Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  'I am sure of it, sir. But I could not answer it to my conscience, to touch your tooth this evening. Drink this down, keep your dressing in its place, and I give you my word you will pass a tolerable night.'

  On their way back to the shore Stephen said not a word to his assistant; he felt worn and emptied, and Herapath was as mute as himself. Stephen was little more loquacious when he reported to Jack: 'I suggest that all the Irishmen and foreigners and black men the ship still contains should assemble on the strand in the morning, to help unload the forge; and that you and the officers should keep out of the way,' he said. He looked thoughtfully at Jack's shining face for some moments; then, without saying anything more, he walked off to Mrs Wogan's hut.

  'I am come to drink tea with you,' he said, 'if you will indulge me so far.'

  'Delighted, enchanted,' cried she. 'I had not expected you today, in the least. What a surprise. What a very pleasant surprise. Peggy, the tea-things, and then you may go.'

  'What shall I do with the trousers, ma'am?' asked Peg, raising her broad innocent face from the sewing.

  Mrs Wogan darted across, plucked them from her hands, and hurried her from the room. Stephen gazed at the kettle singing on the seal-oil stove, and said, 'A dish of tea, a dish of tea . . . I have been sawing up your countrymen, my dear, and mine too for that matter; and when it was done, they would ply me with whiskey, Geneva, and rum: a dish of tea would settle my spirits.'

  'My spirits too have been in a strong hurry and flurry today,' said Mrs Wogan; and she was obviously speaking the truth—she could scarcely keep still, and she had quite lost the somewhat drawn, pasty look of her first weeks of pregnancy; her complexion now had an extraordinary bloom, and this, combined with the light in her eyes and the brimming life of her person, made her quite strikingly beautiful. 'A strange hurry of spirits. Let us drink a whole hogshead of tea together; and then we shall be calm—Look, Dr Maturin, I have adventured upon a pair of seamen's trousers—I hope you do not think them immodest—they are against the cold, you know. Most prodigious warm, I assure you. And see, I have finished your blue comforter. Pray, sir, have you news of the States?'

  'How infinitely kind. I shall wear it about my loins; for the loins, ma'am, are the seat of animal warmth: my very best thanks. As for news, alas, it seems that a war cannot be long delayed, if it has not already been declared. The La Fayette spoke of another American off Tristan no great while ago, and—but Herapath can tell you better than I; he had more time to talk. As for our merely local news, they have very kindly undertaken to lend us their forge and their anvil, so that we may continue our voyage.'

  'Will they stay here long, do you know?'

  'Oh no: just to pick up greenstuff for their voyage home; a day or so, while I see to a few more cases, and then they are homeward-bound. Homeward-bound for Nantucket, which is in the Connecticut, I believe.'

  'Massa—Massachusetts,' said Mrs Wogan, and burst into tears. 'Forgive me,' she said, through her sobs, 'forgive me. It must be my pregnancy—I have never been pregnant before. No, pray do not go. Or if you must, send Mr Herapath: I should so like to hear what news he may have.'

  Stephen withdrew. He felt somewhat more dirty than usual—it had been a dirtying day—but in his diary he wrote: 'Things seem to be following their train much as I could wish; and yet I am not quite sure. I should carry the poor simple creatures aboard the whaler myself, only that Wogan must not suspect that I am aware of their motions: that would destroy the credibility of her papers, at least if her chief is as intelligent as I suppose. I am tempted to confide in Jack, so that he may withdraw guards, leave boats lying about: anything to facilitate their escape. But he is a wretched hand at playing a part; he would over-act, and she would see through him directly. Yet I may be driven to it at last. Herapath is the most unfortunate accomplice for a conspirator that can well be imagined: true, he possesses that invaluable air of integrity which can so rarely be assumed once its basis is lost; but on the other hand he can control neither his countenance nor his memory. He observed that I was 'a friend to independence', which is very true; but I never told him so and the information can only have reached him through Wogan: a sad gaffe on his part. And then this very integrity may well bring on an untimely fit of honourable feeling: I dread it. Jack's words about rats were most unhappily chosen. However, I have done all I can, and tonight I shall allow myself just twenty-five drops, which I shall drink to Herapath's felicity. I am much attached to that young man, and although I may not be doing the kindest thing by him in fact—a prolonged association with Wogan may not prove quite what he hopes—yet I wish he may enjoy what there is to be enjoyed: that he may not eat up his youth in longing and hope disappointed, as I have ate mine.'

  He slept long and deep, and he was woken by the sound of hammers ringing on iron. The forge was already on shore, a white-hot blaze in its heart, and the whalers had returned to the brig.

  He had rarely seen Jack happier than he was at breakfast, sitting there in the great cabin drinking coffee, with a spy-glass at hand so that he could watch the beautiful smithy between cups. 'There is good even in an American,' he said. 'And when I think of that poor skipper with his face-ache, drinking small-beer for his morning draught, I have a mind to send him a sack of coffee-beans.'

  'There is a proverb in Ireland,' said Stephen, 'to the effect that there is good to be found even in an Englishman—is minic Gall maith. It is not often used, however.'

  'Of course there is good in an American,' said Jack. 'Look at young Herapath yesterday. I told him so, when we had a word first thing this morning. In his place, I should have been strongly tempted to skip. What an amazingly handsome woman she is, upon my word: jolly too, which I love in a girl. She don't look so jolly at the moment, though: I hope he has not said anything impertinent. It looks to me as if he had said something impertinent, and she is bringing him up with a round turn—he hangs his head—ha, ha, the dog. He should not have done so in the morning—the cold dawn is no time for such capers. But I tell you what, Stephen, there are run seamen in that whaler: one I recognized for certain—Scanlan, yeoman of the signals in Andromache, always on the quarterdeck, so I could not mistake him. And I am sure there are others.'

  'I beseech you, Jack,' said Stephen wearily, 'I beseech you to leave them alone. With things as they now stand, you would do immeasurable harm by stirring it all. Pray, my dear Jack, just sit in your good comfortable chair until they are gone. I speak in sad sober earnest.'

  'Well,' said Jack, 'I will do as you say; though you cannot imagine my hunger for men. Prime seamen, whaler's hands, good Lord! Are you away?'

  'I go to draw the skipper's teeth.'

  'They are drawn already,' cried Jack. 'His forge stands there on the beach, ha, ha, ha! What do you say to that, Stephen?'

  Stephen said little to that, and less to Herapath as they rowed across to the La Fayette. The whale-boats were putting off for their last few loads of greenstuff and eggs, and their crews called out, friendly and familiar, as Stephen went aboard. The youngest mate met him with the news that the skipper had only just woken up—they had thought he was dead in the night—and speaking for himself and his fellows, the mate asked whether the Doctor wanted to trade any. Coffee-beans for a hog, for example; a prime Marquesas hog of twelve score.

  'I have no occasion for a hog, sir; but if you would like some beans, you will find a small sack under the seat in the boat. I will attend to the Captain directly.'

  Putnam was rapidly coming to life; so was his tooth. But the swelling was less; the tooth was ripe for extraction; and with one long firm twisting wrench Stephen delivered him, leaving him gaping, amazed, staring at the bloody fang. He then moved on to his other patients, and once again he observed that men who would submit to grave surgery, even amputation, with a noble fortitude, and bear the worst with no more than an involuntary groan, grew unaccountably shy when sat in a chair and told to open wide. Unless the pain was urgent, there at the moment of sitting or within the las
t hour, many would change their minds altogether, grow evasive, and move silently off. The teeth dealt with, he attended to the dressing of yesterday's wounds, again explaining just what should be done: he did not wish to lose any one of these men for want of a clear understanding, and he repeated himself frequently, so frequently that he feared his aim might show through. And it would have shown through, if Herapath had not been so absent. 'You seem somewhat distraught, colleague,' said Stephen. 'Be so good as to rehearse the main points I have made.'

  'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Herapath, having done so moderately well. 'I slept badly last night, and am stupid.'

  'Here is a smell will revive you,' said Stephen. The whole ship was embalmed with the roasting of coffee, or rather with the parching of the beans in a red-hot skillet.

  They finished their dressings, and Stephen made some general observations on the drugs he had provided for the whaler's medicine-chest: coming to the antimony, he enveighed against the custom of calling it poison, and of frightening young practitioners: 'Certainly antimony is a poison, when wrongly exhibited. But we must not be the prisoners of words. There are times when it is right to use antimony, and many another thing that has an ugly name. It is very weak to be swayed by a mere word, Mr Herapath, by a categorical imperative imposed from without by those who do not know the inward nature, the full complexity of the case.' He was still speaking of the necessity for a clear head, free of prejudices and of notions preconceived by others, for the mind that could judge for itself, and that, on perceiving two evils, could choose the less, whatever its ugly name, when they were invited to drink coffee with the Captain.

  The absence of pain, the presence of coffee, made Mr Putnam a far more agreeable companion; he was very complimentary about Stephen's abilities, and he blessed his stars that he had put into Desolation, though when he saw the Leopard in there, he had very nearly turned about, and would have, too, but that the tide was on the make, the breeze in his teeth, and no other sheltered harbour, with greenstuff at hand, that he knew of anywhere under his lee. He reckoned he would sail on the ebb today, round about moonrise; and he begged Dr Maturin to accept these sea-otter skins, ready dressed, that they had picked up off Kamschatka, this piece of ambergris, and these sperm-whale teeth, as a token of the La Fayette's sense of his kindness and skill.

  'Hear him,' said Reuben.

  Stephen made a suitable reply, but said that he would not say farewell, at this point: he would visit his patients once more, just before they sailed, to see that all was well and above all to give Captain Putnam the fullest instructions for their subsequent care, a point of the greatest importance, since they had no surgeon aboard. At this, as he observed with deep satisfaction, Captain Putnam's face went as blank as a wall, all expression wiped out; while Reuben looked down at his feet.

  'But stay,' he said, considering. 'I think I shall take my leave after all. Mr Herapath is quite as competent as myself in these matters: he will come in the evening. Yes, Mr Herapath will come in my place. And so farewell to you, gentlemen; and I wish you a most prosperous voyage home to the States.'

  As they rowed back Herapath said, in a low, troubled voice, 'Dr Maturin, I should very much like to speak to you privately, if I may.'

  'Perhaps when we go through the chest again, in the afternoon. We may be able to spare your countrymen some asafoetida. There is nothing more comforting to a seaman with the megrims, than asafoetida.' The asafoetida, with examples of its various mixtures, lasted them to the Leopard, where Stephen went aboard, asking Herapath to carry on to the shore—a shore still filled with the clangour of hammers and the roar of the forge—to note what drugs remained in the hut; and, while he was there, to tell Mrs Wogan that Dr Maturin proposed himself the pleasure of waiting on her after dinner. Mr Herapath still had the spare key, he believed.

  In spite of the very high spirits in the wardroom—everyone talking at once, although the Captain was present, laughing, guzzling albatross soup, tender sea-elephant, mutton-bird fritters—dinner was a somewhat empty ceremony as far as Stephen and Herapath were concerned: they both of them took little on their plates, and of that little they ate less, concealing the gobbets of flesh beneath biscuit. And whenever Stephen happened to look down the table, he found Herapath's eye fixed upon his face or the Captain's: as the meal progressed Stephen grew more and more alarmed. If Herapath jibbed now, with the whaler almost on the wing . . . 'Captain Moore,' he called through the din, 'you have sailed with the Prince d'Auvergne, have you not? Pray what kind of a man is he?' The gentleman was one of the few French royalist officers serving as a post-captain in the Royal Navy, and his reserve, his aloofness, was a by-word in the service.

  'Why, as to that,' said Moore, his smile changing to a serious took, 'I cannot say very much. I never saw him in action, though no doubt he would have behaved very well; and I never saw much of him out of action either, if you follow me. He was in an awkward position, fighting against his own country; and as far as his officers were concerned he kept himself very much to himself. I suppose he did not care to risk hearing us crowing over the French, or—' Babbington's Newfoundland, excited by the merriment, interrupted with a melodious baying, and the general talk flowed on—it was of gudgeons and braces—drowning Moore's final observations, which he delivered in dumb-show, shaking his head in disapprobation. Stephen was quite pleased with the result of his words, but his satisfaction disappeared at the end of the meal, when they drank the King's health. Herapath emptied his glass and joined in the general 'God bless him' with what seemed an unusual emphasis; and Stephen recalled, with dismay, that Herapath's father had been a Loyalist—a man with a deep sense of allegiance. How much of this had he passed on?

  'It seems to me,' said Stephen to himself, 'that an interview would be fatal. Herapath would certainly open his mind to me. Unsuccessful opposition on my part would confirm him in his resolve; successful opposition would expose my hand. In any case I have not the strength to argue a decent man out of his convictions; not today. I am sick, sick to the heart of these manipulations.'

  Nevertheless, when he called upon Mrs Wogan he took with him a soft parcel, which he laid upon the small table in the middle of the room, a table that was usually covered with books, sewing, a variety of objects. including, at times, Stephen's stockings to be darned. It was empty now, and indeed the whole place was curiously trim, almost bare. 'Upon my word, ma'am,' he said, 'you are in prodigious fine looks today. I speak with never a word of flattery.' Nor did he. She might not have quite the feral grace of Diana, but Diana's complexion had suffered from the Indian sun, and Mrs Wogan's was now of a brilliance he had never seen surpassed. The drifting rain was much the same here as it was in Ireland: perhaps that was a cause. 'You are superb,' he said.

  Mrs Wogan blushed and laughed, said she was happy to hear it, and wished she might believe him. But in fact this was largely mechanical: she paid little attention to his remarks. After a turn or two about the room she observed that it was a wonder how the weather held up: day after day of something almost like summer. He had never heard her reduced to the weather before: nor had he seen her so little mistress of her emotions. She asked after the state of the tide, and whether the whale-boats were still on the shore, with quite a painful edge of agitation.

  'So we have a set of beautiful new gudgeons,' she said, 'and may sail away directly.'

  'I believe they are all done but two,' he said. 'The wardroom is in a great state of jubilation. But I do not collect that we are to leave Desolation quite so soon. These gudgeons must first be attached, or shipped, as we say; then all the innumerable objects on the strand must be returned to the ship. In any case, Captain Aubrey could never answer for it to the Royal Society, were he to hurry me away before my collections were completed; and I am not half way through the cryptogams.'

  'The cryptograms, sir?' cried Mrs Wogan.

  'No, child,' said Stephen. 'Cryptogams. A cryptogram, with another r to it, is a puzzle; and the word is also used for a secret w
riting, I believe. Cryptogams are plants that produce offspring without any visible, apparent marriage.' Mrs Wogan blushed again, and hung her head. 'And that reminds me,' said Stephen, taking the parcel and slowly untying it. 'Your kind countrymen made me a compliment of furs. I beg you will accept them to wrap your baby in. When it arrives it will need all the warmth it can get; both figurative warmth and literal too.'

  'It shall certainly have them both, poor honey-lamb,' said Mrs Wogan, and then, 'Oh, oh,' she cried, colouring again, 'sea-otters! I have always longed for a sea-otter. Maria Calvert had two—how we envied her—and here there are four! I shall wear them first, with great care, and then the baby shall have them on Sundays. What luxury! And it is my birthday too, or almost.'

  'Give you joy, my dear,' said Stephen, saluting her.

  'Dear Dr Maturin,' said she, returning a hearty kiss. 'How immeasurably kind. But surely, sir, there must be some lady who . . .?'

  'Alas, never a one. I have no advantages of person, nor family, nor purse; and it has always been my misfortune to aim far beyond my deserts. I am unlucky in love.'

  'You must come to Baltimore. You would find plenty of girls, and good Catholics too—but what am I saying? We are bound for Botany Bay.' After a longish pause, in which she stroked the furs against her cheek, she said, almost to herself, 'It depends what you mean by love, of course.' Then, in quite another tone, 'So you do not think the Leopard will sail quite yet?'

  'I do not.'

  'Suppose it takes a week. Tell me, since you know everything about the sea, and ships, would the Leopard catch up with the whaler, if they went in the same direction? The Leopard has more masts and sails, and is a man-of-war, so much faster, I presume.'

  'No, no: the Leopard will never catch the whaler, my dear. When the La Fayette sails tonight on the turn of the tide, you must say farewell to her for ever. She will never be seen again.'

  Mrs Wogan wanted to understand this matter of the tide—it was dreadful to be so ignorant—and Stephen told her all that he knew, adding that Mr Herapath, who would be rowing the jolly-boat across to see the patients just before they left, would find no adverse current, but rather slack water. It would be perfectly easy for him, in spite of the darkness. There followed a number of questions of much the same kind: when would the whalers take off their forge? Would they have difficulty rowing across? Suppose the wind turned, or failed, would the tide still take the ship away? Would it, indeed? She was happy to hear it. Stephen watched her with pleasure: there was a touching mixture of ingenuousness and skill, and when she had finished he said, 'As for what is meant by love, sure there are definitions without end; but perhaps they must all include an abdication of the critical sense. I mean that the one may see the faults of the other, but utterly refuse to condemn them. But come, if I were to tell you my thoughts on the passion, I should still be here at midnight. Good day to you, ma'am.'