The Nutmeg of Consolation

by Patrick O'Brian

  'As for the purser, my enquiries have not led me to any man I could recommend, but I have an excellent clerk—he was wounded in the leg when we took this place, but he is recovered now and he gets about quite nimbly—and two young gentlemen, who may or may not suit. Do you think Aubrey could dine on Thursday? I could produce my candidates before or after, just as he chooses. And I could ask him, in a general way, about his immediate plans. I think I could do so without indiscretion, because quite apart from my intense curiosity about whether he means to risk an encounter with the Cornélie or to outrun her, I could, by stretching my authority a little, detach a sloop, the Kestrel, to accompany him as far as the Passage, if he wishes. She should be in by the end of the week.'

  Stephen said 'Speaking without the least authority—what is that at the window?'

  'A tangalung, a Java civet,' said Raffles, opening the casement. 'Come, Tabitha.' And after a pause the pretty creature, striped and spotted, came and sat in his lap, looking at Stephen with a frown.

  Stephen lowered his voice respectfully and went on, 'Without the least authority, I think I may assert that no offer could be more unwelcome.'

  'Oh, indeed?'

  'My impression—and this is only my impression: I betray no confidence, still less any consultation—is that Aubrey means to attempt the Cornélie if he can find her. The presence of the Kestrel could make no difference to the physical outcome of the engagement, since she carries only fourteen pop-guns and is no more capable of setting about a frigate than a frigate is capable of setting about a ship of the line; but it would have a disastrous effect upon the metaphysical result. If Aubrey's attempt should fail, then the Kestrel must be sunk or taken too: the Cornélie would beat two opponents and cover herself with laurels. But if Aubrey's attempt is successful, as God send, then the Cornélie is defeated by the overwhelming odds of two to one, she suffers no disgrace and Aubrey wins no glory. For you are to consider that newspapers and the public take very little notice of the relative strength of opposing ships.'

  'Aubrey is much attached to glory?

  'Certainly he fairly worships Nelson. But I do not think there is any taint of vanity about him, as perhaps there was in his hero. Aubrey's personal triumph however, is a matter of no importance in this hypothetical encounter: the essential aim, which he recognizes with perfect clarity, is to lower French self-esteem, particularly French naval self-esteem. It is, I do assure you, a matter of such importance that I should go to—have been to—surprising lengths . . .'

  The nature of these lengths was never revealed: the door opened and the English butler, once a fine plump rosy specimen of his kind but now yellowed and shrunken with Javan ague, announced that His Excellency was served.

  'Heavens, Mr Richardson, my dear, what a hullabalboo!' cried Stephen, going aboard the Nutmeg. 'What are all these people about?'

  'Good morning, sir,' said Richardson. 'They are rattling down the shrouds.'

  'Well, God be between them and evil,' said Stephen. 'It looks horribly dangerous to me. Would himself be in the ship?'

  He was in the cabin, taking his ease with a pot of coffee after an exceedingly hard morning that had begun in the darkness: he looked pale, worn, but contented.

  'I should never have believed that so much could be done in three days,' said Stephen, looking around, 'for it is absolutely no more since I was here. The cabin is almost the same as our old one—clean, trim, comfortable; and these neat little carronades leave one so much more room, what joy. Raffles asks us to dine on Thursday, here in Batavia: he has a clerk for you whom he guarantees and two midshipmen whom he does not. No honest purser, I am afraid.'

  'Thursday?' said Jack, his face falling. 'I had reckoned on warping out for the powder-hoy tomorrow forenoon, getting our livestock in during slack water. and sailing on the evening tide.'

  'I know that tomorrow he has a council-meeting and then a great dinner for a score of potentates at Buitenzorg.'

  'Of course he is very much taken up,' said Jack; and having reflected he went on, 'Thursday means the loss of a couple of days. Yet it would make me most uneasy not to do the civil thing by the Governor; he has been so uncommon obliging. But I tell you what it is, Stephen: was you to see him before Thursday and beg him not to trouble with his clerk and the reefers, but just tell a secretary to give them a note for me, how very much better that would be. He and Mrs Raffles would not have a couple of awkward louts on their hands and I could get a much better notion of their capabilities. Do you know why they were discharged?'

  'Drunkenness, fornication and sloth were their undoing; and they were not so much discharged as abandoned. They left their disorderly house at about noon, made their staggering, crapulous way to the strand, and found that the squadron had sailed at dawn. They have been living in squalor ever since; for although the Governor has taken some little indirect notice of them, it does not appear that their friends have relieved them in any way, possibly for want of time rather than of inclination. It does after all take an eternity for an Indiaman to come and go.'

  Jack gazed at the South China Sea for a while—brilliant sun and countless small craft moving busily under it, but a greenish tinge to the water, with a rain-charged cloudbank rising a handsbreadth from the horizon in the south—and then pouring Stephen another cup he said 'As for the purser, I can do without. Poor Bligh had an intelligent, reasonably honest steward and a knowing Jack-in-the-dust: and in any case Captain Cook was his own purser. I should most cordially welcome a good clerk however; it would wound my heart to lose all our records as you suggested—my observations for Humboldt were to some extent combined with them—and a clever man used to ship's books could perhaps disentangle the confusion. Besides, there was the awful case of Macintosh—you remember Macintosh took the Sibylle, 36 in a running fight right down the Channel—who tried the same solution when he went ashore in the Cyclades and lost half his papers. He took the remaining half, wrapped it up in a sheet of lead on which he wrote "S— the Navy Board, f— the Admiralty, b— the Sick and hurt" and dropped it overboard. A week later a Greek sponge-diver brought it to the flagship in perfect condition and asked for a reward.'

  'He counted his chickens without reckoning with his host,' said Stephen.

  'Yes. As for the reefers, I shall look at them of course; but an unrecommended reefer, and an oldster at that . . . I had been thinking of young Conway of the foretop; but it is an awkward thing coming through the hawse-hole in your own ship giving orders to men who were your messmates yesterday, quite apart from joining a midshipmen's berth full of people who were your superiors. And then again my promotions have often been unlucky. The quarterdeck is a damned unhealthy place in action, you know.'

  'Little do I know of battle,'said Stephen, 'but I had imagined that the midshipmen were with their gun-crews or in the tops with the small-arms men.'

  'So they are, most of them; but there are always some on the quarterdeck with the captain and first lieutenant—aides de camp, as you might say.'

  On Wednesday the Nutmeg sailed out into the bay, picked up the Dutch moorings the Diane had used, and underwent a very severe examination by her captain, her master and her mate of the hold. Neither in the yard nor alongside the powder-hoy had they been able to get far away enough to judge her trim as they could wish, but now they had all the room in the world, and all three were agreed that she was a little by the stern. The laying of the ballast and the stowing of the hold was an exceedingly laborious, highly-skilled process; it had been completed even to the installation of the livestock, so that the familiar smell of swine now rose from the fore hatchway and wafted along the decks; and to undo it all would have led not perhaps to mutiny but quite certainly to muttering. Fortunately Mr Warren, who was well acquainted with the Captain's devotion to trim and to sailing his ship as fast as ever she could go, had so arranged the hoses that he was able to shift some tons of water to and fro along the ground-tier. 'I think half a strake will do it, sir,' he said.

  Jack nodded,
and filling his lungs he called 'Mr Fielding: pray start pumping forward.'

  'What a voice our Captain has,' said Stephen, walking to the boat with Welby. 'It carries a vast distance; yet you are to remark that it has none of the hoarseness or metallic quality we find in auctioneers, politicians, shrews.'

  'There is a bird in my part of England we call a mire-drum or bull of the bog that is almost as good. You can hear him a good three miles off on a calm evening. But I dare say you know all about that, Doctor.'

  'Oh sir. Sir, if you please,' called a voice from behind—a youth running along the quay and panting as he called. 'If you are going to Nutmeg, please would you take us with you? We have a note for the Captain.'

  'How do you mean, we?' asked Welby, frowning.

  'There is my friend too, sir, just the other side of the bridge. The heel of his shoe came away again.'

  'Then let him take off the other shoe and carry them both in his hand,' said Welby. 'And at the double. We cannot wait here all night.'

  'Come on, Miller, come on,' cried the youth in a shout that cracked in the middle. 'Carry your shoes in your hand. The gentlemen cannot wait here all night.'

  Stephen considered them as the boat pulled out across the calm water. They were pale, sallow youths, all elbows and knees (What is the English for âge ingrat? he wondered); they were thin and underfed, and although they had obviously taken great pains with their appearance and their remaining shabby outgrown clothes they were barely presentable. Indeed, their very care had done them disservice, for they were neither of them practised, expert shavers and both were at the pimply stage: the gashes and excoriations had turned ordinarily plain adolescent faces into something quite repulsive. They were pitiful as the lost and anxious young are pitiful but they did not seem to Stephen particulaly interesting youths until one of them, catching his piercing gaze just before the boat touched, said in a low voice 'I am afraid we must seem rather squalid, sir.' He said it shyly but with a direct look and an evident confidence in Stephen's good-will that touched him. 'Not at all, at all,' he said, and as he went up the side, 'I wonder what Jack will make of them. I hope he will find they are seamen. Otherwise they must take to the loom or the plough.'

  A friendly hand pulled him up the last step and he saw Fielding smiling down upon him. 'There you are, Doctor,' he said. 'The Captain desired me to let you know that he is in the cabin with a surprise.'

  Smiles again in the cabin, perfectly easy on Jack's fine red face, diffident on that of his neighbour, a small man, standing behind a great array of papers. 'There you are, Doctor,' cried Jack, 'and here is an old shipmate of ours.'

  'Mr Adams,' said Stephen, shaking his hand, 'it gives me great pleasure to see you again; and I wish you joy of your recovery.'

  'Mr Adams swears he can sort out all this chaos, deal with the necessary replacements and provide us with a full set—we shall preserve everything, and we shall be able to pass our accounts!'

  'I have every confidence in Mr Adams' thaumaturgical powers,' said Stephen, speaking with the utmost sincerity, for Adams had been captain's clerk and secretary in the Lively when Jack was her temporary commander and he was renowned throughout the Mediterranean for his ability: troubled pursers from other ships came privately aboard for his advice, and many a captain's dispatch owed its clear, accurate account of a complex action to his pen. He could have been a purser himself long ago, but he disliked the candle-counting side; and in any case it was easier for a captain's clerk to take part in cutting-out expeditions, which were his particular delight.

  'I should have waited on you as you came in,' said Adams, 'but I was drinking the waters at Barbarlang and never knew you were here till Tuesday, when the Governor sent to let me know, bless him.'

  When three bells struck and there was a slight pause Stephen cried 'But I have quite forgot those unhappy youths. Our boat carried them out, bearing the Governor's or rather a secretary's note, and they are still waiting on the—waiting outside.'

  'I shall see them presently,' said Jack.

  'You may see them at once, for me, sir,' said Adams, gathering up his papers. 'I am away to the purser's steward. If he has anything of a headpiece, he and I can fill in all these gaps.'

  Five minutes later the youths were brought in, pale with waiting and apprehension. Jack received them in a detached, non-committal manner: his present happiness did not cloud his judgment as far as the ship was concerned and his first impression was scarcely favourable: these might very well be the kind of midshipman that any captain would leave behind without any rigorous search.

  He quickly learnt their service history—undistinguished—and their natural abilities—moderate. After some thought he said 'I know nothing about you. I know none of the captains you have served under: I have no note from them and the secretary's chit merely names you, without any recommendation. And of course there is an R against your names on the Clio's books: you are technically deserters. I cannot take you on my quarterdeck. But if you wish I will enter you on the books, rating you able.'

  'Thank you, sir,' they said, very faintly.

  'The notion of the lower deck don't please you?' said Jack. 'Very well. I am not short-handed and I shall not press you. Nor shall I take you up as deserters. You may go ashore in the next boat.'

  'We had much rather stay, sir, if you please,' they said

  'Very well,' said Jack. 'Of course life on the lower deck is hard and rough, as you know very well, but the Nutmeg has a decent set of people, and if you keep quiet, do your duty and do not top it the knob—above all do not top it the knob—you will have quite a good time what is more, you will come to understand the service through and through. Many a good man has started his career as a rating or has been turned before the mast when he was a midshipman and has ended by hoisting his flag. Killick! Killick, there. Pass the word for Mr Fielding. Mr Fielding, Oakes and Miller here will be entered on the ship's books, rated as able. They will belong to the starboard watch and be stationed in the foretop. Purser's steward will issue slops, beds, hammocks, under Mr Adams' supervision.'

  'Aye aye, sir,' said Fielding

  'Thank you very much, sir,' said Oakes and Miller, their distress concealed, or rather attempted to be concealed, by a decent appearance of gratitude.

  On Thursday Ahmed came into Stephen's cabin with a conscious expression and a prepared speech in his mouth; he knelt, struck his forehead on the deck, and begged leave to depart. He was languishing for his family and his village; it had always been understood that he should return to Java with the tuan; and now the ship was about to leave for an unknown world, a worse England. As a farewell present he had brought the tuan a trilobate betel box in which he might carry his coca-leaves, and a wig, a poor thing, but the best the island could produce.

  Stephen expected this, particularly as Ahmed had been seen leading out a Sumatran beauty; having given him leave to go he added a small purse of johannes, those broad Portuguese gold pieces, and wrote him a handsome testimonial in case he should wish to be employed again. They parted on excellent terms, and Stephen wore the wig, adequately powdered, to the Governor's dinner.

  The meal ran its pleasant course, and although Jack and Stephen were the only men invited, Mrs Raffles had asked no less than four Dutch ladies to keep them company, Dutch ladies moderately fluent in English who had contrived to keep their delicate complexions in the climate of Batavia, and whose bulk had not diminished either, nor their merriment. For the first time in his life Stephen found that he and Rubens were of one mind, particularly as their generous décolletés and their diaphanous gowns showed expanses of that nacreous Rubens flesh that had so puzzled him before. The nacreous flesh did in fact exist: and it excited desire. The notion of being in bed with one of these cheerful exuberant creatures quite troubled him for a moment, and he regretted Mrs Raffles' signal, at which they all departed, while the men gathered at the end of the table.

  'Aubrey,' said the Governor, 'I dare say Maturin has told you how he receiv
ed my suggestion of detaching the Kestrel as far as the Passage when she comes in?'

  'Yes, sir, he did,' said Jack, smiling.

  'I am sure he was right; but he was speaking as a man primarily concerned with the political aspect, and I should like to hear the opinion of a sailor, a fighting captain.'

  'Well, sir, from the purely tactical view I should much regret having the sloop in company. Her presence might well mean that there would be no engagement at all. The Cornélie, seeing us hull-down, in poor light, might easily over-estimate the Kestrel's strength—she is after all ship-rigged—and sheer off, never to be seen again. But above all the sloop is not due for several days and even then she would surely have to refit and water and take in stores; and every day means the loss of one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles of casting with the present breeze. As for the rest, the political or what I might even call the spiritual side, I thoroughly agree with Maturin: the more the French navy can be persuaded that they are always to be beat, the less likely they are ever to win. So with your permission, sir, I mean to slip my moorings within five minutes of taking leave of Mrs Raffles, and once I have sunk the land, to stand eastwards under all the sail she can carry.'

  'My dear,' said the Governor in the drawing-room, 'we must not keep Captain Aubrey for more than the ritual cup of coffee. He is fairly pawing the ground—he is all eagerness to stand eastwards and persuade the French that they are always to be beat.'

  'Before he goes,' said Mrs Raffles, 'he must tell me what he has done with those poor unfortunate young men. It quite used to make my heart bleed when I saw them hanging about the Chinese market, looking so wan and shabby and sad: it would have grieved their mothers past expression.'

  'I took them aboard, ma'am, but not on my quarterdeck: before the mast.'