Clarissa Oakes.
Aubrey - Maturin Series.
by Patrick O"Brian.
for Mary, with love and most particular grat.i.tude
CHAPTER ONE.
Standing at the frigate"s taffrail, and indeed leaning upon it, Jack Aubrey considered her wake, stretching away neither very far nor emphatically over the smooth pure green-blue sea: a creditable furrow, however, in these light airs. She had just come about, with her larboard tacks aboard, and as he expected her wake showed that curious nick where, when the sheets were hauled aft, tallied and belayed, she made a little wanton gripe whatever the helmsman might do.
He knew the Surprise better than any other ship he had served in: he had been laid across a gun in the cabin just below him and beaten for misconduct when he was a midshipman, and as her captain he too had used brute force to teach reefers the difference between naval right and naval wrong. He had served in her for many years, and he loved her even more than his first command: it was not so much as a man-of-war, a fighting-machine, that he loved her, for even when he first set foot aboard so long ago neither her size nor her force had been in any way remarkable, and now that the war had been going on for twenty years and more, now that the usual frigate carried thirty-eight or thirty-six eighteen-pounders and gauged a thousand tons the Surprise, with her twenty-eight nine-pounders and her less than six hundred tons, had been left far behind; in fact she and the rest of her cla.s.s had been sold out of the service or broken up and not one remained in commission, although both French and American yards were building fast, shockingly fast: no, it was primarily as a ship that he loved her, a fast, eminently responsive ship that, well handled, could outsail any square-rigged vessel he had ever seen, above all on a bowline. She had also repaired his shattered fortunes when they were both out of the Navy - himself struck off the list and she sold at the block - and he sailed her as a letter of marque; but although that may have added a certain immediate fervour to his love, its true basis was a disinterested delight in her sailing and all those innumerable traits that make up the character of a ship. Furthermore, he was now her owner as well as her captain, for Stephen Maturin, the frigate"s surgeon, who bought her when she was put up for sale, had recently agreed to let him have her. And what was of even greater importance, both man and ship were back in the Navy, Jack Aubrey reinstated after an exceptionally brilliant cutting-out expedition (and after his election to Parliament), and the frigate as His Majesty"s hired vessel Surprise - not quite a full reinstatement for her, but near enough for present happiness. Her first task in this particular voyage had been to carry Aubrey and Maturin, who was an intelligence-agent as well as a medical man, to the west coast of South America, there to frustrate French attempts at forming an alliance with the Peruvians and Chileans who led the movement for independence from Spain and to transfer their affections to England.
Yet since Spain was then at least nominally allied to Great Britain the enterprise had to be carried out under the cover of privateering, of attacking United States South-Sea whalers and merchantmen and any French vessels she might chance to meet in the east Pacific. This plan had been betrayed by a highly-placed, a very highly-placed but as yet unidentified traitor in Whitehall and it had had to be postponed, Aubrey and Maturin going off on quite a different mission in the South China Sea, eventually keeping a discreet rendezvous with the Surprise on the other side of the world, in about 4 N and 127 E, at the mouth of the Salibabu Pa.s.sage, the frigate in the meantime having been commanded by Tom Pullings, Jack"s first lieutenant, and manned, of course, by her old privateering crew. Here they sent her more recent prizes away for Canton under the escort of the Nutmeg of Consolation, a charming little post-ship lent to Captain Aubrey by the Lieutenant-Governor of Java, and so proceeded to New South Wales, to Sydney Cove itself, where Jack hoped to have his stores renewed and several important repairs carried out against their eastward voyage to South America and beyond, and where Stephen Maturin hoped to see the natural wonders of the Antipodes, particularly Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, the duck-billed platypus.
Unfortunately the Governor was away and Jack"s hopes were disappointed because of the ill-will of the colonial officials; and the fulfilment of Stephen"s very nearly killed him, for the outraged platypus, seized in the midst of his courting-display, plunged both poison-spurs deep into the incautious arm. It was an unhappy visit to an unhappy, desolate land.
But now the odious penal sh.o.r.es had sunk in the west; now the horizon ran clean round the sky and Jack was in his old world again, aboard his own beloved ship. Stephen had recovered from his distressing state (immensely swollen, dumb, blind and rigid) with extraordinary speed; the bluish leaden colour of his face had returned to its usual pale yellow; and he could now be heard playing his "cello in the cabin, a remarkably happy piece he had composed for the birth of his daughter. Jack smiled - he was very deeply attached to his friend - but after a couple of bars he said "Why Stephen should be so pleased with a baby I cannot tell. He was born to be a bachelor - no notion of domestic comforts, family life - quite unsuited for marriage, above all for marriage with Diana, a dashing brilliant creature to be sure, a fine horsewoman and a capital hand at billiards and whist, but given to high play and something of a rake - quite often shows her wine - in any case quite improper for Stephen - has nothing to say to books - much more concerned with breeding horses. Yet between them they have produced this baby; and a girl at that." The wake stretched away, as true as a taut line now, and after a while he said "He longed for a daughter, I know, and it is very well that he should have one; but I wish she may not prove a platypus to him," and he might have added some considerations on marriage and the relations, so often unsatisfactory, between men and women, parents and children, had not Davidge"s voice called out "Every rope an-end" cutting the thread of his thought.
"Every rope an-end." The cry was automatic, perfunctory, and superfluous: for having put the ship about (with rather more conversation than was usual in a regular man-of-war but even more neatly than in most) the Surprises, in the nature of things, were rapidly coiling down the running rigging, braces and bowlines, just as they had done thousands of times before. Yet without the cry something would have been missing, some minute part of that naval ritual which did so uphold sea-going life.
"Sea-going life: none better," reflected Jack; and certainly at this point in time he had something like the cream of it, with a good, tolerably well-found ship (for the returning Governor had done all he could in the few days left), an excellent crew of former Royal Navy hands, privateersmen and smugglers, professional from clew to earing, with his course set for Easter Island, and many thousand miles of blue-water sailing before him. Above all there was his restoration to the list, and though the Surprise was no longer in the full sense a King"s ship both her future as a yacht and his as a sea-officer were as nearly a.s.sured as anything could be on such a fickle element. In all likelihood he would be offered a command as soon as he came home: not a frigate alas, since he was now so senior, but probably a ship of the line. Possibly a small detached squadron, as commodore. In any event a flag, being a matter of seniority and survival rather than merit, was not so very far distant; and the fact that he was member of parliament for Milport (a rotten borough, in the gift of his cousin Edward) meant that independently of his deserts this flag would almost certainly be hoisted at sea, for rotten borough or not, a vote was a vote.
This certain knowledge had been with him ever since the Gazette printed the words Captain John Aubrey, Royal Navy, is restored to the List with his former rank and seniority and is appointed to the Diane of thirty-two guns, filling his ma.s.sive frame with a deep abiding happiness; and now he had another, more immediate reason for joy, his friend having made this astonishing recovery. "Then why am I so cursed snappish?" he asked.
Five bells. Little Reade, the midshipman of the watch, skipped aft to the rail, followed by the quartermaster with the log-ship and reel. The log splashed down, the stray-line ran gently astern; "Turn" said the quartermaster in a hoa.r.s.e tobacco-chewing whisper, and Reade held the twenty-eight second gla.s.s to his eye. "Stop," he cried at last, clear and shrill, and the quartermaster wheezed "Three one and a half, mate."
Reade gave his captain an arch look, but seeing his grim, closed expression he walked forward and said to Davidge "Three knots one and a half fathoms, sir, if you please," directing his voice aft and speaking rather loud.
The wake span out, rather faster now than Jack had foretold - hence the arch look. "Cross in the morning and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded with it, like an old and ill-conditioned man. It is discreditable in the last degree," he said, and his thoughts ran on.
Profound attachment to Stephen Maturin did not preclude profound dissatisfaction at times: even lasting dissatisfaction. For a quick and efficient refitting of the ship, good relations with the colonial administration had been of the first importance; but in that very strongly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic atmosphere (Botany Bay had been filled with United Irishmen after the "97 rising) the presence of Stephen, irascible, more or less Irish and entirely Catholic, rendered them impossible. Or to put it more fairly not just his presence but the fact that he had resented an insult after a Government House dinner on his very first day in the penal colony - blood all over the bath-stoned steps. Jack had had to endure weeks of official obstruction and hara.s.sment - the vexatious searching the ship for convicts trying to escape, the stopping of her boats, the arrest of mildly drunken liberty-men ash.o.r.e - and it was only when the Governor returned that Jack had been able to put a stop to all this by promising him that the Surprise should carry no absconder from Port Jackson.
Stephen, poor fellow, could not really be blamed for the misfortunes of his birth, nor for having resented so very gross an insult; but he could be blamed, and Jack did blame him, for having, without the least consultation, planned the escape of his former servant Padeen Colman, equally Popish and even more Irish (virtually monoglot), whose sentence of death for robbing an apothecary of the laudanum to which, as Stephen"s loblolly-boy, he had become addicted, had been commuted to transportation to New South Wales. The matter had been presented to Jack when he was exhausted with work and last-minute preparations, frustrated beyond description by a light froward conscienceless woman, liverish from official dinners in the extreme heat; and their difference of opinion was so strong that it endangered their friendship. The escape did in fact take place in the confusion that followed Maturin"s encounter with the platypus and Padeen was now on board: it took place with the consent of Padeen"s master and of the entire crew; and it could be said that Captain Aubrey"s word was unbroken, since the absconder came not from Port Jackson but from Woolloo-Woolloo, a day"s journey to the north. Yet for his own part Jack dismissed this as a mere quibble; and in any event he felt that he had been manipulated, which he disliked extremely.
That was not the only time he had been manipulated, either. Throughout the voyage from Batavia to Sydney Jack Aubrey had been chaste: necessarily so, given the absence of anyone to be unchaste with. And throughout his anxious, frustrating negotiations in Sydney he had been chaste, because of total exhaustion by the end of the day. But after Governor Macquarie"s return all this changed. At several official and unofficial gatherings he met Selina Wesley, a fine plump young woman with a prominent bosom, an indifferent reputation and a roving eye. Twice they were neighbours at dinner, twice at supper-parties; she had naval connexions, an extensive knowledge of the world, and a very free way of speaking; they got along famously. She had no patience with Romish monks or nuns, she said; celibacy was great nonsense - quite unnatural; and when during the interval in an evening concert given in some gardens outside Sydney she asked him to walk with her down to the tree-fern dell he found himself in such a boyish state of desire that his voice was scarcely at his command. She took his arm and they moved discreetly out of the lantern-light, walked behind a summer-house and down the path. "We have escaped Mrs Macarthur"s eye," she said with a gurgle of laughter, and her grasp tightened for a moment.
Down through the tree-ferns, down; and at the bottom a man stepped out of the shadows. "There you are, Kendrick," cried Mrs Wesley. "I was not sure I should find you. Thank you so much, Captain Aubrey. You will find your way back easily enough, I am sure, steering by the stars. Kendrick, Captain Aubrey was so kind as to give me his arm down the path in the dark."
He had other causes for discontent, such as the faint and even dead contrary airs that had kept Bird Island in sight for so long and then the curious falsity of the trade wind that obliged the ship to beat up close-hauled day after day, wearing every four hours. Other causes, some of them trivial: he had taken only two midshipmen from the Nutmeg into the Surprise, two for whom he felt a particular responsibility; and both of them were extremely irritating. Reade, a pretty boy who had lost an arm in their battle against sea Dyaks, was over-indulged by the Surprises and was now much above himself; while Oakes, his companion, a hairy youth of seventeen or eighteen, went about singing in a most unofficer-like manner -a kind of bull-calf joy. Jack skipped over the matter of Nathaniel Martin, the Reverend Nathaniel Martin, an unbeneficed clergyman, a well-read man and an eager natural philosopher who had joined the Surprise as a.s.sistant surgeon to see the world in Maturin"s company. It was impossible to dislike Martin, a deeply respectable man, though his playing of the viola would never have recommended him anywhere; yet Jack could not love him either. Martin was of course a more suitable companion for Stephen in certain respects, but it seemed to Jack that he took up altogether too much of his time, prating away about primates in the mizen-top or endlessly turning over his collections of beetles and mummified toads in the gunroom. Jack pa.s.sed quickly on - he did not choose to dwell on the subject - and came to the strange, unaccountable behaviour of the frigate"s people. Obviously they were not like a Royal Navy crew, being much more talkative, independent, undeferential, partners rather than subordinates; but Jack did not dislike that at all; he was used to it, and he had thought he knew them intimately well from his cruises with them as a privateer and from this long run from Salibabu to New South Wales. Yet something seemed to have happened to them in Sydney. Now they were fuller of mirth than before; now they had private expressions that caused gales of laughter in the forecastle; and now he often saw them look at him with a knowing smile. In any other ship this might have meant mischief, but here even the officers had something of the same oddness. At times even Tom Pullings, whom he had known since his first command, seemed to be watching him with a considering eye, hesitant, quizzical.
Causes for discontent, vexations, of course he had them; and none rankled like that caper in the tree-ferns nor came more insistently into his humiliated mind, so full of unsatisfied desire. Yet all these put together, he thought, could not account for this growing crossness, this waking up ready to be displeased, this incipient ill-humour - anything likely to set it off. He had never felt like this when he was young - had never been made game of by a young woman either.
"Perhaps I shall ask Stephen for a blue pill," he said. "For a couple of blue pills. I have not been to the head this age."
He walked forward, the windward side of the quarterdeck emptying at his approach; and as he pa.s.sed the wheel both the quartermaster at the con and the helmsman turned their heads to look at him. The Surprise instantly came up half a point, the windward leaches of the topsails gave a warning flutter and Jack roared "Mind your helm, you infernal lubbers. What in h.e.l.l"s name do you mean by leering at me like a couple of moonsick cowherds? Mind your helm, d"ye hear me there? Mr Davidge, no grog for Krantz or Webber today."
The quarterdeck looked suitably shocked and grave, but as Jack went down the companion-ladder towards the cabin he heard a gale of laughter from the forecastle. Stephen was still playing and Jack walked in on tiptoe, with a finger to his lips, making those gestures that people use to show that they are immaterial beings, silent, invisible. Stephen nodded to him in an absent way, brought his phrase to a full close and said "You have come below, I find."
"Yes," said Jack. "Not to put too fine a point on it, I have. I know this is not your time for such things, but I should like to consult you if I may."
"By all means. I was only working out a few foolish variations on a worthless theme. If what you have to say is of an intimate nature at all let us close the skylight and sit upon the locker at the back." Most consultations shortly after a ship had left port were for venereal diseases: some seamen were ashamed of their malady, some were not: in general the officers preferred their state not to be known.
"It is not really of an intimate nature," said Jack, closing the companion nevertheless and sitting on the stern-window locker. "But I am most d.a.m.nably hipped . . . cross even in the morning and much ill-used. Is there a medicine for good temper and general benevolence? A delight in one"s blessings? I had thought of a blue pill, with perhaps a touch of rhubarb."
"Show me your tongue," said Stephen; and then, shaking his head, "Lie flat on your back." After a while he said "As I thought, it is your liver that is the peccant part; or at least the most peccant of your parts. It is turgid, readily palpable. I have disliked your liver for some time now. Dr Redfern disliked your liver. You have the bilious facies to a marked degree: the whites of the eyes a dirty yellow, greyish-purple half-moons below them, a look of settled discontent. Of course, as I have told you these many years, you eat too much, you drink too much, and you do not take enough exercise. And this bout I have noticed that although the water has been charmingly smooth ever since we left New South Wales, although the boat has rarely exceeded a walking pace, and although we have been attended by no sharks, no sharks at all, in spite of Martin"s sedulous watch and mine, you have abandoned your sea-bathing."
"Mr Harris said it was bad in my particular case: he said it closed the pores, and would throw the yellow bile upon the black."
"Who is Mr Harris?"
"He is a man with singular powers, recommended to me by Colonel Graham when you were away on your tour of the bush. He gives you nothing but what grows in his own garden or in the countryside, and he rubs your spine with a certain oil; he has performed some wonderful cures, and he is very much cried up in Sydney."
Stephen made no comment. He had seen too many quite well educated people run after men with singular powers to cry out, to argue or even to feel anything but a faint despair. "I shall bleed you," he said, "and mix a gentle cholagogue. And since we are now quite clear of New South Wales and of your thaumaturge"s territory, I advise you to resume both your sea-bathing and your practice of climbing briskly to the topmost pinnacle."
"Very well. But you do not mean me to take medicine today, Stephen? Tomorrow is divisions, you remember."
Stephen knew that for Jack Aubrey, as for so many other captains and admirals of his acquaintance, taking medicine meant swallowing improbable quant.i.ties of calomel, sulphur, Turkey rhubarb (often added to their own surgeon"s prescription) and spending the whole of the next day on the seat of ease, gasping, straining, sweating, ruining their lower alimentary tract. "I do not," he said. "It is only a mixture, to be followed by a series of comfortable enemata."
Jack watched the steady flow of his blood into the bowl: he cleared his throat and said "I suppose you have patients with, well, desires?"
"It would be strange if I had not."
"I mean, if you will forgive a gross expression, with importunate p.r.i.c.ks?"
"Sure, I understand you. There is little in the pharmacopoeia to help them. Sometimes" - waving his lancet - "I propose a simple little operation - a moment"s pang, perhaps a sigh, then freedom for life, a mild sailing on an even keel, tossed by no storms of pa.s.sion, untempted, untroubled, sinless- but when they decline, which they invariably do, though they may have protested that they would give anything to be free of their torments, why then unless there is some evident physical anomaly, all I can suggest is that they should learn to control their emotions. Few succeed; and some, I am afraid, are driven to strange wild extremes. But were the case to apply to you, brother, where there is a distinct physical anomaly, I should point out that Plato and the ancients in general made the liver the seat of love: Cogit amare jecur, said the Romans. And so I should reiterate my plea for more sea-bathing, more going aloft, more pumping of an early morning, to say nothing of a fitting sobriety at table, to preserve the organ from ill-considered freaks." He closed the vein, and having washed his bowl in the quarter-gallery he went on, "As for the blue devils of which you complain, my dear, do not expect too much from my remedies: youth and unthinking happiness are not to be had in a bottle, alas. You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed, it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fort.i.tude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue."
"Stephen, surely you would never consider me middle-aged, would you?"
"Navigators are notoriously short-lived, and for them middle-age comes sooner than for quiet abstemious country gentlemen. Jack, you have led as unhealthy a life as can well be imagined, perpetually exposed to the falling damps, often wet to the skin, called up at all hours of the night by that infernal bell. You have been wounded the Dear knows how many times, and you have been cruelly overworked. No wonder your hair is grey."
"My hair is not grey. It is a very becoming b.u.t.tercup-yellow."
Jack wore his hair long, clubbed and tied with a broad black bow. Stephen plucked the bow loose and brought the far end of plait round before his eyes.
"Well I"m d.a.m.ned," said Jack, looking at it in the sunlight.
"Well I"m d.a.m.ned; you are quite right. There are several grey hairs . . . scores of grey hairs. It is positively grizzled, like a badger-pie. I had never noticed."
Six bells.
"Will I tell you something more cheerful?" asked Stephen.
"Please do," said Jack, looking up from his queue with that singularly sweet smile Stephen had known from their earliest acquaintance.
"Two of our patients have been to the two islands you mean to pa.s.s. That is to say Philips has been to Norfolk Island and Owen has been to Easter Island. Philips knew the place before it was abandoned as a penal station, and he knew it extremely well, having spent - I believe Martin said a year, for it was to him that Philips spoke about the place - in any event a great while after the ship to which he belonged was wrecked. I forget her name: a frigate."
"That must have been the Sirius, Captain Hunt, heaved on to a coral reef by the swell in the year ninety, much as we were so very nearly heaved on to the rocks of Inaccessible on the way out. Lord, I have never been so terrified in my life. Was you not terrified, Stephen?"
"I was not. I do not suppose there is my equal for courage in the service: but then, you recall, I was downstairs, playing chess with poor Fox, and knew nothing of it until we were delivered. But as I was saying, Martin was delighted to hear that the mutton-birds would be there by now. He loves a petrel even more than I do; and the mutton-bird, my dear, belongs to that interesting group. He very much hopes that we may go ash.o.r.e."
"Certainly. I should be happy to oblige him, if landing is possible: sometimes the surf runs very high, by all accounts. I shall have a word with Philips; and I shall ask Owen to tell me all he knows about Easter Island. If this breeze holds, we should raise Mount Pitt on Norfolk tomorrow morning."
"I hope we shall be able to go ash.o.r.e. Apart from anything else there is the famous Norfolk Island pine."
"Alas, I am afraid it was exploded years ago. The enormous great spars would not stand even a moderate strain."
"To be sure: I remember Mr Seppings reading us an excellent paper at Somerset House. But what I really meant was that so prodigious and curious a vegetable as the Norfolk pine may well harbour equally prodigious and curious beetles, as little known to the world in general as their host."
"Speaking of Martin," said Jack, who did not give a pinch of snuff for beetles, however singular, "I thought of him twice yesterday. Once because while I was going through the ma.s.s of estate-papers with Adams, trying to get them in some kind of order - they came from seven different lawyers after I had paid off my father"s mortgages, and the children had tumbled them about to get at the stamps - he pointed out that I had three advowsons and part of a fourth, with the right of presenting every third turn. I wondered whether they would interest Martin."
"Are they of any value?"
"I have no idea. When I was a boy, Parson Russell of Wool-combe kept his carriage; but then he had private means and he had married a wife with a handsome dowry. I have no notion of the others, except that the vicarage at Compton was a sad shabby little place. I went to sea when I was no bigger than Reade, you know, and hardly ever went back. I had hoped that Withers" general statement of the position would reach me in Sydney: that would give all the details, I am sure."
"What was the second circ.u.mstance that brought Martin to your mind?"
"I was restringing my fiddle when it occurred to me that love of music and the ability to play well had nothing to do with character: neither here nor there, if you follow me. Martin"s two Oxford friends, Standish and Paulton, were perfect examples. Standish played better than any amateur I had ever heard, but he was not really quite the thing, you know. I do not say that because he was perpetually seasick or because he ratted on us; nor do I mean he was wicked; but he was not quite the thing. Whereas John Paulton, who played even better, was the kind of man you could sail round the world with and never a harsh word or a wry look all the way. What astonished me is that Martin should have played with two such very capital hands and that neither should ever have persuaded him to tune somewhere near true pitch." Jack regretted this fling against Stephen"s friend as soon as it was out - it sounded malignant - and he quickly went on, "And it is odd that they should both have become Papists."
"You find it odd that they should revert to the religion of their ancestors?"
"Not at all," cried Jack, feeling low. "I only meant it as though there were an affinity between music and Rome."
"So we are to have divisions tomorrow," said Stephen.
"Yes. I was sorry to miss them last week. They have a good effect in pulling the crew together after a long run ash.o.r.e, and they allow one to take the ship"s pulse, as it were. The people have surely been behaving rather strangely, simpering, making antic gestures . . ."
Jack"s tone was that of enquiry, but Stephen, who knew perfectly well why the people were simpering and making antic gestures, only said "I must remember to shave."
The Surprise, in her present state, carried no Marines and a much smaller crew than a regular man-of-war of her rate - no landsmen, no boys, and very little in the way of gold lace and glory: but she did possess a drum, and at five bells in the forenoon watch, the ship being under a great spread of sail with the gentle, steady breeze one point free, the sky perfectly clear and Mount Pitt in Norfolk Island sharp on the horizon at twelve or thirteen leagues, West, the officer of the watch, said to Oakes, the mate of the watch, "Beat to divisions." Oakes turned to Pratt, a musically gifted seaman, and said, "Beat to divisions," whereupon Pratt brought his poised drumsticks down with a fine determination and the generale boomed and roared throughout the ship.
This surprised no one: shirts and duck trousers had been washed on Friday, dried and prettied on Sat.u.r.day; during the long breakfast of Sunday morning the word "Clean to muster" had been pa.s.sed, and in case anyone had not seized the message Mr Bulkeley the bosun had bawled down the hatches "Do you hear there, fore and aft? Clean for muster at five bells." While his mates, even louder, called "D"ye hear there?
Clean shirt and shave for muster at five bells." Long before this the forenoon watch had brought up their clothes-bags and had stowed them in a hollow square on the quarter deck abaft the wheel, leaving a s.p.a.ce over the companion to let daylight into the cabin; and at four bells the watch nominally below brought up theirs and made a pyramid of them on the booms before the boats, not without a good deal of jocular shoving and calling out, laughter and jokes about Mr O in the middle watch. It would never have done for the Royal Navy, and some of the old man-of-war"s men tried to quieten their privateer shipmates: but by the time their officers had lined them up, and by the time each had reported his division "present, properly dressed and clean, sir" to Pullings they really looked quite presentable, and Pullings was able, with a clear conscience, to turn to Captain Aubrey, take off his hat, and say "All the officers have reported, sir."
"Then we will go round the ship, if you please," replied Jack, and all fell mute.
The first division was the afterguard, under Davidge, who saluted and fell in behind his captain. All hats flew off, the seamen stood as straight and as motionless as could be in the heavy swell, and Jack walked slowly along the line, looking attentively into the familiar faces. Most retained their ceremonial expression - Killick, standing there with his mouth set in disapproval, might never have seen him before - but in a few he thought he detected a look of something he could hardly name. Amus.e.m.e.nt? Knowingness? Cynicism? In any case a lack of the usual frank amiable vacuity.
On to West - poor noseless West, a victim of the biting frost far south of the Horn - and his division, the waisters; and as Jack inspected them, so down in the sick-berth one of their number, an elderly seaman named Owen, absent from divisions because of illness, said "And there I was on Easter Island, gentlemen, with the Proby clawing off the lee sh.o.r.e and me roaring and bawling to my shipmates not to desert me. But they were a hard-hearted set of b.u.g.g.e.rs, and once they had sc.r.a.ped past the headland they put before the wind - never started a sheet until they crossed the Line, I swear.
And did it profit them at all, gentlemen? No, sirs, it did not; for they was all murdered and scalped by Peechokee"s people north of Nootka Sound, and their ship was burnt for the iron."
"How did the Easter Islanders use you?" asked Stephen.
"Oh, pretty well, sir, on the whole; they are not an ill-natured crew, though much given to thieving: and I must admit they ate one another more than was quite right. I am not over-particular, but it makes you uneasy to be pa.s.sed a man"s hand. A slice of what might be anything, I don"t say no, when sharp-set; but a hand fair turns your stomach. Howmsoever, we got along well enough. I spoke their language, after a fashion . . ."
"How did that come about?" asked Martin.
"Why, sir, it is like the language they speak in Otaheite and other islands, only not so genteel; like the Scotch."
"You are familiar with the Polynesian, I collect?" asked Stephen.
"Anan, sir?"
"The South Sea language."
"Bless you, sir, I have been in the Society Islands this many a time; and sailing on the fur-trade run so long, to north-west America, when we used to stretch across to the Sandwiches in the winter when trading was over, I grew quite used to their way of it too. Much the same in New Zealand."
"Anyone can speak South Seas," said Philips, the next patient on the starboard side. "I can speak South Seas. So can Brenton and Scroby and Old Chucks - anyone that has been in a South Seas whaler."
"And then I had a girl, and she helped me to a lot of their words. We lived in a house, built by the old uns a great while ago, and ruined, though our end was sound enough: it was a stone house shaped like a canoe, about a hundred foot long and twenty wide, with walls five foot thick."
"On Norfolk Island me and my mates cut down a pine two hundred and ten foot high and thirty round," said Philips.
Captain Aubrey, accompanied by Mr Smith the gunner and Mr Reade, reached the end of the next division, made up of the captains of gun-crews, quarter-gunners, and the armourer; and as he looked attentively at the bearded Nehemiah Slade, the captain of the gun called Sudden Death, the ship, impelled by a freakish double crest, gave a great lee-lurch. Although Jack had been at sea from his boyhood, even his childhood, he could still be caught off balance, and now, while the gunners were all heaved back to leeward against the hammock-netting, he plunged into Slade"s bosom.
The general roar of honest mirth that followed this might account for the amus.e.m.e.nt in the next division, the fore-topmen, the youngest, brightest, most highly decorated members of the ship"s company, who were led by Mr Oakes. Although he was a plain, thick-faced youth he was unusually popular; he was often drunk, always jolly, with a great flow of animal spirits; he never tyrannized nor did he report any sinner; and although he was no great seaman in the navigational or scientific way he would run up to the iron crosstrees with the best of them and there hang upside down.
"And then another wonderful thing about Easter Island," said Owen, "is what they call moles."
"There is nothing wonderful about moles," said Philips.
"Pipe off, Philips," said Stephen. "Go on, Owen."
"Is what they call moles," said Owen, rather more distinctly than before. "And these here moles is platforms built on the slopes of hills, with the walls on the seaward side maybe three hundred foot long and thirty foot high, all made of squared stone sometimes six foot long. And on the platforms there are huge great images carved out of grey rock and brought there to be set up, images of coves as much as twenty-seven foot high and eight across the shoulders. Most of them were thrown down, but some of them were still standing, with great red round stone hats on the top of their heads: and these here hats, because I sat on one with my girl, one that had been thrown down, is four foot six across and four foot four high, measured with my thumb."
With a certain sense of relief Jack came to the forecastle, where he was received by Mr Bulkeley the bosun and Mr Bentley the carpenter, in their good West-of-England broadcloth coats, grave men, but scarcely graver than the forecastle hands, prime middle-aged seamen who, having taken off their hats to the Captain, smoothed their hair over pates that were sometimes bald on top and whose waist-length pigtails were often eked out with tow. Behind these, in the days when the Surprise was in regular commission, there would have stood the ship"s boys, under government of the master-at-arms; but a privateer had no room for boys, and their place, ludicrously enough, was now taken by two little girls of even less value in fighting the ship, Sarah and Emily Sweeting, Melanesians from the remote Sweeting"s Island, the only survivors of a community wiped out by the smallpox brought by a South Seas whaler. They had been carried aboard by Dr Maturin, and the task of looking after them naturally fell to Jemmy Ducks, the ship"s poulterer, who now whispered to them "Toe the line, and make your bob."
The little girls fixed their bare black toes exactly on a seam in the deck, plucked the sides of their white duck frocks and curtseyed.
"Sarah and Emily," said the Captain, "I hope I see you well?"
"Very well, sir, we thank you," they replied, gazing anxiously into his face.
On to the galley, with its coppers shining like the sun, the cheerful cook and his sullen a.s.sistant Jack Nastyface, whose name, like Chips for the carpenter or Jemmy Ducks, went with the office. On to the lower deck, where the hammocks swung by night, but empty now, with a candle in each berth and a variety of ornaments and pictures laid out pretty on the seamen"s chests; not a hint of dust, not even a gritting of fine sand underfoot, and the light sloping down through the gratings, such elegant shafts of parallel rays. Jack"s heart lifted somewhat, and they came to the midshipmen"s berth, cabins built up on either side and reaching as far aft as the gunroom, too small in the days when the frigate carried so many master"s mates, midshipmen and youngsters, too big now that she had only Oakes and Reade, particularly as Martin, the surgeon"s mate, and Adams, the Captain"s clerk, lived and messed in the gunroom, where the purser"s, master"s and Marine officer"s cabins all stood vacant.