Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  He reached his boat—the Doctor's skiff, newly painted green—shoved off and made his way through some small-craft setting lobster-pots. He had noticed a good many a mile or so off-shore, fishing in their primitive way. Slab-sided objects, and some of them mere dug-out canoes. There was not a seaman among them, and at no time did he pay any attention to their more or less facetious cries of 'Spik English, yis, yis,' 'Marrano,' 'Heretico pálido.'

  One particularly obstinate bugger, a good way off, in a disgraceful battered old thing almost the size of a man-of-war's longboat but only pulling three lackadaisical oars, kept barking like a comic sea-lion, on and on, anything for a laugh. Pullings frowned and rowed a little faster, his head turned from the distant boat, a craft of no known form, with bits and pieces dangling over the gunwale. He was after all a commander, R.N., by courtesy called Captain; and he was not to be barked at by a parcel of seals.

  As his pace increased so the sea-lions began to bawl out all together—a pitiful exhibition and much too hoarse to be amusing—but as the sudden clamour died away a single disgusted voice, not very loud, came clear across the quiet water: 'Oh the fucking sod.'

  That was no native cry, no heathen mockery: that was a naval expression, familiar to him from childhood, and uttered in a naval voice. He turned, and with a mixture of horror and delight he saw the massive form of his Captain heaving up for a final hail, clinging to the stump of a mast; and he recognized the shattered hull of the Alastor's launch.

  Having whipped the skiff round and come alongside he wasted no time in asking what had happened or telling them they looked terrible, but gave them his bottle of cold tea—they were almost speechless from thirst, lips black, faces inhuman—passed a line and began towing the launch towards the shore.

  He rowed with prodigious force, rising on the stretcher and pulling so that the sculls creaked and bent under his hands. He had never seen the Captain look more destroyed, not even after the Master action: the bloody bandage over his eye had something to do with it, but quite apart from that his bearded face was thin and drawn, barely recognizable, and he moved with difficulty, like an old man, heaving slowly on his oar. From the skiff Pullings looked straight into the launch: the Captain, Darky Johnson and Bonden were doing what they could, labouring with uneven sweeps, roughly shaped from broken spars; Killick was bailing; Joe Plaice and young Ben were stretched out, motionless. The two boats scarcely seemed to move; there were nearly three miles to go, and at this rate they would not be able to go half-way before the ebb set in, carrying them far out to sea.

  Yet the Surprise, lying there in the road, had three midshipmen aboard, and what they lacked in intelligence they made up for in physical activity. Reade, having but one arm, could no longer go skylarking, hurling himself about the upper rigging regardless of gravity, but his messmates Norton and Wedell would hoist him by an easy purchase to astonishing heights, and from these, having still one powerful hand and legs that could twist round any rope, he would plunge with infinite satisfaction. He was at the masthead, negligently holding the starboard main topgallant shrouds with the intention of sliding straight down the whole length of the topgallant backstay, well over a hundred feet, when his eye, wandering towards San Lorenzo, caught the odd spectacle of a very small boat trying to tow a much larger one. Even at this distance the very small boat looked surprisingly like the Doctor's pea-green skiff. Leaning down he called, 'Norton.' 'Ho,' replied his friend. 'Be a decent cove for once and send me up my glass.'

  Norton, an invariably decent cove, did more than that: he swarmed aloft like an able-bodied baboon, begged Reade to shift over and make room on his tiny foothold, unslung the telescope and handed it over, all this with no more gasping than if he had walked up one pair of stairs. Reade using a telescope from the masthead was a sight to turn a landsman pale: he had to pull the tubes right out, twist his one arm through the shrouds, set the small end to his eye and bring all into focus by a steady pressure. Norton was used to it however and he only said, 'Let's have a go, mate, when you've done: don't be all bloody night.'

  Reade's reply was a hail as loud as his breaking voice could make it. 'On deck, there. On deck. Mr Grainger, sir. Right on the beam. Captain Pullings is trying to tow the Alastor's launch. Launch all mangled: something cruel. They are bailing: in a bad way. Captain is pulling, and I can make out Bonden, but . . .'

  The rest was drowned in the vehement cry of all hands and the launching of boats regardless of new paint not yet dry.

  The Alastor's launch and the skiff came alongside under the larboard chains, Bonden mechanically hooked on; and as hands ran down with the man-ropes Pullings came scrambling aft to help his Captain go aboard. 'Where is the Doctor?' asked Jack, looking up at the rail.

  'He's ashore, sir, and has been these five or six days: he sent to say he was a-naturalizing in the mountains.'

  'Very good,' said Jack, strangely disappointed, aware of an emptiness. He managed to get up the side with a shove, but only just. Even in his present state he loved his ship and he was heartily glad to be alive and aboard her again, but he could not cope with the quarterdeck's awed congratulations nor with the open amazement of all hands before the mast. He went as steadily as he could down the companion ladder and to his cabin, and when he had drunk four pints of water—more, he thought vaguely, would amount to that excess so fatal to cows, horses and sheep—he looked at Plaice and Ben in their hammocks, washed the filth from his person, threw off his clothes, ate six eggs with soft-tack, followed by a whole water-melon, and stretched out on his cot, his eyes closing as his head went down.

  A little after sunset he climbed up from a bottomless sleep, in a ship as silent as the grave, the light fading fast. He gathered himself into the present, collecting the immediate past, thanked God for his delivery, and then said, 'But what's amiss? Am I really here and alive?' He moved, feeling himself: the weakness was authentic, so was his gummed-up, itching eye and his unshaven face. So was his consuming thirst. 'Ahoy, there,' he called, but without much conviction.

  'Sir?' cried Grimble, Killick's mate.

  'Light along a jug of water, just tinged with wine.' And when he had drained it he asked, gasping, 'Why is the ship so quiet? No bells, Is anyone dead?'

  'No, sir. But Captain Pullings said any sod as woke you should have a hundred lashes.'

  Jack nodded and said, 'Let me have some warm water, and pass the word for Padeen and the Doctor's young man.'

  They came, but a grim, bent Killick came hobbling in with them and for a moment Jack thought he would have to top it the Tartar, which he could hardly bear: he had underestimated their kindness, however, for without any wrangling they divided the task. Padeen, the acknowledged surgical dresser, very gently removed the soaking bandage; Fabien replaced the exhausted salves with others from the medicine-chest; Killick applied them, stating that as far as he could see in this light the eye had not suffered but that he would give a considered judgement come the morning; and Padeen dressed the place again. 'Will I shave you at all, sir dear?' he asked. 'Sure you would lay . . . lay . . .'

  'More easy,' said Killick.

  Shaved and looking almost like a man that might live, Jack received Pullings at the setting of the watch. 'How do you feel, sir?' asked Tom in a hushed voice.

  'Pretty well, I thank you,' said Jack. 'But tell me, have you had any word of Dutourd?'

  'Dutourd? No, sir,' said Tom, amazed.

  'He has contrived to run, stowing away either in the launch or possibly the Alastor herself. The Doctor told me to keep him aboard, and we must get him back.'

  'How shall we set about it, sir?' asked Pullings.

  'That indeed is a question. Perhaps the Doctor will come back tonight. Perhaps I shall be cleverer in the morning. But meanwhile, how does the barky come to look so trim and spry? How does she come to be out of the yard so soon?'

  'Why, sir,' said Pullings, laughing. 'We were all very much at sea, our notions all ahoo. When the shipwrights had her clear, all we found was a
stretch of copper clean gone, not much bigger than that table—a whale, no doubt. But the worm had been at it quite amazingly. It still kept the water out, more or less, but all the members around it worked something horrid in anything of a sea. They cut the whole piece back to sound wood, replaced it as pretty as ever Pompey could have done, and clapped on new copper twice as thick as ours. There were those few knees that we knew about and some we did not; but the wrights were honest fellows—they made little of it—and now we are as stiff as ever you could wish.'

  'Just where . . .' began Jack, but on deck the cry 'The boat ahoy. What boat is that?' interrupted him.

  'I dare say that will be Father Panda,' said Pullings. 'He usually comes about this time, asking for news of you.'

  'Does he, Tom?' cried Jack, flushing. 'Let him be brought below at once. And Tom, keep the after part of the quarterdeck clear, will you?'

  'Of course, sir,' said Pullings: and inclined his head to catch the deep, resonant answer to the frigate's hail; he said, 'That's him, all right. Perhaps he may be able to tell us how to get hold of Dutourd.' During the inexpert thumping and rattling of the boat along the side and the cries of 'Ship your oar, sir—clap on to the painter, Bill—here's t'other man-rope, Father: hold tight' he said, 'Oh sir, I forgot to tell you Franklin is in the offing with what looks like a prize. I will go and bring the Reverend below.'

  Sam was even taller and more massive than when he and his father had last met. Jack rose with a double effort, put his hands on those broad shoulders, and said, 'Sam, how very glad I am to see you.'

  Sam's great flashing smile lit up his face and he, clasping Jack, cried, 'Oh sir . . .' Then his expression changed to one of the utmost concern as he saw the bandage and he went on, 'But you are wounded—you are ill—let you sit down.' He guided Jack to his chair, lowered him gently into it, and sat under the hanging lamp gazing at him, drawn, lined and ravaged as he was, with such troubled affection that Jack said, 'Never take on so, dear Sam. My eye is all right, I believe—I can see pretty well. And for the rest, we had a rough time of it on a lee shore in the Alastor's launch during the easterly blow—she was stove, dismasted—lost our food and water—nothing to eat but a raw sea-lion. We had been forced back past the sea-lion island seven times and I said, "Shipmates, if we don't get round and run clear on this tack we shall have a dirty night of it." Well, we did get round, but we did not run clear. There was a reef on the far side and in avoiding it we became embayed—a lee-shore in a strong gale—heavy seas, tide and current all setting us in—grapnel coming home. We had our dirty night, true enough, but it lasted four mortal days. However, we patched her up more or less—brought her in—it is all over now—and we have earned a thundering good supper.' He pulled the bell and called for the best supper the ship and his cook could produce. But to his distress he saw tears running down that ebony face, and to change the current of Sam's thoughts he said, 'Have you seen the Doctor? I had hoped he would be aboard, but he has not yet returned.'

  'Sure I have seen him, sir. I am after leaving him in the mountain.'

  'He is quite well? I am so happy. I was anxious for him.'

  The first part of the supper came in, cold things the Captain's cook had under his hand with the ship lying off a plentiful market: roast beef yielded up by the gun-room with barely a sigh, chickens, capons, ducks, ham, quantities of vegetables and a great bowl of mayonnaise, decanters of Peruvian wine, a jug of barley-water that Jack emptied without thinking of it. He ate voraciously, swallowing as fast as a wolf; but he both talked at quick intervals between bites and listened. 'We had a prisoner called Dutourd,' he said, spreading butter on his soft-tack. 'We took him out of the Franklin, a privateer under American colours. He was a Frenchman with enthusiastic visionary notions about an ideal community in a Polynesian island—no Church, no King, no laws, no money, everything held in common, perfect peace and justice: all to be accomplished, as far as I could make out, by the wholesale slaughter of the islanders. He was a wealthy man, the Doctor told me, and I think he owned the Franklin, but that was not clear: at all events he had no letter of marque though he or his skipper had preyed on our whalers and strictly I should have carried him back to England, where they would have hanged him for piracy. I did not like him at all, neither his ideas nor his manners—a confident scrub, very much the foreigner. But he did have some qualities; he was courageous and he was good to his people; and it seemed to me—Sam, the bottle stands by you—that piracy where he was concerned was too much like a lawyer's quibble, so I meant to put him ashore here and let him go on parole. He was what is ordinarily called a gentleman: an educated man with money, at all events.' He set about the cold roast beef, and when he had filled their plates he went on, 'An educated man: he knew Greek—you know Greek, Sam, I am sure?'

  'A little, sir. We are obliged to, you know, the New Testament being written in Greek.'

  'In Greek?' cried Jack, his fork poised in the air. 'I had no idea. I thought it would naturally be written in—what did those wicked Jews speak?'

  'Hebrew, sir.'

  'Just so. But, however, they wrote it in Greek, the clever dogs? I am amazed.'

  'Only the New Testament, sir. And it was not quite the same as Homer or Hesiod.'

  'Oh, indeed? Well, I dined in the gun-room one day when he was also invited, and he told the company about those Olympic games.' He gazed round the almost empty table, filled Sam's glass, and said, 'I wonder what comes next.'

  Beef steak and mutton chops came next, hot and hot, and a dish of true potatoes, fresh from their native Andes.

  '. . . Olympic games and how they valued the prizes. There was one of these Seven Sages, you know, a cove by the name of Chilon, whose son gained one, and the old gentleman, the Sage, I mean, died of joy. I remembered him and his mates—one of my very few pieces of classical learning—because when I was a little chap they gave me a book with a blue cover and a cut of the Seven Sages in it all looking very much alike, that I had to learn out of; and it began First Solon, who made the Athenian laws; Then Chilon, in Sparta, renowned for his saws. But surely, Sam, dropping down dead shows a very wrong set of ideas in a sage?'

  'Very wrong indeed, sir,' said Sam looking at his father with great affection.

  'To be sure, he was only a sort of ironmonger, but even so . . . I once had a splendid filly that I hoped might win the Oaks; but if she had, I hope I should not have dropped down dead. In fact she never ran, and now I come to think of it the Doctor suspected that her lack of barrel betrayed a want of bottom. Yes. But in my pleasure at being in your company, and eating and drinking at last, I talk too much, almost like that French scrub Dutourd; and when you are fagged the wine goes to your head, so I wander from the point.'

  'Not at all, sir. Not at all, at all. Will I help you to a chop?'

  'By all means. Well, the point is this: when we were lying off Callao I happened to tell the Doctor that I was sending some French prisoners in. "Not Dutourd?" cried he, and then in a low voice, "That might be impolitic." Now this is rather delicate and I am puzzled quite how to put it. Let us eat our pudding, if we are allowed any pudding on such short notice, and when we reach port perhaps my intellects will shine out afresh.'

  They were allowed pudding, but only apologetical fancies such as sago, summer's pudding made with what Peru could afford, and mere rice, rather than those true puddings based on suet, which called for hours and hours in the copper.

  Jack told Sam of a fine great sago-palm forest in the island of Ceram in which he had walked with his midshipmen and how they had laughed at the spectacle—a sago-forest! These trifles, barely worth attention, were soon dispatched; the cloth was drawn, the port set on Jack's right hand, and Grimble was told that he might turn in.

  'Well, now, Sam,' said Jack. 'You must know that when the Doctor goes ashore it is not always just for botanizing or the like. Sometimes it is rather more in the political line, if you follow me. For example, he is very much against slavery; and in this case he might encourage
people of the same opinion here in Peru. Certainly, by all means, very praiseworthy: but the authorities might take it amiss—the authorities in a slave-state might take it amiss. So when he said it would perhaps be impolitic for Dutourd, who knows his opinions, to be set ashore he may very well have seen the man as an informer. And there are other aspects that I will not touch upon: shoal water that I am not acquainted with, shoal water and no chart. But to come to the point at last—Sam, you must forgive me for being so slow, roundabout and prosy: I find it hard to concentrate my mind this evening. But the point is this: Dutourd has contrived to get ashore. I am very much afraid he may do the Doctor harm, and I mean to do everything I can to get the fellow back on board. I beg you will help me, Sam.'

  'Sir,' said Sam. 'I am yours to command. The Doctor and I understand one another very well where his present activities are concerned. He has consulted me to some extent. I too am very much opposed to slavery and to French domination; so are many men I know; and as you say there are other aspects. As for the miserable Dutourd, I am afraid he is beyond our reach, having been taken up by the Holy Office last Saturday. He is now in the Casa de la Inquisición, and I fear things will go very badly for him, once the questioning has finished; he was a most publicly violent blasphemous atheistical wretch. But he has already done all the harm he could do. The Doctor's friends had arranged a change in government, and since the Viceroy was away everything was moving rapidly and smoothly towards the desired end, troops were being moved and bridges secured, all the necessary precautions for a peaceful change, when Dutourd appeared. He said the Doctor was an English agent and that the whole operation was set a-going with the help of English gold by purchased traitors. Nobody took much notice of such an enthusiast, a Frenchman into the bargain, stained with the crime of their revolution and Napoleon's against the Pope. But a vile official, one Castro, the black thief, thought he might seize upon it to curry favour with the Viceroy, and he made a great noise, hiring a mob to shout in the streets and stone foreigners. The whole city was alive with it. The chief general cried off; the movement collapsed; and his friends advised the Doctor to leave the country at once. He is in the far mountains by now, travelling with a sure experienced guide towards Chile, which has a separate government. We consulted together before he left, and it was agreed that I should tell you he would do his utmost to be in Valparaiso by the last day of next month, staying either with the Benedictines or with don Jaime O'Higgins. Obviously he cannot travel so far over such a country in that period, but once he is in Chile we hope that he will be able to travel on by a series of small coasting vessels from one little port or fishing village to another and so reach Valparaiso in good time. We further agreed, sir, that until the Viceroy's return, which will be in three or four days now, you need have no fear for the ship, and even then direct seizure is unlikely. But we were told on good authority that you would be well advised to move her out of the yard—as indeed Captain Pullings has done—to avoid any vexatious measures, such as detention for some alleged debt or the like. For example a woman is prepared to swear that Joseph Plaice, a member of your crew, has got her with child. Then again our confidential friends, men of business, all assert that you should sell your prizes directly, or if the offer do not suit, send them down to Arica or even Coquimbo. Or even Coquimbo,' repeated Sam in the all-pervading silence. 'But I will tell it you all again, so I will, at half eight tomorrow,' he whispered. 'God bless, now.'