Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  Jack was right about the gravity that the burial-service induced, and about the verminous nature of some of his young gentlemen; but as to the survey of the convicts he was mistaken. The sight of the Atlantic rising, rising, and slowly falling had undone Mr Fisher, and although by a noble effort he got through his duty, he was obliged to excuse himself immediately afterwards, and retire; Stephen had made his tour alone, and he was now standing immediately above Jack's head, on the poop, talking to the first lieutenant, and smoking a cigar.

  'That young man at dinner, Byron. Is he related to the poet?'

  'The poet, Doctor?'

  'Aye. The famous Lord Byron.'

  'Oh, you mean the admiral. Yes, I believe he is a grandson, or maybe a great-nephew.'

  'The admiral, Tom?'

  'Why, yes. The famous Lord Byron. They still call him Foul-weather Jack: the whole Navy knows about him. There's fame for you! My grandad sailed with him when he was only a midshipman, and then again when he was an admiral, bosun of the Indefatigable; and many a crack they had about their days on Chile after the Wager came to grief. How the Admiral did relish a blow! Almost as much as our Captain Jack. Would crack on regardless, laughing ha, ha, ha; but I don't recall he was ever much of a hand in the poetry line. It was hearing about him that first made me long to go to sea: and my grandad's tales of the wreck.'

  Stephen had read an account of the loss of the Wager in the cold, stormy, uncharted waters of the Chiloe archipelago: he said, 'Yet surely it was but a dismal wreck? No Cytherea, with coral strands, palm-trees, and dusky maidens to fill the horn of plenty? No Crusoe stores at hand? As I recall, they ate a drowned seaman's liver.'

  'Very true, sir; it was an uncomfortable time, as my grandad remarked; but he loved to look back, and contemplate on it. He was a contemplative man, although he had no schooling beyond the hornbook and the rule of three; and he liked to contemplate on wrecks. Seven he went through, in his time, and he used to say you never knew a man, till you had seen him in a wreck. It still amazed him, he said, to see some hold fast, but the most part run all to pieces—discipline goes by the board, even in a right good crew, steady old forecastle hands and even warrant-officers break into the spirit-room and get beastly drunk, refuse orders, pillage cabins, dress like Jack in the Green, fight, blackguard their officers, jump into boats and swamp 'em like a parcel of frightened landsmen . . . There's an old belief on the lower deck that once the ship's aground, or once she can't steer, then the captain's authority is gone: that's the law, they say, and nothing will get it out of their stupid heads.'

  Four bells struck. Stephen tossed his cigar into the Leopard's wake, and took leave of Pullings, observing that he must make his report.

  'Jack,' he said, when he was in the great cabin, 'I spoke intemperately to you before dinner. I ask your pardon.' Jack flushed, said that he had not noticed it, and Stephen continued. 'I am abandoning a course of physic, an injudicious course, perhaps; the effect is not unlike that produced in your confirmed tobacco-smoker when his pipe is taken from him, and sometimes, alas, I yield to fits of petulance.'

  'You have enough to make you petulant, with these convicts on your hands,' said Jack. 'By the way, I believe you were right about Mrs Wogan: by all means let her take the air upon the poop.'

  'Very well. Now as to the rest of them. Two I find to be idiots, sensu stricto; three, including the big fellow that is thought to have killed his keeper, are hard men. In another I recognised a resurrector, and when there is a brisk demand for corpses, the resurrection-men sometimes have an expeditious way of satisfying it; so perhaps he should be included among my men of blood. Five are little silly creatures, weak and flabby, taken up for repeated stealing from shops and stalls; and all the rest are countrymen who were too fond of taking a pheasant or a hare. No great wickedness there, I believe; and you could well exchange them for some of the objects that came from the receiving-ship. Two of them, brothers called Adam, won me entirely: they know everything that moves in the woods, and it called for five keepers and three constables to take them at the last. Here is my list. I recommend no irons at all, since in our floating prison there is no escape; but the men marked with a cross might be exercised separately for a while, merely to avoid a bout of folly.'

  'But the murderer, he must be kept in irons until I hand him over.'

  'Sure, it was a joint venture. The superintendent abused them to the height of his power, and from what I hear he had already extorted most of their money and their small provision for the voyage: I believe they fell on him spontaneously, in a confused heap in the dark, he having dropped his lantern: no one man, shackled, could have inflicted such injuries. Of course, for half a guinea and their neck preserved, many of them are willing and eager to inform; but what does it amount to? Let the civilians settle their own dirty business in New Holland, and in the meantime take the irons away: they can only serve as weapons.'

  'Well. And what about the women?'

  'The Mrs Hoath, the procuress and abortionist, seems to me to have thrown off what little humanity she may have been born with, and by long perseverance to have reached a depth of iniquity that I have rarely seen equalled, never surpassed. She will not trouble us long, however: her liver alone, to say nothing of the ascites and a whole complication of morbid states, will look to that before we pass the tropic line: nevertheless, I shall see what quicksilver, digitalis, and a stout, sharp-pointed trocar will do. Salubrity Boswell, the Gipsy woman, on the other hand, is a female worthy of a nobler age. Her husband having been bitchadey pawdle, as she puts it, or sent across the water, she contrived to be bitchadey pawdle herself, in order to join him. She made his brother get her with child—a practice reminiscent of the ancient Jews—so that she might plead her belly and so avoid the gallows, and then she savaged the judge in broad daylight, the judge that sentenced him. We are to expect the child in five months' time, presumably between the Cape and Botany Bay.'

  'Oh, oh,' said Jack, in a low tone, 'here's a pretty kettle of fish. In a King's ship, too. I have always set my face against women aboard, and now look what they are at.'

  'One swallow does not make a summer, Jack, as you frequently observe. She also told me my fortune: should you like to hear it?'

  'If you please.'

  'I am to have a prosperous voyage, and not too long, and all my heart's desire.'

  'A prosperous voyage, eh?' said Jack, brightening.

  'Well, I am heartily glad of it, and I give you joy. There is always something in what these women say, however you may wag your head, Stephen. There was a Gipsy on Epsom Downs that told me I should have trouble with women, early and late; and you can't say fairer than that. Come, Stephen, sup with me—Killick shall toast you the Parmesan cheese—and we will have some music at last. I have not touched my fiddle since the evening we weighed.'

  Stephen and Martin made their afternoon rounds: some broken ribs and collarbones, ugly contusions and crushed fingers in the Leopard's sickbay—inevitable after a violent blow, with so many landsmen aboard—together with the usual array of poxes. These, though the most familiar of disorders to the naval surgeon, were somewhat outside Martin's practical experience, and Stephen urged him to 'ply his mercurials, even to the extremity of salivation; to eradicate the noxious principle at the earliest possible moment; to dose, drench, and spare not, though it made vast inroads on their stock of venereals, for once the ship was well clear of the land, there would be no call for them, no reinfection to be feared.' But Mr Martin was to take care to note down each dose against the patient's name, since the foolish libidinous creatures must pay for their folly not only in suffering but also in coin, the value of their physic being stopped out of their pay. They moved on to the convicts' quarters, where two men exhibited symptoms of a curious nature that puzzled both Stephen and Martin; symptoms that had nothing to do with seasickness. Martin put on first one pair of spectacles and then another to look at them as he auscultated, turned, and palpated; and once again Stephen wondered wheth
er he had made such a very wise choice in his assistant. The man had a capital brain, no doubt, but he seemed entirely devoid of bowels. He handled his patients as though they were anatomical specimens, not fellow beings at all: an inhuman, mechanical medicine. 'In this case, colleague Martin,' he said, 'our diagnosis must attend the event: in the meantime, blue pill and black draught, if you please.'

  Then, taking the late Mr Simpson's bundle of keys, he walked aft to Mrs Wogan's cabin, jangling as he went: there were fewer rats in the cable-tier, he noticed, and as a ship's rat was a good weather-prophet, it looked as though the Gipsy's tale might come true, at least for the coming days; yet among those few, two rats, male rats this time, were obviously indisposed.

  He knocked, unlocked, and found Mrs Wogan in tears. 'Come, come,' he said, ignoring them, 'lose not a moment, I beg. I am come to exercise you, ma'am; to air you for the good of your health. But there is not a moment to be lost. As soon as they tingle on that bell, it will be quarters, and then where shall we be? Pray put some woollen garment on your head and shoulders; you will find the sea-air pierce you, after this mephitis. I cannot recommend shoes of that nature: the motion is far more violent upstairs. Half-boots, or list slippers, or indeed bare feet, are the proper wear.'

  Mrs Wogan turned, privately blew her nose, reached for a blue cashmere shawl, kicked off her red-heeled shoes, and thanking Dr Maturin a thousand times for his goodness, declared that she was perfectly ready.

  He led her up ladder after ladder towards the main hatchway. At one point they both fell with a soft dump on to a heap of studdingsails, but eventually they emerged on to the quarterdeck. The afternoon was more brilliant than ever, and the steady wind swept in over the hammock-nettings, salt and full of life. Babbington and Turnbull, the officer of the watch, were talking by the starboard hances; three midshipmen were busy with their sextants on the old lopsided moon, measuring her angular distance from the sun, now well to the west over the splendid empty sea. The talk instantly stopped; the sextants drooped; Babbington straightened to his full five foot six and darted an old clay pipe into his pocket; the Leopard came up half a point, her headsails gave a hint of a shiver, and Turnbull roared, 'Full and by, there, God damn your eyes. Quartermaster, mind your con. Come no near.' Stephen led Mrs Wogan across the sloping deck to the fife-rails and pointed out the gangway. 'That is the gangway,' he said, 'and there you will walk in inclement weather.'

  A low whistle came from a party of men at work in the waist, and Turnbull cried, 'Clarke, take that man's name at once. You, sir, jump up to the head and back seven times. Clarke, start him hearty.'

  'And this is the quarterdeck,' continued Stephen, turning about. "The upper level over there, is called the poop, where you may walk today, and when it is fine. I shall conduct you by these stairs.'

  The wardroom goat and Babbington's Newfoundland left the hencoops by the wheel and paced across to meet them. 'Do not be afraid, ma'am,' cried Babbington, approaching with a smile that would have been even more winning if youthful folly had left him more in the way of teeth, 'he is as gentle as a lamb.'

  Mrs Wogan made no reply other than a gentle inclination of her head. The dog smelt her proffered hand and walked after her, wagging its tail.

  The poop was empty, and Mrs Wogan walked up and down it, stumbling now and then when the Leopard gave one of her cumbrous skips. Stephen, having watched a sheerwater until it vanished astern, leant on the taffrail and considered her. Barefooted and with that shawl, her misty eyes and a little dark hair showing, she looked wonderfully like the young Irishwomen of his youth, and sorrowful too, as he had seen so many and many after the rising of 'ninety-eight. The sadness surprised him, for although there was plenty of cause for it, with fifteen thousand miles of sea before her and a most unenviable fate at the far end, he had expected her spirits to rise when she was brought out into the sun.

  'You must allow me to warn you against any indulgence in lowness,' he said. 'Were you to give way to melancholy, you would certainly pule into a decline.'

  She managed a smile, and said, 'Perhaps it is no more than the effect of Naples biscuits, sir. I must have eaten a thousand, at least.'

  'Unrelieved Naples biscuit? Do they not feed you at all?'

  'Oh yes, and I am sure I shall come to relish it soon. Pray do not think I complain.'

  'When did you last eat a square meal?'

  'Why, it must have been quite a long time ago . . . in Clarges Street, I believe.'

  No hint of consciousness in that Clarges Street, he observed; and he said, 'A diet of Naples biscuits alone—that would account for the yellowness.' He took a dried Catalan sausage from his pocket, skinned the end with his lancet, and said, 'Are you hungry, now?'

  'Oh dear me, yes! Perhaps it is the sea air.'

  He fed her slices, advising that they should be chewed very thoroughly, and he noticed that she was very near tears again—that she secretly glided some pieces to the Newfoundland, and that those she swallowed would scarcely go down. Babbington's head appeared on the larboard poop ladder: he mounted, went through the motions of looking for his dog, feigned to catch sight of it, came over, and said, 'Come, Pollux, you must not make a nuisance of yourself. I trust he has not been importuning you, ma'am?'

  But Mrs Wogan said no more than 'No, sir,' in a very low voice, looking down and away; and Babbington, under the cold fire of Stephen's eye, was unable to hold his ground. Turnbull, who succeeded him, was in a better position; he had brought a quartermaster and a bosun's mate to do something to the ensign-staff. But before he had given even the first of his orders he bawled out, 'You sir! What the bloody hell do you think you are doing here?' at a young man who came running up on to the poop with a look of radiant delight on his face. The look changed; the man stopped. 'Get along forward,' shouted Turnbull. 'Atkins, start that man.' The bosun's mate darted forward, his triple rattan high; the man dodged a blow or two, and then vanished.

  This kind of brutality was familiar enough to Stephen, but he turned to see what effect it would have on Mrs Wogan. To his astonishment he saw that she had flushed a bright pink: there was no yellowness in that face turned studiously away to contemplate the horizon, and when he spoke to her again he beheld an equally surprising change of expression, a brilliant eye, an evident hurry of spirits, a sudden volubility, an unavailing attempt at disguising some very strong and pleasurable emotion. Would Dr Maturin have the extreme kindness to tell her the name of that rope, the mast over there, these sails? What a great deal he knew; but then of course he was a sailor. Might she presume to beg for just one more slice, a very little slice of that delicious sausage? At times she endeavoured to stop, but after a slight pause the words would come bubbling out, in remarks that were not always perfectly coherent.

  'That went down better,' he observed; and although the words were not particularly droll, Mrs Wogan laughed in reply, a gurgling laugh that went on and on, so deeply amused, so natural and so absurdly fetching, that he felt his mouth broaden, and he said to himself, 'No, no; this is no hysteria; this has none of the shrill flightly morbid ring of hysteria.' Meeting his eye she collected herself, grew grave, and said, 'I beg you will not think me impertinent, sir, but is it not a shame to put that sausage into your pocket—so very greasy, and such a handsome coat?'

  Stephen looked down: yes, indeed, his idiot servant must have put out his best gold-laced coat for today's dinner; and now there was a broad grease-mark on its side. 'I was not aware,' he said, spreading the grease with his fingers. 'It is my best coat.'

  'Perhaps if you were to wrap it in a handkerchief? You have no handkerchief? Here: pray hold it out by the string.' She plucked a handkerchief from her bosom, wrapped it neatly about the sausage, tied its ends, and said, with a look that could scarcely be described as anything but affectionate, 'Should you like me to carry it, sir? It would be a sad shame for the coat to grow greasier still; though to be sure a chalk-ball will soon get it out.'

  'What is a chalk-ball?' asked Stephen, still
looking sadly at his coat. And then, 'Come, come, there is not a moment to be lost. See the sentry going forward. In two minutes they will beat to quarters: our time is done.' He handed her to the steps, where the wind, wanton and indiscreet at the break of the poop, caught her petticoats. But every eye on the quarterdeck was fixed forward in rigid propriety, for Jack was at the windward rail; and when, having mastered her skirt at the bottom of the steps, she said, 'And the sausage, sir?' Stephen put his finger to his lips. He led her below, told her that she must never never speak on the quarterdeck when the tall gentleman, the Captain, was there; that she must eat the sausage herself, and that she must try to accustom her stomach to the ship's fare, 'which was wholesome, though rough, and which use would render palatable, to a well-thinking mind'; and hurried away to his action-station in the cockpit as the drum volleyed and thundered over his head.