Book 3 - H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Have you come aboard, my plum?' cried Jack, looking up from the bosun's accounts with a beaming face. 'I have such news for you. We are to carry treasure, and the freight will see me clear.'

  'What is freight?'

  'It means I am clear of debt.'

  'That is news indeed. Ha, ha, I give you joy, with all my heart. I am delighted—amazed.'

  'I will explain it to you, with figures, the moment my accounts are done. But damn paper-work for today. Had you any particular music in mind?'

  'The Boccherini C major, perhaps?'

  'Why, that is the strangest thing—the adagio has been running through my head this last hour and more, yet I ain't in the least melancholy. Far from it, ha. ha.' He rosined his bow, and said, 'Stephen, I took your advice. I have written to Sophie, asking her to come out to Madeira. Canning sends it overland.'

  Stephen nodded and smiled, hummed the true note and found it on his 'cello. They tuned, nodded, tapped three times, each with his eye fixed on the other's bow, and dashed away into the brilliant, heart-lifting first movement.

  On and on, lost in the music, intertwined, a lovely complexity of sound; on through the near-desperation of the adagio, on and on with such fire and attack to the very height and the majestic, triumphant close.

  'Lord, Stephen,' said Jack, leaning back and laying his fiddle carefully down, 'we have never played so well.'

  'It is a noble piece. I revere that man. Listen, jack: here are some papers I must confide to you—the usual things. I fight Canning in the morning, alas.'

  A dense curtain fell instantly, cutting off all but formal communication between them. After a pause jack said, 'Who is your second?'

  'Etherege.'

  'I will come with you. That was why there was all that firing on the quarterdeck, of course. You would not mind it, if I were to have a word with him?'

  'Not at all. But he is gone to the Chief justice's: he is to view the ground with a Colonel Burke after the party. Never vex your heart for me, Jack: I am used to these things—more used to them than you, I dare say.'

  'Oh, Stephen,' said jack, 'this is a damned black ending to the sweetest day.'

  'This is where we usually settle our affairs, in Calcutta,' said Colonel Burke, leading them across the moonlit Maidan. 'There is the road over the Alipur bridge, do you see, conveniently near at hand; and yet behind these trees it is as discreet and secluded as you could wish.'

  'Colonel Burke,' said Jack, 'as I understand it, the offence was not given in public. I believe any expression of regret would meet the case. I have a great esteem for your principal, and I say this out of consideration for him; pray do all you can—my man is deadly.'

  Burke gave him a broad stare. 'So is mine,' he said in an offended tone. 'He dropped Harlow like a bird, in Hyde Park. But even if he were not, it would not signify. He don't want pluck, as I know very well; I should not be here, else. Of course, if your man chooses to put with a blow, and turn the other cheek, I have nothing more to say. Blessed are the peacemakers.'

  Jack commanded himself; there was little hope of piercing through Burke's deep stupidity, but he went on. 'Canning must certainly have been in wine. The least admission of this—a general expression—will answer. It will be satisfactory, and if need be I shall use my authority to make it so.'

  'Confine your man to his quarters, you mean? Well, you have your own ways in the Navy, I see. It would scarcely answer with us. I will carry your message, of course, but I cannot answer for its coming to anything. I have never had a principal more determined to give satisfaction in a regular way. He is a rare plucked 'un.'

  In his journal Stephen wrote, 'At most times the diarist may believe he is addressing his future self: but the real height of diary-writing is the gratuitous entry, as this may prove to be. Why should tomorrow's meeting affect me in this way? I have been out many, many times. It is true my hands are not what they were; and in growing older I have lost the deeply illogical but deeply anchored conviction of immortality; but the truth of the matter is that now I have so much to lose. I am to fight Canning: made as we are, it was inevitable, I suppose; but how deeply I regret it. I cannot feel ill-will towards him, and although in his present state of confused passion and shame and disappointment I have no doubt he will try to kill me, I do not believe he feels any towards me, except as the catalyst of his unhappiness. For my part I shall, sub Deo, nick his arm, no more. Good Mr White would call my sub Deo gross blasphemy and I am tempted to throw down some observations on the matter; but peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere—I must find my priest and go quickly to sleep: sleep is the thing, sleep with a quietened mind.'

  From this sleep—but a sleep troubled by hurrying, disjointed dreams—Jack woke him at two bells in the morning watch; and as they dressed they heard young Babbington on deck singing Lovely Peggy in a sweet undertone, as cheerful as the rising day.

  They came out of the cabin, into the deathly reek lying over the Hooghly and the interminable mud-flats, and at the gangway they found Etherege, M'Alister and Bonden.

  Under the peepul-trees on the deserted Maidan a silent group was waiting for them: Canning, two friends, a surgeon, and some men to keep the ground: two closed carriages at a distance. Burke came forward. 'Good morning, Gentlemen,' he said. 'There is no accommodating the affair. Etherege, if you are happy that there is light enough, I think we should place our men; unless, of course, your principal chooses to withdraw.'

  Canning was wearing a black coat, and he buttoned it high over his neckcloth. There was light enough now—a fine clear grey—to see him perfectly: perfectly composed, grave and withdrawn; but his face was lined and old, colourless.

  Stephen took off his coat and then his shirt, folding it carefully. 'What are you doing?' whispered Jack.

  'I always fight in my breeches: cloth carried into a wound makes sad work, my dear.'

  The seconds paced out the ground, examined the pistols, and placed their men. A third closed carriage drew up.

  With the familiar butt and the balanced weight in his hand, Stephen's expression changed to one of extreme coldness: his pale eyes fixed with impersonal lethal intensity upon Canning, who had taken up his stance, right foot forward, his whole body in profile. All the men there stood motionless, silent, concentrated as though upon an execution of a sacrament.

  'Gentlemen,' said Burke, 'you may fire upon the signal.'

  Canning's arm came up, and along the glint of his own barrel Stephen saw the flash and instantly loosened his finger from the trigger. The enormous impact on his side and across his breast came at the same moment as the report. He staggered, shifted his unfired pistol to his left hand and changed his stance: the smoke drifted away on the heavy air and he saw Canning plain, his head high, thrown back with that Roman emperor air. The barrel came true, wavered a trifle, and then steadied: his mouth tightened, and he fired. Canning went straight down, rose to his hands and knees calling for his second pistol, and fell again. His friends ran to him, and Stephen turned away. 'Are you all right, Stephen?' He nodded, still as hard and cold as ever, and said to M'Alister, 'Give me that lint.' He mopped the wound, and while M'Alister probed it, murmuring, 'Struck the third rib; cracked it—deviated across the sternum—the ball is awkwardly lodged—meant to kill you, the dog—I'll clap a cingulum about it,' he watched the far group. And his heart sank; the wicked, reptilian look faded, giving way to one of hopeless sadness. That dark flow of blood under the feet of the men gathered round Canning could mean only one thing: he had missed his aim.

  M'Alister, holding the end of the bandage in his mouth, followed his glance and nodded, 'Subclavian, or aorta itself,' he muttered through the cloth. 'I will just pin this end and step over for a word with our colleague.'

  He came back, and nodded gravely. 'Dead?' said Etherege, and looked hesitantly at Stephen, wondering whether to congratulate him: the look of utter dejection kept him silent. While Bonden drew the charge from the second pistol and ranged them both in their cases, Eth
erege walked over to Burke: they exchanged a few words, saluted formally, and parted.

  People were already moving about the Maidan; the eastern sky showed red; Jack said, 'We must get him aboard at once. Bonden, hail the carriage.'

  Chapter Eleven

  The tigers had gone, and servants were openly carrying things away.

  'Good morning, ma'am,' said Jack, springing up. Diana curtseyed. 'I have brought you a letter from Stephen Maturin.'

  'Oh how is he?' she cried.

  'Very low: a great deal of fever, the ball is badly lodged; and in this climate, a wound—but you know all about wounds in this climate.'

  Her eyes filled with tears. She had expected hardness, but not this cold anger. He was taller than she had remembered him, altogether bigger and more formidable. His face had changed, the boy quite gone, vanished beyond recall: a hard, commanding eye: the only thing she recognised, apart from his uniform, was his yellow hair, tied in a queue. And even his uniform had changed: he was a post-captain now.

  'You will excuse me, Aubrey,' she said, and opened the note. Three straggling uneven lines. 'Diana: you must come back to Europe. The Lushington sails on the fourteenth. Allow me to deal with any material difficulties: rely upon me at all times. I say at all times. Stephen.'

  She read it slowly, and again, peering through the mist of tears. Jack stood, his back turned, looking out of the window with his hands behind his back.

  Beneath the anger and the distaste for being there, his mind was filled with questions, doubts, a hurry of feelings that he could not easily identify. Righteousness, except where faulty seamanship was concerned, or an offence against Naval discipline, was unfamiliar to him. Was he a contemptible scrub, to harbour this enmity against a woman he had pursued? The severity that filled him from head to toe—was it an odious hypocrisy, fit to damn him in a decent mind? He had gone near to wrecking his career in his pursuit of her: she had preferred Canning. Was this holier-than-thou indignation mere pitiful resentment? No, it was not: she had hurt Stephen terribly; and Canning, that fine man, was dead. She was no good, no good at all. Yet that meeting under the trees could have taken place over the most virtuous of women, the world being what it was. Virtue: he turned it over, vaguely watching a horseman winding through the trees. He had attacked her 'virtue' as hard as ever he could; so where did he stand? The common cant it is different for men was no comfort. The horseman came in sight again, and his horse into full view: perhaps the most beautiful animal he had ever seen, a chesnut mare, perfectly proportioned, light, powerful. She shied at a snake on the drive and reared, a lovely movement, and her rider sat easy, kindly patting her neck. Virtue: the one he esteemed above all was courage; and surely it included all the rest? He looked at her ghostlike image in the window-pane: she possessed it—never a doubt of that. She was standing there perfectly straight, so slim and frail he could break her with one hand: a tenderness and admiration he had thought quite dead moved in him.

  'Mr Johnstone,' said a servant.

  'I am not at home.'

  The horseman rode away.

  'Aubrey, will you give me a passage home in your ship?'

  'No ma'am. The regulations do not admit of it; in any case she is unfit for a lady, and I have another month and more of refitting.'

  'Stephen has asked me to marry him. I could act as a nurse.'

  'I regret extremely my orders will not allow it. But the Lushington sails within the week; and if I can be of any assistance, I should be most happy.'

  'I always knew you were a weak man, Aubrey,' she said, with a look of contempt. 'But I did not know you were a scrub. You are much the same as every man I have ever known, except for Maturin—false, weak, and a coward in the end.'

  He made his bow and walked out of the room with an appearance of composure. In the drive he passed a cook pushing a hand-cart loaded with brass pots and saucepans. 'Am I indeed a scrub?' he asked, and the question tormented him all the way to Howrah, where the frigate lay. The moment he saw her tall mainmast high above the mass of shipping he walked even faster, ran up the gangway, passed through the waiting officers and shipwrights, and went below Killick,' he said, find out if Mr M'Alister is busy with the Doctor; if he is not, I wish to see him.'

  Stephen was in the great cabin, the airiest, lightest place in the ship: there seemed to be a good deal of activity in there. M'Alister came out, with a drawing in his hand, followed by the bosun, the carpenter, and several of their mates. He looked anxious and upset 'How is he?' asked Jack.

  'The fever is far too high, sir,' said M'Alister, 'but I hope it will come down when we have extracted the ball. We are almost ready now. But it is very badly placed.'

  'Should he not be taken to the hospital? Their surgeons could give you a hand. We can have a litter ready in a moment.'

  'I did suggest it, of course, as soon as we found the bullet right under the pericardium—flattened and deflected, you understand. But he has no opinion of the military surgeons, nor of the hospital. They sent to offer their assistance not half an hour since, and I confess I should welcome it—the pericardium, hoot, toot—but he insists on performing the operation himself, and I dare not cross him. You will excuse me now, sir: the armourer is waiting to make this extractor he has designed.'

  'May I see him?'

  'Yes. But pray do not disturb him, or agitate his mind.'

  Stephen was lying on a series of chests, propped up with his back against a thrum-mat, the whole covered with sailcloth: over against him, showing his naked chest in the fullest light, a large mirror, slung by a system of blocks and lines: beside him, within reach, a table covered with lint, tow, and surgical instruments—crowbills, retractors, a toothed demi-lune.

  He looked at Jack and said, 'Did you see her?'

  'Yes.'

  'I am deeply obliged to you for going. How was she?'

  'Bearing up: she has all the spirit in the world. Stephen, how do you feel?'

  'What was she wearing?'

  'Wearing? Oh, a sort of dress of some sort, I suppose. I did not attend.'

  'Not black?'

  'No. I should have noticed that. Stephen, you look damnably feverish. Shall I have the skylight unshipped, for air?'

  Stephen shook his head. 'There is some little fever, of course, but not enough to cloud my mind to any degree. That may come later. I wish Bates would hurry with my davier.'

  'Will you let me bring the Fort William man, just to stand by? He could be here in five minutes.'

  'No, sir. I do this with my own hand.' He looked at it critically, and said, more or less to himself, 'If it could undertake the one task, it must undertake the other: that is but justice.'

  M'Alister came back, holding a long-nosed instrument with little jaws, straight from the armourer's forge. Stephen took it, compared its curve with his drawing, snapped its levered beak, and said, 'Cleverly made—neat—charming. M'Alister, let us begin. Pray call for Choles, if he is sober.'

  'Is there anything I can do?' asked Jack. 'I should very much like to help. May I hold a basin, or pass the tow?'

  'You may take Choles's place, if you wish, and hold my belly, pressing firmly, thus, when I give the word. But have you a head and a stomach for this kind of thing? Does blood upset you? Choles was a butcher, you know.'

  'Bless you, Stephen, I have seen blood and wounds since I was a little boy.'

  Blood he had seen, to be sure; but not blood, not this cold, deliberate ooze in the slow track of the searching knife and probe. Nor had he heard anything like the grind of the demilune on living bone, a few inches from his ear as he leant over the wound, his head bent low not to obscure Stephen's view in the mirror.

  'You will have to raise the rib, M'Alister,' said Stephen. 'Take a good grip with the square retractor. Up: harder, harder. Snip the cartilage ' The metallic clash of instruments: directions: perpetual quick swabbing: an impression of brutal force, beyond anything he had conceived. It went on and on and on. 'Now, Jack, a steady downward pressure. Good. Ke
ep it so. Give me the davier. Swab, M'Alister. Press, Jack, press.'

  Deep in the throbbing cavity Jack caught a glimpse of a leaden gleam; it clouded; and there, half-focused, was the long-nosed instrument searching, deeper and deeper. He closed his eyes.

  Stephen drew his breath and held it, arching his back: in the silence Jack could hear the ticking of McAllister's watch close to his ear. There was a grunt, and Stephen said, 'Here she is. Much flattened. M'Alister, is the bullet whole?'

  'Whole, sir, by God, quite whole. Not a morsel left. Oh, brawly feckit!'

  'Easy away, Jack. Handsomely with the retractor, M'Alister: a couple of pledgets, and you may begin to sew. Stay: look to the Captain, while I swab. Hartshorn—put his head down.'

  M'Alister heaved him bodily into a chair: Jack felt his head pressed down between his knees and the pungent hartshorn searching his brain. He looked up and saw Stephen: his face was now perfectly grey, glistening with sweat; it was barely human, but somewhere about it there was a look of surly triumph. Jack's eye moved down to Stephen's chest, ploughed open from side to side, deep, deep; and white bone bare . . . Then McAllister's back hid the wound as he set to work—a competent back, expressing ease and a share in the triumph. Competent activity, short technical remarks; and there was Stephen, his chest swatched in a white bandage, sponged, relaxed, leaning back with his eyes half-closed. 'You took the time, M'Alister?' he asked.

  'Twenty-three minutes just.'

  'Slow . . .' His voice trailed away, reviving after a moment to say, 'Jack, you will be late for your dinner.'

  Jack began to protest that he should stay, but M'Alister put his finger to his lips and led him on tiptoe to the door. More of the ship's company than was right were hanging about outside it. Discipline seemed to have been forgotten. 'The ball is out,' he said. 'Pullings, let there be no noise abaft the mainmast, no noise at all,' and walked into his sleeping-cabin.