The Far Side of the World

by Patrick O'Brian

  These thoughts ran through and through his head as he poked about under a long recess in the side of the cabin once inhabited by Mr Cunningham and his chests—the holes for the screws that had held them down were still to be seen—and it was not without a certain relief that he turned to Jack at last, saying, 'The mad brute-beasts have given me the wrong direction, so they have. There is nothing here. Perhaps it is just as well.'

  'Should you like me to look at the paper?' asked Jack.

  'By all means. But it is as plain as can be. "Press the third bolt-head under the larboard shelf-piece three foot nine inches from the bulkhead." '

  'Stephen,' said Jack, 'I believe that is the starboard shelfpiece you are looking at.'

  'Oh your soul to the devil, Jack,' cried Stephen. 'This is my left hand, is it not?'—holding it up—'And what is on the left or unlucky or indeed sinister side is the larboard.'

  'You are forgetting that we have turned about,' said Jack. 'We are now facing aft, you know. The third bolthead, did you say?' He pressed, and instantly and with a surprisingly loud crash a metal box fell from the seam, striking the deck with one corner and bursting open. He bent to pick up scattered sheafs of bank-notes and other papers, putting his lantern down, and at the sight of the first he cried, 'God love us! What can—' But recollecting himself he gathered the bundles together in silence and handed them to Stephen, who gave them a cursory glance, shook his head with a worried, dissatisfied air, and put them back into their box. 'The best thing I can do is to seal this at once, and give it to you to keep in a safe place. Perhaps you had better carry it back to the Surprise yourself: I have slipped into the water from a boat before this.'

  In the great cabin once more Stephen melted the wax, pressed his curiously engraved watch-key upon it, and handed the box over together with a small piece of paper, saying, 'This slip shows the proper recipient, if any accident should happen to me.'

  'It is a damned heavy responsibility,' said Jack gravely, taking it.

  'There are heavier by far, my dear,' said Stephen. 'I must be away for my rounds.'

  'That reminds me,' said Jack. 'I see that the gunner's wife is on your sick-list. I hope she is better by now?'

  'Better? She is not,' said Stephen emphatically.

  'I am sorry for it,' said Jack. 'Would a visit be in order, or one of the chickens, or a bottle of port-wine? Or perhaps all three?'

  'Listen,' said Stephen, 'I do not know that she will live.'

  'Oh Lord,' cried Jack, 'I had no idea—I am extremely concerned—I hope there is something you can do for her?'

  'As for that,' said Stephen, 'I set nearly all my trust in the resilience of youth. She is no more than nineteen, poor child, and at nineteen one can support hell and purgatory almost, and live. Tell me, Tom Pullings will not be leaving us at once?'

  'No. He keeps company until the morning. I have a great deal of paper-work to do.'

  'I must write at least one letter too,' said Stephen. 'And if I possibly can I will come and help you with the captured mail,' he added, knowing Jack's extreme reluctance to read other people's correspondence, even though it might contain priceless information. 'We shall have a busy night of it.'

  A busy night and a sleepless one, but in the course of it they found one letter written by an officer named Caleb Gill which gave a clear statement of the Norfolk's intended movements as far as the Galapagos archipelago: from that point she was to steer westward 'to my uncle Palmer's particular Paradise, for which we have a band of colonists, who wish to be as far away from their countrymen as possible'. Uncle Palmer was obviously the captain of the Norfolk, and his particular Paradise might be anywhere in the South Seas; but by comparing dates and positions and what the whalers said about the Norfolk's sailing qualities, Jack was reasonably confident that he should come up with her well before the Galapagos, probably at the island of Juan Fernandez, where she meant to wood and water, or in the neighbourhood of Valparaiso, where she meant to refit; and Stephen would have been quite cheerful if it had not been for two patients who weighed upon his mind, the one his old friend Joe Plaice, who had brought his head against a ring-bolt in a commonplace fall down a ladder, fracturing his skull, and the other Mrs Horner, who was not responding to his treatment in any way.

  'It astonishes me that our seamen can move straight from one ship to another and sail it off with no practice,' said Martin as they stood watching the Danaë part company, turning in a long pure curve until her head was pointing north-north-east while the Surprise carried on to the west of south.

  'The complexity of rigging is much the same in all, I am told,' said Stephen. 'Just as we see a clear analogy between the skeletons of vertebrates, so the mariner with his boats. In a brig I believe some ropes run forward while on a three-masted ship they run backwards, yet this is no more a source of confusion for the seaman than the ruminant's multiplicity of stomachs for the anatomist, or the howler's anomalous hyoid. Yet what I wished to say was this: I know it was your kindly intention to visit the gunner's wife, but in her present state of mental agitation and extreme physical distress I really think I should beg you not to do so until there is some improvement: I have already banished her husband. On the other hand, I should be glad of your assistance in a tolerably delicate operation as soon as there is light enough: a depressed fracture. I must trepan poor Plaice and I should like to do so today; they tell me there is dirty weather ahead, and clearly one needs a steady deck underfoot and an immobile patient. I have an improved Lavoisier's trephine, a magnificent instrument with extraordinary biting power; and if you choose, you shall turn the handle!'

  The Surprise's crew, like most seamen, were a hypochondriacal set of ghouls upon the whole, and they loved a surgical operation almost as much as they loved a prize. But whereas the amputation of a shipmate's arm or leg had disadvantages of which they were fully sensible, a trepanning had none: the patient had but to survive to have all his former powers restored—to be as good as new, with the glory of a silver plate and an anecdote that would last him and his friends to the grave.

  It was an operation that Dr Maturin had carried out at sea before, always in the fullest possible light and therefore on deck, and many of them had seen him do so. Now they and all their mates saw him do it again: they saw Joe Plaice's scalp taken off, his skull bared, a disc of bone audibly sawn out, the handle turning solemnly; a three-shilling piece, hammered into a flattened dome by the armourer, screwed on over the hole; and the scalp replaced, neatly sewn up by the parson.

  It was extremely gratifying—the Captain had been seen to go pale, and Barret Bonden too, the patient's cousin—blood running down Joe's neck regardless—brains clearly to be seen—something not to be missed for a mint of money—instructive, too—and they made the most of it. This was just as well, because it was the last gratification they had for a very long while: in some cases the last they ever had. The dirty weather, foretold by the long heavy swell from the south and west, the dropping glass and the most forbidding sky, struck them even sooner and even harder than they had expected.

  Yet the Surprise was a well-found, weatherly ship, and she rigged preventer backstays, braces, shrouds, and of course stays throughout, as well as rolling tackles, a full suit of storm-canvas bent well in time and her topgallant masts struck down on deck. Although the gale was very heavy indeed, filled with blinding rain and sleet, and although at first it blew against the swell and cut up a wicked sea, it was not foul, and the frigate, under close-reefed topsails, raced south at a tremendous pace, half smothered in flying water, shipping green seas every other minute, so that her decks were aswim and men could never move without clinging to the life-lines stretching fore and aft.

  Two days and three nights it blew, the storm-wrack as low as the mastheads, but the third day it cleared and they had a good noon observation: to his great pleasure Jack found that they were farther south than he had expected—farther south than their dead-reckoning allowed—and that they were within striking distance of State
n Island.

  He and Allen had a long conference, with the charts spread out before them, charts that gave different longitudes for a good many awkward islands, reefs and headlands: and all the while they talked the decks as far aft as the taffrail were aflutter with sea-soaked clothes attempting to dry in the pale evening sun. Jack questioned the master again and again about Captain Colnett's accuracy, and again and again the master affirmed that he would take his Gospel oath on it. 'He was Captain Cook's pupil, sir, and he carried a pair of Arnold's chronometers: they lasted him all the way, always wound, never once stopping, right by observation to within ten seconds, until we were pooped south of St Helena, homeward bound.'

  'A pair of Arnold's chronometers? Very well then, Mr Allen,' said Jack, satisfied at last, 'let us set course for Cape St John. And as you go forward, pray tell the Doctor that I shall be able to accompany him on his rounds this evening.'

  'Well, Stephen,' he said, when the Doctor came to fetch him, 'you have a thundering long great sick-list today, I see.'

  'The usual strained articulations, crushed fingers, broken bones,' said Stephen. 'I tell them, "You must have one hand for the ship, and another for yourself; and you must throw your nasty grog into the scuppers, if you are to go aloft within two hours," but they do not attend. They leap about the rigging, encouraged by the bosun, as though they were octopodes, with prehensile tails into the bargain; so of course every time there is a tempest my sick-bay fills.'

  'Of course. But tell me about Mrs Horner: I thought of her often when we rolled and pitched to such an extent.'

  'She was unaware of it at the time, being delirious, but in any case the hanging cot is wonderfully adapted for patients at sea. I believe I may say that she has overcome her fever—I shaved her head—and that although there is a high degree of debility the youthful resilience of which I spoke may pull her through: it may perhaps pull her through, with the blessing.'

  Jack Aubrey saw very little sign of resilience when he was led without warning into the gunner's cabin, or of youth; and if it had not been for Stephen's words he would have said that her grey face, her immense dark-circled eyes, showed the marks of death. Mrs Horner had just enough strength to snatch up a scarf and wrap it round her bald head, casting a reproachful glance at Stephen as she did so, and to murmur, 'Thank you, sir,' when Jack told her that he was delighted to see her looking so much better, and that she must make haste to be quite well again for the sake of the youngsters, who missed her sadly, and of course for Mr Horner. He was about to say something about 'Juan Fernandez restoring the roses to her cheeks' when he noticed that Stephen had laid his finger to his lips, and realized that in his embarrassment he had been addressing Mrs Horner as though she were a ship some considerable distance to windward.

  He felt much happier in the sick-bay, where he knew exactly what to say to each man and boy—the boy being one of his youngsters, John Nesbit, with a broken collarbone—and in his relief he said to Plaice, 'Well, Plaice, at least some good has come out of this: at least nobody will ever be able to say, "Poor old Plaice is down to his last shilling."

  'How do you make that out, sir?' asked Plaice, closing one eye and smiling in anticipation.

  'Why, because there are three of 'em screwed to your head, ha, ha, ha!' said his Captain.

  'You are not unlike Shakespeare,' observed Stephen, as they walked back to the cabin.

  'So I am often told by those who read my letters and dispatches,' said Jack, 'but what makes you say so at this particular moment?'

  'Because his clowns make quips of that bludgeoning, knock-me-down nature. You have only to add marry, come up, or go to, with a pox on it, and it is pure Gammon, or Bacon, or what you will.'

  'That is only your jealousy,' said Jack. 'What do you say to some music tonight?'

  'I should like it extremely. I shall not play well, being quite fagged out, as our American captive says.'

  'But Stephen, we say fagged out too.'

  'Do we? I was not aware. Still, at all events we do not say it with that touching colonial twang, like a cockle-woman's horn on Dublin Quay. He is close kin to that most amiable Captain Lawrence we met in Boston, I find.'

  'Yes, the same that captured Mowett in the Peacock and was so good to him. I mean to pay the young fellow every attention in my power: I have asked him and his midshipman to dinner tomorrow. Stephen, you will not mind doing without our usual toasted cheese? There is only just enough to make a presentable dish for my guests.'

  They played without cheese; they played far into the night, until Stephen's head bowed over his 'cello between two movements: he excused himself and crept off, still half asleep. Jack called for a glass of grog, drank it up, put on a comforter knitted by his wife, still full of warmth and love though somewhat mangled by Brazilian mice, and his Magellan jacket and went on deck. It was a little after seven bells in the first watch, a drizzling night; and Maitland had the deck. As soon as his eyes were used to the darkness Jack looked at the log- and traverse-boards. The Surprise had kept exactly to her course, but she had been travelling rather faster than he had expected. Somewhere out there in the darkness to leeward was Staten Island: he had seen engravings of its ironbound coast in Anson's Voyage and he had no wish to come up against it, no wish to be whirled about in the strong currents and furious tides that swept round the tip of South America and through the Straits Lemaire. 'Clew up the forecourse and pass along the deep-sea line,' he said.

  A few minutes later there began the steady ritual of taking soundings: the splash of the heavy lead far forward, the cry of 'Watch, there, watch,' coming aft as each of the men along the side let go the last of his coils of deep-sea line, until it reached the quartermaster in the mizzen-chains, who reported the depth to the midshipman of the watch and called, 'Ready along,' whereupon the lead passed forward and the sequence began again.

  'Belay,' said Jack as eight bells struck and the pink, sleepy larbowlines and the master relieved the midnight deck. 'Good night to you, Mr Maitland. Mr Allen, I believe we should be off Cape St John. We have a little over a hundred fathom, gently shoaling. What do you say to that?'

  'Why, sir,' said the master, 'I think we should arm the lead and go on casting until we strike say ninety fathom with white shelly ground.'

  One bell: two bells. And then, 'Ninety-five fathom and white shelly sand, sir,' said the quartermaster at last, holding the lead to the lantern, and with a strong feeling of relief Jack gave orders to haul to the wind. With the Surprise sailing away from that vile thing a lee-shore, but still heading south, he could go below and sleep in peace.

  He was on deck again at first light: a clear day, with the wind freshening and blowing in strange, uneasy gusts, a troubled sea and sky, following no coherent pattern, but no land to leeward, no land at all. The master, having had the middle watch, ought to have been asleep, but he was not, and together they laid a course that should take the ship round the Horn with no great offing—just enough to allow their minds to rest easy yet at the same time to profit from the variable inshore winds, which were blowing at present from the north and north-east, as favourable as could be.

  They were profiting from them still as the guests in the cabin finished the very last of Jack's cheese, watched by a disapproving Killick and his coal-black mate: disapproval on a black face, ordinarily lit by a white smile, is disapproval indeed. It had not been an easy party; the circumstances were obviously very much against convivial merriment in the first place, and then again the sanguine, readily-pleased, conversible Jack that his friends knew was a very different person from the tall, imposing, splendidly-uniformed Captain Aubrey, his face moulded by years of nearly absolute authority, who received the two much younger Americans—far more different than he had supposed. It was therefore with a general, though decently concealed, sense of release that they parted, the prisoners to return to the gun-room with Mowett and Martin, their fellow guests, and Jack to walk on the quarterdeck.

  There he found that the Surprise was hol
ding her course, though from the look of the sky it was unlikely that she should hold it very much longer. The master was also on deck, and from time to time he swept the horizon from the starboard bow to the beam with his telescope; there were several others with him, for word had gone round that the Horn itself might appear about this time if the sky stayed clear.

  No false word either: Jack, pacing up and down the seventeen yards of his quarterdeck, had not travelled above three furlongs of the three miles that Stephen insisted upon to control what he termed the Captain's gross obesity, before the lookout gave the cry of land. Maitland, Howard and all the valid youngsters ran up to the maintop to see, and presently it was in sight from the deck, not so much land as the world's grim end, a tall blackness on the rim of the sea that continually flashed white as the rollers broke at its foot and dashed far up the towering rock.

  More people came on deck, including the doctor and parson. 'How very like landsmen they look, poor fellows,' thought Jack, shaking his head kindly. He called them over, assured them that it was indeed Cape Horn and showed it to them through his telescope. Martin was absolutely delighted. Staring at the far deadly precipice with the foam surging up it to a preposterous height he said, 'So that spray, that breaking water, is the Pacific!'

  'Some call it the Great South Sea,' said Jack, 'not allowing it to be really Pacific until the fortieth parallel; but it is all equally wet, I believe.'

  'At all events, sir,' said Martin, 'what lies beyond is the far side of the world, another ocean, another hemisphere, what joy!'

  Stephen said, 'Why are all the people so very earnest to double it today?'

  'Because they fear the weather may change,' said Jack. 'This is west-wind country, as you remember very well from our trip in the Leopard; but if once we can slip round the Horn, slip round Diego Ramirez, and gain a few degrees onward, the west wind may blow great guns if it likes—we can still bear away for the Chile coast—we shall still have rounded the corner. But before we get round, do you see, a south-west or even a strong west wind would quite bar our way. We fairly dread a south-west wind at this point.'