21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

by Patrick O'Brian

  For two and even three days after that furious blast the waters of the Strait remained strikingly turbulent, particularly in the Narrows, and great beds of kelp, torn loose from their basis, floated on every hand, sometimes endangering the rudder, sometimes checking the ship’s way, and always disturbing birds, cetaceans and ordinary level-headed fishes. Nevertheless in spite of kelp, unexpected currents and strange vagaries of tide off a number of headlands, the ship’s whole passage of the Strait, before she turned north, well out in the full Atlantic, with the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins broad on larboard bow, lasted only three hours more than nine days.

  “We are making pretty good time,” said Jack, “and I think we may look into Port Desire and Bahia Blanca without keeping the Admiral waiting. He was not to sail till the twelfth.”

  “Would you ever te ll me, has he a numerous fleet?”

  “Pretty considerable: three squadrons, of which ours, the blue, is of course the smallest – but, Stephen, do not think for a moment that I complain. Of course it is the smallest, being blue. But had it been half the size, I should still have given my right hand for it. Good Lord above: a flag at last! It was amazingly kind of them. Do not think for a moment that I complain, dear Stephen.”

  “It had not occurred to me at all, at all,” said Stephen. And he went on, “Since my ill-bred questioning is so prosperous - and to be sure it is very ill-bred indeed — may I ask why you mean to stop at these South American ports, when I understood you to say we could sail home with what was in the hold?”

  “Why, for fresh water and meat, of course, to say nothing of vegetables and fruit. We could probably have got home, of course, but verminous, half-starved and rotten with scurvy: but that would have been a desperate stroke, in a God-damned desperate situation, one that a man could not stand. But now the case is altered. I am to join Lord Leyton in the River Plate, and I make no doubt – for he is a very active officer, as I know full well – that he will take the fleet down and across to the Cape with the utmost dispatch, and I prefer to be ready to weigh at the first hint of a signal, with the last cask of biscuit aboard and a well-fed, active, healthy crew – no shore-leave will be allowed.”

  “But, my dear, Surprise is to go home, as you very well know, with your dispatches and all our letters home; and once there she reverts to the station of a private ship. Ever since we left Magellan’s Strait and steered north the people have become increasingly aware of this, and the joy that filled the Surprise has sensibly diminished day by day. You know how unhappy our men from Shelmerston were when they were paid off with the peace and how wonderfully they revived when you took them aboard.”

  “Certainly I know it very well, and I am going to use all what influence I may have to ease her back into the service. The squadron is pitifully short of frigates, and since I understand that our duty down there is the protection of the Indian and Chinese trade, nothing could be more useful than a nimble weatherly ship like Surprise. And I beg you will do the same. But even if we cannot succeed directly, I am allowed my bargemen and a good many other followers – I have little doubt that I shall house a score or so of the rest among my friends. And for those that are left, if there are any left, merchant shipping has revived wonderfully, and a seaman with a good character from the Royal Navy will not wait long for a berth.”

  Just as it had been Hanson who first sighted Cape Pilar on their eastward leg, at the very opening of the Strait, so it was his particular friend Daniel who, spending his watch below in the foretopgallant crosstrees, caught the leading-mark for Port Desire in his glass, checked it twice, and called, “On deck, there. On deck: St Paul's Rock, twelve to fifteen miles on the larboard bow. Dim. Comes and goes.”

  It came and went because of a heavy sea inshore that covered it entirely from time to time, if not with green water then with foam; and although the rollers moderated somewhat inshore, the frigate had an uneasy time, mooring in the sullen turbulences this side of the primitive mole – dirty water from some untimely flash-flood.

  “I once saw a rhea here, some way inland,” observed Stephen, as he and Jacob were walking along the mean street (obscurely strewn with drowned dogs) to speak to the port-captain about water and vegetables. “The South American ostrich, somewhat smaller than the African bird – a most inferior creature.”

  “Ah?” said Jacob: and then “I believe this must be the captain’s house.”

  The port-captain half rose when they came in, but he was far from cordial and he said that he could not recommend the town water after this diabolic flood and all the nastiness it brought.

  Stephen spoke about the country inland, a hacienda he had visited, the kindness of the people. He and the others were of course speaking Spanish and after a while the port-captain said that there happened to be a clean spring at no great distance, but they would have to pay the proprietor a fee. “It is not for myself, you understand. For my own part I am astonishingly generous, generous to a fault, even lavish . . .” He spoke of his faults at some length and then, having called for coffee, he asked in a confidential, almost affectionate tone, “Why they, obviously old and rancid Christians, consorted with those vile heretics?” And when Stephen made the usual gesture of extreme poverty, rubbing thumb over knuckle, the captain shook his head, saying “Ah, when the Devil drives . . . I shall send my boy with your men to Anita's spring, but they must be very respectful to her, and pluck off their hats. Her sister, Helena, the werewolf, will provide cabbages.”

  So she did, fine upstanding plants, but without the least appearance of pleasure or (perhaps understandably) of common humanity: and both in these transactions and in a few others along the edge of the market the Surprises noticed a sullenness, a strong inclination to stare, muttering; while after some of their transactions the sellers could be seen to wash the coins or rub them industriously in the grit underfoot.

  Even if the Surprise, with her singularly fine lines and her thirty-six-gun frigate’s towering mainmast, had not b een so recognizable to a sailor’s eye, her ensign would have identified her almost anywhere in the world, for on reverting to her function as a surveying-vessel under Admiralty command she had also reverted to the white ensign. At Bahia Blanca, their next port of call, Stephen, who was the natural emissary on such occasions, reported the same sullen antipathy, not unmingled with a reluctance to sell, exorbitant prices and injurious expressions.

  “Brother, you are playing at least half a tone too high,” said Jack that evening as they sawed away after an early supper.

  “Am I?” cried Stephen, looking attentively at his fingers and twanging the string. “So I am. I do beg your pardon. It is the shrill bitterness of my soul that makes its way out, I fear.”

  “I am so sorry to impose these odious duties upon you, Stephen – pray take a sup of port – but you know, of course you know only too well, that when you and all your people have been without long enough you will descend to the basest means to relieve your wants.”

  “I am not sure that the response is altogether civil: but be that as it may, I will tell you, Jack, that if they are bad in Port Desire and worse in Bahia, they are likely to be downright outrageous in the River Plate, where we are to meet the South African ships. Yet if I am not mistaken we are likely to be there well before Lord Leyton – well before even your little squadron ….”

  “What the Devil do you mean by my little squadron? It is a perfectly normal squadron, rather large than otherwise. Two ships of the line apart from Suffolk: a fifty-gun ship, two considerable sloops of war...”

  “Hush, hush, Jack. Never fly into a passion, soul,” cried Stephen, seeing that his friend was seriously annoyed. “Sure you must know after all this time that we use little as an endearment – a meliorative term, as one says my little Puss to a handsome Amazon that weighs fifteen stone in her shift. So we arrive, do you follow me now, well before his lordship, whom God preserve, and our natural allies, all because of our commendable zeal. Now let me beg you, for all love, to moor your
ship close in against the southern shore for so much as an egg, an egg: for in a considerable city fanaticism can swell to a most surprising and horrible extent.”

  At the end of the particularly grave adagio Jack put down his bow and said, “Should you dislike it very much if we were to leave Bahia out of our plans? Our water and the cabbages have held out uncommon well and I had as soon push on quietly, if you understand me, to the River Plate, where there is a great resort of merchantmen and all sort of people that supply their needs, chandlers, smiths and the like: you are not dependent on the local werewolf. Not that I have anything to say against werewolves: the gentlewoman was perfectly civil, and her cabbages have stood up admirably.”

  “I should not dislike it at all. Bahia has by all accounts some tolerable strands, but nothing in the way of lakes or marshland within striking distance: Jacob and I have an immense amount of sorting, reconstituting, classifying and preserving to do, and I had as soon sail on northwards – quietly, as you put it so well, quietly putting our collections in order.”

  Quietly indeed they sailed along, with gentle breezes that wafted them generally northwards at something in the nature of five miles in the hour, northwards to even warmer seas. Little activity was called for, apart from the nice adjustment of the sails, and although the exact routine of the ship was never relaxed nor her very strict rules of cleanliness, these long sunny days with a soldier’s wind seemed to many the ideal of a seaman's life – regular, steady, traditional meals with the exact allowance of grog; hornpipes in the last dogwatch, the deep melody of the Doctor’s ‘cello from the cabin and th e cheerful sound of the gunroom’s dinner; the future lost in a haze somewhere north of the equator.

  So the golden days went by, and Stephen’s mound of tiny skins mounted up, very carefully dried and treated against mites, against the voracious cockroaches that no amount of sulphurous fumigation could eliminate from the ultimate depths of the hold, their survivors breeding with extraordinary rapidity.

  By the time they were in flying-fish water again, the Surprise and her people had settled down to this very agreeable form of life – some few cases of sunburn and alleged moon-pall by night, to occupy Poll Skeeping and Maggie, and a series of quite deep, painful wounds or rather hook-billed bites from those parakeets that did not choose to be tamed; but for once, for once, no steady dosing for the pox. With a perfectly competent, conscientious, but by no means tyrannical first lieutenant, Jack Aubrey and his clerk could devote their hours to gathering all the scattered surveying material from the various notebooks and journals and cast it into the regular form most valued by the Hydrographical Department. They were quite near the end of their work on the immense south Pacific crescent, at the northern tip of the Chonos

  Archipelago, which Jack had surveyed in freezing drizzle with a team of zealous and remarkably amiable young Chilean officer-cadets when the expected news came below. With the Master’s duty, Mr Wells begged to tell Captain Aubrey that the leading-marks for the River Plate were clear from the masthead, almost due north-northwest.

  They were clearer still by the last dogwatch, when the declining sun lit them from behind; and in the morning the Surprise was well into the whole vast bay. All day long, with a gently favouring breeze they sailed up it until both shores could clearly be seen, and a fair amount of shipping: but never a sign of a man-of-war.

  Farther, farther, with no more than her foretopsail now: a pause for dinner; and drinking his coffee on deck afterwards Jack said to Stephen, “May I ask you and Dr Jacob to run up to the island with Wantage and make sure that our salute will be returned? This reception is so very curious that I should like to make quite certain. Mr Harding, please be so good as to have the blue cutter put over the side.”

  The island was the chief of the many administrative centres: it was from the battery high on the seaward cliff that salutes were answered; and usually the place was like a fairly busy hive, with customs, quarantine and harbour-dues officials swarming all over it, together with soldiers, sailors, marines and those grave gentlemen in long black coats, black-scabbarded swords, black neckcloths and black wigs who were said to be very high in the administration. At present the place was singularly quiet, almost motionless, and since a salute was rarely returned without a good deal of bustle, the silence made all hands uneasy. It was known throughout the service that an unreturned salute was practically a casus belli. In any event it was the gravest insult and one that put an end to all communication with the shore. And to fire a salute without assurance that it would be returned was strictly forbidden. The question did not often arise, but in this case the atmosphere was so uncommon that Jack did not intend to run the risk.

  Yet while the coxswain was summoning his boat’s crew Harding said to Jack, “Forgive me, sir, but I believe I see a craft clearing from the lee-side. Yes, sir,” lowering his glass, “I think it is one of their medicos and a couple of dirty mates.” He peered again. “'Yes: a dirty, ill-looking crew in a dirty, ill-looking craft.”

  They did not improve on closer acquaintance: at fifty yar ds from the frigate’s side a man stood up and bawled “Quarantine.”

  Harding had a ladder put over and the party’s leader, wearing a black coat and a yellow wig, followed by a youth with an ink-h orn, came aboard quite nimbly. “Dr Quental,” said the man in a very loud voice. “Health. Speak Portuguese?” Wantage, who was fluent in the language, made as though to answer, but Stephen checked him. “I am the surgeon of this ship, sir,” he said in Latin. “Dr Maturin, at your service. I do not have the pleasure of speaking Portuguese, but I should be happy to answer any questions you choose to ask in Latin. And so will my colleague, Dr Jacob.”

  Dr Quental put as good a face on it as he could, and with more ease than the company expected he repeated a list of disorders by class: “Exanthematici? Critic? Phlogistici? Dolorosi? Quietales? Motorii? Suppressorii ? Evacuator ii? Defomes? Vitia?

  Stephen considered all these, one by one, shaking his head after due reflection and t h en inviting their guest to come and view what invalids the ship possessed.

  Poll Skeeping and Maggie had had plenty of time: their few patients (all with mill strains or broken bones apart from one with raging toothache, to be dealt with tomorrow, when his particular friend the armourer had finished a powerful pair of forceps to his own satisfaction) were correctly rigid in their cots, washed pink, brushed and incapable of movement, almost of drawing breath, so tight-strained were the sheets. Dr Quental was much impressed, much gratified by a draught of rum, happy to accept the compliment of a neatly-cased French amputating saw, and perfectly willing to give Surprise a clean bill of health. He also stated that in his considered opinion the fort would not hesitate to answer the ship’s s alute with exactly the same number of guns; having sorted his Latin with some care while he finished his glass, he told Stephen that he was an anti-cle rical, that he had nothing to do with the public burning of heretics, and that he dared say there were very good men everywhere: among Jews, for example, or blacks, or even worse.

  “Sir,” said Wantage in Stephen’s ea r as the Rio boat pulled away, “his mates that did not go below with the Doctor, told me there was a rare old rumpus in the town last night, when some of people from a barque out of Boston, the Boston in the colonies, stood up at a vigil and said it was great nonsense to say you were allowed only one wife: one wife at a time. ‘Look at King Solomon,’ they said; and it was taken very much amiss. Then one of them called out that he did not give a fig for the Pope of Rome, and fighting broke out. They said five Protestant houses were set on fire, and it might be much worse tomorrow, with the arrival of the Legate.”

  “What’s a legate?” asked Jack, when Stephen told him of this.

  “In England th ey were usually called nuncios,” said Stephen: but in answer to a very severe look he added; “An ambassador, as you might say - often plenipoten tiary.”

  “Well, I hope the si lly villains have got it wrong,” said Jack with a look of strong dissatisfa
ction. “This is the very last moment to become religious and start looking for stakes, gunpowder and -what do you call those things?”

  “Sanbenitos.”

  “Just so: Sanbenitos. All we want to do is to fill up our water, buy a few fresh provisions and no doubt some wholesome fruit — we do not want to be racked, scourged and burnt: we get plenty of that at sea, free, gratis and for nothing - and pay our compliment to the Governor. Oh, that Suffolk would come in, followed by the rest of the blue squadron, then by Lord Leyton with his ships and hey for Cape Town with never a papist in sight for the next ten thousand miles . . . I beg pardon, dear Stephen,” he added, looking earnestly into Stephen's face. “I really did not mean to be unkind or personal.”

  “I am sure you did not, my dear,” said Stephen. “Pray when do you mean to start the salute?”

  “Just as soon as the gunner tells the officer of the watch that all is right and ready, oh; and the officer of the watch tells Harding to his astonishment that we are all ready. Then, when I have begged Harding to proceed we shall, with luck, hear that fine measured boom, boom, boom. Twelve guns is usual for Rio, and I know that Harding is having the irons heated; for, do you see, with a red-hot iron in your touchhole you cannot miss fire and have one of those embarrassing pauses in the solemn round. He is as eager as I am to have the barky as trim as the Royal yacht on occasions like this.”