The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O'Brian

  So, when the time of delays was done at last, and the long-boat was launched, victualled and ready to sail, Jack and Tobias went aboard quite calmly, in spite of the torn and ominous sky, and in spite of the spectacle of the marines drawn up on the beach to conduct the imprisoned captain aboard.

  There were fifty-nine in the crew of the long-boat, now transformed into a schooner, twelve in the cutter and ten in the barge; they were so crowded that there was scarcely room to work, and aboard the schooner many people were obliged to go below. They weighed; the sails mounted billowing and fluttering, and they rounded at once as they were sheeted in; the schooner and the boats heeled to the western breeze and stood close-hauled for the southern point of the bay.

  The movement, the feeling of life in the deck under his feet, the confused cheering and the wonderfully familiar sound of water rippling along the lee made Jack feel suddenly happy – absurdly happy. The schooner had got under way very fast and she was already making six or seven knots; it looked as though she might weather the point without having to tack, although the wind was stronger out there. Jack looked back to the bottom of the bay, to judge how much lee-way they were making: and there, which made his heart miss out a beat, he saw Captain Cheap and Mr Hamilton standing motionless on the silent beach, marooned.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘THIS WILL NEVER DO,’ said Jack to himself. He looked quickly round, and he realised that some of the men had been in the secret – all those who were now exulting in the stern – and that some had not. There were strange looks, frightened and as it were ashamed: men saw what had happened, but dared not say anything against it; they looked down quietly, pretending not to know. The gunner, the bo’sun and some of the strongest allies were conspicuously well armed, and in spite of their excitement they were keeping a very sharp watch on the deck. Mr Bean, Campbell, the master and his mates, and many others Jack had relied upon were nowhere to be seen; they had come aboard early – they had been manoeuvred aboard before the others – they had gone below, and they were still there.

  The southern point of the bay lay three points on the port bow, and it was coming nearer at a spanking pace. Already they were out of the lee of Mount Misery, and the gusty wind was laying the schooner down.

  ‘Up sheets,’ came the order, and immediately afterwards the furious shout, ‘For’ard there, start that sheet. Mr Byron, get off that foresheet. Byron, get off that – sheet, you–’ The gunner came rushing forward, tripped in the confusion and fell, bawling still, as the schooner came up into the wind with her canvas shaking and rattling. ‘There, look what you done,’ he shrieked, pointing to the foresail, split in every direction and streaming out in ribbons. ‘Oars, oars, out oars,’ he shouted, and hailed the cutter for a tow, for they were drifting rapidly towards the point.

  In a howling medley of cries and counter-commands (for many of the gunner’s friends thought themselves entitled to give orders too) the schooner scraped by the point and bore away for a sandy bay on the mainland, where they dropped the anchor and took stock of the damage. The arguing about what should be done took a great deal of time: some people were inclined to solve the whole difficulty by blaming Jack, but William Rose said, ‘I won’t have him abused: it is because he don’t understand a fore-and-aft rig. Because he’s young, that’s why.’ The quartermaster emphasised his point with blows of a belaying-pin on the deck and glared round for contradiction. ‘There is only one thing for it,’ he said, with the faintest possible wink at Jack, ‘and that is to put back in the barge and bring the spare canvas. As never should of been left,’ he cried, with a triple thump.

  The mutiny of the Wager may have started as a quarter-deck mutiny or something very like it, but it was fast growing to resemble one of the ordinary, or anarchical, kind. Every man thought himself as good as the next, and as none of the leading figures had the gift of command, everything was decided in a very democratic, very parliamentary fashion, admirably adapted to keeping the schooner in one place for ever. In the end, when many of the disputants had gone off fishing, the remainder agreed that new canvas was the only answer, and Jack, whispering Tobias to keep close, stepped into the barge: Rose and Noble followed quickly, and Plastow, the captain’s steward, came after them. Jack saw the purser at the side, and looking significantly at him said, ‘Do you wish to come, Mr Hervey?’ But the purser feigned not to hear, and moved away. His namesake, William Harvey, a quarter-gunner, and Buckley, another quarter-gunner, jumped down into the boat.

  ‘We don’t want you, stinkard,’ said Noble to Matthew Lively, who came next.

  ‘Why not?’ cried the gunner’s mate. Noble, an old and experienced quartermaster, was used to dealing with awkwardness: he made no verbal reply, but in a moment Lively was in the schooner again, rubbing himself. Two more seamen came down, Bosman and Church, and as they were shoving off, a single marine.

  ‘Give way,’ said Jack, with the tiller under his arm. ‘Toby, take your hands off the gunwale.’

  ‘There is Mr Campbell, sir,’ said Rose, at the stroke oar.

  Campbell had suddenly appeared on deck, and he was signalling desperately. Jack turned the barge in a tight curve and brought it under the schooner’s rail. Campbell jumped down and the barge set off again. ‘We shall not be able to do that twice,’ said Jack, listening to the noise behind him. There were many voices, some merely bellowing, some reminding them just where the spare canvas lay, but louder than them all the gunner’s voice in a hailing trumpet ordering them to put back at once.

  ‘He has smoked us at last,’ said Jack, nodding. ‘You had better pull uncommon hard.’ The barge moved faster and faster through the water: nothing makes one pull harder than a suspicion that people may be pointing muskets at the boat. But presently they were out of musket-shot, and they rested upon their oars.

  ‘I take it we are all of the same mind in this boat?’ said Jack.

  Some said ‘Yes,’ and some said ‘That’s right,’ and some jerked their heads and laughed. The rain had come on again, the wind and the tide were against them, but these things only made pursuit – which was never likely – virtually impossible: they pulled steadily for the southern headland of Cheap’s Bay over a reasonable western swell, and once they were round the point they set the barge’s sail and ran down to their old landing-place.

  Captain Cheap stood not at the landing-place, but near it: his face was as nearly expressionless as he could make it, for he did not know their intention, and he would not appear to be waiting for them with any hope; nevertheless it showed traces of the most acute anxiety. Jack felt a certain embarrassment at the situation, and he busied himself with the mooring of the barge while Campbell hurried up the beach to report for duty. In the extremity of his relief the captain shook Campbell fervently by the hand and came forward with the intention of saying something pleasant to the men; this was not a way of speaking that came naturally to him, however, and the words tended to stick in his throat. Still, he did say that they were very welcome, that he was glad to see them and that he would not fail to mention their conduct to the commodore. He said that he was glad, for their sake, that they had understood their own interest well enough to return to their duty. He began his remarks in the tone of a man who has been suddenly and unexpectedly relieved from a very ugly situation, but a returning sense of his office and its importance filled him as he spoke, and he finished with all the condescension of a post-captain addressing mortals.

  He invited Campbell, Jack and Tobias to take a little supper with him and Mr Hamilton, and after this slender meal he told them (for he was more expansive than they had ever known him) that his plan was to go north to the island of Chiloe, the most southerly Spanish settlement, there to cut out a ship, and that the best time for the voyage, seeing that it must now be made in open boats, would be somewhat later in the year, after the solstice. The mutineers – he spoke of them with shocking virulence – had left him the yawl, but it was in a sad state of repair and it would need a good deal of tim
e to make it seaworthy: they had also left provisions at half allowance for the deserters (for this was a mutiny that paid great regard to legal forms) and at full allowance for the captain and Mr Hamilton. Each had two pieces of pork, two pieces of beef and thirty pounds of flour; and this was ten weeks’ ration. Ten weeks’ ration for one man, if he were desperately frugal; Captain Cheap leant heavily upon this point while they were eating, and although this threw something of a damp upon the party, he was unwilling to leave it alone, in case he should be misunderstood, and before they parted he repeated in the clearest terms, that he had no food that was not essential for his own preservation, and that what they had just eaten was upon a footing of favour, not to be considered as a right nor as a precedent.

  ‘It is a great pity,’ said Jack, as they walked, bowed under the icy rain, through the silent village to their hut, ‘it is the world’s pity that people who are in the right are so often disagreeable, and that it is impossible to like them.’

  ‘That man is in a very bad way,’ said Tobias. ‘His liver is chronically disordered; I remember that Mr Eliot spoke of him as an example of a bilious temperament aggravated by cirrhosis, as far back as Madeira, and he must be suffering cruelly from his shoulder. It looks to me as though he will lose the use of that arm: it has started to tabefy. He has grounds for being disagreeable, and he will have more, unless we can come at some medicines very soon.’

  ‘I never thought we should see the old tabernacle again,’ said Jack – they had reached their hut. ‘But,’ said he, groping about inside, ‘I wish we had not been quite so free in stripping the cloth, and carrying away our beds.’

  ‘There are the sacks, however,’ said Tobias; and, as something fell on his feet, he added, ‘Here is your gun. Had you meant to leave it?’

  ‘I was obliged to, we lying so close; but I am very glad of it now. For I tell you what, Toby, we are going to find it hard to scrape a living off the shore. There is not so much as a limpet left for miles on either hand, and if we can shoot a cormorant or a kite we shall be uncommon glad of it, let alone a race-horse.’

  In the morning Captain Cheap spoke to them about the deserters. He said that it was but just that they should have a chance to return to their duty, and he said that Tobias was the most suitable person to speak to them: he would thank him, therefore (a very high piece of affability), to do so at eleven o’clock.

  It was not a difficult task. Tobias had been several times before to the deserters’ camp, he knew all the people there, and he was welcome. There were only eight of them left now that the boldest had gone over to the mainland on rafts of their own making, and these eight were very happy to be assured that they would be pardoned and fed if they returned. They had had a miserable life of it, not having the wit or resource to make themselves passably comfortable even at first, when the coast was rich in shellfish and other delights. They were the fag-end of the Wager’s crew, two landsmen, two seamen and four marines, of whom three had taken the King’s shilling rather than be transported.

  He brought them back in the yawl, looking sheepish and (though the terms are in apparent contradiction) hangdog as well, and on delivering them to their proper officers he learnt, with unmixed dismay, that Jack had gone off in the barge to see whether the long-boat would deliver up their share of the provisions to the men who chose to stay. That is to say, he was landed on the mainland with the intention of walking down to the bay where the mutineers were lying, for the barge was not to be trusted within their reach.

  Tobias found this profoundly disturbing: he did not believe that there was the least hope of success, and he feared that Jack would almost certainly be kept, for if the mutineers wished to protect themselves they could not do so better than by implicating someone with a great many influential connexions. This ran through his mind continually. He told Campbell of it, and spoke with Mr Hamilton; he was on his way to Captain Cheap with a plan for a rescue when Jack reappeared, empty-handed, scratched, lame and utterly tired out. Having reported his failure, he went straight to bed. ‘You cannot imagine, Toby,’ said he, ‘how hellish it was, plunging through those swamps. It was impossible to get along the coast most of the way because of the rocks and the cliffs; and inland it was all wood, where you had to creep under the undergrowth, it was so thick and high; or else it was so plash that you went in knee-deep, waist-deep in black mud. And sometimes it was both together, like that piece of country behind Mount Misery. But it was worth it. They might have given us our share – after all, we fished most of it up – and I think they would have, if most of the decent men had not been away fishing. But now we have done all we can, and I would rather know that than curse myself afterwards.’

  He stopped speaking to listen to the wind; and still listening to it, he went to sleep. The weather had been surprisingly kind for these last three days – it had allowed all this activity by land and sea – but now, as if to make up for lost time, it came in dirty from the north-west, a great bellowing gale laden with rain, hail and slush, that worked up a dreadful overgrown hollow sea. By the morning they had to talk loudly to be heard over the thunder of the surf, even at that distance from the beach; but it did not go down with the daylight nor with the sunset, and the next day the towering waves were beginning their breaking run half a mile out from the shore, and the wind whipped their crests off in long white streamers that tore along before them. The sea had no surface, and the air was filled with flying water. This was weather they had often known off the Horn, and Tobias, though he was faint with hunger (the shore, their only larder, was entirely closed), munched and gnashed his teeth in private delight at the thought that he was not afloat.

  Now the lean days began. Both Jack and Tobias had thought they knew a great deal about hunger, but now they found that their former pangs were but the gentlest hint of real famine. Day after day the gales succeeded one another; and even when there was not wind enough to keep them in, the pounding surf made the rocks impossible. The wild celery and the mire-drumble had all gone long ago: they ate the weed called slaw, which, eaten alone and in handfuls, made them very sick. It was at this time that three of the former deserters made a stupid, easily detected raid upon the stores, the little treasure of flour that the captain had set aside from the common stock for their forthcoming voyage. One escaped: the others were sentenced to be flogged and then to be marooned on a barren rock, without so much as a flame of fire to comfort them.

  But now and then a fine day would come, and on one of these Jack and Tobias were in the yawl with Rose and Bosman, poking about the remains of the Wager at the extreme ebb of the spring tide. They had no hopes from the wreck – the upper works were all gone and the hull was fast merging with the sea-bed – but there were sometimes crabs to be found there; besides, they had a tendency to haunt the place where food had once been plentifully found, much as bees will come day after day to a place where they have been fed, although the honey is there no more.

  ‘What is the mark on a beef cask?’ asked Tobias, who, chewing a piece of sea-tangle, had been watching an iridescent holothurian creeping over the touch-hole of one of the guns far below him in the cold clear green water.

  ‘Broad arrow in red,’ said the quartermaster. ‘Lovely great red broad arrow, and then a number.’

  The holothurian crossed the touch-hole and proceeded along the encrusted barrel towards a mass of kelp, into which it vanished. Five minutes later Tobias said, ‘Well then, there are three beef-casks under the ledge of rock down there. You can see them if you follow the pointing gun and look sideways under the kelp.’

  It is a curious fact that everybody contradicted him at once – there were no casks there – it was an illusion – they were empty, staved – and that at the same time everybody trampled upon him mercilessly in order to prod the kelp with the oars and the boat-hook.

  But they were barrels of salt beef, heavy, sound, unstaved barrels that loaded the yawl until it was almost level with the water. It called for the most finished seamanshi
p to get them to the landing-place, prodigies of strength and address, but no one was going to trust the beef to the rising tide for another hour, no, not even for the time that it would take to return with the barge and the other men. They brought the beef ashore and willing hands – Lord, how willing – rolled the casks up to the store house.

  ‘So long as you have enough to eat,’ said Jack, that evening, ‘you have little to grumble at: and if you have a fire and a roof over your head you have nothing to murmur at at all, but are an ungrateful dog.’

  This recruitment of their stores raised the spirits of the men to a high degree: they began to agitate for their departure, and on a day when the captain’s temper seemed unusually mild, Campbell ventured to tell him that the people were growing restless. Strangely enough, Captain Cheap did not resent this, but desired Rose and Noble, as representatives of the men, to accompany him to the top of Mount Misery; he bade Jack and Campbell come too. From the height they surveyed the sea to the northward and the huge distant arm of the mainland that reached out into the west – the cape that seemed to form the upper limit of the gulf that contained Wager Island and a hundred more. The captain, having looked long and hard with his glass, observed that the sea was very high outside, and passed his telescope round. But the wind was fair for the far-off cape, being for once a little east of south, and the general opinion was that they should try for it – that they should try to run straight across the whole width of the gulf and pass the western headland in one determined effort.

  ‘Very well,’ said the captain. ‘Mr Byron, take the bearing of the cape. Mr Campbell, run down and see that the boats are launched directly, or we shall have to wait on the tide.’

  ‘You haven’t any money on you, sir, I do suppose?’ asked Noble in a hoarse whisper, as he and Jack climbed down behind the captain.

  ‘I have not had a penny in my pocket these six months past,’ said Jack, ‘or you should have it. Would it be any good to you?’