H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  Yet it was Mr Stanhope that suffered from the calenture. One afternoon when Ahmed Smyth dined with the gun-room, Atkins could be heard ranting away in the cabin. Some feet above the open skylight the carpenter rested his mallet and said privately to his mate, 'If I was His Excellency, I should put that bugger into the jolly-boat with a pound of cheese, and bid him look out for another place.'

  'How he does badger and worry the poor old gent, to be sure. You would think they was married. I feel for him: poor old gent—always a civil word.'

  A little later Mr Stanhope's valet brought his master's compliments—he begged to be excused from their party at whist, and would be most grateful for a word with Dr Maturin at his leisure. Stephen found him looking tired and old and discouraged: it was this wretched bile again, he thought, and should be infinitely obliged for half of a blue pill, or whatever Dr Maturin judged proper. A thready, uneven pulse, a high temperature; dry skin, an anxious face, a brilliant eye: Stephen prescribed bark, his favourite slime-draught, and a blue-coloured placebo.

  They had some effect, and Mr Stanhope was more comfortable in the morning. Yet his strength did not return, nor his appetite; Stephen was not pleased with his patient, whose temperature rose and fell, with an alternation of febrile excitement and languor that he had never seen before. Mr Stanhope found the heat very hard to bear, yet every day they drew nearer to the equator, and every day the wind died to the smallest breeze between ten and two. They set up a wind-sail for him, to direct the air into the cabin, where he lay, dry, thin, yellow, suffering from continual nausea, but always polite, always grateful for any attention, apologetic.

  Stephen and M'Alister had a fair library of books on tropical medicine; they read them through and through, and admitted to one another, but in Latin, that they were at sea. 'There is at least one thing we can do,' observed Stephen. 'We can get rid of one external source of irritation.'

  Mr Atkins was forbidden the cabin on doctor's orders, and Stephen spent most of his nights there, generally accompanied by the valet or Mr White. He was fond of the envoy; he wished him very well; but above all he was professionally committed. This was a case in which close Hippocratic attention must take the place of drugs; the patient was too weak, the disease too little understood, for any radical measures; and he sat by Mr Stanhope's bedside watch after watch while the ship moved quietly through the phosphorescent sea. This, he reflected, was his true occupation; this, not the self-destructive pursuit of a woman far beyond his reach. Medicine, as he saw it, was largely impersonal, and although its effect might be humane, Atkins would have received much the same care. What were his motives, beyond a desire for knowledge, an itch for cataloguing, measuring, naming, recording?

  His mind wandered away, losing itself in intricate paths; and when he found that his half-waking consciousness was suffused with a rosy pleasure, and that there was a smile upon his face, he brought up his vague ideas with a jerk, to find that in fact between two bells and the three that had just struck he had been musing upon Diana Villiers, or rather upon her laughter, particularly bubbling and gay, unaffectedly musical, and the way the hair curled at the nape of her neck.

  'Did you do the Heautontimoroumenos at school?' whispered Mr Stanhope.

  'I did, too,' said Stephen.

  'But at sea it is different. I was dreaming of Dr Bulkeley at school and his terrible black face; I really thought I saw him there in the cabin. How he frightened me when I was a little chap. But, however, we are at sea—it is different. Tell me, is it nearly daylight yet? I thought I heard three bells.'

  'Very soon now. Just raise your head, will you now, till I turn your pillow.' Fresh sheets, sponging, a spoonful of animal soup, sordes removed from his cracked lips, black in the candlelight. At four bells Mr Stanhope fell into a rambling account of the etiquette at the Sultan's court—Mr Smyth told him the Malay rulers were very particular about precedence; His Majesty's representative must not give way to any improper claim; he hoped he should do right . . .

  Sponging, a change of position, the small personal ignominies—Mr Stanhope was as shamefaced as a girl. Day after day Stephen felt the balance shift and vary; but after a fortnight of unremitting care he walked into the sick-bay, his eyes sunk and dark-rimmed with fatigue, and said 'Mr M'Alister, a good morning to you. I believe we may cry Io triumphe, at least as far as the anorexia is concerned. We had a pretty crisis at four with a laudable exudation, and a little after six the patient took eleven ounces of animal soup! It is the animal soup that bears the bell away—the animal soup for ever! The vicious anomaly of the pulse remains, and the palpable liver; but I think we may look forward to a gain in weight and strength.'

  By day they slung his cot on the weather-side of the quarterdeck, and the Surprises were happy to see him again, He and his people and his baggage, presents and livestock had been a great nuisance to them these fifteen thousand miles now; but, as they said, the Excellency was a civil gentleman—always had a civil word, not like some touch-me-not sodomites—and they were used to him. They liked what they were used to, and they rejoiced to see him getting better as the frigate slipped away south and eastwards through stronger, cooler winds.

  Much fresher winds, and more uncertain: sometimes they would fairly box the compass, and now it was no unusual thing for the Surprise to strike her topgallantmasts down on deck, hand her courses, and proceed under close-reefed topsails alone.

  It was on such a day as this, a Sunday with Jack dining in the gun-room, where the conversation was running on the wild beasts to be met with in Java, whose western tip, the opening of the Sunda Strait, they hoped to raise on Monday, that Mr Stanhope's valet rushed in, his face horrified, staring and distraught. Stephen left his plate; a few minutes later he sent for Mr M'Alister. Already rumours were flying round the ship—the envoy had been struck down by the strong fives, or apoplexy; he had choked over his wine and blood, thick blood, was gushing black from his mouth; he was to be opened by the surgeon within the hour and the instruments were sharpening this minute; he was dead.

  When he came back to the damped, silent, apprehensive feast, Stephen sat to his meal, and eating it up with no apparent emotion he said to Jack, 'We have taken the first measures, and he is relatively comfortable; but his state is very grave and it is essential that he should be set down on land, the nearest firm land. And until we can reach it the motion of the ship should be reduced as far as possible. Another four and twenty hours of this bucketing must have a fatal issue. May I trouble you for the wine?'

  'Mr Harrowby, Mr Pullings, pray come with me,' said Jack, throwing down his napkin. 'Mr Stourton, you will excuse us.'

  In a few moments all the sea-officers had gone, leaving only Etherege and the purser: they pushed the cheese towards Stephen, the pudding and the wine, watching silently and uneasily as he made his hearty meal.

  Jack stood at the charts, with Pullings and the master beside him. The ship's course had been altered to bring the wind on her quarter and she was lasking along with an easy motion under little more than her foretopsail: the latest log-board readings had been fetched and her position was clearly and certainly set down: 5°13'S, 103°37'E, Java Head beating WSW 70 leagues. 'We could fetch Bencoolen on this tack,' he said, 'but not in four and twenty hours. Or bear up for Telanjang . . . no: not with this cross-sea. Does he need a civilised town, a hospital, or will any land answer? That is the point.'

  'I will find out, sir,' said Pullings: and coming back he said, 'Any land at all, he says.'

  'Thank you, Pullings. You know these waters—you must have run through the straits a dozen times: have you anything to suggest?'

  'Pulo Batak, sir,' said Pullings at once, touching the coast of Sumatra with the dividers. 'Inside Pulo Batak. We watered there twice in the Lord Clive, both coming and going. It is a right bold shore, forty fathom water not a cable's length from the land, and a clean bottom. At the head of the bay there is a stream comes out of the rock—sweet water you can fill directly into the boats. It ain
't civilised—nothing but some little naked black men that beats drums in the woods—but it's purely calm, and the island shelters it from anything but a nor-wester.'

  'Very well,' said Jack, hanging over the chart. 'Very well. Mr Harrowby, lay off the course for Pulo Batak, if you please.' He went on deck to see what sail she could bear and still remain on a fairly even keel: at midnight he was still there, and at dawn; and as the wind failed, so the Surprise silently blossomed, sail by sail, into a pyramid of whiteness. They needed every ounce of thrust to reach Pulo Batak in twenty-four hours.

  Their noon altitude showed a fair day's run, and a little after dinner-time—no pipes, no drum—they made their landfall. Pullings, at the fore royal jacks, was certain of it: a rounded head with two peaks bearing north-east. The ship ghosted along on the unruffled sea, her lofty skysails giving her four knots.

  There was also the strange attraction of the land heaving her in, and presently the whole of the eastern sky was barred with dark mountains, growing greener as she stood on and on. The island guarding the little bay was clear from the deck, with a hint of gentle surf on its westward face, and it looked very much as though the Surprise would drop her anchor within the time laid down: there was still an hour to go.

  The best bower was already at the cat-head and all was cleared away when the land-breeze set untimely in, coming off strong and gusty, and bringing with it the strong scent of rotting vegetation. The sails slackened, flapped, and her way began to fall off. Jack sent for the deep-sea line. It splashed into the sea far forward, and running aft down the side came the familiar cry, strangely muted. 'Watch, watch, bear away, veer away,' and at last the answer he had expected: 'No ground, sir, no ground with two hundred fathom.'

  'All boats away, Mr Stourton,' he said. 'We must tow her in. Let us hope we reach soundings before the tide sets too strong against us. Mr Rattray, bend another shot of cable to the small bower, if you please; and rouse out the new eight-inch hawser.'

  Pullings took her in, conning the ship from the foreyard-arm; and when the ebb began to run so hard against them that the boats could no longer give her any headway at all they dropped the small bower in a prodigious depth—something over ninety fathoms to hold their ground. This was deeper water than Jack had ever anchored in, and in his anxiety he twice asked Thomas Pullings if he knew what he was at. 'Mr Pullings, are you happy about our berth?'

  They were standing immediately above the hawse-hole, with a group of extremely grave forecastlemen, old experienced seamen, behind them. 'Yes, sir,' said Pullings. 'We rode here three days in the Clive: I am sure of the bearings, and the bottom is as clean as Gurnard Point. If we veer out to the bitter-end, I will answer for it.'

  'Below, there,' cried Jack down the hatch. 'Double the stoppers, clap on two dogs, and veer out to the bitter-end.'

  The Surprise was going fast astern: the cable straightened, rising in a drooping curve and dragging the anchor over the sea-bed far below. A fluke dug into the bottom, dragged a little further, and held firm: the cable rose again, much higher, much straighter; and as it took the full strain it stretched taut, squirting water, and then brought her up, riding steady.

  Throughout the tide Pullings stood there, the responsibility heavy on him, watching the cable and the shore, keeping three tall trees in a line to make sure she did not move, drift helplessly out to sea, out to the strong current that set north-west up the coast, so that they might have to beat up for days before they reached the bay again. The ebb ran faster, even faster, gurgling round her stem.

  'I never heard of an anchor holding, well-nigh apeak, not in a hundred fathom water,' observed an elderly hand. 'It stands to reason, on account of the compression of wolume.'

  'You pipe down, Wilks,' cried Pullings, turning sharp upon him. 'You and your God-damned wolumes.'

  'Which I only passed the remark,' said Wilks, but very quietly.

  How cruel fast it ebbed! But it was slackening, surely it was slackening? Babbington joined him on the forecastle. 'What's o'clock?' asked Pullings.

  'It wants five minutes of half-tide,' said Babbington. Together they stared at the cable. 'But it is slackening faster already,' he said, and Pullings felt his heart warm to him. After a moment Babbington went on, 'We are to buoy the cable and slip, as soon as we can tow again. They are making a kind of litter to pass him over the side in.'

  The ebb ran its course at last; the barge pulled out with the tow-line, buoying the cable in its way; and Pullings went aft, feeling young once more.

  'Are you ready there below, Mr Stourton?' called Jack.

  'All ready, sir,' came the muffled reply.

  'Then slip the cable. Mr Pullings, take the jolly-boat and lead in. Boats away, and stretch out there, d'ye hear me?'

  They stretched out; they pulled with a will, and the frigate towed sweetly. But even so it was late evening before she glided past the island, down the sheltered inlet with its tall, jungle-covered sides, green cliffs or bare rock rising sheer from the water, down to the far end, where there was a little white crescent of beach and an astonishing waterfall plunging down the black rocks to one side of it, almost the only sound in that strangely oppressive air. The land, which had seemed so green and welcoming from a distance, took on altogether another appearance as they drew in; and two hundred yards from the shore a swarm of black flies settled heavily on the ships and the boats, crawling about the rigging, the sails, the deck, and the people.

  Thirty hours, not twenty-four, had gone by before they lifted Mr Stanhope's litter out of the barge and set it gently down on the sand.

  The little beach seemed even smaller to Jack as he walked about it. The jungle pressed in on all sides: huge improbable fronds overhung the sea-wrack, and the still air—no land-breeze here in this lost inlet—was filled with the smell of decay and the hum of mosquitoes. He had heard the sound of a drum in the forest as they came in, and now that his ears were accustomed to the roar of the waterfall he heard it again, some way inland, and to the north; but there was no telling how far off.

  A troop of fruit-bats, each five feet across, flew low over the open space and into a vast, creeper-covered tree; following their sinister flight he thought he saw a dark, man-sized form moving through the mass of green below and he stepped eagerly towards it. But the jungle-wall was impenetrable, the only paths being tunnels two or three feet high. He turned and looked out over the strand and to sea. They had rigged two tents, and a fire was burning, bright already in the twilight; a top-lantern had been set up, and Etherege was posting his Marines. Beyond the tents lay the ship, no more than a cable's length away but still in twenty fathom water; she was moored fore and aft to trees on the outward-curving shores, and they had laid out the best bower to seaward: she looked huge and tall in this confined space, and lights were moving about on the main-deck, behind her open ports. Beyond her rose the island, blocking out the sea. She would lie safe there, even if it came on to blow; and her guns commanded every approach. But he had an uneasy feeling of being watched, and presently he moved down towards the tents.

  'Mr Smyth,' he said, meeting the oriental secretary, 'have you been here before?'

  'No, sir,' said Smyth. 'This is not a part of the country the Malays frequent. Oh no. It belongs to the Orang Bakut, a little black naked people. There—you can hear their drums. They communicate with drums.'

  'Aye. I dare say . . . is the Doctor with his patient?'

  'No, sir. He is in the other tent, preparing his instruments.'

  'Stephen, may I come in?' he said, ducking under the doorway. 'What is your news?'

  Stephen tested the edge of his catlin, shaving the hair from his forearm, and said, 'We shall operate as soon as there is light enough, if his strength recovers a little in the night. I have represented to him the alternatives—the delicacy of such an intervention in a body worn by disease: the inevitably fatal outcome of delay. He has made his mind up to the operation as a matter of duty: Mr White is with him now. I wish his resolution may not fa
lter. I shall require two more chests and some leather-bound rope.'

  It was not Mr Stanhope's resolution that faltered, but his vital spirit. All night the noises of the jungle kept him from sleep; the drums on either side of the bay disturbed his mind; the motionless heat was more than he could bear; and towards three in the morning he died, talking quietly about the ceremonies at the Sultan's court and the importance of yielding to no improper claim; the drums and his official reception having as it were run into one another. He had little real notion of dying. Through the remaining hours of darkness Stephen and the chaplain sat with him, listening to the noises outside the tent: the croaking and chuckling of innumerable reptiles; unidentified and countless shrieks, hoots, grunts, against a deep background of steady sound; the roar of a tiger, frequently repeated from different places; the continually shifting drums, now close, now far.

  They buried him in the morning at the head of the bay, with the Marines firing volleys over his grave and the ship thundering out an envoy's salute, raising clouds of birds and flying-foxes all round the reverberating cove: all the officers attended in full dress, their swords reversed, and most of the ship's company.

  Jack took advantage of their sheltered anchorage to correct the frigate's trim; and while this was going forward the carpenter made a wooden cross: they painted it white, and before the paint was dry the Surprise stood out to sea, her cables recovered and stowed in the tier, smelling of the mephitic ooze.

  Jack looked out of the stern window at the distant, receding land, dull purple now, with a rainstorm beating down on it. He said, 'We came on a fool's errand.'

  Stephen said, as though in reply,

  'All all of a piece throughout

  Thy chase had a beast in view

  Thy wars brought nothing about

  Thy lovers were all untrue.'