Sic erimus cuncti postquam nos auferet
Orcus ergo vivamus dum licet esse, bene.
And I also know I am not a monster incapable of affection," she said, laying a hand on Stephen's knee and flushing a little under her tan. 'Only I cannot connect it with that toying, striving, gasping - what can I call it without being gross? -with anything of a carnal nature. They seem to me poles apart.'
'I am sure they do. Sic erimus cuncti ... so that was where Mr Oakes had his couplet yesterday? I wondered.'
'Yes. It was a doggerel version I made when I was putting on my gown. But I was astonished he should remember it.'
Stephen's only patients that afternoon were the butcher and the bosun's mate, both of whom, but particularly Mason, needed dressing. Martin had applied the ordinary pads, but he had had little experience with this kind of wound, the Surprise's temper being ordinarily so mild, and a more practised hand was required to wind the cingulum that would enable them to move with something approaching ease.
Yet it was clear to the practised hand that he might have a well-populated berth quite soon. Not only was Jack tautening the ship in all points, but on excusing himself for missing dinner - 'he would take an extra bite this evening, and with the wind going down like this they might very well have some fresh fish with their music' - he had also thrown out a remark about a flying column. Quite what he meant by that Stephen had not gathered; but basing himself upon the axiom that what goes up must necessarily come down, he anticipated a fine crop of broken limbs, ribs, even skulls.
He reflected upon this as he dined in the gunroom, a rather silent gunroom, but one in which the malignance had been largely replaced by anxiety and even by a certain fellow-feeling. Martin ate wolfishly, twice desiring Pullings 'to cut him just a little more of this excellent roast pork, but when at last his empty plate was taken from him before pudding he told Stephen that he had seen a remarkable number of boobies towards the northern horizon, and that old Macaulay, who knows these seas, had confirmed him in his notion that this meant great shoals of fish. They might go a-fishing if the evening fell calm.
'You medicoes may go a-fishing,' said Pullings. 'But I very much doubt whether we do anything but exercise until next Christmas.'
Truer words he never spoke. The Surprise had by no means passed through the variables, and in the afternoon watch the breeze, which had been boxing the compass for some time, died away almost entirely; yet it did not do so until it had brought the ship within a mile or so of the zone where the boobies were fishing, and Stephen's skiff had long since been lowered down.
They rowed laboriously out, with rods, hand-nets, sieves for animalculae, pots and jars, baskets, all of which got in the way, impeding their artless progress and making them even slower, even hotter in the damp, unmoving air. Stephen, who had little sense of shame where nakedness was concerned and who had so often exposed his entire person that he feared no sunburn, took off his clothes; Martin, more shamefast by far, only unbuttoned his shirt, rolled up his trousers, and suffered.
But it was worth their toil. The fishing-ground was sharply defined, and as soon as they were over its border and among the boobies they found that it possessed at least two levels, a turmoil of squids pursuing pelagic crabs and the free-swimming larvae of various forms of marine life that neither could identify, though they were fairly confident of the pearl oyster, and two or three fathoms below these, clearly to be seen, particularly under the shade of the boat, swam schools of fishes, crossing and recrossing, all of the same mackerel-shaped kind, all flashing as they turned, and all feeding upon a host of fry so numerous that they made a globular haze in the clear green water. The boobies preyed on both, either making a slight skimming dive to snatch up a squid just under the surface, or plunging from a height like so many mortar-bombs to reach the depth where the fishes cruised. They took no notice whatsoever of the men, sometimes diving so close to the boat that they splashed water into it; and after some time the men, having classified the birds (two species, neither particularly rare), took no notice of the boobies. They scooped up the squids with their hand-nets and found that they belonged to at least eleven different kinds, two of which they could not name; they sieved great quantities of the squids' food, which they put into well-closed pots; and they caught the fishes - handsome fellows, weighing a couple of pounds - baiting their hooks with pork rind cut in the shape of a minnow.
'Paradise must have been very like this,' observed Martin, putting another into their basket: and then 'How happy they will be when we bring back our catch. There is nothing like fresh -' Here he looked towards the ship and his face changed entirely. 'Oh,' cried he, 'she has lost a mast!'
Certainly she looked horribly lopsided, or rather deformed; but Stephen replied 'Not at all, at all.' He reached among his clothes for a little pocket spy-glass, pointed, focussed, and continued 'Never in life, my dear sir: they are only shifting topmasts.'
He saw from the great activity in the maintop, where topmast shrouds were being set up afresh, that they had begun aft and were working forward in one of the most strenuous exercises known to man.
Pullings and Oakes were on the forecastle; Davidge was in the foretop; West was perched in the maintopmast crosstrees; they and all the hands under their command were all in a state of extreme activity; and Jack Aubrey, with Reade on one hand and Adams on the other, was timing them with his open watch.
'I believe you have not seen it done before,' said Stephen, passing the glass. 'Will I tell you what they are at?'
'If you would be so good.'
'First they unbend the topgallantsails and send them down and the yard after them; then they strike the topgallant mast, a manoeuvre we are all familiar with - a matter of minutes for skilful mariners, attentive to their duty. But then they do the same to the great topsail, its mighty yard and then the very mast itself, a heavy task indeed. This they have evidently done to the mizenmast and the main; now they are operating on the foremast, and I perceive from the forms creeping along the bowsprit that they contemplate shifting the jibboom too, the creatures.'
'Do they look for flaws and change the defective pieces?'
'I suppose they do. But I believe the real aim is to make them brisker, to confirm them in their seamanlike activity, and perhaps to strengthen their sense of combined, exactly synchronous effort. Sometimes it is done, not from any desire to enforce discipline and instant compliance with orders but out of a spirit of competition if not indeed of vainglory and showing away. The old Surprise, with a crew that had been together a great while, all men-of-war's men, was extraordinarily good at it; and I remember that once, in the West Indies, shifting topmasts at the same moment as the Hussar, considered a crack ship, she did so in one hour and twenty-three minutes, the hands dancing hornpipes on the forecastle before the wretched Hussars had even crossed their main topgallant yards. See, the topmast is swaying up - it rises, rises, the capstan turns - higher, higher, secured by a complex system of ropes - high enough - Tom cries "Launch ho!" - it is ridded and safe - they fling themselves upon the shrouds and cast off this and that - the brave topgallant-mast follows ..."
So it did; and once the frigate looked like a Christian ship again - for the shifting of the jibboom was neither here nor there to the medicoes - they returned to their squids, more active now than ever. 'I am almost certain that over there we have a species quite unknown,' said Martin. He leaned out with his long-handled net, but before he had even dipped it he started back. 'Oh,' he said in a shocked voice. 'Do not move. Do not hang your arm over the side. My image of Paradise was only too exact. The Evil One is with us too.'
They peered cautiously over the gunwale, and there under the frail skiff they saw the familiar form of a shark: one of the many kinds of Carcharias no doubt, though to tell just which they would have to look at its teeth; yet it seemed larger than most: far larger.
'Do you suppose it is likely to bump the boat?' asked Martin in a low voice.
'Sure he may well do so,
by rising suddenly; or sometimes they are known to take a run and launch themselves bodily into the middle, or athwartships as we say, snapping right and left.'
'I wonder you can speak with such levity,' said Martin. 'And you too a married man.'
A silence fell, broken from time to time by the splash of a deep-diving booby and the remote shrilling of bosun's calls. A bird dived close at hand, down and down: the shark moved smoothly from under the boat: its bulk covered the diving form and carried on into the depths, growing steadily dimmer though still huge when it vanished. Three or four feathers floated up. 'Will he come back, do you imagine?' asked Martin, still gazing down with shaded eyes.
'I do not,' said Stephen. 'The flesh of the booby is acrid and rank, and I have no doubt he thinks we belong to the same genus at least.'
From over the sea came an urgent piping and Captain Aubrey's powerful voice urging haste. In rapid succession all the frigate's boats were lowered down; their crews leapt into them with the breakneck speed they would have shown if a valuable prize had just heaved up; and lines having been passed they began towing the ship in the direction of the boobies.
By the time the Surprise reached them the sun was already far down the sky. The fish had stopped biting; the squids and their prey had sunk out of sight; and as soon as the boats were hoisted in the hands were piped to a belated supper, with precious little rum served out.
'What a comfort it is to have solid heart of oak beneath one's feet,' said Martin as they took their pots fishes rods buckets and specimens out of the skiff. 'I had never felt the dreadful fragility of this boat - planking not half an inch thick - so much as when I saw that horrible creature almost touching it. I have never felt more uneasy in my life. As I peered down it rolled a little and gave me a cold look that I shall not soon forget.'
Supper was hardly swallowed before the drum beat for quarters. The cabins vanished in the usual clean sweep fore and aft; Stephen hid his specimens together with a large number of squids in the quarter-gallery and hurried to the sick-berth, his action-station; the great guns were cast loose, and the drooping officers reported 'All present and sober, if you please.'
They were soberer still by the time they had performed the great-gun exercise - running in the cannon (five hundredweight to a man) - running the massive object out again as far as possible, laying the tackle-falls in neat fakes - pointing the guns in a given direction - going through the motions of firing - running in, going through the motions of worming, sponging and reloading - replacing the tompion - housing and making all fast - a dozen turns apiece, each separately timed by their inflexible Captain, and then a full broadside together: all this in dumb show. They were not indulged in a single round of live ammunition, for although the magazines were tolerably full (powder being one of the few things that New South Wales could supply) Jack Aubrey had no intention whatsoever of giving them pleasure: he was profoundly displeased with his officers and men, and with himself for not having detected this spirit of faction earlier. He was in no mood for indulgence of any kind, and the hands knew it.
There was no singing or dancing on the forecastle during what little remained of the sweetest evening. The hands sat about, dog-tired, until the setting of the watch. They did not resent the skipper's anger: they knew it was justified: they hoped it would not last.
A vain hope. All through the variables they were kept on the run, manning and arming boats, lowering them down and hoisting them in until they achieved twenty-five minutes twenty seconds for the one and nineteen minutes fifty seconds for the other: they could also send up lower yards and topmasts and cross topgallant yards in four minutes four seconds; and apart from shifting topmasts every now and then there was always the bending of new sails, painting ship and a remarkable amount of small-arms and cutlass exercise.
Throughout this time Jack kept his severity for the quarterdeck: once in the cabin he was as amiable as ever. He played his violin to Stephen's 'cello with his usual wholehearted enjoyment, and apart from the deep lines in his weatherbeaten face there was little to show the strain he was under.
'Lord, Stephen,' said he, after a day of particularly wearing exercise, 'I cannot tell you what a refuge this cabin is, and what a happiness it is for me to have you to talk to and play music with. Most captains have trouble with their ship's people from time to time - on occasion it is a continual sullen covert war - and unless they make cronies of their first lieutenants, as some do, they have to chew over it alone. I do not wonder that so many of them grow strange or bloody-minded; or run melancholy mad, for that matter.'
Even when they did reach the full north-east trades there was no relaxation of his manner on deck: he was fairly cordial to Pullings, Oakes and Reade, always civil to Martin and markedly polite to Clarissa when he saw her; but he remained stern, impersonal, remote and exigent with the other officers and the foremast jacks. Nor was there much relaxation in their daily and nightly toil, for the trade-wind proved more northerly and considerably less steady than he could have wished, and this called for the nicest management of the helm, a continual attention to brace and bowline and a frequent change of jibs and staysails if the Surprise were both to keep her course and run off her two hundred sea-miles between one noon observation and the next. He spent most of his waking hours on deck with Pullings, and he liked West, Davidge and Oakes to spend much of theirs aloft, supervising the exact carrying-out of his orders or even anticipating them. They grew worn and lean; they were haunted by the dread of being found asleep on their watch; and the gunroom dinners were silent less from animosity than extreme fatigue. None of them had ever known a ship driven so hard so long.
'My dear' wrote Stephen.
'We are now in the realm of the trade wind and we fly along at an exhilarating pace; but sailing against the wind (or as nearly against it as lies within the abilities of a square-rigged ship) is very unlike sailing before it, very unlike those luxurious days of rolling down to St Helena when one sits under an awning admiring the sea or reading one's book and when the mariners are not required to touch the flowing sheet. Now we lean over to a dangerous degree, and the spray or even solid water comes sweeping back with uncommon vehemence. Jack comes down soaked: not that he comes down often, because sailing of this kind requires his presence on deck. It would be much, much easier for all concerned if he would spread fewer sails and keep the wind one point free; yet he means not only to reach Moahu as soon as ever he can but he also, and above all, wishes to deal with the present situation by recalling all hands to their duty; and he is doing so with a greater authority than I knew he possessed.
'Whether he will succeed in his purpose I do not know. He sees the trouble as being caused by the enmity between the officers who are attracted to Mrs Oakes, and these officers being supported by their own men, so that there are rival clans in the ship. But there are complexities that escape him, and now that I have time and to spare and the cabin to myself I shall endeavour to set them out as well as I can. The divisions, if I may so call them, amount to at least half a dozen: there are those (the majority) who condemn Clarissa for lying with any member of the quarterdeck at all apart from her husband; those who condemn her for lying with any officer but their own; those who support Oakes without reserve (they belong for the most part to his division and they are known as the Oak-Apples); those who condemn him for having beaten his wife; those who support their divisional officer whatever his situation with regard to her; and those who still look upon Clarissa with affectionate esteem - the sailmaker, for example, has recently made her a tarpaulin cloak, in which she now sits by the taffrail.
'Even if it were right for me to open my mind to Jack, I doubt it would be useful: I do not think I could ever make him understand that for her the sexual act is trivial, of no consequence. Our ordinary salute, the kiss, is held infamous among the Japanese if bestowed in public: with them, says Pinto, it is as much a deed of darkness or at least of total privacy as physical love-making is with us. For her, because of the parti
cularity of her bringing-up, kiss and coition are much the same in insignificance; furthermore, she takes not the slightest pleasure in either. If therefore, through a variety of motives in which good nature and even compassion certainly have a part as well as a general desire to be liked, she has admitted some men to her bed, she has done so very innocently: "If an ill-looking pitiful fellow with say a thorn in his foot begged you to take it out, sure you would consent, even if doing so were rather unpleasant than otherwise." To her astonishment she had found herself loved and hated in various degrees, rather than merely liked, by those she obliged; and condemned by many who were in no way concerned.
'At different times I had tried to explain the violent male desire for exclusive possession - the standard by which a wide variety of partners if not promiscuity is laudable in oneself, vile in women - the want of sequence or even common honesty of mind coupled with unshakable conviction - the unreasonable yet very strong and very painful emotions that arise from jealousy (a feeling to which she is almost entirely a stranger) - and the very great force of rivalry. I also told her, with authority, that nothing can be done aboard ship without its being known. I spoke each time at some length, with real concern for her; she listened attentively and I think she believed me. In any event she is determined to renounce fornication: though how she will fare I know not. She has lit a fire that will not easily be put out; and although for the moment Jack keeps all hands in such a state of perpetual activity that the members of the gunroom mess can hardly put one foot in front of the other when they come below, these passions, confined as they are in space, may burst out later with a shocking force.'
He sat there, lost in his reflections, until Killick came in and said, as he had so often said before, 'Why, sir, you are sitting in the dark.' He brought a light, a lantern that swung in gimbals, and Stephen returned to his contemplation, holding his pen in the air.
The Truelove Page 22
