The Nutmeg of Consolation

by Patrick O'Brian

  'So he told me: he told Captain Aubrey and me at once. I am afraid people are tactful: avert their eyes without any questions and look no more.'

  'I am afraid they do. But tell me, tell me, what have you been doing all this time, and what have you seen, apart from the orang-utang?'

  Stephen smiled at him, and as he smiled so the events of these past months presented themselves scarcely as a sequence but more nearly as a whole. From them he picked what was proper to tell, together with the inward reflexion 'What are the three things that cannot be concealed? Love, sorrow, and wealth are the three things that cannot be concealed: and intelligence-work comes a very close fourth' and the realization that these mental processes had occupied no more than two rolls of the ship, magnified in space up here but clearly not in time. 'You must know,' said he, 'that Captain Aubrey was called back to England to be fully reinstated and to take command of the Diane. She was to carry an envoy to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, who was contemplating an alliance with the French; and since this island—oh such orchids and coleoptera, Martin, apart from my celestial ape and the unimaginably huge rhinoceros!—lies in the South China Sea, almost across the path of our Indiamen coming from Canton, and where should we be without our rhubarb and tea, God preserve us, the envoy's mission was to induce the Sultan to change his mind. It was thought useful that I should go too, speaking French and having some knowledge of Malay as well as medicine. And so we went, sailing as fast as ever we could, making only one stop, at Tristan da Cunha; but that was very nearly our last, the ship being heaved nearer and nearer and nearer a sheer wall of rock by rollers topmast high and never a breath of wind to give us motion. I assure you however we survived it, and I even set foot on Tristan, flattering myself I should see wonders while they were watering and taking in greenstuff. It will not surprise you to learn that I was snatched away within hours, within hours, on the plea that they must not lose some favourable conjuncture of wind, tide or the like. Then the far southern ocean, and there at last I had albatrosses, giant petrels, stink-pots, pintadoes: but at such a cost! Monstrous billows, an incessant shrieking wind that allowed human thought and speech only when we were in the vast deep hollow of the wave; and then ice; ice on the deck, ice on the ropes, ice-mountains in the sea of most prodigious size and I must confess prodigious beauty that threatened to do us in as the seamen say; so Captain Aubrey directed our course to more Christian seas and I was in great hopes of seeing Amsterdam Island, a remote and uninhabited speck untouched by any naturalist, its flora, fauna and geology wholly undescribed. I saw it indeed, but only far to windward, and the ship carried on under a press of sail for Java Head.'

  The sun had set in its usual abrupt tropical manner soon after they had made themselves comfortable: night had swept over the sky, showing the eastern stars after the few minutes of twilight, and now on the larboard beam a glowing planet heaved up on the horizon, lying there for a moment like the stern-lantern of some important ship. Martin was a man of peace; Maturin, with certain qualifications, was in principle opposed to violence; yet both had absorbed so much of the man-of-war's and even more the letter of marque's predatory values that they fell silent, staring like tigers at the planet until it rose clear of the sea and betrayed its merely celestial character.

  'I must ask Captain Aubrey the name of that prodigious star,' said Stephen. 'He is sure to know,' and as it were in answer to these words they heard Jack tuning his violin far below. 'I shall pass over Java and the great kindness of Governor Raffles, a most distinguished naturalist, for the now, though I shall show you some of my specimens when we can find a table free—did you know there was a Java peacock? God help me, I never did: a famous proud bird he is too—and shall only observe that we reached Pulo Prabang; that our envoy outwitted the French, although they were there before us; and that he induced the Sultan to sign a treaty of alliance with Great Britain. Happily all this took some time—would that it had been longer by far!—in which I had the inestimable good fortune of becoming acquainted with Dr van Buren, of whom you may have heard.'

  'The great Dutch authority on the spleen?'

  'The same. But his interests spread far beyond.'

  'To the pancreas, the thyroid?'

  'Even farther. There is nothing in the animal or vegetable kingdoms that does not arouse his eager deeply-informed curiosity. It was to him that I owed my introduction to an inconceivably remote Paradise inhabited by Buddhist monks where the birds and beasts have no fear of men—have never been harmed—and where I walked hand in hand with an amiable aged female orang-utang.'

  'Oh, oh, Maturin!'

  'And other wonders that I have noted down; but if I should tell you a half of them, and show you the half of my specimens, with remarks, we should still be talking when we reach New South Wales; and I have not yet heard a word from you. Let me just close my summary by telling you that we sailed off in triumph with our treaty, that we cruised at one of the points of rendezvous without success, and that in the course of our return to Batavia the Diane struck an uncharted reef—there are many in that uncomfortable sea, it appears—ran on to it by night and at the very height of flood. We could not pull her off; but there being an island fairly close at hand we carried most of our possessions to it in rowing-boats, formed a military camp and sat down, tolerably easy in our minds, to wait for the next spring-tide, which, as you probably know, depends on the moon. We were tolerably easy, because our well supplied us with water and the woods with boar; while the island was not without interest, being inhabited by ring-tailed apes, two sorts of pig, sus babirussa and barbatus, and numerous colonies of the so-called bird's-nest-soup swallow, which I am sorry to say is not a swallow at all but only a dwarvish species of oriental swift. The envoy, however, did not wait for us to settle: he was eager to return with his treaty, and Captain Aubrey gave him the new launch with adequate stores and crew for the voyage to Batavia, a voyage of no more than two hundred miles that would have been no great matter but for a typhoon that destroyed our ship on its reef and certainly overwhelmed the open boat. We were building a schooner from the wreckage when a horde of ill-favoured raparees attacked us—Dyaks and Malays led by a nasty confident quean, a bloody-minded covetous froward strumpet. They killed many of our people, but we killed more of theirs: they burnt our schooner, the thieves, as they left, but we destroyed their proa entirely with one brilliant ball from the Captain's long nine. Then it was the anxious time, with the boar so thin on the ground and barely a ring-tailed ape at all; but, however, a junk that put in for bird's nests carried us back to Batavia, where Governor Raffles gave us that charming ship the Nutmeg in which you found us. There. Those are the essentials, which I hope to fill with notes and specimens as we sail along. Now pray tell me what you have done and what you have seen.'

  'Well,' said Martin, 'although I have not seen an orang-utang, my journey has not been without its interesting moments. You may recall that last time we had the happiness of walking in the Brazilian forest I was bitten by an owl-faced night-ape.'

  'Certainly I do. How you bled!'

  'This time I was bitten by a tapir, and bled even more.'

  'A tapir, for all love?'

  'A young striped and spotted tapir, Tapirus americanus. I saw his huge dark-brown distracted mother at the turn of a little sort of track or path by the river. She rushed wildly into the water below and was seen no more. I found that he was caught in a pitfall, and when with infinite pains I had seized him and hoisted him to the edge, he bit me. If there were any light I should show you the scar. And before I could get out of the pit a band of Indians came up, no doubt those that had dug it; and they reproached me very bitterly, stabbing the air with their spears. I was exceedingly uneasy, so uneasy that I hardly felt the pain; but happily a party from the ship appeared, and one of the seamen who spoke Portuguese gave them a piece of tobacco and desired them to go about their business. But it comes to me that one of the party was Wilkins, whose broken arm you saw in the sick-berth: may I break off for
a moment and ask what you thought of him?'

  'It seemed to me an ordinary distal radius-ulna transverse fracture with some lateral displacement effectively reduced: the kind of break you would expect from a fall. But as it was dressed according to the Basra method I did not see much of the arm. When did it take place?'

  'Three weeks ago; and it is not yet knit, nor beginning to knit. The ends are closely approximated—there is crepitus—but there is no union.'

  'You suspect scurvy, I collect? Sure, that is a usual sign, though by no means infallible. And incipient scurvy would in part account for John Brampton's extreme lowness of spirits. Are we out of juice?'

  'No. But I opened a new keg no great while ago, and I doubt its quality. We bought it in Buenos Aires.'

  'I have a net of fresh lemons and an elegant private keg, wholly reliable, which will do for some months. But as Captain Aubrey does not intend to touch at New Guinea, and as the voyage is long, we may ask him to steer in time for a convenient, well-charted, well-stocked island.'

  Eight bells below them and the watch was mustered—loud, unmistakable calls, hoots and pipes.

  'Lord,' cried Stephen, 'I shall be late again. Will you sup with us?'

  'Thank you: you are very good, but I must beg to be excused this time,' said Martin, looking through the lubber's hole with some anxiety. 'We shall have to climb down in the dark.'

  'So we must,' said Stephen. 'If it were not for my engagement I should as soon have stayed up here, so soft and gentle a night, with no fear of the moonpall or of falling damps.'

  'If we had a little dark lantern we could see better,' said Martin.

  'Truer word was never spoke,' said Stephen. 'I do not like to call for one however; it might seem unseamanlike.'

  'It was this very top Wilkins fell from when he broke his arm. It is true he was drunk at the time, but the height is much the same.'

  'Come, let us show more than Roman fortitude,' said Stephen. 'Gravity will help us, and perhaps Saint Brendan.' He let himself down through the hole, his feet groping for the ratlines, very narrow up here, where the shrouds were crowded in so close. His toe found one, far, far down, and he let go the rim; but he did so without considering that he should have waited for the roll to swing him in towards the mast. For a moment as disagreeable as any his hands clawed the empty darkness: they did in fact seize a shroud, the aftermost of all, for he had not waited for the pitch either. He clung there long enough to be able to answer with an even voice when Martin, who being on the other side had profited by the roll, asked him how he did: 'Perfectly well, I thank you.'

  'Forgive me if I am a little late,' he said, walking into the smell of toasted cheese. 'I am just come from the mizzentop.'

  'Not at all,' said Jack. 'As you see, I have not waited for you.'

  'I was in the mizzentop from before sunset until a couple of minutes ago.'

  'Yes,' said Jack. 'Should you like some wine, or shall you wait for the punch?'

  'Considering my excesses at dinner and the state of the wine in this climate, I believe I shall confine myself to punch, to a very moderate dose of punch. What an elegant toasted-cheese dish. Have I seen it before?'

  'No. This is the first time it has been out of its box. I had ordered it from the man in Dublin you recommended, and I picked it up when we were last at the cottage. Then I forgot all about it.'

  Stephen lifted the lid and there were six several dishes, sizzling gently over a spirit-lamp under the outer shell, the whole gleaming from Killick's devoted hand. He turned it this way and that, admiring the workmanship, and said 'It is the long road you have come, Jack, that you can forget a hundred guineas or so.'

  'Lord, yes,' said Jack. 'Lord, we were so miserably poor! I remember how you came back to that house in Hampstead with a fine beef-steak wrapped in a cabbage-leaf, and how happy we were.'

  They talked of their poverty—bailiffs—arrest for debt—sponging-houses—fears of more arrests—various expedients—but presently, when these, considerations of wealth and poverty, the wheel of fortune and so on had been dealt with, the zest and cheerfulness went out of the conversation; and after his second dish of cheese Stephen became aware of a certain constraint in his friend. The frank hearty laugh was heard no more; Jack's eyes were directed more at the massive gun that shared the cabin with them than at Stephen's face. Silence fell, as much silence as could fall in a ship making eight knots, with the water singing along her hull, her troubled wake streaming, and all her standing and running rigging together with its countless blocks uttering their particular notes in a general volume of sound.

  Out of this silence Jack said 'I went round the ship this afternoon to ask our shipmates how they did, and I noticed that they were many of them older than when I saw them last. That made me think perhaps I was older too; and when you spoke of the barky as an aged man-of-war it quite put me about. And yet it was absurd in me to toss all these together in one gloomy pot; for although the Sethians may have grown beards a yard long, and although no doubt I ought to wear lean and slippery pantaloons, a ship and a man are different things.'

  'Is that right, brother?'

  'Yes, it is: you may not think so, but they are quite different. The Surprise is not old. Look at Victory. She is tolerably spry, I believe. Nobody would call her old, I believe. But she was built years before the Surprise. Look at the Royal William. You know the William, Stephen? I have pointed her out many and many a time among the hulks at Pompey. A first-rate of one hundred and ten guns.'

  'Sure I remember. A dreadful-looking object.'

  'That is only because of the uses she has been put to. It is her heart and life I am talking about: her timbers are as sound as the day she was built, or sounder: you run your knife into one of her knees and it will bend or break in your goddam hand; and I saw a length of one of her shrouds, when the worming and service were taken off, perfectly sound too. White untarred cordage, and perfectly sound. And the Royal William was laid down in 1676. Sixteen seventy-six. No, no; perhaps the Surprise is not one of your gimcrack modern craft, flung together with unseasoned timber by contract in some hole-in-the-corner yard: she may have been built some time ago, but she is not old. And you know—who better?—the improvements that have been carried out: diagonal bracing, reinforced knees, sheathing . . .'

  'You speak quite passionately, my dear: protectively, as if I had said something disagreeable about your wife.'

  'That is because I do in fact feel passionate and protective. I have known this ship so many years, man and boy, that I do not like to hear her blackguarded.'

  'Jack, when I said aged I referred only to the generations, or ages, of filth that have accumulated below; I did not mean to blackguard her any more than I should blackguard dear Sophie, God forbid.'

  'Well,' said Jack, 'I am sorry I flew out. I am sorry I spoke so chuff. My tongue took the bit between its teeth, so I was laid by the lee again; which is very absurd, because I had meant to be particularly winning and agreeable. I had meant to say that yes, there was a hundred tons of shingle ballast down there that should have been changed long ago; and after having admitted so much and said that we intended to open the sweetening-cock and pump her cleaner, I was to go on and ask whether you would consider selling her to me. It would give me so much pleasure.'

  Stephen was chewing a large, rebellious piece of cheese. As it went down at last he said indistinctly, 'Very well, Jack.' And covertly looking at the decently-restrained delight on his friend's face he wondered 'How, physically speaking, do his eyes assume this much intenser blue?'

  They shook hands on it, and Jack said 'We have not talked about her price: do you choose to name it now, or had you rather reflect?'

  'You shall give me what I gave,' said Stephen. 'How much it was I do not at present recall, but Tom Pullings will tell us. He bid for me.'

  Jack nodded. 'We will ask him in the morning: he is deadbeat now.' And raising his voice, 'Killick!'

  'Sir?' answered Killick, appearing within the seco
nd.

  'Bring the Doctor the best punch-bowl and everything necessary; then clear away his 'cello and my fiddle in the great cabin, and place the music-stands.'

  'Punch-bowl it is, sir; and the kettle is already on the boil,' said Killick, almost laughing as he spoke.

  'And Killick,' said Stephen, 'instead of the lemons, pray bring up the smaller keg from my cabin: you may take it from its sailcloth jacket.'

  The bowl appeared, together with its handsome ladle; then a long pause before Killick could be heard stumping along the half-deck. From the peevish oaths it was clear that one of his mates was giving him a hand, but he came in alone clasping the keg to his belly. 'Put it on the locker, Killick,' said Stephen.

  'Which I never knew you had it,' said Killick with an odd mixture of admiration and resentment as he stood away from the barrel, oak with polished copper bands and on its head the stamp Bronte XXX with an engraved plate below To that eminent physician Dr Stephen Maturin, whose abilities are surpassed only by the gratitude of those who have benefited from them: Clarence.

  'Bronte!' cried Jack. 'Can it be . . .?'

  'It can indeed. This is triple-refined Sicilian juice from his own estate, a present from Prince William. I had meant to keep it for Trafalgar Day, but seeing this is a special occasion perhaps we may draw off an ounce or so and drink the immortal memory tonight.'

  The steaming bowl, the melted sugar, the heady smell of arrack; and as Stephen stirred in his concentrated lemon-juice he said 'I must tell you that there may possibly be some hint of scurvy aboard your ship. It was Martin that noticed it first, to my shame, the valuable man.'

  'Certainly. All hands say how lucky we are to have him.'

  'He suggested, and I heartily concur, that we should steer for some fruitful island. There is no urgent necessity, with what I have brought with me; but from the medical point of view we should certainly have a relief at some half-way stage, if ever you can find one in the limitless ocean.'