Book 19 - The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Oh sir, if you please,' cried Poll, 'Dr Jacob says Captain Hobden has fallen down in a fit and please would you come and look at him?'

  It was clear that Jacob, though an experienced physician by land, had not served at sea long enough to make an instant and correct diagnosis of alcoholic coma, a state not uncommon in officers aboard His Majesty's ships, they (unlike the hands) being allowed to bring any quantity of wine and spirits aboard, according to their taste and pocket. And in any event, his practice had been largely among Jews, who drink very little, and Moslems, who at least in theory drink nothing at all.

  Hobden was carried by two admiring, envious seamen to his cot, where he lay motionless, breathing (but only just), his face devoid of expression apart from its habitual look of discontent. 'There we may leave the sufferer,' said Stephen. 'Or rather the sufferer to be: there is a word for the morning state, but it escapes me.'

  'Crapula,' said Jacob. 'A very loathsome condition that I have rarely encountered.'

  Stephen returned to the great cabin, where he found Jack dictating a letter to his clerk: and Mr Candish the purser was sitting by with a pile of dockets to be checked and countersigned. In any case it was almost time for his evening rounds: they amounted to a couple of obstinate gleets and a tenesmus, and when they had been attended to he said to Jacob, 'I shall look after Daniel's last dressing with Poll, if you like to sit with your comatose patient and take notes on pulse, rate of breathing and sensitivity to light.'

  The dressing was a simple exercise, but Poll, running her hand over Daniel's shoulder, cried, 'There we are, sir!'

  'Well done, Poll,' said Stephen, 'there we are indeed. Bring me a lancet and the fine pincers and we will have it out in a moment.' Poll ran to the dispensary and back. 'There,' he said to Daniel, showing him a splinter of bone, 'that will allow a quick, clean, painless healing. I congratulate you: and I congratulate you too, Poll. Now,' he went on, Poll having blushed, hung her head, and carried the old dressings and implements away, 'a little while ago you were telling me about the beauty and fascination of number: do you think it allied to the pleasures of music?'

  'Perhaps it is, sir: but I have heard so little I can hardly give a sensible answer. Yet as for this splinter, sir'—holding it up—'it may be that my bones are like shaky timber, liable to part, because I had just such a piece come out some years ago. I was in Rattler, sixteen, and we were cracking regardless after a French privateer out of La Rochelle that had taken two West Indiamen in the Bay: she was making for home, deep-laden, with everything she could bear, and our skipper drove the ship, drove her and every man aboard, and although our bottom was dirty from lying weeks on end in the Bight of Benin we were gaining on the chase when the maintopgallant carried away. I was aloft, and down I came. I was stunned and out of my wits for a great while, and when I came to I found my mates all disconsolate. We had lost the Frenchman of course, but Dolphin had snapped her up next morning and carried her into Dartmouth. She was condemned out of hand, and she, hull, goods, head-money and all, was worth £120,000 odd pence. A hundred and twenty thousand pound, sir! Can you conceive such a sum?'

  'Only with great difficulty.'

  'And since we were very short-handed from fever in the Bight, my one and a half shares as seaman would have been £768. Seven hundred and sixty-eight pound. Happily they did not tell me until I was over the worst of my wound—it was when my head was being shaved that the splinter of bone I was telling you about came through my scalp—or I think I should have run mad. Even as it was I was haunted, right haunted, by that sum. Seven hundred and sixty-eight pound. It was not a beautiful prime or anything like that: nor it was not what people would ordinarily call a fortune; but for me it was or rather would have been freedom from hard labour and above all freedom from the continual anxiety that runs through ordinary people's life—loss of employ, loss of customers, even loss of liberty. At five per cent it would bring in £38.8.0 a year, or £2.18.11d a month—a lunar month, Navy fashion; whereas even an able seaman has no more than £1.13.6d No, it was not what would be called wealth, but it would have meant a quiet life at home, reading and going much farther into the mathematics, and sometimes fishing—I used to delight in fishing. Dear Lord, when that Paradise was lost I could not keep my mind clear of it—£768 and how many groats, farthings or penny pieces it contained—to just this side of madness: though to be sure some of it was madness too, since the fever took me every other day or so. But, Lord, sir, I have worn your kind patience cruelly, a-pitying of myself, and prating so.'

  'Not at all, John Daniel: yet just tell me succinctly about naval prize-money, will you, and then I must go. I have heard of it for ever, but I have never retained the principles.'

  'Well, sir, the captain has two eighths of the value of the prize; but if he is acting under a flag-officer he must give the admiral a third of what he receives: then the lieutenants, master and captain of the Marines have equal shares of one eighth: then the Marine lieutenants, surgeon, purser, bosun, gunner, carpenter, master mates and chaplain, equal shares in another eighth; while everybody else shares the remaining half, though not equally, the reefers having four and a half shares each, the lower warrant-officers like the cook and so on, three; the seamen, able and ordinary, one and a half, landmen and servants one, and boys half a share each.'

  'Thank you, Mr Daniel: I shall try to keep it in my mind. At present I shall bid Poll make you comfortable: give you good night, now.'

  Cape Bon had been a disappointment. Algiers and the Bay of Algiers were not. Commodore Aubrey sent one of the boys wished upon him in Gibraltar by former shipmates—a short-legged, long-armed little creature, very like an ape—to rouse Stephen Maturin at the crack of dawn and to beg him to come at once, in his nightshirt or a dressing-gown or whatever he pleased, but anyhow at once.

  'Lord, how brilliant,' he cried, blundering up the ladder to the quarterdeck, his eyes half-closed against the light. Jack gave him a hand up the last step, saying, 'Look! Look!'

  'Where away?'

  'On the starboard quarter—about a cable's length on the starboard quarter.'

  Powerful hands gently swivelled him about, his nightshirt flying in the breeze, and there he saw a fine great company of egrets, snowy white, so near that he could make out their yellow feet; and somewhat beyond them another even larger band, all flying with a steady concentration northwards, presumably to some Balearic swamp. And with the first group there flew a glossy ibis, absurdly black in this light and company, and continually uttering a discontented cry, something between a croak and a quack: from time to time it darted across the path of the leading birds with a louder shriek.

  Stephen had the impression that the ibis was extremely indignant at the egrets' conduct: and indeed so late a migration, well on in the month of May, was unusual, unwise, against all established custom. Yet the beautiful white birds would not attend, and presently the ibis left them with a final screech and hurried as fast as it could to the farther group, which might, perhaps, listen to its advice.

  Stephen never knew the outcome, for Jack led him to the starboard bow—the ship was ghosting along under courses and a forestaysail—and from here he beheld a vast expanse of gloriously blue sea and a great convoy of merchantmen upon it, perhaps a hundred sail of ships, British, Dutch, Scandinavian and American, gathered from Tripoli, Tunis and further east, with the two corvettes and the sloop that Jack had sent to protect them strung out to windward, while still farther off a practised eye could make out some long, low-built corsairs waiting their opportunity.

  'That gives you some notion of the trade, don't you find?' asked Jack. 'Prodigious. But come over this side, and you will see another sight.' He held back the forestaysail and guided Stephen to the larboard cathead, where they stood gazing across an even deeper blue expanse of sea to the African shore. The Surprise had already opened the bay entirely and now the sun was lighting first the mountains behind the town and on either side—brilliant green after the spring rains—and then in a
few moments the splendid topmost buildings on the tall, symmetrically rounded hill upon which the city was built. 'That is the Kasbah, the Dey's palace,' said Jack.

  Minute by minute the brilliant light moved down, showing innumerable white flat-roofed houses built very close together; towering minarets; occasional alleys, barely a single street; some blanks that would probably be great squares if one could see them from above. Row after row of houses going down and down to the prodigious great stone wall, the port, the huge mole and the inner harbour.

  'It is exceedingly impressive: there is a strange beauty here,' said Stephen. 'I long to be better acquainted with it.'

  'Yes,' said Jack. 'And when we are a little closer I shall ask Dr Jacob to go ashore, wait on the British consul to make sure that if, in command of a King's ship, I salute the castle, the salute will be returned. And if the answer is yes, which is close on certain, whether he can arrange for you to see the Dey as soon as possible.'

  'If you do not mind, brother, I had rather go myself, with Dr Jacob to show me the way. I have a note that must be delivered into the consul's own hands. You will let me have Ringle, for greater stateliness?'

  'Of course I shall: but in that case you may have to wait for the land-breeze in the evening, to carry you out again. Algiers bay is almost always a lee-shore.'

  In spite of Jack's words, it was the stately Ringle that bore them in, on the understanding that her jolly-boat should pull out as early as possible with the consul's answer about the salute, Ringle waiting at the mole for Stephen and a favourable wind.

  Very fine she was as she stood in, came sweetly against the mole and moored there to the admiration of all beholders: but there the stateliness of the mission stopped. Dr Maturin had eluded the vigilance of Killick, who supposed that the two doctors were gone aboard the schooner merely to see their friends and who had taken no notice of his rusty old black coat, his breeches unbuttoned at the knee or his crumpled neck-cloth, spotted with blood from a recent shaving. Besides, Killick had had a most indifferent morning. Presuming on his status as captain's steward he had given Billy Green, armourer's mate, a shove as he went aft along the gangway, a shove that Green had returned with such force that Killick plunged between the skid-beams to the deck below, falling on two men at work there and scattering their tools; and when Killick directed a reproof at Green, who replied 'You and your God-damned unicorn's horn', they set about him with jerks and cuffs and one threatened him with a marlin-spike, calling him 'abject reptile' and desiring him to pipe down and stop his gob for an unlucky, unlucky son of a rancid bitch. And although the officer of the watch very soon put a stop to this unpleasantness, Killick realized that the feeling of all those present was still very much against him.

  He was grieved and angry; and he would have been even more grieved and angrier by far if he had seen Dr Maturin walking along the mole with Jacob and one of the Ringle's boys, walking along in the comfortable, shabby, down-at-heel shoes that had been taken from him but not hidden well enough. He was a disreputable object, with his wig awry and blue spectacles on his nose; and his companion was not much better either. Dr Jacob was dressed in rather old clothes that might belong to the east or west of the Mediterranean—a grey caftan with many cloth-covered buttons, a grey skull-cap, and grey heelless slippers.

  'It is indeed a most prodigious wall,' said Stephen.

  'Forty feet high,' said Jacob. 'I measured it twice, long ago, with a string.'

  They entered the town through a heavily-fortified gate, and to Stephen's surprise there were no formalities: the Turkish guards looked at them curiously, but at Jacob's brief statement that they were from the English ship they nodded and stood aside. A few narrow streets, a small square with an almond-tree, and the Ringle's boy cried, 'Oh sir, sir! There is a camel!'

  'Yes, indeed,' said Jacob. 'A she-camel,' and he led them round the creature, through yet another maze to a larger square: it was the slave-market, he observed in a matter-of-fact tone, but there would be neither merchants nor wares until later in the day: and the boy was to take particular notice of all the turnings they took, since he would have to find his way back alone. 'Yes, sir,' said the boy; but at almost the same moment, in spite of Jacob's assertion, they did see one weary old man, slowly carrying his chain as he walked across the market to the fountain, and this so struck the boy, who stared with all his might, even walking backwards to see more, that Stephen resolved to ask the consul to let a servant show him the way back to the mole. Another broad rectangle, and Jacob pointed out the house where he had lived. 'I shared it with a friend, the daughter of the last descendant of a very ancient family of Grey Huns: but unhappily we neither of us quite answered the other's expectations. In the corner on the left there is a shaded coffee-house, where we might well be advised to drink a cup, because our next stage is a climb of some five hundred steps almost to the Kasbah itself. Shall we walk in?'

  They walked in, and after civil greetings Jacob and Stephen were given leather cushions by the side of a table nine inches high, near the front of the well-filled shop (which also sold hashish and tobacco), while the delighted boy sat on the ground. 'Perhaps the young man would prefer sherbet?' suggested Jacob. 'Oh yes, sir, if you please,' said the young man, and he drank with ecstasy, gazing at a whole train of camels that passed slowly by, laden with dates, pliable baskets crammed with dates and covered with palm-leaves.

  People were now passing in greater numbers: mostly Moors, but many black Africans, and some that Jacob pointed out as Jews of different kinds, Greeks and Lebanese. But when, having finished their second cups of coffee and another bowl of sherbet, they declined the proffered hookah and began their climb, they did not find the path at all crowded.

  'Is this a Muslim holy day, or a fast, that so many people stay at home?' asked Stephen. 'I had always thought of Algiers as a teeming, densely-populated town.'

  'So it is, at ordinary times,' replied Jacob. 'I think that all who can have moved into the country or the surrounding villages. I heard the men sitting behind us speak of an English bombardment as very probable indeed; and the emptiness of the markets is something I have never known before, even in times of plague.' He was already gasping when he said this, and a few steps further on he pointed to a recess and said, 'This is where I usually sit when I am going to the Kasbah.'

  They all rested on the stone bench, worn smooth with innumerable weary hams, and presently the boy cried, 'Oh sir! Do you see them enormous great huge birds?'

  'Certainly,' said Stephen. 'They are vultures, you know, the ordinary fulvous . . .' He stopped short, not wishing to disappoint, and added, 'But they are very splendid on the wing. See how they turn!'

  'I have seen a vulture, said the boy, more or less to himself, with infinite satisfaction.

  Another two hundred steps and Jacob turned off right-handed. 'There is the consulate,' he said, pointing to a considerable house with a garden full of date-palms. 'Should you like to draw breath again before going in?'

  Stephen felt in his pocket for the ministerial letter, heard the reassuring crackle, and said, 'Never in life: let us not lose a minute. Boy, will you wait here, sitting in the shade of a palm-tree?'

  He and Jacob walked through the side-door obviously intended for business, and in the office they found a young man sitting with his feet on the desk. 'Who the Devil are you?' he asked. 'And what do you want? Distressed British subjects, I suppose.'

  'My name is Maturin, Dr Stephen Maturin, surgeon in HMS Surprise, and I wish to see the consul, for whom I have a letter and a verbal message.'

  'You can't see the consul. He is sick. Give me the letter and tell me the message,' said the young man; but he did not take his feet off the desk.

  'The letter is from the Ministry and can be delivered only into the consul's own hands. The message is equally private. If you wish you may show him my card: and he will decide whether to receive me or not.' He brought out a card, pencilled some words on the back, and laid it on the desk. The young man c
hanged colour and said, 'I will speak to her ladyship.'

  'Dr Maturin,' she cried, running in—a remarkably handsome woman of thirty-five or so. 'You will not remember me, but we met in Sierra Leone, when Peter was on poor Governor Wood's staff—we dined on opposite sides of the table—of course you shall see him—you will not mind his being in bed, I am sure—it is the hip-gout and he suffers most cruelly . . .' Her eyes filled with tears.

  'Dear Lady Clifford, I remember you perfectly. You wore a pearl-grey dress and as Mrs Wood observed it became you wonderfully. May I present my colleague, Dr Jacob? He has more experience than I of sciatica and related diseases and he may have seen similar cases.'

  'How do you do, sir?' said Lady Clifford, and she led them upstairs to a sadly tumbled bedroom.

  'Dr Maturin, I do apologize for receiving you like this,' said the consul, 'but I dare not get up: the fit has just died away, and I fairly dread waking it . . .' He gave Jacob a civil but enquiring look. Stephen explained his presence and the Ministry's total confidence in him; he then passed the letter he was carrying. Sir Peter smiled kindly at Jacob, said, 'Forgive me,' to Stephen, and broke the seal. 'Yes,' he said, putting the letter by, 'it is perfectly clear. But, my dear sir, I believe you have come to a totally new situation. Have you had news from Algiers since the beginning of April?'

  Stephen cast his mind back and after a moment's thought said, 'We have not. Between this and Durazzo we touched only at Pantellaria, where they had nothing to tell us, good or bad, only that no houario had passed or touched there—that no houario could have survived the furious wind that struck us. Nor did we speak any ship, though Commodore Aubrey may even now be conferring with some one of the captains he sent to convoy the eastern trade . . . and, sir, before going any further may I carry out one part of my duties? The Commodore desired me to ask you whether, if he were to stand in, perhaps with part of his squadron, and salute the castle, whether the salute would be returned?'