by A. N. Wilson
Heyne wrote back that he deemed Jacobins to be the murderous scum of the earth.
—Are you surprised that he should write those words, asked Therese furiously. She held out a Strassburg newspaper. Have you seen what they did – fifteen hundred men and women put on a so-called trial and then simply massacred? Is that Liberty and Fraternity?
George and his fellow German Jacobins – and there were disappointingly few of them in Mainz – met the commander of the invading army in the Baroque Deanery so much admired by Goethe. Count Adam-Philippe Custine, with his thick shock of white hair and very pronounced arched dark eyebrows, would have been a handsome man had not the bushy mustachios, symbols of his revolutionary fervour, not given his aristocratic features the look of an amateur-dramatics version of a bandit, perhaps a minor role in Schiller’s The Robbers. George had perfect French, so there was no question of their conversing in the language of the defeated.
—. . . pleasure in offering you both the position of Deputé in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Mainz, said Custine. It was a remark which he addressed to exquisitely manicured fingernails, though presumably addressed to George and to a lumpen fellow called Adam Lux, whose presence was disconcerting. Had one of George’s close friends at the University stood beside him as a ‘Mainz revolutionary’, his resolution would not have wavered. As it was, Lux, who smelt of underarm sweat, was not a reassuring presence. George knew Lux slightly – the man came to the library to consult an impressive range of books. The son of a local farmer, he had written a doctorate on ‘Enthusiasm’. For a while he had worked as a private tutor in the town: then a fortunate marriage had enabled him to buy a small farm, and to live the life of a private scholar.
—I’m sure, Lux was saying, that it has come to your attention, Citizen Custine, that some of your troops have been appropriating sheep, pigs, pulleys . . .
—Pulleys.
—He means chickens, translated George.
—. . . without payment. We appreciate that the army has to eat and has to sleep. But we would respectfully ask that you should ask permission . . . For instance, one of your sergeants authorized his troops to stable horses in the Carmelite hat. I cannot endorse superstition, of course not, but the hat is a place where our fellow human beings have experienced the sacred . . .
—He means a chapel, said George, to the General’s puzzled face.
Even at the moment of joining the Rosicrucians at Kassel, George had experienced a sense of sinking, an awareness that this was a step too far. As Lux and Custine discussed points of administration, water supply, accommodation, hours of curfew, George was beginning to ask himself how he could escape. He would take Therese and the children to follow Brand. That was what they would do. Caroline’s idea had been a good one – A Journey to Greece, by the author of Through the Lower Rhine, Cook the Discoverer and A Voyage Round the World . . .
When he returned to the apartment, he found that Therese had left, taking with her Karin, the nurserymaid, and their two children. Her short letter asked him not to follow her, but since she did not tell him where she was going, this was scarcely possible. The single piece of paper which contained this news had been propped, on his writing table, against a Hindustani grammar and his copy of Linnaeus. It would have been hard to assess how long he sat there, staring at his wife’s handwriting. Once or twice he rang the little hand-bell on the writing table, an instinctive gesture, though Inge and Mattias had presumably deserted. Then, somewhere in the region of the kitchen corridors, he heard a movement, and believed he had done his two remaining servants an injustice. He rang the bell again. Moments later, the door opened. It was Caroline, carrying a papier-mâché florally decorated tray on which tinkled two glasses and a decanter of Riesling. Her thick chestnut curls fell on to her creamy shoulders. She was completely naked.
PART FIVE
The Roaring Breakers
And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong
I
1774
—ROUND THE BACK, SOBACHKA, ROUND THE BACK!
In their winter clothes, strange mummified Resolutions, they all looked very much alike; from Captain Cook to the youngest midshipman, they were all tubby, semi-comical dolls. All, that is, but Nally who, even in his thick woollen leggings, managed to pirouette and wiggle his hips in balletic twists and by moving first one buttock, then another, provoked the dog to dance about like something at the circus. Sobachka was George’s dog, but it was Nally who taught her tricks, running behind his calves, and performing figures of eight around him before sitting in front of him and opening her mouth for a reward. When she had learnt the tricks, Sobachka could hope for pieces of meat or cheese, biscuits or fish-tails. Supplies were now running low and she was lucky if, in reward for her dance round Nally’s writhing legs, she got more than a ‘There’s a darling’ and a pat on the head.
Sobachka had come from Bora Bora, one of the Society Islands, which they had visited the previous September. A dog-loving race, the inhabitants. Many of the women, as would have been the case in the higher reaches of society in London, petted over their dogs, devoting to them an excess of physical affection which, if shown to their children, or to a man, would have been considered distasteful. The Bora-Boran ladies, however, went further. When George had first set eyes upon Sobachka, her human minder was holding the puppy to her breast, wiggling a rubbery pink nipple at the dog’s tongue and mouthing chuckled endearments.
Sobachka was a white and brown, round-headed dog, who, in the four months since becoming George’s pet, had grown wiry fur. Her eyes were small, her ears upright. She could never be described as beautiful, but her arrival had changed George’s ship life. Although the midshipmen openly despised her (‘Hello, shitter’ was Pickersgill’s usual way of greeting her), she was much liked by the men, and owed her slightly barrel-like shape to the treats they threw to her.
Nally and she had a number of tricks, apart from ‘round the back’. She held up her right paw whenever he said, ‘How d’ye do?’ She could balance bread pellets on her nose and feign death by lying on her back. Nally surreptitiously gathered up her knotted, stony little turds whenever he found them on the deck.
—We don’t want you suffering the fate of the monkeys, eh, Sobachka, do we now?
And George would lay down brush or pencil and remember the poor monkeys, those early casualties of the voyage out. Sobachka shivering on his lap made bearable the other circumstances of life as the thermometer sank from the early forties to the thirties: the scurvy, which began to affect some of the men, the fact that everyone was hungry, everyone had a cold. She also numbed his irritation with Reinhold, in particular his father’s ability to quote an apt line from Horace or Virgil to cover any eventuality, from a storm at sea to a case of constipation.
His love for her was tactile, the whole relationship based on her nuzzling him, licking him, butting him, his being able to reach her, stroke her, pat her. Twenty years later, stubbornly wakeful, though exhausted in the marriage bed, knowing that he lay beside a woman who hated him – knowing this because she said so – George would think fondly of Sobachka. Presumably those who had the knack of matrimony were able to lie together and receive the same consolations from one another which the ugly little island dog and the lonely, spotty boy symbiotically enjoyed.
They had been at sea for two long months, the harshest months of the voyage. The Captain was determined to see if they could find the Southern Continent. The Resolution took a westerly course S60˚15 and sailed through severe gales, fog and snow until they once more had met the ice. For over a month, the sloop simply froze. The ropes were wires of ice. The sails became like huge sheets of metal, heavy and hard. The shivers froze fast in the blocks, so it became all but impossible to hoist the topsail up or down. Moreover, supplies were running low. Most of the bread brought from New Zealand and packed in green casks had begun to go off.
—The casks were not sufficiently cleaned. Normally I
would hold my tongue, but, Mr Gilbert, there are moments when a man must speak out.
George had heard Mr Gilbert, the master, tell Captain Cook that it would be the grace of God alone which saved him from the gallows, since he could not envisage getting back to England before his patience with ‘the tactless philosopher’ snapped.
—You see, even the good bread, the twice baked, so to say, has touched the sides of the casks. This is most unfortunate because it has become rotten. It is for this reason all the men are now hungry.
The master said nothing.
Battening on to the surgeon, Reinhold said,
—Mr Patten, the Kapitän has put the men on a two-thirds allowance. This will undoubtedly lead to sickness.
—Very likely, Dr Forster.
—You must speak to him, you are responsible for the health of the ship. I’m here on this ship now nineteen months and already I am finding it astonishing that you cannot be responsible for the health. To my point of view this is astonishing. You should tell the Kapitän it was a mistake, this attempt again to find the Terra Australis, a land, by the way, which plainly does not exist. It is ice, ice and again ice. There is no Southern Continent. Of this you can be sure.
—It is to establish the truth or falsehood of that proposition, Dr Forster, that we all set forth.
—Why will the Kapitän not listen to me? Is not mine the voice of reason? Are my rheumaticks worse or better? They are worse. My son’s legs, they have begun to swell. His teeth are falling out. He has scurvy, Mr Patten. Scurvy. My son. His face was a mass of spots before this, I own. Now it is nothing more than a blotch. And this is my reward for accompanying this voyage. My reward.
—I like the way your son never complains, sir. He holds the pencil in his mittens. In ice and snow, he keeps drawing, drawing. Hello, hello – what’s that?
And the surgeon pointed to what seemed to be a whale, surfacing in the foggy middle distance, beyond the floating ice. In the silver-white air a few petrels swooped, but there were very few birds in evidence.
George and his father were too depleted, too depressed, too ill to make observations on Natural History. In their separate little cabins they lay in their bunks and George’s only consolation – for much of the time, he was too sad even to read, too stiff-fingered to draw (in spite of what the doctor said), he lay there under a damp blanket, shivering, with aching gums, and blotchy skin and swollen legs and a dizzy sick headache – was to clutch Sobachka, whose large black sad eyes stared at his. Was she imploring him to get well? Was she praying to him, her Deity, for warmer weather? Or did she want him to come out and play on the frozen decks?
Once again, they failed to find the Southern Continent. When the Captain deemed that everyone on board had suffered enough, they turned from the freezing waters. The wind suddenly picked up. With the greatest run since leaving England, the Resolution crossed three degrees latitude in a single day – the thermometer in Reinhold’s cabin began to climb – to 48˚ by 9th February, to 58˚ by 15th February. Bird life resumed. Shearwaters hovered, portents of better days in the fresh breeze. Mr Cooper, First Lieutenant, shot two grampuses with musket balls. Albatrosses swooped and flapped. The sea, from being iron-cold and life-destroying expanses of dark blue black, became a shook silk bedspread of vibrant green. Porpoises leapt from its surface.
Then, as the temperature rose through the sixties, very many on board, having suffered minor colds, cramps, rheumaticks and constipation, got truly ill. Nally began to double up with intolerable colic. Reinhold, distrustful of a simple Irishman’s capacity to explain his own condition with scientific accuracy to the surgeon, insisted upon forming his own diagnosis.
—I have questioned him in great detail, Mr Patten. Nally has coagulated, bilious faeces. Without a purge, there is no hope for him. He will die.
Similar pains began to afflict the Captain. These, however, were much more severe than Nally’s, indeed incapacitating.
—Kapitän Cook, I must enter.
This was Reinhold at the door of the Captain’s cabin. He could hear light groaning within, punctuated by yelps of frantic hiccoughs. Cooper, who had been to consult the Captain about essential navigational matters, said,
—I entreat you, sir, our beloved Captain is in such pain, he can scarcely speak. I am doing my best to navigate us towards Easter Island.
—This is a mistake. None of us can wait so long. Easter Island, it is too far. You should aim for Davis Island.
—Which the Captain believes to be one and the same place.
—If Kapitän Cook dies, proclaimed Reinhold in his carrying voice, I do not reckon much to any of our chances of returning to New Zealand alive: let alone to England.
He pushed past the First Lieutenant and stood beside Cook’s truckle. The body upon it, wracked with agony, hiccoughed convulsively.
—I would suggest, Kapitän, that this hiccoughing is continuing now for several days, and if it continues much longer you will be dead. You have coagulated faeces in your gut, sir. I have consulted Mr Patten, who informs me that you have not responded to the purges he administered.
Cook, on quivering elbows, raised himself from the narrow bed and gasped,
—Bowl!
His servant had a metal pail to hand in which Cook vomited copiously.
—This is good, said Reinhold. This is the first stage.
—If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to clear up, said Willis, the servant. There’s no room for three in this space, sir.
A few hours later, the Captain passed motions for the first time in over a week. The hiccoughing, however, continued. The coming and going of the attentive Willis, and the almost constant attendance of the surgeon in Cook’s small sleeping-quarters, did not keep Reinhold away.
—Mr Patten, you must not be afraid, sir, of the vomitings. The purging should continue. Camomile tea and a glyster, these would be my remedies. Then, perhaps, a warm bath and a plaster of Theriac on the stomach itself.
The crisis was past, but Cook was still too weak to rise from his bed. He was able to sit upright and to take a little nourishment. Mr Patten agreed with Reinhold that strength would only fully return when they reached land and found fresh vegetables and fruit. In the meantime, however, the Captain was not going to gain strength from salt pork and biscuit.
—There is no fresh meat to be had, sir – these were Patten’s fateful words. The last sheep died of scurvy. There is no fresh meat.
Moments later, Reinhold lurched off down the swaying, heaving deck in search of his son. With the warmer temperatures, George and Sobachka had sought out a sunny spot on deck. In the middle distance, a flock of greyish tern flew in the bright sky. George was sketching them, while Sobachka, weaving in and out of Nally’s gyrating knees, performed an elaborate version of her ‘round the back’ trick.
—Now, this one is for George, Sobachka. George – George, now, have a look at this one.
—I have told you before, not to address my son by his first name.
—Vati, it’s all right. I don’t mind it.
—Watch this, George.
In common with the entire crew, Nally now appeared unresponsive to most of the instructions emanating from Reinhold’s brain, though he continued to be an efficient and unobtrusive valet and man of all works to both father and son.
—On your back, Sobachka! You’re dead! Bang! Bang!
She obliged him by lying on her back with paws in the air. It seemed as if she was laughing.
—Dira necessitas! Dira necessitas! intoned Reinhold.
He had picked up Sobachka before either George or Nally realized what he was doing, and, in so far as it is possible to bustle on a swaying deck, he had bustled away with the wiry creature wriggling in his arm. George, still intent on the grey tern, did not immediately take in what was being said, something about the Captain’s health being more important to all of them than the life of a dog.
—No sir! Nally was calling out. Jesus Christ, I beg you . . .
George never brought himself to ask his father, neither at the time, nor afterwards when he wrote up A Voyage Round the World, whether Reinhold himself or Pattinson, the ship’s cook, put Sobachka to death, nor how the execution was effected.
The Captain himself later remarked,
—I received nourishment and strength from food which would have made most people in Europe sick, so true it is that necessity is governed by no law.
George tried to persuade himself that Captain Cook had not known, until after Sobachka’s death, what Reinhold and the surgeon had in hand. No man aboard, apart from the Captain, partook of the dish.
A week passed. Before a coastline came into sight, there were harbingers that land was near. One day, they caught four albacores in a net – ‘very acceptable’, in the Captain’s opinion. George found the fish so rich, after weeks of an austere and near-starvation diet, that he almost vomited on the first mouthful; but he kept it down, and after only a few hours, he could feel the food giving him strength. Day by day, there were ever more birds circling the Resolution, always a signal of land – man-of-war birds, noddies, tern, petrels. Cook was now sufficiently restored to have resumed control of navigation. With a gentle breeze and in pleasant weather, the sloop scudded through the waves, easterly in the course W2˚S. On Friday 11th March they covered sixty miles. Shortly after midnight, one of the Lieutenants, Charles Clerke, believed that he’d sighted land, and with dawn on the 12th, this belief was confirmed. Trees, sand, semi-naked people appeared in the spyglass. In confirmation of Cook’s belief that this was Easter Island, the telescope also revealed a number of the enormous stones for which the place is famous.
After breakfast on board the Resolution two separate landing parties set off for the shore in jolly boats. Reinhold and Dr Sparrman carried bags for plant specimens, Hodges took his collapsible easel, his sketch-blocks and colour-boxes. With Lieutenants Pickersgill and Edgecumbe they intended, despite the intense heat, to pass the day exploring the interior. Cook and George, still incapacitated by illness, went in the other boat with Odiddy the interpreter. By the time the Captain’s party came ashore, the first group had already set out into the cinder-strewn, ashy island.
