Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  'You are very good, ma'am,' said Jack, 'but I fear I am not at leisure. A lantern, however—just so, a lantern slung from the beam. You would be much better, with a lantern slung from the beam. For I must tell you, ma'am, that a naked—that a bare—that is to say, an unprotected flame cannot possibly be countenanced aboard. A flame is little more—little less—than a crime.' Even as he spoke, the word crime, addressed to a female convict, a criminal, seemed to him unfortunate; but Mrs Wogan only said, in a low, penitent voice, that she was much concerned to hear it: she begged pardon, and never would offend again.

  'A lantern will be sent below at once,' he said. 'Is there anything else that you could wish?'

  'If enquiries might be made for the young woman that attends me, sir, it would be a great comfort; I am afraid the poor creature may have come to harm. And if I might have liberty to take a little air . . . perhaps the request is improper. But if someone would have the goodness to take the rat away, I should be most infinitely obliged.'

  'The rat, ma'am?'

  'Yes, sir: in the corner there. I knocked him on the head at last, with my shoe—it was quite a battle.'

  Jack kicked it out of the door, said that these things should be attended to, that the lantern should be sent directly, bade her good day, and withdrew. Sending the turnkey forward to deal with Mrs Wogan's servant, he joined Stephen under the light of the breadroom grating, where he was holding the rat by the tail, examining it with close attention: a gravid rat, near her term, very much infested with fleas, a rat with some anomalous lesions apart from those inflicted by the heel of a shoe.

  'That was Mrs Wogan,' said Jack. 'I had a curiosity to see her, after what the messenger let fall. What did you make of the lady?'

  'The door so narrow, and your vast bulk filling it,' said Stephen, 'I saw nothing of her at all.'

  'A dangerous woman, they say. It seems she offered to pistol the prime minister or blow up the Houses of Parliament—something very shocking, that was obliged to be played pianissimo; so I had a curiosity to see her. A rare plucked 'un, of that l am very sure: an ugly four days' blow, and her cabin as neat as a pin! Lord, Stephen,' he said, when he had changed his filthy clothes and they were sitting in the stern-gallery, watching the Leopard's wake race from them, pure white in living blue, 'did you ever see such a Godforsaken shambles as the forepeak?' He was extremely depressed: he was conscious of having failed in his duty as far as the forepeak was concerned. He should never have allowed the cage to be so built that it would flood: the deep bottom bar, upon which the uprights rested, had acted as a dam—that was obvious to him now, as obvious as the simple remedy. And he should have sent for a report from the superintendent. Although the man was not required to report to him more than once a week, and although the man had fallen foul of him before they weighed from Spithead, he should certainly have sent. Now the unfortunate, pompous, brutal, pretentious fellow was dead, and that meant that Jack would either have to shuffle the responsibility for the convicts off on to the useless half-witted illiterate turnkeys or assume it himself; and if anything went wrong he would have not only the Admiralty down on him like a hundred of bricks, but also the Navy Office, the Transport Board, the Victualling Office, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the Home Office, and no doubt half a dozen other bodies, each better than the last at calling for accounts, dockets and vouchers, at handing down reprimands, at holding officers liable for extraordinary sums, and at involving them in endless official correspondence.

  'No,' said Stephen, having considered the prisons he had known. 'I have not.' They had been quite as filthy particularly in Spain; they had been even wetter, in the underground vaults of Lisbon; but at least they had been stable. In them it had been possible to die of starvation and a large variety of diseases, but not of mere seasickness, the most ignominious end of all. 'No. I have not. And it occurs to me that now their surgeon is so dead I shall have to look after their health. I quite regret my second mate.' As surgeon of a fourth-rate, Stephen was entitled to two assistants. Several well-qualified men, including some former shipmates, had applied to him, for Dr Maturin was much caressed in the physical world: his Suggestions for the Amelioration of Sick-Bays; his Thoughts on the Prevention of the Diseases most usual among Seamen; his New Operation for Suprapubic Cystotomy; and his Tractatus de Novae Febris Ingressu were read throughout the thinking part of the Navy; a cruise with him meant an accession of professional knowledge, the likelihood of advancement, and, since he generally sailed with Lucky Jack Aubrey, the possibility of large sums of prize-money—the assistant surgeon of the Boadicea, for example, had retired from the service on his share, had bought a practice in Bath, and had already set up his carriage. But true to that principle of isolation which prevented him from having a confidential servant, Stephen never sailed twice with the same colleague; and this time he not only declined the offers of those he knew but he also limited himself to a single man, Paul Martin, a brilliant anatomist from the Channel Islands, recommended to him by his friend Dupuytren of the Hôtel Dieu: for although Martin was a British subject, or to be more exact a subject of the Duke of Normandy, who also happened to rule over the British Isles, he had spent much of his life in France, where he had recently published his De Ossibus, a work that had caused a considerable sensation on both sides of the Channel, among those who delighted much in bones. On both sides of the Channel, for science flowed freely in spite of the war: indeed, earlier in the year Stephen had been invited to address the learned of Paris at the Institut, a journey that he might have made, with the consent of both governments, had it not been for the presence of Diana Villiers and of certain scruples that were still unconquered by the time the Leopard sailed.

  'The chaplain,' he said. 'The chaplain might perhaps, as you would say, lend a hand. I have known parsons study physic with a not inconsiderable success; they have been known to be of great help to the surgeon in the cockpit during an action. Apart from their spiritual and their pedagogical functions, they may surely be considered—since even surgeons are not immortal—as potentially useful members of a ship's company, and I have often wondered at your unwillingness to have them aboard. I do not advert to the barbarous prejudice that some untutored minds are weak enough to entertain, with regard to cats, corpses, and clergymen in a ship; for that could never have any influence with you.'

  'I will tell you what,' said Jack heavily. 'I respect the cloth, of course, and learning; but I cannot feel that a man-of-war is the proper place for a parson. Just take this morning . . . On Sunday, when we rig church, I dare say he will tell us to treat one another like brethren, and to do unto others, you know. We will all say Amen, and the Leopard will sail on with all those people in irons in that filthy hole forward, just the same. But that is only what occurred to me this morning: in a larger way, it seems to me uncommon odd, and precious near to cant, to tell the ship's company of a man-of-war with loaded guns to love your enemy and to turn the other cheek, when you know damned well that the ship and every man jack aboard her is there to blow the enemy out of the water if he possibly can. Either the hands believe it, and then where is your discipline? Or they don't, and then it seems to me to come hellfire close to mockery of holy things. I prefer reading them the Articles of War or giving them a piece about their duty: coming from me, with no bands or surplice on, why, it has another effect.'

  He thought of mentioning the lamentable quality of most of the naval chaplains he had seen, and of telling the well-worn anecdote of Lord Cloncarty, who, on being informed by his first lieutenant that the chaplain had been carried off by the yellow fever, and had died a Roman Catholic, replied, 'Well, so much the better.' First lieutenant: 'Hoot awa, my lord, how can you say that of a British clergyman?' Lord Cloncarty: 'Why, because I believe I am the first captain of a man-of-war that could boast of a chaplain who had any religion at all.' But reflecting that Stephen was himself a Papist, and might be hurt, and that in any case the anecdote had something of the air of letting down his own si
de, he remained silent, inwardly observing, 'You was precious near being brought by the lee again, Jack.'

  'Sure,' said Stephen, 'this is a question that has troubled many a candid mind: far be it from me to propose any solution. I believe I shall step forward and look at these new patients. They will have been carried up to the forecastle, I suppose, the creatures? And then there is your Mrs Wogan: when is she to be indulged in air? For I must tell you, that I will not answer for their health if they are not aired at least an hour a day, at twice, in fine weather.'

  'Lord, Stephen, I had quite forgot. Mr Needham,' he cried in a strong voice, addressing his clerk in the fore-cabin, 'pass the word for the first lieutenant.' And a moment later, when Pullings hurried in with a sheaf of papers, 'No, Tom, it is not the watchbills, for the moment. Pray have a lantern sent into the little cabin abaft the tiers—the female prisoner that berths alone.' Pullings was also to find out what arrangements the late superintendent had made for victualling the convicts, their rations, the stores available, and the practice, in common transports, for prisoners' exercise.

  'Aye aye, sir,' said Pullings, in his competent, cheerful way. 'And there is this stowaway, sir. What am I to do with him?'

  'The stowaway? Oh, yes, that half-starved fellow this morning. Well, now, since he is so very eager to go to sea, and since, after all, he is at sea, I think you may enter him as a supernumerary landsman. God knows what romantic notions he has in his head . . . the lower deck will soon knock them out again.'

  'He is probably running from a wench, sir. Twenty young fellows in the starboard watch are in the same case.'

  'It is often those slim young men who procreate so freely,' said Stephen, 'whereas your village champion, for all his parading like the parish bull, in fact remains comparatively chaste. For lack of opportunity? Who can tell? Is the flame more ardent in a lighter form? Does a more insinuating manner count for all? But you will not set him at work until he is restored. Such emaciation! He must be fed pap from a spoon, and a small spoon too, once every watch, or you will have still another corpse upon your hands—you may readily kill him with kindness and a piece of pork.'

  He considered for a while, and when Pullings had gone about his innumerable duties, he said, 'Jack, have you ever known any gentlemen on the lower deck?'

  'Yes: a few.'

  'And how did you like it yourself, when you were a midshipman and your captain turned you before the mast for incompetence?'

  'It was not for incompetence.'

  'I distinctly remember that he termed you a lubber.'

  'Yes, but a lecherous lubber: I kept a girl in the cable-tiers. It was a reflection upon my morals, not my seamanship.'

  'You astonish me: but tell, how did you like it?'

  'It was no bed of roses. But I was bred to the sea, and the midshipmen's berth is no bed or roses neither. For a Landsman, brought up to be nice about his food and so on, it would come very hard. I knew one, a parson's son who got into trouble at college, that could not bear it, and died. On the whole I should say that if your educated man is young and healthy, if he is In a happy ship, and can stand up for himself, and can survive the first month or so, he has a fair chance. Not otherwise.'

  Stephen walked forward along the weather gangway, and in spite of the unhappiness settled deep into his heart and of the craving that filled his whole being, he felt his spirits lift. The day had grown more brilliant still; the diminishing wind had backed a point and more abaft the beam, and the Leopard was running under courses, top-sails and lower studdingsails; and being a new suit they made a splendid expanse of white against the sky. Great smooth taut curves of a whiteness so intense that their surface was rather to be apprehended than distinctly seen, and all set among the sharp, definite, clear-cut pattern of the rigging. But above all it was the warm yet vivifying, tonic air sweeping in over the side and searching deep into his lungs that made his sad face lighten and his dull eyes come to life. He was pleased to find that his assistant and the loblolly-boy had been on the forecastle for some while, and that Martin could give him an account of those convicts who were still prostrated. Most, however, had recovered by this time, at least enough to sit up or even stand and take some interest in life. The two older women were of this class (the half-wit girl was presumably with Mrs Wogan) and they stood leaning on the breastwork, looking down into the head, to the infinite annoyance of the hands; for the head, or that part of it on either side of the stem, was the seamen's privy, their only place of ease; and many of them were now hard-pressed. One was a middle-aged Gipsy, spare, dark, fierce, and aquiline; the other a quite remarkably vicious-looking woman, with such evident wickedness on her face and eye that it was a wonder she had ever been able to make a living in any occupation that brought her into contact with her fellow men. Yet from her bulk she must have done quite well: although diminished by imprisonment and continual seasickness so that her filthy crimson gown hung loose, she was still a flabby, swagging fifteen stone. Sparse carotty hair, the outer half dyed yellow: tiny glaucous eyes set close and deep in a vast amorphous face, an incongruous bar of eyebrow right across the two. Some few of the convict men might have been her cousins; other had more of a mere petty-larceny look; still others would have seemed quite ordinary if they had been wearing smockfrocks; and two were idiots. They all had the deathly gaol-pallor, and all, except for the idiots, wore a hopeless, downcast expression. In their revolting clothes and their inhuman irons they were a squalid, even an abject group, herded there like cattle; they were in the way; the seamen glanced at them with disapprobation, contempt, and in some cases enmity.

  The big man who was suspected of having killed the superintendent was one of the worst cases: his powerful body still heaved convulsively from time to time, but otherwise he might have been a corpse. 'Here,' said Stephen to his assistant, speaking Latin, 'heroic measures are meet to be used. A funnel having been introduced into his pharynx, fifty, nay threescore drops of sulphureous ether are to be administered.' He then prescribed a decoction of orange-peel and Peruvian bark for some of the others, and said, 'These you will be pleased to take from our chest. For my part, I shall overhaul their late surgeon's stores, and see what they contain.'

  They contained an extraordinary amount of Hollands gin, a very few books and instruments—cheap, dirty instruments, with rust and old blood still coating the whole length of the large saw—and the Home Office collection of drugs, by no means the same as those supplied to men-of-war by the Sick and Hurt Board. The Home Office pinned its faith more upon rhubarb, grey powder, and hartshorn than did the Sick and Hurt, upon Lucatellus's balsam, polypody of the oak, and, to Stephen's surprise, the alcoholic tincture of laudanum. Three Winchester quarts of it. 'Vade retro,' he cried, seizing the nearest and opening the scuttle: but after the first had gone he paused, and in reasonable, false, considering voice he observed that what was left should be preserved for the use of his patients; there were many contingencies in which the tincture might be of essential consequence to them.

  Then, pausing only to summon a wan and hopeless guard, he made his way aft to Mrs Wogan's cabin. It was filled with Mrs Wogan and her attendant, folding sheets, the girl still wearing no more than a blanket pinned across her bosom. In the ensuing fuss Stephen noted that Mrs Wogan at least was capable of decisive action: she placed a shift and a plain dress in the girl's arms, told the guard to take her back to where she had come from, and so dismissed them.

  'Good morning, ma'am,' said Stephen, as they faded from view along the dim alleyway, both guard and prisoner screeching at the rats. He advanced into the cabin, so that Mrs Wogan, falling back, received the light from the hanging lantern full in her face. 'My name is Maturin: I am the surgeon of this ship and am come to enquire after your health.' Not the slightest flicker of awareness. Either the woman was the most consummate actress or she had never heard his name. Diana, he reflected bitterly, might not have been so proud of mentioning it. No: he would probe again, several times for conscience sake; but even n
ow he would lay a thousand to one that she had never heard of Stephen Maturin.

  Mrs Wogan apologized for the confusion, begged him to sit down, and stated, with many acknowledgements of his goodness, that she was quite well.

  'Yet your face is somewhat yellower than could be wished,' said Stephen. 'Give me your hand.' Her pulse was normal: a strong confirmation indeed. 'Now show me your tongue.' No woman can look either handsome or dignified with her mouth wide open and her tongue protruding, and there appeared to be a slight struggle in Mrs Wogan's bosom; but Stephen had all the authority of a physician, and the tongue appeared. 'Well,' he admitted, ' 'tis a laudable tongue. I dare say you took, a good hearty vomit. They may cry out against the seasickness as much as ever they please, but as an evacuation of the gross humours and crudities, it has no rival.'

  'To tell you the truth, sir,' said Mrs Wogan, 'I was not sick at all; only a little indisposed. I have made several voyages to America, and I do not find the motion very troublesome.'

  'Then perhaps we should contemplate a purge. Please to inform me of the state of your bowels.'

  Mrs Wogan told him frankly how they did, for Stephen had not only the medical man's authority but also his un-human quality—the Hippocratic mask was second nature to him by now—and she might have been confiding in a graven image: yet she did start a little when he asked whether she had any reason to apprehend a pregnancy, and her reply, 'None at all, sir,' was uttered with considerable reserve. There was no coldness, however in the words that followed: 'No, sir; I conceive that I am far more likely to be cribbed and cabined, than confined. And may not my yellow face,' she added with an amused, good-natured ghost of a smile, 'be connected with my cabining? I must not presume to teach a doctor physic, Heaven forbid, but if only I might have a breath of untainted air . . . I did mention it to the very large gentleman, an officer I believe, that was here earlier in the day, but . . .'