H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  'But at least,' said Babbington, 'we did fill our water-casks. Then we rigged a jury mizzen and maintopmast; and we've been beating up ever since.'

  An infinity of details—Babbington's low anxious inquiries after Nicolls—the surprisingly ready, philosophical acceptance of his death—more details of yards sprung, bowsprit struck by lightning, great exertions day and night—and Stephen slept, the piece of cake in his hand.

  'There she lays,' said Bonden's voice through his dispersing dream. 'They've sent up a foretopgallant. Captain will be main glad to see you, sir. Said you could never last on that—rock; on deck all day and night—hands 'bout ship every glass. God love us,' he said with a chuckle, remembering the ferocious compulsion, the pitiless driving of men three parts dead with fatigue, 'he was quite upset.'

  He had indeed been quite upset, but the news from the mast-head that the returning barge carried an animate surgeon reassured the greater part of his mind: he was still in strong anxiety for Nicolls, however, and the two emotions showed on his face as he leant over the rail—gravity, and yet a flush of pleasure and a smile that would be spreading. Stephen came nimbly up the side, almost like a seaman. 'No, no, I am perfectly well,' he said, 'but I am deeply concerned to tell you, that Mr Nicolls and the boat vanished entirely. I searched the rocks that evening, the next day and the next: no trace at all.'

  'I am most heartily sorry for it,' said Jack, shaking his head and looking down. 'He was a very good officer.' After a moment he said, 'Come, you must go below and to bed. M'Alister shall physic you. Mr M'Alister, pray take Dr Maturin below—'

  'Let me carry you, sir,' said Pullings.

  'I will give you a hand,' said Hervey.

  The whole quarterdeck and the greater part of the ship's company were gazing at the resuscitated Doctor, his older shipmates with plain delight, the others with heavy wonder: Pullings went so far as to push between the captain and the surgeon and to seize him by the arm. 'I have not the least wish to go below,' said Stephen sharply, twitching himself away. 'A pot of coffee is all that I require.' He moved a little way aft, caught sight of Mr Stanhope, and cried, 'Your Excellency, I must beg your pardon for not having kept my engagement with you on Sunday.'

  'Allow me to congratulate you upon your preservation,' said Mr Stanhope, advancing and shaking hands; he spoke with more than his ordinary formality, for Stephen was mother-naked; and although Mr Stanhope had seen naked men before, he had never seen one with eyes so reddened by the salt and the intolerable sun that they shone like cherries, nor one so wizened, so wrinkled in his loose blackened skin, so encrusted and cadaverous.

  'I wish you joy of your rescue, Doctor,' said Mr Atkins, the only man aboard who was not pleased to see the barge return: Stephen was attached to the mission in an artfully vague capacity, and the envoy's instructions required him to seek Dr Maturin's advice; Mr Atkins's advice or indeed presence was nowhere mentioned and he was consumed with jealousy. 'May I fetch you a towel or some other garment?'—with a look at Stephen's scrofulous shrunken belly.

  'You are very officious, sir; but this is the garment in which I shall appear before God; I find it answers pretty well. It may be termed my birthday suit.'

  'That has choked the bugger off,' said Pullings to Babbington, just above his breath, out of a motionless face. 'That is one in his bleeding eye.'

  In the morning he appeared, eager and sharp-set at the breakfast-table, on the first stroke of the bell. 'Are you sure you should not stay abed?' cried Jack.

  'Never in life, soul,' said Stephen, reaching for the coffee-pot, 'am I not telling you for ever that I am well? A slice of that ham, if you please. No, in all sobriety, if it had not been for poor unhappy Nicolls, I should have been glad to be marooned. It was uncomfortable—I was roasted, to be sure—but it has done extraordinary things to my sinews, more than the waters of Bath in a hundred years. No pain, no awkwardness! I could dance a jig, and an elegant jig. And quite apart from that, what else would have allowed me day after day of detailed observation? The arthropods alone . . . Before I went to bed last night, before I turned in, I threw down a mass of undigested notes, and merely for the arthropods there were seventeen pages! You shall see them. You shall have the maidenhead of my observations.'

  'I shall be very happy; thank you, Stephen.'

  'Then I sponged myself repeatedly, from head to foot, with fresh water, your blessed fresh water; and I slept—I slept! It was like falling slowly into a bottomless void, so deep that this morning I had difficulty in recalling the events of yesterday—a vague recollection of the sick-bay that I had to piece together from fragments that came swimming up. I fear I shall have a sad report for you when I have made my rounds this morning.'

  'Certainly you look less like a burnt-offering than you did yesterday,' said Jack, peering affectionately into his face. 'Your eyes are almost human. But,' he said, feeling that this was not perfectly civil, 'they will behold a charming sight on deck—we have picked up the south-east trade at last! It is coming more southerly than I could wish, but I believe we shall weather Cape St Roque. At all events we shall cross the line before noon—we have been making seven and eight knots since the beginning of the middle watch. Another cup? Tell me, Stephen, what did you drink on that infernal rock?'

  'Boiled shit.' Stephen was chaste in his speech, rarely an oath, never an obscene word, never any bawdy: his reply astonished Jack, who looked quickly at the tablecloth. Perhaps it was a learned term he had misunderstood. 'Boiled shit,' he said again. Jack smiled in a worldly fashion, but he felt the blush rising. 'Yes. There was one single pool of rainwater left in a hollow. The birds defecated in it, copiously. Not with set intent—the whole rock is normally deep in their droppings—but enough to foul it to the pitch of nausea. The next day was hotter, if possible, and with the reverberation the liquid rose to an extraordinary temperature. I drank it, however, until it ceased to be a liquid at all; then I turned to blood. Poor unsuspecting boobies' blood, tempered with a little sea-water and the expressed juice of kelp. Blood . . . Jack, this Cape St Roque, of which you speak so anxiously, is in Brazil, is it not, the home of the vampire?'

  'I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting you,' said Hervey, appearing at the door, 'but you desired me to let you know when the maintopgallant was ready to be swayed up.'

  Left alone Stephen looked at his nail-less hand, flexed it with great complacency—remarkable intension: precise, unwavering—carried out a delicate operation on the ham with his pocket-lancet, and walked forward to the sick-bay, observing, 'I could not have done that before I was broiled alive, desiccated, mummified: bless the sun in his power.'

  They crossed the line that day, but with muted ceremonies. It was not only the loss of their shipmates and of Mr Nicolls—a loss emphasised by the sale of their clothes at the capstanhead—but there was not much spirit of fun in the ship. Badger-Bag came aboard with his trident, shaved the boys and the younger hands in a perfunctory manner, mulcted Stephen, Mr Stanhope and his people of six and eightpence a head, splashed a fair amount of water about the forecastle and the waist of the ship, and withdrew.

  'That was our Saturnalia,' said Jack. 'I hope you did not dislike it?'

  'Not at all. I am wholly in favour of innocent mirth; but I wonder you suffered it, with so much work on hand—all these spars, ropes and sails lying about half destroyed, and time, as you tell me, so precious.'

  'Oh, you must not interfere with custom. They will work double-tides tomorrow—they will be in much better heart. Custom—'

  'You are hag-ridden by custom, in the Navy,' said Stephen. 'Bells; an esoteric language—I will not say jargon; unmeaning ceremonies. The selling of poor Nicolls's clothes, for example, seemed to me gross impiety. And to Mr Stanhope, too. He is a far more interesting man than you might suppose; reads; plays a delicate flute. But I am not come here to be prating of the envoy. I have something far graver to tell you. The incessant labours of the last week have exhausted the men; many who showed no signs of scurvy at the
last examination are now affected: here is my list. Virtually all the Racoons, many Surprises, and four landsmen. What is worse, the squall, in wrecking my store-room, has made the strangest magma of my drugs, to say nothing of the remaining and more than doubtful lime juice. I tell you officially, my dear, and will put it in writing if you choose, that I cannot be answerable for the consequences unless green vegetables, fresh meat and above all citrus fruits are provided within a few days. If I understand you, you mean to skirt the extremity of eastern Brazil; and eastern Brazil,' he cried, looking greedily through the open port westwards, 'is notoriously supplied with all these commodities.'

  'So it is,' said Jack. 'And with vampires.'

  'Oh, do not imagine I have not examined my conscience,' cried Stephen, laying his hand on Jack's bosom. 'Do not suppose I am unaware of my eagerness to set foot upon the New World at the earliest possible moment. But come and look at my suppurating five-year-old amputation, my re-opening once-healthy wounds, my purulent gums, imposthumes, low fevers, livid extravasations.'

  'I was hardly serious,' said Jack. 'But. the fact is, there are many things I have to take into account.' There were indeed. This was a very long voyage, and already he had lost a great deal of time. With the Cape in the hands of the Dutch again he must get right down to the forties, to the great unfailing westerlies that would carry him into the Indian Ocean at two hundred miles a day, to catch the tail of the south-west monsoon somewhere about the height of Madagascar. His orders required him to touch at Rio, which was not much above a thousand miles away, no great distance if the hardwon trades held true; whereas if he stood in with the land he might lose them. He would certainly be entangled with the Portuguese officials if he called at Recife, for example: interminable delay at the best, and at the worst some ugly incident, detention, even violence, they being so very jealous of a foreign man-of-war anywhere but Rio. Delay, perhaps a row, and even then no certainty of supplies. And although Stephen was speaking in good faith, the dear creature was so passionate a philosopher, with his bugs, vampires . . . 'Let me consider of it, Stephen,' he said. 'I will come to the sickbay.'

  'Very well. And as we go, pray consider of this, too: my rats have vanished. The squall did not take them. Their cage was undamaged, but its door was open. I turn my back for five minutes to take the air on St Paul's Rock, and my valuable rats disappear! If this is one of your naval customs, I could wish you all crucified at your own royal-yards; and flayed alive before you are nailed up. This is not the first time I have suffered so. An asp off Fuengirola: three mice in the Gulf of Lyons. Rats I had brought up by hand, cosseted since Berry Head, crammed with best double-refined madder in spite of their growing reluctance—and now all is lost, the entire experiment rendered nugatory, utterly destroyed!'

  'Why did you feed them with madder?'

  'Because Duhamel tells us that the red is fixed and concentrated in their bones. I wished to find the rate of penetration, and to know whether it reached the marrow. I shall know in time, however: M'Alister and I will dissect all suitable subjects, for the effect will be passed to those that ate them, of course; and I tell you soberly, Jack, that if you persist in this dogged, self-defeating hurry, hurry, hurry, clap on more sails, not a moment to be lost, then most of the people will pass through our hands, including, no doubt, that black thief whose very bones will blush for shame.' He uttered these words in a high shriek at the entrance to the sick-bay, to make himself heard above the armourer's forge, where they were fashioning a new iron-horse, to replace that carried away in the squall.

  Jack looked at the crowded berth; he breathed the fetid air that no wind-sail would carry away; he stood by while Stephen and M'Alister undid bandages and showed him the effects of scurvy upon old wounds; he did not give an inch even when they led him to their chief witness, the five-year-old amputated stump. But when they showed him a box of teeth and sent for their walking cases to see how easily even molars came out and to make him palpate their rotting gums he said he was satisfied and hurried aft.

  'Killick,' he said, 'I shall not be having any dinner today. Pass the word for Mr Babbington.' Here at least was something pleasant to take the charnel-house smell away. 'Ah, Mr Babbington, there you are: sit down. I dare say you know why I have sent for you?'

  'No, sir,' said Babbington instantly. It was worth denying everything as long as he could.

  'I low is your servitude coming along, eh? You must be close on your time.'

  'Five years, nine months and three days, sir.' After six years on ships' books a midshipman might pass for lieutenant, might change from a reefer, a nonentity discharged or disrated at pleasure, to a godlike commissioned officer; and Babbington knew the date to the very hour.

  'Yes. Well, I am going to give you an order as acting-lieutenant in poor Nicolls's place. By the time we reach the Admiral you will have your time and you can sit your board; and I dare say the Admiralty will confirm the appointment. They will never fail you on seamanship, I am very sure, but it might be wise to beg Mr Hervey to give you a hand with your double altitudes.'

  'Oh thank you, thank you, sir,' cried Babbington, suffused with joy. It was not wholly unexpected (he had bought one of Nicolls's coats on the off-chance), but it had been far from certain. Braithwaite, the other senior midshipman (who had bought two coats, two waistcoats, two pair of breeches) had as good a claim to the step; and some sharp words had passed between Babbington and his captain at Madeira ('This ship is not a floating brothel, sir'), sharper still about relieving the watch in time. It was an exquisite moment, and the kind words with which Jack finished—'shaping well—responsible, officerlike—should feel as easy with Babbington keeping a watch as any officer on the ship'—brought tears to Babbington's eyes. Yet in the midst of his joy his heart smote him, and pausing at the door after the usual acknowledgements he turned and said, in a faltering voice, 'You are so very kind to me, sir—always have been—that it seems a blackguardly thing. You might not have done it, if . . . but I did not exactly lie, however.'

  'Eh?' cried Jack, astonished. In time it appeared that Babbington had eaten of the Doctor's rats; and that he was sorry now. 'Why, no, Babbington,' said Jack. 'No. That was an infernal shabby thing to do; mean and very like a scrub. The Doctor has been a good friend to you—none better. Who patched up your arm, when they all swore it must come off? Who put you into his cot and sat by you all night, holding the wound? Who—' Babbington could not bear it; he burst into tears. Though an acting-lieutenant he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and through his sobs he gave Jack to understand that unknown hands had wafted these prime millers into the larboard midshipmen's berth; that although he had had no hand in their cutting-out—indeed, would have prevented it, having the greatest love for the Doctor, so much so that he had fought Braithwaite over a chest for calling the Doctor 'a Dutch-built quizz'—yet, the rats being already dead, and dressed with onion-sauce, and he so hungry after rattling down the shrouds, he had thought it a pity to let the others scoff the lot. Had lived with a troubled conscience ever since: had in fact expected a summons to the cabin.

  'You would have been living with a troubled stomach if you had known what was in 'em; the Doctor had—'

  'I tell you what it is, Jack,' said Stephen, walking quickly in. 'Oh, I beg your pardon.'

  'No, stay, Doctor. Stay, if you please,' cried Jack.

  Babbington looked wretchedly from one to the other, licked his lips and said, 'I ate your rat, sir. I am very sorry, and I ask your pardon.'

  'Did you so?' said Stephen mildly. 'Well, I hope you enjoyed it. Listen, Jack, will you look at my list, now?'

  'He only ate it when it was dead,' said Jack.

  'It would have been a strangely hasty, agitated meal, had he ate it before,' said Stephen, looking attentively at his list. 'Tell me, sir, did you happen to keep any of the bones?'

  'No, sir. I am very sorry, but we usually crunch 'em up, like larks. Some of the chaps said they looked uncommon dark, however.'

  'Poor fellows
, poor fellows,' said Stephen in a low, inward voice.

  'Do you wish me to take notice of this theft, Dr Maturin?' asked Jack.

  'No, my dear, none at all. Nature will take care of that, I am afraid.'

  He wandered back to the sick-bay, and there, when he had carried out some dressings, he asked M'Alister how many lived in the larboard midshipmen's berth. On being told six he wrote out a prescription and desired M'Alister to make it up into six boluses.

  On deck Stephen was conscious of being closely, furtively watched; and after dinner, at a time when he was judged to be in a benevolent frame of mind, he was not surprised to receive a deputation from the young gentlemen, all washed and wearing coats in spite of the heat. They, too, were very sorry they had eaten his rats; they, too, begged his pardon; and they should never do so again.

  'Young gentlemen,' he said, 'I have been expecting you. Mr Callow, be so good as to take this note, with my best compliments to the Captain.' He wrote 'Can the services of the young gentlemen and the clerk be dispensed with for a day?', folded it and handed it over. In the interval he gazed at Meadows and Scott, first-class volunteers aged twelve and fourteen; the captain's clerk, a hairy sixteen with his wrists far beyond the sleeves of his last year's jacket; Joliffe and Church, fifteen-year-old midshipmen: all thinner, hungrier than their mothers could have wished. And they gazed covertly back at him, their habitual thoughtless merriment quenched, turned to a pasty solemnity.

  'The Captain's compliments, sir,' said Callow, 'and he says with the greatest possible ease. A week, if you choose.'

  'Thank you, Mr Callow. You will oblige me by swallowing this bolus. Mr Joliffe, Mr Church . . .'