The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O'Brian

  ‘I see him,’ said Toby, looking attentively at the august form of Mr Anson. ‘Shall we pull off our hats, and wave?’

  ‘No, no,’ cried Jack, for the Centurion was no distance away at all, and he could even hear the commodore’s voice. ‘Give way,’ he called to the boatman, and he hastily drew Tobias’ attention to the Gloucester, the next in line, and then to the Severn, both fifty-gun ships. ‘Who commands the Severn now?’ he asked the boatman.

  ‘Captain Legge,’ said the boatman. ‘A lord’s son. The honourable Legge, as they say. You can do anything you please if you are a lord’s son’ – spitting virtuously into the sea. ‘If I was a lord’s son,’ said the boatman, ‘do you think as I should be a-sitting here, toiling and moiling all day long?’

  ‘Do you moil a great deal?’ asked Tobias.

  ‘Like a porpoise, governor; and likewise toil. But was I a lord’s son, I should sit a-taking of my ease in a cutter with pink taffety sails: because why? Because honest worth has no countenance these days.’

  ‘Captain Legge was with Admiral Vernon at Porto Bello,’ said Jack. ‘He was in the Pearl then. And there is the Pearl: ain’t she elegant?’ She was, indeed; and she had the aura of a famous victory about her still. When Jack had looked long enough at her, he added, ‘Forty. She is one of the old forty-gun ships, but she is a very fine sailer on a wind, they say – will outsail anything. Captain Mitchel has her now. The sloop lying inside her is the Tryall: belongs to us.’

  ‘But you described a sloop as a vessel with one mast and a sail out behind,’ objected Tobias, seeing two undeniable and very tall masts before him, and a square rig.

  ‘Ah, she’s only called a sloop,’ said Jack. ‘It is perfectly logical really – we do not mean that she is a sloop.’ He did not elucidate this statement, but looked fixedly towards the Wager, which they were now approaching. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said, after a few moments, and he glanced anxiously at Tobias to see whether he would be disappointed: but to Tobias the Wager looked very much like any other ship. She was about a hundred feet long, as opposed to the hundred and fifty of the fourth rates, and she had but a single row of gun-ports; but still she was a high and beautiful ship, far beyond anything that Tobias had aspired to. Searching for something agreeable to say (for he felt Jack’s eye upon him), he stared at her for a while, screwing his face hideously to one side and scratching his right thigh. ‘It is wider than the others,’ he said at last, ‘and, I presume, less liable to be overset.’

  It was quite true: the Wager was broad in the beam, wide and motherly; she was built to carry a large quantity of merchandise at a prudent pace, and in spite of her naval trim and Captain Kidd’s lavish use of dockyard paint she had (to a knowing eye) nothing of the high-bred, dangerous air of a man-of-war. She was undisguisably a former Indiaman, a store-ship; and however worthy she might be, and however little liable to be overset, Jack thought that it would be difficult to love her.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ he said; and to the waterman, ‘Lay us alongside, then. Toby,’ he said, in a low but urgent voice, ‘you will be discreet, I beg? You will remember not to scratch or look awry or squint when officers are talking to you? Do just as I do, eh? And manage it so that you come aboard her with your right foot first – it is amazingly lucky.’

  It was amazingly lucky, too, that the sea was so calm, so unusually calm; for many a landsman going aboard for the first time has been confronted with the towering ship’s side, rising and falling in nasty, cold, dangerous black water while the boat dances here and there in imminent peril of being crushed or sucked under, and he must make the journey, dry and undisgraced, over the varying gulf and up the appalling slippery height to the longed-for deck. But Tobias had merely to step from a well-behaved boat to a scarcely-moving ship and walk to the entering-port: which was just as well, for he stopped to ponder at the water-line, and had there been any hint of a swell he must inevitably have been ducked, if not washed off and drowned at the very moment in which his nautical career began.

  It was perfectly evident to Jack as he went up the side and as he went from the entering-port to the quarter-deck that the Wager had had no intention of sailing that Saturday: she was half deserted, and although her decks were being quite briskly washed she had a comparatively somnolent air. These were momentary impressions, received as he approached the officer of the watch, with Toby just behind him, to report for duty, to announce his presence in a correct and official manner.

  Mr Clerk, the master of the Wager, was a mild, elderly man, with a bleached, sea-washed appearance and watery blue eyes; he received them kindly, told Jack that the purser had been asking for him, told Tobias that Mr Eliot was in the cockpit at that very moment, and called one of his mates to show them the way. ‘Mr Jones,’ he said, in his nasal East Anglian voice, ‘you will take these gentlemen below, if you please, and see them properly bestowed.’

  From the poop to the quarter-deck proper, and thence to the dim light of the upper deck, where Tobias, trying to see too much at once, tripped over the handle of a swab and measured his length (five feet five and a half inches): he brought his forehead against the unsympathetic surface of a gun, and jarred it till it rang again; the master’s mate picked him up, told him that he had fallen down, and that he should take care – that he should look where he was going. At the same time a fat man in a greasy black coat, a pale fat man with the face of a cellar-dweller, hurried down from the shadows and greeted them.

  ‘Mr Byron?’ he said. ‘The honourable Mr Byron?’

  ‘At your service, sir,’ said Jack coldly.

  ‘My name is Hervey – purser,’ said the fat man. ‘And I have saved you a cabin. May I have the pleasure – ?’

  ‘You are very good,’ said Jack. ‘Mr Hervey, this is Mr Barrow, the surgeon’s mate, who has just joined.’

  ‘Servant,’ said the purser with a distant nod, and hurrying Jack away by a moist grip of his elbow he continued, ‘I have the honour of being known to your grandfather …’

  ‘Old Greasy,’ muttered the master’s mate. ‘Come on, young Sawbones, and mind your step.’ Mr Jones spoke in this unceremonious manner not from any native moroseness or incivility of mind, but because he had taken a disgust at the purser’s obsequious tone. They went on a little circuitously towards the cockpit, for part of the gun-deck was at that time shut off, with its ports netted or closed, for the better retention of the lately pressed men, who would escape if ever they could: he led the way along the deck, up and down again, and so to a hatchway that vanished into the total darkness; his voice floated up, advising Tobias to mind the cascabel, with an odd reverberating hollowness, and Tobias, whose eyes were still filled with the yellow flashing coruscations of his fall, followed him by the sound, like a bat. Presently the darkness became a little less intense, and in addition to the smell of bilge, sea, pitch and hemp, Tobias caught the familiar odour of medicaments: they rounded a canvas screen, and there was Mr Eliot, standing in the middle of the cockpit with a farthing candle in his hand and an expression of marked discontent upon his face.

  ‘Here is your mate, doctor,’ said Mr Jones.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Jones,’ said the surgeon, looking a trifle less vexed. ‘And Mr Jones, if you should see that damned loblolly-boy, give him a great kick, will you, and send him to me? I sent him,’ he explained to Tobias, ‘I sent him half an hour ago to the bo’sun for a man to refashion your screen – a pretty simple message, I believe.’

  Mr Eliot afloat was not altogether the same as Mr Eliot ashore: much more authoritative, less loquacious and companionable; and at this moment he was out of humour. His natural benignity had prompted him to come down to see to Tobias’ quarters, which (as he said) few surgeons would have done, but by now a large number of little irritations had mounted up, so that he felt distinctly aggrieved by Tobias. ‘Andrew!’ he shouted into the echoing cavern of the gun-deck, ‘Andrew! Blast that brute-beast to the nethermost bottom of Hell. Ah, there you are. Where have you been? Ah, lumpki
n!’ cried the surgeon, sweeping his hand in the general direction of the boy’s head.

  ‘The bo’sun says it is the carpenter’s business,’ said the boy, ducking.

  ‘What a disobliging dog that bo’sun is,’ said the surgeon. ‘A shabby fellow – a Gosport truepenny. It is always the same, Mr Barrow: he knows the carpenter is ashore. I wished to have this screen arranged so, do you see?’ he said, holding up a piece of canvas. Tobias’ eyes were by now thoroughly accustomed to the murk, and he saw that he was in an enclosure about nine feet by twelve, made of canvas up to five feet high on two sides, while an immense chest with a prodigious number of small drawers closed the third side. Mr Eliot was holding a loose piece of canvas across the fourth. ‘This would give you a surprising degree of privacy, could we but fix it,’ he said. ‘It is a magnificent cockpit, upon my word – almost a standing cabin. And look at the head-room! Even I need hardly stoop, and you can stand quite upright, at least in the middle. You should have seen the hole I started my career in. Half the size, and there were three of us, one a very nauseating companion. But we might as well make it even better, and screen you from the view of our future patients: a little privacy is a wonderful thing at sea.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Tobias, ‘I am infinitely obliged to you, for your attention to my comfort.’

  ‘And well you may be,’ said Mr Eliot, ‘for there’s not another surgeon in the service who would do half as much.’ Then, feeling that this was a little more ungracious than he had meant, he showed Tobias the medicine-chest, and offered him a draught of medicinal brandy, or a spoonful of syrup of squills, and anything that he might fancy in the way of melissa balm, Venice treacle or aniseed julep. In the course of a lifetime spent among drugs he had acquired a taste for many of them, a taste shared, to some extent, by Tobias and the loblolly-boy, and for a while they browsed among the tinctures, linctuses and throches, mixing themselves small personal prescriptions – mandragora, opium, black hellebore. ‘We operate here,’ said Mr Eliot, ‘in time of action,’ and he showed Tobias the instruments.

  ‘This is a very fine trepan,’ said Tobias, holding up a wicked machine for boring holes in one’s skull.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Eliot. ‘The last time I used that was on the second lieutenant of the Sutherland, a very obstinate case of melancholy. I conceived that it would relieve him.’

  ‘Did it do so, sir?’

  ‘He was a most ungrateful patient.’

  Tobias thought it as well to change the subject, and observed, ‘Here are bandages; here are needles and sutures. If we were to make a hole in this piece of wood with the trepanning-iron and pass a bandage through it, we could fasten the screen, by sewing the flaps as though it were a Gemelli’s prosection.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Mr Eliot, whose temper had been largely restored by a saline draught and a blue pill; and seizing the trepan he bored the standard with a skill and celerity that reflected much upon the gratitude of the second lieutenant of the Sutherland. Speed is of vital importance to those who must operate without anaesthetics, and Mr Eliot, seconded by Tobias, whipped up the canvas erection as if they were racing against a stop-watch.

  ‘It will do,’ said the surgeon, snipping the last suture and standing back, as if from a patient. ‘About two minutes, I believe. Now I will leave you, Mr Barrow, and I shall expect to see you at eight o’clock in the morning, abaft the foremast: the rest of the day is your own. If there is anything you want, pass the word for one of the loblolly-boys, or come to my cabin, which is on the starboard side of the half-deck, next to the master’s. I dare say his mates will invite you to mess with them.’ With these words he walked off, followed by his attendant, leaving Tobias in the cockpit; leaving him, too, in a state of confusion. He sat in the gloom, repeating ‘abaft the foremast’ in an undertone, and trying to reconcile his ideas of the healthiness of a sea-going life – unlimited fresh open air, and light – with this appallingly fetid den in the darkness. He tried to remember the way by which he had been led into the cockpit; he wondered whether it would be improper to leave it, whether he would ever be fed, and if so, where. A little later there was a strange drumming noise, followed by an unrestrained bawling and hallooing: a body of men rushed along the deck, lit now by occasional gleams and the opening of ports, and the canvas walls of Tobias’ berth bulged inwards as human forms blundered past it, to vanish as suddenly as they had come, with a spirited howl.

  ‘If I had had more presence of mind,’ said Tobias aloud, feeling his way slowly out of the cockpit, ‘I would have asked them the way. It might not have looked well, however: and I shall certainly find it myself, sooner or later.’ He was particularly anxious not to expose Jack as the possessor of a discreditably ignorant friend; he had, without being able to define the immediate causes, been aware of Jack’s uneasiness on several occasions, and although for himself he was totally indifferent to public opinion, he now, on reaching the main well-pump ladder, crept silently down it into the hold.

  When he had crawled over six of the lower futtocks, he found himself against the bulkhead of the bread-room, and here he was obliged to stop, for there was no way of getting farther aft. He was entirely surrounded by vast shrouded forms, very faintly to be surmised by the strangled remnant of light that filtered down through four successive gratings: rats moved about, and the unseen bilges slopped drearily underfoot. He no longer knew which way round he was.

  Immediately above him, separated by some thirty feet of perpendicular distance, Jack and the purser took leave of one another.

  ‘You will commend my humble duty to his lordship,’ said the purser, ‘and if there is any way in which I can oblige you, I shall be most happy.’

  ‘You are very good,’ said Jack; and as soon as the purser had gone he wiped his hand, for Mr Hervey had been very zealous in shaking it. ‘I wonder what he wants,’ he thought, looking after the purser: Jack was not unduly cynical, but he was aware of the facts of life. ‘Probably one of the livings,’ he surmised, quite accurately, as it happened. His grandfather, Lord Berkeley (Jack was disgustingly well-connected, and there were lords in every direction, in his family), had two livings in his gift, whose present incumbents were very old; and Jack had more than once received marked civilities and attentions from clergymen and their relatives. He always accepted anything that was going in this line with a natural cheerful corruptness, and now he looked about the cabin with intense satisfaction: it was an odd, long, thin space squeezed between the wardroom bulkhead and the first lieutenant’s cabin, and if the Wager had carried a normal complement of lieutenants it would certainly have belonged to one of them, if not to two, for it was much too valuable a space to be occupied by any midshipman, however gaudy his connexions. It had a bunk of rather curious lines, excellently adapted for a triangular dwarf, two lockers and just enough room to sling a hammock; it had no light or air, of course, except that which could make its way through the door, but it represented a degree of comfort that Jack could not have looked for legitimately for years to come.

  ‘I must find Toby,’ said he, and he hurried forward to the midshipmen’s berth. Here there was an apprehensive thin youth, but no Toby. ‘Hallo,’ he said to the thin boy. ‘My name is Byron. Have you seen the surgeon’s mate? A little cove in black?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the thin boy, standing to attention.

  ‘Never mind me,’ said Jack, ‘I’m only a midshipman. If he should come in, beg him to wait for me, will you? I am going down to the cockpit.’

  He drew a blank in the cockpit, although he waited there for some time; but reflecting that Tobias would probably be with the surgeon in his cabin revolving the ghastly topics of their trade, he went back to the berth: he had heard the noise of several parties returning to the ship while he was below, and he was not surprised to find two more midshipmen there. One was a big, fleshy fellow with a red face and a loud laugh, and the other was a dark, pock-marked, wry-mouthed creature with a Scotch accent.

  The fat, jolly midshipma
n was amusing himself by interrogating the thin boy, an obviously new arrival, who was standing stiffly before him, terrified. ‘Here, you,’ called out the inquisitor, on seeing Jack. ‘Come here and give an account of yourself. Double up.’

  ‘Damn your blood,’ said Jack mildly, sitting on a locker. ‘Do you think my name is Green?’

  ‘I suppose you are Byron?’ asked the other, with a grin. ‘Your chest came aboard just now: Ransome of the Centurion brought it – he only hooked on, and said he would see you again. My name is Cozens, and this is Campbell. I was only trying it on: for a laugh, you know. You ain’t offended?’

  ‘Never in life,’ said Jack, shaking hands.

  ‘Ye’re the pairson wha’s tookit yon pigwidgeon cabin,’ said Campbell. From this point onwards it must be understood that Campbell spoke broad Scotch at all times, although his remarks will be put down in English; for the representation of a dialect is tedious, inaccurate and often incomprehensible. On this occasion the only part of the remark that Jack clearly understood was the unfriendliness of the tone; but he was saved from making any reply by the hubbub of all hands being piped for dinner.

  ‘Who’s the senior among us?’ asked Jack, as they sat over the frugal delights provided for the midshipmen.

  ‘I am,’ said Cozens.

  ‘Well then, do you mind if I bring a friend into our mess? He is the surgeon’s mate, a capital fellow.’

  ‘Bring a dozen, mate. The more the merrier, I always say,’ said Cozens, laughing heartily. ‘I love a crowd.’

  ‘It is not regular,’ said Campbell.

  ‘What do you say?’ said Jack to the new midshipman, whose name was Morris.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Morris.