Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  A dozen black slaves were found shut in the Alastor's orlop, as well as a few wretched little rouged and scented boys; and they were put to throwing the dead over the side. Long before they reached his part of the deck Jack Aubrey heaved himself from beneath three bodies and one desperately wounded man. 'It was as bloody a little set-to as ever I have seen,' he said to Pullings, sitting by him on the coaming, trying to staunch the flow from his wound and dabbing at his bloody eye. 'How are you, Tom?' he asked again. 'And how is the ship?'

  Chapter Six

  'It would be only with the greatest reluctance that I should consent to leave you,' said Stephen, sitting there in the Franklin's cabin.

  'It is most obliging of you to say so, replied Jack with a hint of testiness, 'and I take it very kindly; but we have been through this many times and once again I am obliged to point out that you have no choice in the matter. You must go into Callao with the others as soon as everything is ready.'

  'I do not like your eye, and I do not like your leg,' said Stephen. 'As for the scalp-wound, though spectacular it is of no great consequence. I dare say it will hurt for some weeks and your hair will go white for an inch or two on either side; but I do not think you need fear any complications.'

  'It still makes me stupid and fretful at times,' said Jack, and then with the slightly false air of one who is deliberately changing the subject, 'Stephen, should Sam come aboard—of course it is very unlikely—why should he indeed, or even still be in Peru? But should he come aboard, pray give him my love, tell him that I hope to bring the Franklin in, and that we should be very happy if he would dine with us. And for the moment, I mean if he should come, which I doubt, please ask him what we can do with the blacks we took in Alastor. They are not seamen in any sense of the term and they are really no use to us at all. But they were slaves, and Peru is a slave country; so I do not like to put them ashore, where they may be seized and sold. I particularly dislike it since having been aboard an English ship they are now, as I understand it, free men. Quite how this squares with the slave-trade I cannot tell, but that is how I understand the law.'

  'Sure, you are right: there was that case in Naples, where some slaves came aboard a man-of-war and wrapped themselves in the ensign. They were never given up. And in any case Government abolished the trade in the year seven. The law may be disobeyed; slavers may still sail. But they do so illegally, since Government certainly abolished the vile traffic.'

  'Did they indeed? I was not aware. Where were we in the year seven?' He pondered for a while on the year seven, tracing back voyage after voyage, and then he said, 'By the by, I am sending in the Frenchmen who do not choose to carry on with us and who are not seamanlike enough for us to keep—I promised to pay them off in Callao, you remember—and now I come to think of it there is one in this ship'—they were sitting in the cabin of the Franklin, to which Jack had removed—'who was an apothecary's assistant in New Orleans. He wished to stay, and he might be of some use to you, short-handed as you are. Martin found him quite helpful, I believe.'

  'Then you must certainly keep him,' said Stephen.

  'No,' said Jack in a determined voice. 'Killick has looked after me, under your orders, ever since before the peace. This man's name is Fabien. I shall send him over.' Stephen knew that argument would be useless; he said nothing, and Jack went on, 'I shall be sending a whole parcel of them over, those who wish to go.'

  'You would never be sending Dutourd, at all?' cried Stephen.

  'I had thought of doing so, yes,' said Jack. 'He sent me a polite little note, asking leave to make his adieux, thanking us for our kindness and undertaking not to serve again.'

  'From my point of view it might be impolitic,' said Stephen.

  Jack looked at him, saw that the matter had to do with intelligence and nodded. 'Are there any others you would object to?' he asked. 'Adams will show you a list.'

  'Never a one, my dear,' said Stephen, and he looked at the opening door.

  'If you please, sir,' said Reade, 'Captain Pullings sends his compliments, and all is laid along.'

  'The Doctor will be with you directly,' said Captain Aubrey.

  'In five minutes,' said Dr Maturin. He lifted the bandage over Jack's eye: he looked at the pike-wound. 'You must swear by Sophie's head to suffer Killick to dress both these places with their respective lotions and pommades before breakfast, before dinner, and before retiring: I have given him precise instructions. Swear.'

  'I swear,' said Jack, holding up his right hand. 'He will grow absolutely insupportable, as usual. And Stephen, pray give Martin my most particular compliments. It was noble of him to try to come on deck to bury our people: I have never seen a man look so like death: gaunt, grey, sunken. He could barely stand.'

  'It was not only weakness: he has lost his sense of balance entirely. I do not think he will regain it. He must leave the sea.'

  'So you told me. Leave the sea . . . poor fellow, poor fellow. But I quite understand; and he must certainly go home. Now, brother, your boat has been hooked on this age. You will be much better by yourself for a while. I am afraid I have been like a bear in a whore's bed these last few days.'

  'Not at all, not at all: quite the reverse.'

  'As for Dutourd, Adams will reply to his note saying it is regretted his request cannot be complied with and he is required to remain aboard the Franklin. Compliments, of course, and a civil word about accommodation. And Stephen, one last word. Have you any notion of how long your business will keep you on shore? Forgive me if I am indiscreet.'

  'If it is not over in a month it will not be over at all,' said Stephen. 'But I will leave word in the ship. God bless, now.'

  The ships were not to part until the sun was low, in the first place because Captain Aubrey had to speak at some length to the other commanders and redistribute the crews and in the second because he wished to deceive a remote sail on the western horizon, a potential quarry. He intended this distant ship to suppose that an unhurried convoy slowly heading east by south, often peaceably gossiping alongside, would carry straight on to Callao, and he did not intend to make the signal to part company until the stranger's topgallants were out of sight even from the main jack-crosstrees.

  Long before this time however Dr Maturin had to attend to his duties as the frigate's surgeon. Having regained the Surprise he stood for a while at the taffrail, looking aft along the line of ships: the Alastor, thinly manned but unharmed in masts and rigging and now almost clean; the whaler, in much the same case; and the Franklin, her wounded bowsprit now repaired with spars from the four-master: a fine array of yards and canvas, and the kind of tail that had so often followed the Surprise, that predatory ship, into various ports.

  'I beg pardon, sir,' said Sarah, just behind him, 'but Padeen says will you be long at all?'

  After a moment she tugged his coat and speaking rather louder said, 'I beg pardon, sir; Padeen wonders will you ever be a great while surely not for the love of God.'

  'I am with you, child,' said Stephen, gathering his wits. 'I thought I heard a sea-lion bark.' He plunged down to the sick-berth, tolerably fetid still in spite of double windsails, although it was not so crowded as it had been in the first few days after the battle, when he could hardly step between his patients, and they laid here and there about the orlop. Padeen, his loblolly-boy, was as kind and gentle a creature as ever came from Munster, and long use had not blunted his humanity; he was weeping now over a wretched man from the Alastor who having fallen out of his cot was lying there on his shattered arm, wedged under a helpless neighbour and resisting all attempts at help by clinging with maniac force to a ring-bolt. He was indeed out of his mind, not only because of the terrifying end of the battle and the horrible future, but also because his fever had now almost drowned what little reason he had left. However, what Padeen's kindness and great though cautious strength and the little girls' expostulation could not do, Dr Maturin's cool authority accomplished, and with the wretched man restored to his bed, fastened to i
t, his hopeless wound re-dressed, Stephen began his long and weary round. There had been few survivors from the Alastor and of those few three had already died of their injuries; most of the rest swore they were prisoners, and certainly they had taken no part in the fight, having crammed themselves unarmed into the manger or the forepeak.

  All the others were his shipmates, men he had known and liked for many voyages, sometimes for as long as he had been in the Navy. Bonden's great cutlass-slash, which had called for such anxious sewing, was doing well, but there were cases where he saw the probable necessity for resection—foresaw it and its dangers with a grief increased by the seamen's total, unfounded confidence in his powers, and by their gratitude for his treatment.

  A wearing round, and it should have been followed by his visits forward, to the little berths where the warrant-officers slept: Mr Smith, the gunner, was not aboard the Franklin and Stephen had put Mr Grainger into his place, as more suitable for a wounded man than his official cabin aft. He was on his way there, accompanied by Sarah carrying basin, lint, bandages, when as they passed through the checkered shafts of daylight coming down from the deck they heard the call, 'Signal for parting company, sir,' and Pullings' reply, 'Acknowledge and salute.'

  'Oh sir,' cried Sarah, 'may we run up and look?'

  'Very well,' said Stephen, 'But put down your basin and the lint, and walk soberly.'

  The ships separated with the smooth inevitability of a sea-parting, slow at first, still within calling-distance, and then, if one's attention were distracted for a few moments by a bird, a floating patch of seaweed, the gap had grown to a mile and one's friends' faces were no longer to be made out, for with the warm steady southerly breeze ships sailing in opposite directions drew apart at fifteen or sixteen knots, even with no topgallants abroad.

  The Franklin, Captain Aubrey, headed west to cruise upon the enemy until he should hear that the Surprise had been docked and was now fit for a passage of the Horn, that the prizes had been disposed of, and above all that Stephen, having accomplished what he had set out to do, was ready to go home. The Franklin would, he hoped with reasonable confidence, send in prizes from time to time; but in any event he had a fine half-decked schooner-rigged launch belonging to the Alastor that could be dispatched from well out in the offing to fetch stores and news from Callao.

  The Surprise, Captain Pullings, on the other hand, stood a little south of east for Peru, whose prodigious mountains were already said to be visible from the masthead and whose strange cold north-flowing current was undoubtedly present; and in duty bound her two prizes sailed after her, each at two cable's lengths.

  The sun set, with the Franklin clear on the horizon, and it left a golden sky of such beauty that Stephen felt a constriction in his throat. Sarah too was moved but she said nothing until they were below again, when she observed, 'I shall say seven Hail Marys every day until we see them again.'

  The bosun was their first patient. He had gone aboard the Alastor roaring drunk, and there pursuing a pair of enemies into the maintop he had fallen, landing in the waist of the ship on to a variety of weapons. He was a mass of cuts and abrasions: yet it was a great wrench where his leg had caught in the catharpins that kept him from his duty. He was drunk again now, and he endeavoured to disguise his state by saying as little as possible, and that very carefully, and by directing his breath down towards the deck. They dressed his many places, Sarah with something less than her habitual tenderness—she hated drunkenness and her disapproval filled the little cabin, making the bosun simper in a nervous, placating manner—and when he was bound up they parted, Sarah to go back to the sick-berth and Stephen to call on Mr Grainger, who had been brought down by a musket-shot: the ball had followed one of those strange indirect courses so unlike the path of a rifle-bullet and after a prolonged search Stephen had found it lodged, visibly pulsating, just in contact with the subclavian artery. The wound was healing prettily, and Stephen congratulated Grainger on having flesh as clean and sweet as a child's; yet although the patient smiled and made a handsome acknowledgement of the Doctor's care it was plain that he had something on his mind.

  'Vidal came over from the Franklin to see me a little while ago,' he said, 'and he was in a great taking about Mr Dutourd. He had heard that Mr D's request to be sent in to Callao with the other Frenchmen had been refused. As you know, Vidal and his friends think the world of Mr Dutourd; they admire his sentiments on freedom and equality and no tithes—no interference with worship. Freedom! See how he spoke up for those poor unfortunate blacks out of the Alastor, offering to pay the Jamaica price out of his own pocket for their liberty, pay it down on the capstan-head for the general prize-fund.'

  'Did he, indeed?'

  'Yes, sir, he did. So Vidal and his relations—most of the Knipperdollings are cousins in some degree or another—are most uneasy at the thought of his being taken back to England and perhaps taken up before the Admiralty Court on a point of law and ending up at Execution Dock, hanged for a pirate, just because he did not have a piece of paper. Mr Dutourd a pirate? It makes no sense, Doctor. Those wicked men in the Alastor were pirates, not Mr Dutourd. They were the sort of people you see hanging in chains at Tilbury Point, a horrid warning to them as sails by; not Mr Dutourd, who is a learned man, and who loves his fellow-beings.'

  Grainger's drift was clear enough, and he could not be allowed to reach a direct request. Stephen had the medical man's recourse: during a pause for emphasis he desired Grainger to hold his breath, took his pulse, and having counted it, watch in hand, he said, 'Do you know we parted company an hour ago? I must go and tell Mr Martin: with this breeze I understand we should be in quite soon, and I should like to set him on dry land as early as possible.'

  'Parted company so soon?' cried Grainger. 'I never knew; nor did Vidal when he spoke to me this morning.' Then recovering himself, 'Mr Martin, of course. Pray give the poor gentleman my kind good-day. We were right moved to hear he had tried to creep on deck to bury our shipmates.'

  'Nathaniel Martin,' said Stephen, 'I am sorry to have left you so long untended.'

  'Not at all, not at all,' cried Martin. 'That good Padeen has been by, Emily brought me a cup of tea, and I have slept much of the time: I am indeed very much better.'

  'So I see,' said Stephen, bringing his lantern down to look into Martin's face. He then turned back the sheet. 'The disorders of the skin,' he observed, gently feeling the ugliest lesion, 'are perhaps the most puzzling in all medicine. Here is a sensible diminution within hours.'

  'I slept as I have not slept for—for Heaven knows how long, my body lying peacefully at last: no incessant irritation, no pain from the slightest pressure, no perpetual turning in vain for ease.'

  'There is nothing to be done without sleep,' said Stephen, and he continued with his examination. 'Yet,' said he, replacing the sheet, 'I shall be glad to set you on shore. Your skin may well be on the mend, but I am not at all satisfied with your heart or your lungs or your elimination; and from what you tell me the vertigo is as bad as ever, even worse. Firm land under foot may do wonders; and a vegetable diet. The same is to be said for several of our patients.'

  'We have so often known it to be the case,' said Martin. 'In parenthesis, may I tell you a strange thing? Some hours ago, as I was coming out of a blessed doze, I thought I heard a sea-lion bark, and my heart lifted with happiness, as it did when I was a boy, or even in New South Wales. How close are we to the shore?'

  'I cannot tell, but they said before we parted company—for the Captain is standing to the westward: he leaves you his particular compliments—that the Cordillera was distinctly to be seen from the masthead; and there may well be some rocky islands close at hand where sea-lions live. For my own part I have seen a file of pelicans, and they are not birds to go far from land.'

  'Very true. But pray tell me about the present state of the sick-berth. I am afraid you have been cruelly overworked.'

  They talked for a while about the recent incised, lacerated, punctured
and gun-shot wounds, the fractures simple, compound or comminuted that had come below, and Stephen's success or failure in dealing with them, speaking in an objective, professional manner. In a less detached tone Martin asked after the Captain. 'It is the eye that troubles me,' said Stephen. 'The pike-thrust is healing by first intention; the head-wound, though its stunning effect is still evident to a slight degree, is of no consequence; nor is the loss of blood. But the eye received the wad of the pistol-bullet that tore his scalp, a thick, gritty, partially disintegrated wad. I extracted many fragments and I believe there was no grave scoring of the cornea nor of course any penetration. But there is great and persistent hyperaemia and lachrymation . . .' He was about to say that 'such a patient was not to be relied upon—would double doses—would swallow them together with any quack panacea—would listen to the first cow-leech he might encounter', but he restrained himself and their conversation returned to the sick-berth as Martin had left it, to their old patients.

  'And how are Grant and MacDuff?' asked Martin.

  'Those who had the Vienna treatment? Grant died just before the action, and clearly I did not have time to open him: but I strongly suspect the corrosive sublimate. MacDuff is well enough for light duties, though his constitution is much shattered; I doubt his full recovery.'

  After a pause, and in an altered voice, Martin said, 'I must tell you that I too took the Vienna treatment.'

  'In what dose?'

  'I could find nothing in our authorities, so I based myself on the amount we used for our calomel draughts.'

  Stephen said nothing. The bolder Austrian physicians might administer a quarter of a grain of the sublimate: the usual dose of calomel was four.

  'Perhaps I was rash,' said Martin. 'But I was desperate; and the calomel and guaiacum seemed to do no good.'