The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O'Brian

  Jack was about to reply when the sound of Cozens’ laugh interrupted him, a braying noise that echoed far and wide. ‘Bah,’ cried Jack, ‘that flaming ape has begun again.’ Cozens had worn out the two redcoats, and he was circling with Morris, the thin midshipman, now much attached to him, and the shiniest of all the locals.

  ‘You are in a bad way – quite hipped,’ said Keppel. ‘I think you ought not to drink any more of that stuff until we have had something to eat.’

  Jack very deliberately filled his glass, and looking Keppel firmly in the eye he drank it down. He would not for the world have admitted that he was either hipped or in a bad way, but in fact he was both. To begin with, he was far too hot: secondly, he had wandered about all the forenoon, and although he had very much enjoyed showing Tobias sugar-cane and custard apples and bananas growing, thirty-six varieties of horse-flies, leeches and mosquitoes had bitten him; he was itching all over, and he was tired out. Thirdly, he had appointed with his friends to meet at this place for dinner, and he had now been waiting for more than an hour, intolerably hungry. Lastly, he had spent his time drinking sweet Madeira; it is a delightful wine to drink in small quantities, with cake, but drunk by the pint upon an empty stomach it has the most dismal effects.

  So what with fatigue, sticky heat, irritation, faintness from want of food, unbearable itch and nausea, Jack was indeed in a bad way: it was this that led him to speak so venomously of his shipmates, for in general he never did – in general he was a very tolerant person, uncensorious and easily amused – by no means a backbiter. He felt a little uneasy, even now, and he said, ‘I do not mean Cozens is a bad-hearted fellow. Not at all. Only he has such a flow of animal spirits that he is obliged to make a vast brutish noise all day and night – practical jokes every day of the week – and the least drop of brandy or rum goes straight to his head, and then we have a scene. But he means no harm, and the men love him.’

  ‘There they are,’ cried Keppel, pointing through the crowd of Portuguese, Lascars, Barbary Moors, Negroes and English seamen to where Ransome and Tobias came down the hill, riding in an ox-drawn sledge, the usual conveyance of those parts.

  ‘At last,’ said Jack angrily. ‘Damn their impertinence: two hours late. This will need a great deal of explanation.’ He was prepared to be offended and disagreeable, but as they came nearer, grinning all over their faces, loaded with the animal, vegetable and mineral productions of Madeira and looking thoroughly delighted, he found that his surliness vanished of itself, and he was unable to do more than curse their vitals with his ordinary benignity.

  He and Keppel instantly began ordering dinner: they added O to any vaguely French or Latin word they happened to remember, and shouted very loud and clear in imperfect English when the foreign words ran out.

  ‘You bring um soupo et pano first,’ explained Keppel, ‘then pisces fresco – you got um, pisces fresco? And vino blanco: not sweet, seco.’

  ‘Me no want vino,’ said Jack. ‘Vino for the other senhores, comprenny?’

  ‘And then carno, viando. Not goat. No capricorno.’

  ‘Oh no,’ put in Ransome, looking sharp and attentive, ‘no capricorno.’

  The ordering took a long, long time, but eventually their meal arrived, capricorno or not, and they ate it with immense zeal. Food always had a mellowing effect on Jack: by the end of the first dish it could scarcely be detected that he had ever been out of humour; by the end of the seventh he was restored to all his usual complaisance, and beamed greasily upon the assembled company.

  ‘What is meant by the owner of a vessel?’ asked Toby, suddenly speaking for the first time.

  ‘The captain,’ they replied.

  ‘Are you making game of me?’ he asked, looking at them very narrowly. His trusting nature had been much imposed upon, and with advancing age he was growing wary and suspicious.

  ‘No, no; I assure you that it is so,’ said Keppel. ‘We call him the owner, although the ship is the King’s. Ain’t it so, Ransome?’

  ‘Yes, cully,’ said Ransome reassuringly. ‘It’s a kind of joke. Hor, hor.’

  ‘It is a joke, Toby: he is only called the owner for a joke,’ said Jack. ‘But what about it?’

  ‘Well, the owner of the Gloucester is going home. He has a very obstinate marasmus.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Toby was surprised to find his news received with such attention; he told them that Mr Eliot and the other surgeons had been called in that morning and that their unanimous verdict was that Captain Norris must return to a northern climate at once; he assured them that a recovery was probable, and he would have explained the nature of the disease, supposing that to be the reason for their interest. He had yet to learn that the strongest passion in a naval bosom is concerned with promotion, and that although none of his hearers yet had his commission they were all thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the service, and regarded the sweeping-off of a post-captain with the same ghoulish delight as if they had been lieutenants and therefore in line for an upward step. Besides, the question had an immediate bearing for Jack and Tobias, in that their captain would certainly be changed.

  ‘Mitchel will have the Gloucester,’ said Keppel, who was a walking compendium of naval seniority, ‘and Mr Kidd will go to the Pearl.’

  ‘Yes. You’ll lose your captain, cock,’ said Ransome.

  ‘I had not thought of that,’ said Tobias. ‘I am concerned to hear it.’

  Captain Dandy Kidd was an old friend of Mr Eliot’s; they had been shipmates in many commissions, and, as Mr Eliot had often told his mate, the lot of the surgeon aboard the Wager was unusually agreeable for this reason – nowhere else would they have such liberty for philosophical experiment, nor such facilities.

  ‘It will be Captain Murray for us,’ said Jack sombrely, and in a low tone he added, ‘They say the Tryall is not a happy ship.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Keppel. ‘It is his first lieutenant that is so disagreeable.’

  ‘A proper – he is,’ said Ransome. ‘I served along of him in the Royal Oak. A wery spiteful cove, as loved to see a man flogged: there was a landsman, name of Murdoch – Stanley Murdoch – that we had pressed out of a Scotch smack from Leith for London: he was a passenger in it. He did not like being pressed, and he said something disrespectful. “Oh,” says the lieutenant, “do you presume to say that to me? I’ll serve you out,” says he, “you fat dog.” This poor Murdoch was heavy; not paunchy, but thick, and he wheezed something cruel when made to run or go aloft – asthma. It was “Murdoch, lie aloft,” every day; and as he always kept a flogging for the last man off the yard, it was Murdoch copped it every morning. One day the poor soul tried to jump for the main topgallant backstay, to be down sooner, for he was rendered desperate, you understand; but being a landsman, he missed it.’

  ‘Poor wretched Tryalls,’ said Keppel, ‘they will have to make the best they can of it, for he’s the senior lieutenant, and must succeed. An’t he the senior lieutenant in the squadron, Ransome?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Ransome, who had stepped away to stare better into the harbour.

  ‘Cheap.’

  ‘I dare say he is,’ said Ransome, considering. ‘He was made master and commander when they took the Salee rover with the boats, in thirty-six; so I dare say he is. God help his crew, when he comes to be captain.’

  ‘Did you say Cheap?’ asked Tobias.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A squat, thick-bodied, yellow-faced man with a cast in his eye? Speaks with a rude northern accent?’

  ‘Yes. He is from Scotland, and he is no beauty.’

  ‘Toby,’ cried Jack, ‘what have you been doing?’

  ‘I only begged him to hold my serpent while I stepped into the boat: I spoke very civilly – bowed, desired him to excuse the freedom, and would he hold my serpent while I stepped into the boat? He replied with a very cynical degree of asperity, damning my eyes, damning my blood and liver, no he would not hold my serpent and who did I think he wa
s? I told him, an ill-looking fellow, that had yet to be taught the usages of civilised society.’

  ‘Oh dear me,’ said Keppel, in the middle of an appalled silence.

  ‘What happened then?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Nothing. The boat rowed away. But I called out after him that he need not have been so afraid – the serpent was comatose, and in any case it was a coluber. He called back in a great passion; he mentioned his name and said he would remember me; but I was resolved not to notice him and I walked off directly. The Portuguese in his boat – it was a bum-boat – were infinitely diverted by his passion: the Portuguese are a good-natured, amicable nation, as far as I can see.’

  ‘So they are, cully,’ said Ransome, ‘and I would advise you to spend the rest of your days among ‘em, rather nor set foot aboard the Tryall. Because why? Because he would learn you the usages of the gunner’s daughter, that’s why.’

  ‘It is very ridiculous and illiberal, this fear of serpents,’ said Tobias. ‘I remarked upon it to the commodore …’

  ‘Oh no,’ cried Jack, with a strangled shriek of protest.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tobias. ‘Mr Anson was just putting off in his boat – no, in his barge,’ Tobias corrected himself, with a smile, for he knew Jack liked him to use the correct nautical terms. ‘So I told him that he would oblige me extremely by carrying me as far as the Wager, if it lay in his way. Yet even he seemed shy of the snake, though I told him how innocent it was: but the commodore is a very polite man – he told me something of the habits of the frigate-bird, and said he hoped to see some as soon as we were south of the thirtieth parallel. He bade me keep an account of the longitude and latitude at which each sea-bird was found, as being an observation useful to sea-faring men.’

  ‘Well, I am glad you approved of his manners,’ said Jack; and turning to the others with quiet despair he said, ‘You see how it is? I try day and night to teach him the difference between an admiral and a swabber’s mate; I entreat him to mind his duty towards his betters, and what happens? “Just pull me across to the Wager, Anson, my good man; and hold this serpent while you are about it.” Next it will be “Captain Murray, I will trouble you for the use of your state-room, if you please, to keep my luminous squids in.” Oh damn your eyes, Toby, have I not told you a thousand times not to speak to your superiors unless they speak to you first? I don’t believe he thinks he has any superiors, Heaven preserve him.’

  ‘In Plato’s Republic …’ began Tobias.

  ‘But you are not in Plato’s loathsome vile republic,’ cried Jack. ‘You are in the Royal Navy, and must never speak to anyone. At least, nobody above you in rank.’

  ‘I do not know how you can be so ungrateful,’ said Tobias, ‘for I told the commodore, as we rowed along, what a worthy, deserving creature you were; and he was visibly impressed by my words.’

  There were a good many points upon which Jack and Tobias did not see eye to eye, apart from the desirability of chatting with captains and commodores; one difference concerned the proportion of their cabin that could reasonably be devoted to reptiles, and another was about the relative worth of their ship, considered either as a man-of-war or as a home.

  Jack was very good in the matter of birds and mammals; fish he admitted without a word; even the octopus glowed faintly through the night in its bell-jar without protest from him, and the interesting Madeiran wood-slugs crept about in the company of their insect friends with no more than a silent shudder: but when a man comes down at the end of the middle watch, fagged out and ready to turn in, only to find that the scorpions have got out and are playing in his bed, together with a large assortment of serpents – why, then, in Jack’s opinion, things have gone too far.

  Then, as to the Wager herself, Jack judged her with a mind formed by a certain amount of naval experience: he had not been a great while at sea, but the service he had seen was remarkably various. In any case, it did not need any extraordinary degree of penetration to see that the Wager was not an ideal ship. To begin with, she had more than her fair share of rogues aboard: if the crew had been sorted out, one third would have been good, steady seamen, quite reliable afloat, if somewhat given to the bottle when ashore; another third neither good nor bad – apt to follow the lead in either direction; but the last third was made up of the sweepings of various prisons and houses of correction. There were many landsmen in this last third, naturally; but there were some seamen in it too, and among these were faces that would have looked quite natural on Execution Dock, where pirates are hanged. Jack had served on the West Indies station, and he had seen a good many pirates – hard, brutal, very stupid and profoundly disagreeable men, for the most part. She was lucky not to have more, for Commodore Anson’s squadron had been manned after two admirals commanding important fleets had had their pick; and just as the squadron came after the fleets, so the poor Wager came after the other ships of the squadron. The Navy was used to dealing with such people, and with bitterly resentful sailors pressed out of merchant ships coming into port after long voyages; but it meant rigid discipline and a great deal of punishment, and floggings every other day do not make for happiness. And then the Wager was not particularly fortunate in her warrant officers, either: for the Navy, though capable of almost anything, is not infallible, and the bo’sun (who has a great deal to do with the immediate direction of the hands) was so evil-tempered a fellow – unreliable and drunken – that it was a wonder that he had ever been given his warrant; the gunner, who had been a mate in the merchant service and who kept the master’s watch when the master was ill, was almost as quarrelsome as the bo’sun, and prided himself beyond measure on his ability to navigate; and the sailing-master – the man who would have been the captain had the Wager been a merchant ship – was old, tired and ailing. As for Mr Bean, the only commissioned officer aboard other than the captain, Jack did not know what to make of him. In a fit of spleen he had described him to Keppel as ‘an old woman', but this was by no means his considered opinion; the lieutenant had a curious hesitation in his speech that sometimes made him appear uncertain, he had the peculiarity of never swearing and he was an unusually quiet, reserved man. He was old for a lieutenant – grey-haired – but there had been a long period of peace, with little likelihood of promotion for anyone, and scarcely any at all for a man without interest, so that did not necessarily reflect upon his ability. The first lieutenants of Jack’s last two ships had been tremendous fire-eaters, exceedingly fierce in word, deed and appearance, and Mr Bean showed palely in contrast with them: but he was obviously a good seaman.

  Tobias, however, could never be brought to see that the Wager was anything but perfect – ‘a very happily conceived vessel, with a great deal of room downstairs, and a sick-bay better than any other in the squadron.’ But, then, Tobias’ point of view was entirely unlike Jack’s: for one thing, he was not there to see that work was properly done, but to help make the men well if they were sick; he had no authority over them, and they looked upon him in quite a different light; and whereas Jack was not altogether enchanted with his superiors, Tobias was perfectly content with his – he was immediately subject only to Mr Eliot, and Mr Eliot suited him very well.

  Mr Eliot was not entirely perfect; he could be ill-tempered and sharp, and he had a reasonable number of bees in his bonnet; but he was an able surgeon, and he was very much concerned with curing his patients. He was much esteemed aboard, very much more than his military colleague, Mr Oakley, who was there to look after the marines, and who (like too many army and navy surgeons) believed every man who reported sick to be a malingerer until he was proved to be ill.

  Mr Eliot was also pretty well acquainted with malingering; he was no fool, and he had not treated some thousands of sailors without learning something of their tortuous mental processes; but, as he said to Tobias, he would rather have a dozen malingerers impose upon him than turn away one genuinely sick man. In fact, he was very rarely deceived – far less often than Mr Oakley.

  One result of this was th
at as the ship settled down and the lower-deck began to understand the nature of the officers, marines who felt unwell would insinuate themselves into the group of sick seamen, to be treated by the naval surgeon – a proceeding which led to the most violent resentment on the part of Mr Oakley. Mr Eliot utterly discountenanced it, for one of the first principles of medical practice is that another man’s patients must never be taken from him, nor his treatment adversely criticised. But discountenancing a practice does not always abolish it, and the ship’s company remained obstinately attached to Mr Eliot in time of sickness.

  An instance of this arose on that very morning, four days out from Madeira: it was a Tuesday, a very pleasant, warm and sweet-tempered Tuesday, with the sun two hours above the horizon on their larboard quarter, and a steady north-east breeze sending them roundly away under all plain sail on their south-western course over the width of the Atlantic for Brazil. The squadron was sailing in close, rigid formation, with the Pearl hull-down ahead, looking out for the Spaniards, and for once the Wager was keeping her station without any particular effort: she could sail well enough with a following or a quartering wind, and it was only when the wind came forward of her beam that she turned into a heavy, awkward and cross-grained slug.

  They had scarcely had a single day of quartering wind all the way until this, the thirtieth parallel, but now the Wager was doing very well, and as Tobias stepped on deck a few minutes after the change of the morning watch, he saw her looking at her charming best: immediately before and above him the vast spread of the mainsail reflected the sun with a splendid whiteness on to the already whitened deck, left scrubbed and spotless by the departing watch, and under the steady thrust of the wind the lower edge of the huge sail swept in a pure, unchanging curve above the waist of the ship; the shadow of the mainsail, with this same curve repeated, fell across the foc’s’le, above which the foresail made the same strong arc; on the foresail itself, as Tobias could very well see from the gangway, lay the shadow of the maintopsail and the crescent of blinding sunlight that shot between the topsail and the mainyard; and so throughout – a brilliant impression of enormous parallel curves, the strong lines of the yards across and the intensely blue and luminous sky. The Wager was running easily, making a good eight knots, and the long Atlantic swell came from the north – a following sea that passed under her nobly carved stern-gallery, where Captain Murray sat drinking coffee in a coffee-cup and admiring the glorious royal-blue ocean, under her counter to give her a long easy lift from behind; the whole ship was alive, and the wind sang in her rigging. Her easy pitch was one of the rare motions that did not make Tobias sick: he walked forward champing with delight.