of Mrs Oakes leaning over the quarterdeck rail, far aft.
"Heavens," he cried inwardly. "I may be seen naked," and he instantly dived, swimming as fast and far as he could on one breath.
He need not have feared nor held his breath to so near bursting-point: already Oakes was running in one direction to shield her eyes and Killick, with a towel, in the other, to shield his person.
Killick, seeing his captain"s approach from afar, had also timed his first breakfast with particular care, rather as a keeper obliged to live in the same cage with a testy omnipotent lion might time his gobbets of horseflesh to the very first stroke of the zoological bell.
For once Stephen shared this first breakfast. He had been so much taken up with encoding that he had not looked at a tenth part of his botany specimens nor even at all his birds and their parasites with anything like really close attention, and the thought of them brought him out of his cot at first light with that almost trembling or rather bubbling excitement he had known from very early days - his first sight of St Dabeoc"s heath when he was seven, of a dell filled with Gold of Pleasure the next year, and of the Pyrenean desman (that rare ill-natured cousin to the shrew) only a few weeks after that!
"I was very near offering Mrs Oakes a dreadful spectacle just now," said Jack after a pause in which they each drank two cups of coffee. "I was swimming back - was within pistol-shot -when I noticed her there at the rail. Had she looked my way she must have beheld a naked man."
"That would have been very shocking, indeed," said Stephen. "Pray pa.s.s the breadfruit toast." He remembered an earlier occasion on which Mrs Oakes had in fact beheld a naked man, through the scuttle of the cabin in which she had been examined, perfectly unmoved. Jack was standing in a boat, giving directions about the recovery of a hawser cut by the sharp coral rock and on the point of diving himself; and she contemplated him with a detached interest: "Captain Aubrey would be considered a fine figure of a man even in Ireland, would he not?" she asked. "But surely he has been most dreadfully cut about?"
"I should scarcely like to number the wounds I have sewn up and dressed, or the musket and pistol b.a.l.l.s I have extracted," said Stephen. "You are to observe, ma"am, that they are all honourably in front; except for those that are behind."
That was long before their walk in Annamooka: indeed it was the first time he had distinctly seen anything unusual in her att.i.tude towards men, an almost clinical att.i.tude that disconcerted him to some degree, since neither her face nor her everyday behaviour was marked by any irregularity of life. He was still thinking of her when Jack said "Speaking of Mrs Oakes, it is long since I heard her howling on Martin"s viola: or Martin himself, for that matter."
"I believe I understood him to say that the neck was out of order: or possibly the head. How does it come about, do you suppose, that so few people play it? For a score that make their attempts upon a fiddle not more than one, nay less, tries the viola. Yet it has or can have the sweetest voice."
"I cannot tell, I am sure. Perhaps they are less easy to come by. Perhaps they are even more difficult to master: think how rare it is to find a player of the very first rate, fit to answer a violin like Cramer or Kreutzer in say Mozart"s . . . Come in. Come in and sit down, Tom," he called, pouring him a cup of coffee.
"Thank you, sir. It was only that I forgot to ask whether you meant to rig church today."
"Yes," said Jack, his face clouding again. "Yes, certainly: there is nothing like church for bringing a sense of order into things. But only the penitential psalms and the Articles."
Church by all means, with awnings over the quarterdeck; yet before church came the ceremony of divisions, the formal inspection of all hands lined up under their divisional officers, and of their quarters. It was, as Jack had observed, one of a commander"s best opportunities for taking the ship"s company"s pulse. As he pa.s.sed along the ranks he looked eye-to-eye at every seaman, petty officer and warrant officer aboard; and he would be a dull fellow if the expression or lack of expression on these scores of well-washed, new-shaven faces did not give him some notion of the ship"s general temper.
This worked both ways: the Surprises also gauged the state of their captain"s mind; and his progress, accompanied by Pullings and by each divisional officer in turn, left gloom and dismay behind. In spite of his bathe, in spite of his breakfast and in spite of the fine steady breeze there was still a great deal of anger and resentment in his heart. The ship had been mishandled, made to look ridiculous - all that unofficer-like, unseamanlike swearing and shouting and noise in the course of an everyday manoeuvre that the old Surprise would have carried through without the slightest fuss and with little more than the single order "Unmoor ship" - would have carried it through like a man-of-war rather than a slapdash privateer. It was a desecration; and very strong displeasure emanated from him as he walked along. He smiled only once, and that was when he came to the gunner"s division, where Mr Smith was attended by Reade, making his first official appearance since his accident. "I am happy to see you again, Mr Reade," he said. "You have the Doctor"s leave I am sure?"
"Oh yes, sir: he declared I was quite fit for -" began Reade: but here his voice, which had just started to break, soared out of control before he brought out "light duties" in a deep croak.
"Very good. But even so you must take care. We do not have so very many seamen aboard."
On to Oakes and the foretopmen, a division that had always been the most cheerful in the ship and that was now the most disturbed. Guilt accounted for some part of their trouble as it did for their more than usually high perfection of cleanliness and Sunday dress - gestures towards averting wrath - but there was also something more that he could not define. He walked along past them with a grave face and none of the small remarks that so often attended divisions. On to the forecastle-men and so to Jemmy Ducks and his charges. "How they shoot up," he reflected. "Perhaps f.a.n.n.y and Charlotte will be as long in the leg by now." Although he looked at them kindly and asked them how they did, they gazed up with even more anxiety than usual. In their very remote Melanesian small childhood formal gatherings had sometimes ended in human sacrifice - a reasonable foundation for uneasiness - but in addition to this they were more exactly in tune with the people"s mood than their captain; and so, raising upon the foundation to an uncommon height, they quavered as they replied.
In the empty sick-berth Stephen and Martin sat carefully in their good clothes, listening to the sound of Padeen putting the last touches of polish and exact order to the surgical instruments. Breaking the silence Martin said in a low tone, "I owe you a fuller explanation for my conduct yesterday. I did not go with you and Mrs Oakes because for some time now I have felt - how shall I put it? - an inclination, a growing inclination for her that it would be criminal to indulge. I felt I must avoid her company even at the cost of a falseness and incivility that I do a.s.sure you, Maturin, I very much regret."
"Never in life, my dear Martin," said Stephen, shaking him by the hand. "Sure, it is better to flee than to burn; and from the mere philosophical, as opposed to the moral, point of view, we covered rather more ground."
"For the same reason I broke my viola," said Martin, still with his first idea: then, the second having pierced through, he clapped his hand to his pocket and cried, "Very true. And at one point in our return, when Dr Falconer and I were sitting among old and rotting tree-trunks, felled by some long-past hurricane - a kind of locality you did not encounter, I collect - I found a large variety of beetles. Here," - producing a flat box from his pocket - "is a selection I beg you will accept."