Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  At this point the adverse forces reached their highest pitch: the likelihood of being dismasted was very great.

  A quarter of a mile to go, the gale rising every second. 'Main topgallant,' he said, and she gave an appalling lee-lurch as it was sheeted home. A moment's pause, like the suspension of life before a fall, and then she hit the tide-rip: she staggered as though she had struck ice. All round them the roar of breaking water and an intolerable wind; bursting seas on either hand, and a knock-down blow as the counter-eddy took her full aback; a confusion of water, green and white, spray covering her entirely, and as it settled she was through, rocking in the smooth water under the Iee of the high land.

  The transition was unbelievably abrupt. At one moment the Leopard was among bursting seas, furious winds howling upon her, the next she was gliding along in silence beneath the shelter of an enormous cliff, her masts still swaying like inverted pendulums from the momentary counterblast that had knocked her captain into the scuppers.

  He picked himself up, glanced aloft—the upper masts had held, though the main topgallantsail had blown from its boltropes—and then leant far out over the rail to view the land. From the cape it trended westward, westward, towards a bay whose narrow mouth was almost closed with islands.

  'Bosun's party away: Allan, carry on, and look alive. Mr Byron, get the lead going, if you please,' he said.

  'No ground with this line,' came the cry, strangely loud—no other sound against it, apart from the water lipping along the side and the cry of seabirds.

  'Pass along the deep-sea line, and let it be armed. Pumps, there! What the bloody hell are you thinking of?' cried Jack, but quite mildly: he would have stopped heaving himself, at such a time. The long, stunned pause stretched on and on: the hands at the pumps heaving mechanically, staring about them as though amazed: the ship was still running fast of her own momentum through deep green water under the shadow of the monstrous cliff. A desolate land, black rock topped with snow to the right-hand; to the left an island-studded sea; high overhead the wrack of a full western gale, with thunder in the clouds; down here, an unnatural calm, as though the world were deaf.

  'Forecastle, there,' called Jack, breaking the silence, 'how are those hawsers coming along?'

  'All off of the foremast, sir, and stretched along.'

  The solemn splash of the heavy deep-sea line. 'Heave away, watch, watch! Bear away, veer away,' they cried; then, 'Fifty fathom, sir,' and after a short pause, 'Grey sand and shell.'

  In another mile the Leopard had almost lost steerage-way. The sky was now as low as the higher cliffs, and a thin drizzle floated down. Her sails hung limp, but from the mist of rain up there it was clear that a small breeze, a back-breeze, drew in with the land. They set the remaining topgallants to take it, and so she glided on.

  'How are those hawsers now?' called Jack again.

  'Four fore and aft, sir,' replied Allan from the break just under him, where he and Faster Doudle were long-splicing like men possessed.

  The bottom shelved steadily, always with the same good shelly sand, and now, as she approached a passage through the islands that closed the mouth of the bay, the hand-lead was going fast: 'By the mark, seventeen; by the deep sixteen; and a half sixteen; by the deep eighteen . . .'

  A clear deep-water passage, and beyond the islands they could see right into the bay, a purse-like bay opening wide from its narrow mouth, a deep inlet sheltered on three sides.

  Jack stared intently at the nearer island; its foot rose sheer, and from the motion of the spume and the current rounding over the black rock it was plain that the tide was making still. 'Man the braces,' he said, limping forward. He did not mean to run her on a shoal if care could prevent it, and this tide was moving her uncommon fast.

  'Sir, sir,' cried Babbington, running after him. 'There is a flagstaff at the bottom of the bay.'

  Jack took his eyes from the surface for a moment, saw that the bottom of the bay divided into two lobes, each with a strand at the foot of the cliff, and that on the height above one of them there stood an upright pole. 'Dear me,' he said, 'so there is. Allan!'

  'Sir?'

  'How are you come along?'

  'Hawser's knit, sir, and pointed from the gun-room port.' Nearer and still nearer in, with seals staring up on every hand, some of monstrous size: one of the countless seabirds dropped filth on him—oh such good luck—and with his eye fixed on a small island near the shore and his ear following the cry of the lead, he called, 'All hands to bring the ship to an anchor.'

  A long pause while she ghosted still farther in, and then, 'Down with the helm.' Her head came round: hands flew to the halliards, braces, sheets and clewlines, hove the mizzen topgallantsail aback, and he said, 'Let go.' The anchor and its carronades splashed down, and the hawser ran out as the Leopard went astern.

  'Stopper,' he said.

  'Stopper it is, sir,' replied Allan: and indeed the Leopard stopped, brought up with a mild jerk that nevertheless staggered them as they stood. The hawser rose, and straightening took the full strain; and this was the crucial moment. Would the anchor hold? The anchor held, yes, yes, the anchor held; the hawser, though still taut with the tide thrusting on the ship, sank into a gentle curve, and the Leopard's seamen breathed out a general sigh. Yet still, the turning tide, and God alone knew how fast it ran in these seas, could swing her, wrench the anchor from its hold, and fling her on the islands close at hand.

  'Jolly-boat away,' said Jack. 'Mr Babbington, be so good as to proceed to those rocks between us and the shore, carrying out a line bent to the hawser from the gun-room port. Haul the hawser to the rock, and make all fast. You may have the spare iron horse, if you choose, and a grapnel; you will take particular care to make all fast, Mr Babbington, and then, perhaps,' he said, grasping the wooden knighthead, 'we may sleep tight tonight.'

  Chapter Ten

  And tight they slept indeed, so tight that Stephen, roused out at three in the morning for his spell at the starboard chain-pump, was first unable to find his way to that familiar post until the drooping midshipman whom he was to relieve led him there by hand, and then powerless to reconstitute the events of yesterday until he had been heaving for half an hour—until the exercise and the steady half-freezing rain had dispelled the fumes of that trance-like sleep.

  'I believe those were sea-elephants that we saw on entering the bay,' he said to Herapath, his neighbour. 'Foster states that the sea-elephant boasts an external scrotum: or do I confuse him with the eared seal Otaria gazella?'

  Herapath had no views on this or any other kind of seal. He was fast asleep, pumping as he stood. But that very night the pumps, though languid, gained five feet upon the leak: with her hull no longer worked upon by the motion of the sea nor the straining of her masts, the Leopard made no more water than a single watch could deal with. They pumped her dry, or at least no more than very damp—for real dryness had little meaning on Desolation, where it rained almost without a pause—and began the long task of emptying the holds to reach the leak and to ship a rudder.

  At first they had nothing but the jolly-boat for all the hundreds of tons that had to be removed, but this was soon joined by a raft, worked by a system of windlasses that sent it to and fro across the still waters of the inlet, untroubled even at the beginning of their stay, when the storm blew with such shocking violence high overhead that even the albatrosses stayed within. The bay was of course affected by the tides that made their way through the many islands, but they delayed the work far less than the intense curiosity of the penguins. Most of these birds were breeding, but even so they found time to stand in dense crowds on the flagstaff strand, and to hurry to watch the unloading, getting between men's legs, sometimes bringing them down, always hindering their movements. Some of the seals were quite as bad, and harder to remove: many a privy nip and kick did they receive from exasperated seamen; but no more than this, for strict orders had been given that the landing-place was to be considered holy ground. No blood was to b
e shed there, whatever might happen afar off.

  For the first few days Jack let the Leopards take it easy, mounting no more than an anchor-watch, so that they might take their fill of sleep, which by this time had become almost as important to them as food. Where food itself was concerned, there was no difficulty: fresh meat lay there at hand, for the taking. And taken it was, often in bloody excess, for this was almost virgin land, and the creatures did not fear the men: not quite virgin, however, for a bottle at the foot of the broken studdingsail boom they called the flagstaff contained a paper stating that the brig General Washington of Nantucket, Wm Hyde master, had been there, and that if Reuben should come in for cabbages, he was to tell Martha that all was well, and that Wm reckoned he might be home before the fall, with a tidy lading.

  After this period of rest, with all hands recovered, fat and greasy from their four meat-meals a day, Jack set them to work, and the stores piled up on Flagstaff Beach: neatly squared arrays, covered with sailcloth, heaps so high and wide that long before even half the after hold was cleared it seemed impossible that any single ship should have contained so much. The work was steady, even quite severe upon occasion, but the summer days were long and the men had plenty of time to wander off, murdering sea-elephants, seals, albatrosses, giant petrels, small petrels, Cape pigeons, terns, any of the tame creatures that lay or nested in their path. Stephen was perfectly aware that these creatures too lived by incessant carnage, that the skuas wreaked perpetual havoc among eggs and chicks of every kind, that the sea-leopards ate anything warm-blooded they could catch, and that none of the birds showed the smallest mercy to a fish; but at least they respected a certain established hierarchy in their killing, whereas the sailors respected none, slaughtering indiscriminately. He reasoned with them; they listened gravely and carried straight on, only keeping somewhat more out of sight, rambling farther afield, up to the great albatross colonies on the higher slopes or the seal rookeries in the neighbouring cove. He knew that his words did not carry full conviction, since he himself spent all the daylit hours collecting specimens of everything from the sea-elephant to the very small wingless flies and the fresh-water tardigrades, and much of the night dissecting them or ranging eggs, bones and plants. He knew that some of the killing had real point, and that the barrels of penguins, young albatrosses, and seal-flesh could be justified; but it sickened him, and after some weeks he withdrew to an island in the bay, an island forbidden to all but the Leopard's surgeon.

  They made him a little canvas boat, and it was thought that if he were obliged to wear two sea-elephant's bladders, blown up and attached to his person, he could not come to harm in such a placid sea; but after an unfortunate experience in which he became involved in his umbrella and it was found that the bladders buoyed up his meagre hams alone, so that only the presence of Babbington's Newfoundland preserved him, he was forbidden to go unaccompanied.

  The duty of going with him generally fell to Herapath, who was of little more use in the rummaging of a hold than Stephen himself. The common world of papers and intelligence, of people walking about the paved streets of towns, was so very far away, so nearly dream-like, that his conduct towards Dr Maturin seemed to wound him less; and so much close-packed experience lay between his copying of the poisoned documents and the antarctic present that it might have occurred in years gone by. Their former intimacy revived to some extent, and although Herapath loathed walking knee-deep in the rank sodden grass that covered much of the lower ground, and although he did not greatly care whether the huge nesting fowl upon which they pored was a royal or a wandering albatross, he did not dislike these expeditions so long as he was not too often called upon to admire a pool of algae or an infant blue-eyed shag. He had built a shelter by the water's edge, and there he sat with an angle for hours on end while Stephen walked about. It was almost always too wet to read or write, but he was a contemplative young man, and the sight of his cork bobbing away out there allowed his mind to drift far away, yet with a local attachment; and sometimes he would take a fish. When the rain was too heavy even for Dr Maturin they would sit there together, talking of Chinese poetry, or, more often, of Louisa Wogan, who at present lived on shore, and who could sometimes be seen in the distance, a straight, fur-clad figure, walking with Mrs Boswell's baby in the rare gleams of sun; for now the women's imprisonment was merely nominal.

  'This is Paradise,' said Stephen as they landed.

  'A little damp for Paradise, perhaps,' suggested Herapath.

  'The terrestrial Paradise was no howling desiccated waste of sand, no arid desert,' said Stephen. 'Indeed, Mandeville particularly mentions its mossy walls, a sure proof of abundant moisture. I have already found fifty-three kinds of moss on this island alone; and no doubt there are more.' He gazed about the black streaming crags, the slopes between them covered with coarse matted grass, yellow viscous cabbages, many of them in a state of slow decay, or raw spewy earth, the dung of seabirds everywhere, and the whole enveloped in drifting swatches of mist or rain. 'This is very like the north-western parts of Ireland, but without the men: it reminds me of a promontory in the County Mayo where first I beheld the phalarope . . . Shall we visit the giant petrels first, or should you prefer the terns?'

  'To tell the truth, sir, I believe I had rather sit in the shelter for a while. The cabbage seems to have turned my inward parts to water.'

  'Nonsense,' said Stephen, 'it is the most wholesome cabbage I have ever come across in the whole of my career. I hope, Mr Herapath, that you are not going to join in the silly weak womanish unphilosophical mewling and puling about the cabbage. So it is a little yellow in certain lights, so it is a little sharp, so it smells a little strange: so much the better, say I. At least that will stop the insensate Phaeacian hogs from abusing it, as they abuse the brute creation, stuffing themselves with flesh until what little brain they have is drowned in fat. A virtuous esculent! Even its boldest detractors, ready to make the most hellish declarations and to swear through a nine-inch plank that the cabbage makes them fart and rumble, cannot deny that it cured their purpurae. Let them rumble till the heavens shake and resound again; let them fart fire and brimstone, the Gomorrhans, I will not have a single case of scurvy on my hands, the sea-surgeon's shame, while there is a cabbage to be culled.'

  'No, sir,' said Herapath. He could not but agree: he had seen the cure. The Leopard's crew, having killed a sea-elephant early in their stay, ate its enormous liver by way of a change; they came out in dull blue, clearly-defined blotches, about two inches across. Stephen instantly prescribed the cabbage that he had found and that he had tried upon himself and the loblolly-boy, an unattractive plant with a startling smell. It did away with the blotches: as Jack observed, 'it made the Leopards change their spots'—the first really full-hearted laugh, eyes vanishing in a face scarlet with mirth, that he had uttered in the last five thousand miles. And since the ship was short of lime-juice, and since the practice was sound even if the ships had been swimming in anti-scorbutics, Stephen insisted upon the cabbage's being mixed with dinner every day: as to its alleged laxative properties, he had not perceived any inconvenience; and if they had an existence outside a hypochondriacal high-fed cosseted fancy, it was all to the good. Men, said he, looking sharply at his Captain, men who would breakfast on two albatross eggs, weighing close on a purser's pound apiece, should be purged of their gross humours daily.

  'No, sir,' said Herapath again. 'But if you will forgive me, I am a little weary, and should like to fish awhile. You will recall that last time, when the giant petrel covered me with oil, you said I might be excused.'

  'It was only that you startled the poor bird by falling down, and by falling down, as you must allow me to observe, in a singularly abrupt and awkward fashion, Mr Herapath.'

  'The ground was wet, and deep in the excrement of seals.'

  'Petrels cannot abide the least gaucherie,' said Stephen. But it was true that Herapath was an unlucky wight; many of the petrels had shot their evil-smelling stomach-oil
at him, quite unprovoked, whereas they never resented Stephen; and an albatross had given him a cruel nip, sheering quite through his inoffensive sleeve. 'Well,' he said, 'you shall do as you please. Let us share out the sandwiches, for I mean to stay until sunset.'

  Stephen's Paradise was quite large, an hour's walk from the inner to the outer side, and unlike most of the islands, which were broken masses of rock, rising sheer, it possessed little in the way of cliffs except for two on the seaward side, being for the most part a smooth dome. Yet although it had a fine and park-like extent of many hundred acres, it was scarcely big enough for all the creatures that hurried to it for the breeding season, coming in from the limitless southern ocean, an ocean almost devoid of land, where they roamed for the rest of the year. The few resident birds, the curious teal, the blue-eyed shag, perhaps the sheathbill, could scarcely find room to turn, and Stephen himself had to walk very carefully not to step on eggs or plunge into the burrows made by the countless whale-birds. The top of the dome was occupied by the great albatrosses, and here it was easier to walk; the grass was not so long, and the nests were well spaced out. He knew many of the members of the colony quite well, having seen them in their courting, building, and mating, and now he recognized several as they walked about visiting other nests—the place was something like a common with white geese upon it, but gigantic geese, coming and going on wings like those of the genii in the Arabian tale, or walking, or sitting on their hollowed mounds. Most, indeed, were sitting now—few nests without an egg—and he made his way through the throng to the first nest in which he had seen a clutch, if a single egg could be called a clutch. The sitting bird was fast asleep, with its head along its back; it was so used to him that it only opened one eye and grunted when he pushed gently into its breast to find whether the egg were chipping yet. It was not, and he sat on a vacant nest close by to gaze about. A great rush of air—a distinct warmth and the smell of fishy bird, and the albatross's mate landed by him, staggering on the ground as it folded its enormous wings—and waddled over to address soft mutterings to its spouse and nibble her outstretched neck. At his feet a minute dull black petrel scrambled awkwardly among the tussocks, and at head-height the piratical skuas planed, glaring from side to side for an unguarded prey. The rain had stopped: he laid his sealskin aside—he wore it as farm-hands wear a sack, over his head and shoulders—brought out his lunch, swivelled round upon his nest, and surveyed the part of the island he had traversed. On the right hand, down by the sea, the sea-elephants, each weighing several tons. Most of them were kind or at least indifferent, but there was one old twenty-foot bull with a remarkable collection of wives that still would not suffer him to come close to, although they had been acquainted for such a while: it would still rear up and writhe its person, gibbering, gnashing its teeth, blowing out its inflatable nose, and even roaring aloud. 'Did he but know,' reflected Stephen, 'could he but imagine the present mildness of my carnal desires with regard to Mrs Wogan, he would not fear for his harem.' Then came the little fur-seals with their charming pups: he knew them well. Still farther to the left, and straggling high up the slope, the enormous penguin rookeries, myriads upon myriads of birds. And almost beyond his view, the place where sea-leopards bred: yet although in one sea-leopard's stomach he had found eleven adult penguins and one small seal, by land they were on civil terms with their prey: indeed, all the various creatures shuffled and walked about in mingled crowds, abiding by some social contract that dissolved in the sea. Another rush of wings, a screech, and the biscuit with a slice of seal that he had placed upon a tuft, vanished, born off by a skua. 'Oh the thief,' he said, 'the black anarchist,' but in fact he had already had enough, and he gazed on without the least vexation.