Book 17 - The Commodore

by Patrick O'Brian

  He found Square sitting on a stone outside, and as they walked back to the strand he said, 'John Square, if you are not engaged for the next few weeks I should like you to sail with me and show me what plants, birds and animals you can whenever we go ashore. I will give you an able seaman's wages and ask Captain Pullings to enter you as a supernumerary.'

  'Happy, sir, very happy,' said Square, and they shook hands upon it. After another hundred yards and some thought Dr Maturin said, 'There seemed to be an elegant swamp the other side of the town. If I can deal with my rounds early enough, we might go there this afternoon; and in the following days we may ascend the lofty hill beyond.'

  Captain Pullings was quite willing to take Square aboard as a supernumerary for victuals (though not for tobacco, or the purser would grizzle and moan for the rest of the commission), and he said he might stow his canoe in the jolly-boat, as being more suitable for landing the Doctor on so rough a coast.

  This was most satisfactory; so was the almost universal cheerfulness as the boats came alongside to carry the libertymen ashore. There were a few anonymous hoots of 'What cheer, Old Saturnino?'—a nickname given him by some dissolute Maltese hands—but generally it was smiles and nods, yesterday's vehement feelings quite forgotten, while many of his older shipmates asked what they might bring him back.

  Yet his rounds were less so. The great cannonade may not have killed all the slavers aboard the Nancy (an article of belief throughout Freetown) but it had certainly mangled several of the more impetuous and less nimble first-voyagers belonging to the squadron, in spite of their frequent exercise; and although the Belllona's sick-berth was as clean and airy as that of any line-of-battle ship in the fleet, the singular damp, oppressive heat was not well suited to those who had to lie there. Wind-sails there were, well-spread and efficient wind-sails, but they could not make the air they brought down any fresher than it was on the deck, where people walked about panting and mopping themselves. Several of the wounds and burns threatened to turn ugly, and after dinner—a dinner eaten in the gasping wardroom, for Jack and his captains were all invited by the Governor, and which consisted for the main part of steak and kidney pudding—Stephen returned for another session with his assistants, amiable young men, but slow, lacking in experience. This went on until, just as he was administering a last soothing draught of hellebore, Stephen heard the sound of a returning barge, the wail of bosun's calls as the Commodore and Captain were piped aboard, the thump and clash of Marines presenting arms. 'There, gentlemen,' he said, 'now I believe we may allow the berth to take a little rest. Evans,' he said to the loblolly-boy, an aged farrier who had run away to sea, escaping from a devilish shrew, 'you will call Mr Smith at the least emergency. For my own part,' he added, 'I mean to view the swamp behind the town.'

  'Well, my dear, and so you are back, I find,' he said, walking into the great cabin, where Jack was sitting at the stern window in his shirtsleeves, with his breeches undone at the knees and waist. 'I trust you enjoyed your dinner?'

  'James Wood did us proud as Pompous Pilate, bless him,' said Jack. 'Four hours, and never without a glass in my hand. Though Lord, sometimes I feel I am no longer twenty: perhaps it is the heat. Don't you find it damnation hot? Damp, close, oppressive? I suppose not, since you have a coat on.'

  'I do not find the heat exorbitant or disagreeable; though I admit the dampness. You portly subjects feel it more than we spare men, men of a more elegant shape. But take comfort: they tell me that the dry season is at hand, when the air, though hotter by far on occasion, is perfectly dry, so dry that the blacks anoint themselves with palm-oil to prevent their skins from cracking: or in default of palm-oil, with tallow. Dry, and sometimes accompanied by an interesting wind, the harmattan; though that may also be the name of the season itself. As for my coat, I wear it because I mean to view the swamp behind the town, and do not choose to risk the falling damps.'

  'My dear Stephen, what are you thinking of? Have you forgot your orders that no one was to go ashore after sunset? Though by the way you never told us why. It could not be the falling damps, since there are no falling damps in taverns or bawdy-houses, which is where sailors go by instinct, like the hart to the water-brook.'

  'It is because of the miasmata.'

  'Are they like miasmas?'

  'Much the same, I do assure you, Jack; and they are at their worst after sunset.'

  'Look at him now,' said Jack, nodding westwards through the stern-window, where the sun glowed red, his brilliance dimmed by the thick and heavy air. 'He will be down before you have contemplated your swamp for five minutes. No, Stephen. Fair's fair, you know. You cannot deny all hands liberty and then go rioting among the owls and night-birds yourself.'

  Jack's total sincerity and conviction overcame Stephen's protests—his cries of special cases—inherent exceptions to be understood—certain qualifications to be taken for granted—and eventually he said, 'Well, I should not have seen much, anyhow; and there is always tomorrow.'

  'Stephen,' said Jack, 'I grieve to say it, but as far as your great dismal swamp is concerned, there is no tomorrow. We weigh at the turn of the tide: the Governor says that with this wind the news of our coming and of our capers cannot yet have reached Philip's Island; that there are several slavers due there to complete their cargoes; and that we may catch them in the act of doing so.'

  'Oh, indeed,' said Stephen, taken aback.

  'We must take every possible advantage before the whole coast is warned. There is not a moment to lose; and as soon as the tide turns we can stem the current and stand out of the bay.'

  Stephen could not but agree, and after a moment's cursing of his own tongue for its absolute, domineering, prating folly, its lack of ponderation and decent restraint, which would have led to provisoes, to certain exemptions for the common good, he took a turn on deck, where he was comforted first by an uncommonly numerous school of flying fishes that skimmed well above the surface, quite high in the air, there to be snapped up in the fading light by the frigate-birds, darting and flashing among them with breath-taking rapidity; and second by the fact that the Philip Island river was a fine stream, well known to Square, who said that although at the height of the rainy season it flowed broad and fast, lapping far in among the forest trees, making a fall at its mouth and a great bar, once the very heavy rains were over it began to shrink, leaving a clear bank along which one could walk through the forest, where chimpanzees were often to be seen, and beyond into the more open country, much frequented by elephants. He had also spoken of a small plain above the second set of falls almost entirely covered by baobabs, in which there lived fourteen different kinds of bat, some huge, with monstrous faces.

  He was reflecting upon the delightful possibilities—the West African eagle-owl, the blue plantain-eater, the many brilliant weavers and sun-birds, conceivably even the potto, when he heard the cry 'All hands to weigh anchor,' an expected order that was instantly followed by the bosun's call and the powerful voices of his mates roaring 'All hands to weigh anchor' down the hatchways, and he hurried off to be out of the way: well did he know the frightful eagerness and activity set off by this command—the swarms of men racing across the deck regardless of those who might be in their path, the cries, the stretching forth of ropes. Coming into the cabin he found Jack sitting placidly on a locker, treating his fiddle to a fresh set of strings.

  'Why, Stephen,' he said, looking up, 'I was so sorry to dash your spirits about the fetid swamp; but I dare say the miasma would have done you as much harm as an ordinary unlearned cove.'

  'Not at all, my dear,' said Stephen. 'I contemplated on the delights of the Sinon, the river that comes down by Philip's Island. I reflected upon the variety of vegetables and animals, of the very real possibility of a potto, and soon recovered my native ebullience.'

  'What is a potto?'

  'It is a little furry creature that sleeps all day curled up in a ball with its head between its legs and then walks about very, very slowly all night, high
in the trees, slowly eating leaves and creeping up on birds as they roost and eating them too. It has immense eyes, which is but reasonable. Some call it the sluggard; some the slow lemur; some the sloth, but quite erroneously, for the two have nothing in common but their modest demeanour, their inoffensive lives. The potto is the most interesting of the primates, from the anatomical point of view. Adanson saw and dissected the potto, and I fairly long to have the same happiness.'

  'Adamson of the Thetis?'

  'No, no. Adanson, with an n. A Frenchman, though to be sure he was of Scotch origin. Surely, Jack, I have told you of Adanson?'

  'I believe you have mentioned the gentleman's name,' said Jack, concentrating on the peg of his D string, always awkward and crossgrained in this rough old sea-going instrument, above all in damp weather.

  'He was a very great naturalist, as zealous, prolific and industrious as he was unfortunate. I knew him in Paris when I was young, and admired him extremely; so did Cuvier. At that time he was already a member of the Académie des Sciences, but he was very kind to us. When he was little more than a youth he went to Senegal, stayed there five or six years, observing, collecting, dissecting, describing and classifying; and he summarized all this in a brief but eminently respectable natural history of the country, from which I learnt almost everything I know of the African flora and fauna. A valuable book, indeed, and the outcome of intense and long-sustained effort; but I can scarcely venture to name it on the same day as his maximum opus—twenty-seven large volumes devoted to a systematic account of created beings and substances and the relations between them, together with a hundred and fifty volumes more of index, exact scientific description, separate treatises and a vocabulary: a hundred and fifty volumes, Jack, with forty thousand drawings and thirty thousand specimens. All this he showed to the Academy. It was much praised, but never published. Yet he continued working on it in poverty and old age, and I like to think he was happy in his immense design, and with the admiration of such men as Jussieu and the Institut in general.'

  'I am sure he was,' said Jack. 'We are under way,' he cried, as the ship took on a fresh, more lively motion; and Stephen, following his gaze astern, saw the Thames, Aurora and Camilla drop their topsails and fetch the Bellona's wake as the squadron, headed by the Stately, moved south-eastward into the coming night and a sudden violent squall of rain.

  Jack tuned his restrung fiddle: they talked for a while about pitch and how some people maintained that A should sound thus—Jack played the note and said, 'I cannot bear it. I hate to think that our grandfathers should be such flats.' After a moment he chuckled, reflecting upon the double meaning of the word, and said, 'That was pretty good, Stephen, don't you think? Such flats. You smoked it, of course. But can you think of Corelli playing in that moaning, small-beer-and-water kind of whine?' Then, changing his tone entirely he went on, 'I tell you what, Stephen: being tantamount to a flag-officer is very hard work—infinitely solitary care and toil—and if your expedition don't answer the expectations of a parcel of coves that have never been to sea in their lives you are flogged to death and buried at the crossroads with a stake through your heart; but it has its compensations. There is Tom and everybody else aboard, everybody in all His Majesty's ships and vessels under my command, skipping about, getting wet—look how it is coming down now!—hauling aft—tally and belay—laying aloft—coiling down—bees ain't in it—while we sit here like fine gentlemen, ha ha, ha! Come, she's on an even keel now; let me call for lights, fetch your 'cello, and we'll have a tune.'

  At half-past four in the morning Stephen was woken by an agitated Mr Smith: Abel Black, foretopman, starboard watch, a perfectly ordinary cracked fibula (had stumbled over a misplaced bucket in the dark) was on the point of bursting. There had been retention of urine from a wholly unrelated cause—a common calculus—ever since he was brought below; but he was a shamefaced man, and being far from his mesamates, lying there between a couple of unknown larbowlines belonging to the afterguard, he had not liked to mention it early on, while in the night watches he had not liked to disturb the doctors: and now modesty had brought him to a very elegant pass indeed. Stephen knew the condition well, a frequent concomitant of some other seaman's maladies; he was also used to dealing with sailors' wonderfully uneven and complex forms of delicacy; and having dealt with the situation for the time being, he returned to bed. But not to sleep, for just as he was well into his cot and swinging easy, some dreadful voice from the depths said, 'Maturin, Maturin, you had already bored poor Jack Aubrey cruelly with your tedious account of Michel Adanson years ago, prating away in the same earnest even enthusiastic moral improving fashion for half an hour on end and he sitting there smiling and nodding politely saying, "Oh, indeed?" and "Heavens above" oh for shame. You may well blush, but blushing does no good. It is mere remorse of conscience.'

  He could not recall the longitude or latitude in which he had done this, nor even in what ocean; but he could hear the sound of his own zealous voice going on and on and on, and Jack's civil replies. 'Do I often do this?' he asked in the darkness. 'Is it habitual, God forbid, or only advancing age? He is a dear, well-bred man, the creature; but will my heart ever forgive him this moral advantage?'

  He slept at last, but the recollection was with him, strong and fresh, when he woke. To dispel it he washed and shaved with particular care—it was, after all, Sunday—and went on deck to take the air. To his astonishment there was no land at all to be seen to larboard nor any of the smaller vessels. The squadron now consisted of the two-deckers and the frigates, and they were all, in a beautifully exact, evenly-spaced line standing something west of south under topgallantsails with the breeze one or two points free. As he stood there a midshipman reported his reading of the log: 'Eight knots and half a fathom, sir, if you please; and Mr Woodbine reckons the current due easterly a full knot.' The officer, Mr Miller, made some reply, but Stephen missed it, his attention being wholly taken up by an eddy of wind from the forecourse that brought the scent of coffee and toast, of bacon and perhaps of flying fish, freshly fried.

  He hurried aft. He had meant to give himself a certain countenance by repeating the pace of the ship and the current, but greed and affection overcame him and he cried, 'Good morning, Jack, God and Mary be with you, and would that be flying fish, freshly fried, at all?'

  'A very good morning to you, Stephen. Yes, it is. Pray let me help you to a pair.'

  'Jack,' said Stephen, after a while. 'I was astonished to see neither land nor the mass of our smaller companions. Would it be improper to ask how this can have come about? Have they lost their way in the dark, at last? It is but too probable.'

  'I am afraid so,' said Jack. 'Yet I am sure that at least one of them had a compass aboard; and in any event, if it is broke they can always follow our light. We have three splendid green lanterns behind, as you have no doubt observed, and I dare say someone lit them.' He raised his voice: 'Killick. Killick, there. Light along another pot of coffee, will you?'

  'Which I already got it in my hand, ain't I.' said Killick, outside the door.

  'Another cup, Stephen?'

  'If you please.'

  'We separated when the breeze shifted three points in the middle watch. The brigs and schooners, keeping so much closer to the wind, are sailing right along the coast for Philip's Island when they can and beating when they can't; they are followed by Laurel and Camilla, a little farther offshore; and we are making a long south-westerly leg, meaning to go about in the afternoon watch, strike the coast beyond the island and snap up any brutes that might be trying to escape or to bear a hand if there is any trouble in the harbour, which I doubt.'

  Stephen digested this for a while, and then he said, 'Jack, last night it suddenly came to me that I had told you all about Adanson before, and at great length—his assiduity, his countless books, his misfortune. I beg your pardon. There is nothing more profoundly boring, more deeply saddening, than a repeated tale.'

  'I am sure you are right in general. But I
do assure you, Stephen, that in this case I never noticed it. To tell the truth, I was so much taken up with my D string, which kept slipping, that I was afraid you might think my inattention uncivil. Yet I tell you what it is, Stephen: I have been talking with Whewell, and I have decided upon my plan of campaign. Should you like to hear it?'

  'If you please.'

  'Well, it has long seemed to me, and both Wheweli and all the officers who were at Sherbro and beyond confirm it, that this is essentially an inshore task, and that there is no place at all for ships of the line or even for frigates unless they are as fast and weatherly as Surprise, no place except for the same purpose as those cricket-players who scout out a great way off, like the long-stop or the long field off—I mean far out at sea and to the windward of likely routes of escape, particularly towards the Havana. It is no use lying within sight of the shore: our tall masts can be seen a great way off, all the more since they had watchers stationed on the heights and in very tall trees when the preventive squadron was here, and will have again as soon as they hear of our arrival. On the whole, black men see far better than we do, you know.'

  'Sure, I have observed it.'

  'So as soon as we have dealt with Philip's Island I am going to station the two-deckers and Thames well out to sea, far out of sight of the shore but within signalling distance of one another and of smaller craft interposed: this can cover a most surprising area. At the same time the others will work right along the coast, moving as fast as ever they can to keep ahead of the news that we are here, right along the coast, while we keep pace offshore, from Cape Palmas to the Bight of Benin.'