The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  'I swear,' said Jack, holding up his right hand. 'He will grow absolutely insupportable, as usual. And Stephen, pray give Martin my most particular compliments. It was noble of him to try to come on deck to bury our people: I have never seen a man look so like death: gaunt, grey, sunken. He could barely stand.'

  'It was not only weakness: he has lost his sense of balance entirely. I do not think he will regain it. He must leave the sea.'

  'So you told me. Leave the sea... poor fellow, poor fellow. But I quite understand; and he must certainly go home. Now, brother, your boat has been hooked on this age. You will be much better by yourself for a while. I am afraid I have been like a bear in a whore's bed these last few days.'

  'Not at all, not at all: quite the reverse.'

  'As for Dutourd, Adams will reply to his note saying it is regretted his request cannot be complied with and he is required to remain aboard the Franklin. Compliments, of course, and a civil word about accommodation. And Stephen, one last word. Have you any notion of how long your business will keep you on shore? Forgive me if I am indiscreet.'

  'If it is not over in a month it will not be over at all,' said Stephen. 'But I will leave word in the ship. God bless, now.'

  The ships were not to part until the sun was low, in the first place because Captain Aubrey had to speak at some length to the other commanders and redistribute the crews and in the second because he wished to deceive a remote sail on the western horizon, a potential quarry. He intended this distant ship to suppose that an unhurried convoy slowly heading east by south, often peaceably gossiping alongside, would carry straight on to Callao, and he did not intend to make the signal to part company until the stranger's topgallants were out of sight even from the main jack-crosstrees.

  Long before this time however Dr Maturin had to attend to his duties as the frigate's surgeon. Having regained the Surprise he stood for a while at the taffrail, looking aft along the line of ships: the Alastor, thinly manned but unharmed in masts and rigging and now almost clean; the whaler, in much the same case; and the Franklin, her wounded bowsprit now repaired with spars from the four-master: a fine array of yards and canvas, and the kind of tail that had so often followed the Surprise, that predatory ship, into various ports.

  'I beg pardon, sir,' said Sarah, just behind him, 'but Padeen says will you be long at all?'

  After a moment she tugged his coat and speaking rather louder said, 'I beg pardon, sir; Padeen wonders will you ever be a great while surely not for the love of God.'

  'I am with you, child,' said Stephen, gathering his wits. 'I thought I heard a sea-lion bark.' He plunged down to the sick-berth, tolerably fetid still in spite of double windsails, although it was not so crowded as it had been in the first few days after the battle, when he could hardly step between his patients, and they laid here and there about the orlop. Padeen, his loblolly-boy, was as kind and gentle a creature as ever came from Munster, and long use had not blunted his humanity; he was weeping now over a wretched man from the Alastor who having fallen out of his cot was lying there on his shattered arm, wedged under a helpless neighbour and resisting all attempts at help by clinging with maniac force to a ring-bolt. He was indeed out of his mind, not only because of the terrifying end of the battle and the horrible future, but also because his fever had now almost drowned what little reason he had left. However, what Padeen's kindness and great though cautious strength and the little girls' expostulation could not do, Dr Maturin's cool authority accomplished, and with the wretched man restored to his bed, fastened to it, his hopeless wound re-dressed, Stephen began his long and weary round. There had been few survivors from the Alastor and of those few three had already died of their injuries; most of the rest swore they were prisoners, and certainly they had taken no part in the fight, having crammed themselves unarmed into the manger or the forepeak.

  All the others were his shipmates, men he had known and liked for many voyages, sometimes for as long as he had been in the Navy. Bonden's great cutlass-slash, which had called for such anxious sewing, was doing well, but there were cases where he saw the probable necessity for resection - foresaw it and its dangers with a grief increased by the seamen's total, unfounded confidence in his powers, and by their gratitude for his treatment.

  A wearing round, and it should have been followed by his visits forward, to the little berths where the warrant-officers slept: Mr Smith, the gunner, was not aboard the Franklin and Stephen had put Mr Grainger into his place, as more suitable for a wounded man than his official cabin aft. He was on his way there, accompanied by Sarah carrying basin, lint, bandages, when as they passed through the checkered shafts of daylight coming down from the deck they heard the call, 'Signal for parting company, sir,' and Pullings' reply, 'Acknowledge and salute.'

  'Oh sir,' cried Sarah, 'may we run up and look?'

  'Very well,' said Stephen, 'But put down your basin and the lint, and walk soberly.'

  The ships separated with the smooth inevitability of a sea-parting, slow at first, still within calling-distance, and then, if one's attention were distracted for a few moments by a bird, a floating patch of seaweed, the gap had grown to a mile and one's friends' faces were no longer to be made out, for with the warm steady southerly breeze ships sailing in opposite directions drew apart at fifteen or sixteen knots, even with no topgallants abroad.

  The Franklin, Captain Aubrey, headed west to cruise upon the enemy until he should hear that the Surprise had been docked and was now fit for a passage of the Horn, that the prizes had been disposed of, and above all that Stephen, having accomplished what he had set out to do, was ready to go home. The Franklin would, he hoped with reasonable confidence, send in prizes from time to time; but in any event he had a fine half-decked schooner-rigged launch belonging to the Alastor that could be dispatched from well out in the offing to fetch stores and news from Callao.

  The Surprise, Captain Pullings, on the other hand, stood a little south of east for Peru, whose prodigious mountains were already said to be visible from the masthead and whose strange cold north-flowing current was undoubtedly present; and in duty bound her two prizes sailed after her, each at two cable's lengths.

  The sun set, with the Franklin clear on the horizon, and it left a golden sky of such beauty that Stephen felt a constriction in his throat. Sarah too was moved but she said nothing until they were below again, when she observed, 'I shall say seven Hail Marys every day until we see them again.'

  The bosun was their first patient. He had gone aboard the Alastor roaring drunk, and there pursuing a pair of enemies into the maintop he had fallen, landing in the waist of the ship on to a variety of weapons. He was a mass of cuts and abrasions: yet it was a great wrench where his leg had caught in the catharpins that kept him from his duty. He was drunk again now, and he endeavoured to disguise his state by saying as little as possible, and that very carefully, and by directing his breath down towards the deck. They dressed his many places, Sarah with something less than her habitual tenderness - she hated drunkenness and her disapproval filled the little cabin, making the bosun simper in a nervous, placating manner - and when he was bound up they parted, Sarah to go back to the sick-berth and Stephen to call on Mr Grainger, who had been brought down by a musket-shot: the ball had followed one of those strange indirect courses so unlike the path of a rifle-bullet and after a prolonged search Stephen had found it lodged, visibly pulsating, just in contact with the subclavian artery. The wound was healing prettily, and Stephen congratulated Grainger on having flesh as clean and sweet as a child's; yet although the patient smiled and made a handsome acknowledgement of the Doctor's care it was plain that he had something on his mind.

  'Vidal came over from the Franklin to see me a little while ago,' he said, 'and he was in a great taking about Mr Dutourd. He had heard that Mr D's request to be sent in to Callao with the other Frenchmen had been refused. As you know, Vidal and his friends think the world of Mr Dutourd; they admire his sentiments on freedom and equality and no ti
thes - no interference with worship. Freedom! See how he spoke up for those poor unfortunate blacks out of the Alastor, offering to pay the Jamaica price out of his own pocket for their liberty, pay it down on the capstan-head for the general prize-fund.'

  'Did he, indeed?'

  'Yes, sir, he did. So Vidal and his relations - most of the Knipperdollings are cousins in some degree or another - are most uneasy at the thought of his being taken back to England and perhaps taken up before the Admiralty Court on a point of law and ending up at Execution Dock, hanged for a pirate, just because he did not have a piece of paper. Mr Dutourd a pirate? It makes no sense, Doctor. Those wicked men in the Alastor were pirates, not Mr Dutourd. They were the sort of people you see hanging in chains at Tilbury Point, a horrid warning to them as sails by; not Mr Dutourd, who is a learned man, and who loves his fellow-beings.'

  Grainger's drift was clear enough, and he could not be allowed to reach a direct request. Stephen had the medical man's recourse: during a pause for emphasis he desired Grainger to hold his breath, took his pulse, and having counted it, watch in hand, he said, 'Do you know we parted company an hour ago? I must go and tell Mr Martin: with this breeze I understand we should be in quite soon, and I should like to set him on dry land as early as possible.'

  'Parted company so soon?' cried Grainger. 'I never knew; nor did Vidal when he spoke to me this morning.' Then recovering himself, 'Mr Martin, of course. Pray give the poor gentleman my kind good-day. We were right moved to hear he had tried to creep on deck to bury our shipmates.'

  'Nathaniel Martin,' said Stephen, 'I am sorry to have left you so long untended.'

  'Not at all, not at all,' cried Martin. 'That good Padeen has been by, Emily brought me a cup of tea, and I have slept much of the time: I am indeed very much better.'

  'So I see,' said Stephen, bringing his lantern down to look into Martin's face. He then turned back the sheet. 'The disorders of the skin,' he observed, gently feeling the ugliest lesion, 'are perhaps the most puzzling in all medicine. Here is a sensible diminution within hours.'

  'I slept as I have not slept for - for Heaven knows how long, my body lying peacefully at last: no incessant irritation, no pain from the slightest pressure, no perpetual turning in vain for ease.'

  'There is nothing to be done without sleep,' said Stephen, and he continued with his examination. 'Yet,' said he, replacing the sheet, 'I shall be glad to set you on shore. Your skin may well be on the mend, but I am not at all satisfied with your heart or your lungs or your elimination; and from what you tell me the vertigo is as bad as ever, even worse. Firm land under foot may do wonders; and a vegetable diet. The same is to be said for several of our patients.'

  'We have so often known it to be the case,' said Martin. 'In parenthesis, may I tell you a strange thing? Some hours ago, as I was coming out of a blessed doze, I thought I heard a sea-lion bark, and my heart lifted with happiness, as it did when I was a boy, or even in New South Wales. How close are we to the shore?'

  'I cannot tell, but they said before we parted company - for the Captain is standing to the westward: he leaves you his particular compliments - that the Cordillera was distinctly to be seen from the masthead; and there may well be some rocky islands close at hand where sea-lions live. For my own part I have seen a file of pelicans, and they are not birds to go far from land.'

  'Very true. But pray tell me about the present state of the sick-berth. I am afraid you have been cruelly overworked.'

  They talked for a while about the recent incised, lacerated, punctured and gun-shot wounds, the fractures simple, compound or comminuted that had come below, and Stephen's success or failure in dealing with them, speaking in an objective, professional manner. In a less detached tone Martin asked after the Captain. 'It is the eye that troubles me,' said Stephen. 'The pike-thrust is healing by first intention; the head-wound, though its stunning effect is still evident to a slight degree, is of no consequence; nor is the loss of blood. But the eye received the wad of the pistol-bullet that tore his scalp, a thick, gritty, partially disintegrated wad. I extracted many fragments and I believe there was no grave scoring of the cornea nor of course any penetration. But there is great and persistent hyperaemia and lachrymation..." He was about to say that 'such a patient was not to be relied upon - would double doses - would swallow them together with any quack panacea - would listen to the first cow-leech he might encounter', but he restrained himself and their conversation returned to the sick-berth as Martin had left it, to their old patients.

  'And how are Grant and MacDuff?' asked Martin.

  'Those who had the Vienna treatment? Grant died just before the action, and clearly I did not have time to open him: but I strongly suspect the corrosive sublimate. MacDuff is well enough for light duties, though his constitution is much shattered; I doubt his full recovery.'

  After a pause, and in an altered voice, Martin said, 'I must tell you that I too took the Vienna treatment.'

  'In what dose?"

  'I could find nothing in our authorities, so I based myself on the amount we used for our calomel draughts.'

  Stephen said nothing. The bolder Austrian physicians might administer a quarter of a grain of the sublimate: the usual dose of calomel was four.

  'Perhaps I was rash," said Martin. 'But I was desperate; and the calomel and guaiacum seemed to do no good.'

  'They could not cure a disease you did not have,' said Stephen. 'But in any event I shall be glad to have you in hospital, where you can with something like decency and comfort be purged and purged again. We must do everything possible to rid your system of this noxious substance."

  'I was desperate,' said Martin, his mind fixed on that dreadful past. 'I was unclean, unclean: rotting alive, as the seamen say. A shameful death. And I think my mind was disturbed. Until you absolutely asserted that these were salt-sores I was wholly convinced that they were of sinful origin: you will admit they were very like. They were very like, were they not?'

  'When they had been exacerbated by an immoderate use of mercury, perhaps they were; though I doubt an impartial observer would have been deceived.'

  'The wicked fleeth where no man pursueth,' said Martin. 'Dear Marturin, I have been a very wicked fellow. In intention I have been a very wicked fellow.'

  'You must spend the night in drinking fresh rainwater,' said Stephen. 'Every time you wake, you must swallow down a glass at least, to get rid of all you can. Padeen will bring you a rack of necessary-bottles and I trust I shall see them filled by morning: but I cannot wait to get you ashore and to start more radical measures; for indeed, colleague, there is not a moment to lose.'

  There was not a moment to be lost, and happily the harbour formalities in Callao bay did not take long, the Surprise and her valuable train being so welcome to the agent, who had dealt with her prizes on the outward voyage, and to his brother, the captain of the port: as soon as they were over Stephen went ashore pulled by Jemmy Ducks in his little skiff. Well over on the left hand they passed a remarkable amount of shipping for so small a town: vessels from Chile, Mexico and farther north, and at least two China ships. 'Right on our beam, beyond the yellow schooner, in the dockyard itself, that must be the barque from Liverpool,' said Jemmy. 'They are busy in her tops.'

  It was high tide on the dusty strand, and as Stephen walked up it towards an archway in the wall a gritty cloud swept across from the earthquake-shattered ruins of Old Callao. When it had cleared he saw a group of ill-looking men of all colours from black to dirty yellow standing under the shelter. 'Gentlemen,' he said in Spanish, 'pray do me the kindness of pointing out the hospital."

  'Your worship will find it next to the Dominican church," said a brown man.

  'Sir, sir, it is just before Joselito's warehouse," cried a black.

  'Come with me,' said a third. He led Stephen through the tunnel into an immense unpaved square with dust whirling in eddies about it. 'There is the Governor's house,' he said, pointing back to the seaward end of the square. 'It is shut.
On the right hand,' he went on, holding out his left, 'your worship has the Viceroy's palace: it too is closed.'

  They turned. In the middle of the square three black and white vulturine scavengers with a wingspan of about six feet were disputing the dried remains of a cat. 'What do you call those?' asked Stephen.

  'Those?' replied his guide, looking at them with narrowed eyes. 'Those are what we call birds, your worship. And there, before Joselito's warehouse, is the hospital itself.'

  Stephen looked at it with some concern, a low building with very small barred windows, the flat mud roof barely a hand's reach from the filthy ground. Prudent, no doubt in a country so subject to earthquakes, but as a hospital it left to be desired.

  'The hospital, with a hundred people at the least, lying on beds raised a good span from the ground. And there I see a vile heretic coming out of it, with his countryman.'

  'Which? The little small fat yellow-haired gentleman, who staggers so?'

  'No, no, no. He is an old and mellow Christian - your honour too is an old and mellow Christian, no doubt?'

  'None older; few more mellow.'

  'A Christian though English. He is the great lawyer come to lecture the university of Lima on the British constitution. His name is Raleigh, don Curtius Raleigh: you have heard of him. He is drunk. I must run and fetch his coach.'

  'He has fallen.'

  'Clearly. It is the tall black-haired villain who is picking him up, the surgeon of the Liverpool ship, that is the heretic. I must run.'

  'Do not let me detain you, sir. Pray accept this trifle."

  'God will repay your worship. Farewell, sir. May no new thing arise.'

  'May no new thing arise,' replied Stephen. With his pocket spy-glass he watched the birds for a while, their name hovering on the edge of his mind. Presently, as don Curtius' coach rolled into the square, silent on the dust, they flew off, one carrying the desiccated cat, and the other snatching at it. They flew inland, towards Lima, a splendid-looking white-towered city five or six miles away with an infinitely more splendid series of mountains behind it, rising higher and higher in the distance, their snow at last blending with the white sky and the clouds.