The Unknown Shore

by Patrick O'Brian

  From the doorway of the hut Tobias surveyed the bay, the wreck out there on the inner side of the reef, and the beach. For once the day had dawned clear, frosty clear and still, and from the rise he could see the Woger very plain: only her poop and foc’s’le were above the water, but her shape was perfectly distinct – it was not an anonymous, battered, unrecognisable wreck, but the wreck of the Wager and no other. The sight of what had been his home for so long lying there abandoned was very painful: those decks, canted now to a wild degree, with gaping holes cut roughly in them, were once gleaming white and as orderly as a medicine-chest; and there, where the stump of the mainmast washed to and fro in the cold grey swell, he had lain the long night through, while the sweet trade-wind hummed in the rigging, and above the complicated patterns of ropes and sails rose the southern stars, Canopus, Antares, Achernar and, low down, the Southern Cross – long tropical nights when they sailed through a phosphorescent sea as warm as milk, across the middle Atlantic to Brazil.

  This melancholy train of thought was broken by the sight of a condor: the huge bird passed straight across the sky without once moving its wings, until it was hidden by the headland that formed the southern limit of the bay; and it was followed by another, then another, all gliding with unhurried speed straight down to some remote scene of carnage – perhaps a stranded whale: conceivably another wreck.

  The bay was a deep inlet, with high land running out for a mile or so on either side: black cliffs and tumbled rock everywhere except at this end, the bottom of the bay: and everywhere inland thick trees crowded upon one another, the living pushing up among the dead. It was obviously a very wet place, for there were yellow-scummed runs of water down the cliffs, and wherever there was ground unoccupied by trees, rank, sad green things grew very tall – a monstrous giant hairy rhubarb, where there was shelter from the wind, and wild celery as high as a man. Although the day was cold there was a general smell of decay upon the air: rotting wood, rotting vegetation and huge deep banks of sea-weed rotting on the high-water mark.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ asked Jack. Tobias shook his head. ‘It is like the country that runs east from the Land’s End, in Cornwall,’ said Jack, ‘only worse. My grandfather took me down there when he went to see after some dirty parliamentary business at St Murrain, and I thought it was the most horrible coast in the world – could not believe that it would be repeated. That is the store tent down there in the middle, do you see? And this’ – pointing up the slope on which they stood – ‘is Mount Misery. Pretty steep. The mainland looks quite close from the top; and when you are up there you can make out a cape away to the north, about fifty miles away. It runs straight out from the mainland westwards, straight into the wind – the wind is always west here, with a little of north or south in it. So if we had not run aground here, we must have done so there, which is a great consolation. But if ever we do get away to the north, we shall have to weather that cape; and it trends away a great distance to the west. There might possibly be a channel through it, however. Do you see the long-boat? Behind the square house. Mr Cummins has sawn it in two, and it is to be lengthened twelve feet. Beyond the long-boat, where the rocks begin, used to be quite a good place for limpets and a green weed you can make soup of, but they are all gone now; and beyond that there is the cove where I found a large fish with its head crushed among the big pebbles, after a blow. A pretty sea, where even the fish cannot venture inshore. We are protected by that line of rocks to the west, so it must be far worse in the offing. There is the purser going to the store tent, do you see? He will be serving out the rations directly – I will go down.’

  The news of Tobias’ recovery had spread quickly: there were several people moving about, and many of them stared up to the hut and waved. When Jack returned he brought with him not only a mug half full of grey flour and a wizened little knob of horse, their ration, but a tallow candle and two small clams, gifts for Tobias from the carpenter and one Phipps, a bo’sun’s mate. ‘This is one of the most valuable things going,’ said Jack, holding up the candle. Tobias looked attentive, but said nothing. ‘It is tallow, you see,’ said Jack, ‘not wax. We fry seaweed in it, which is uncommon wholesome and refreshing. Unfortunately the lunatics who put the trade cargo aboard sent many more wax candles than tallow. You cannot eat wax, it appears; at least, not with any profit.’

  Their breakfast consisted of the last of the dog and a little flour and water thrown on a hot shovel, so that it clung together, charred slightly, and received the name of bread; and when the feast was over Jack went down to take the yawl across to the wreck. The boats were continually employed in probing the wreck for provisions to add to the all important sea-store; all hands agreed that they must have two months’ minimum ration before they could put to sea, and for daily use they had nothing but damaged casks and what they could find along the shore. It was Jack’s turn of duty now, and he hoped, if he fished up a cask of anything edible, to be indulged with the use of the boat to go after the birds that were sometimes to be met with, or at least to bring in some shellfish from the outer rocks.

  Tobias sat outside the hut, and presently Campbell and Morris came up to shake his hand and wish him joy of his recovery; they were thin – thinner than Jack – and grey and quiet, and they left soon, because the tide was ebbing, and if they did not search the rocks at low water they would find nothing. They were obliged to profit by every minute of calm low water, for unless they could add to their rations they could barely live. Cozens, who came up after they had gone, was more changed by far – shockingly changed. He had been a fleshy young man, but now his face had fallen away and it was unevenly blotched from drinking; he was dirty; he smelt; and he looked quite old. But he was surprisingly cheerful, and he had brought Tobias a case-bottle of brandy. ‘Drink it up, mate,’ he cried, clapping him on the back; ‘there’s plenty more where it came from.’ And he gave Tobias to understand, with nods and winks, that the gunner had a keg hidden, and that he could have as much as he liked: then, speaking much more seriously, he gave Tobias a rambling, disconnected account of how the captain was invading the seamen’s privileges; how the captain and his little band of favourites, the purser, the steward and a few others, had double rations; and how he, Cozens, was resolved to stand up for the sailors’ rights, and not submit to tyranny; and how he wondered that Jack should have turned so like a preaching parson. ‘He ought to come into the square house and mess with us,’ he said. ‘We have all the best fellows in the crew – all the men with any independent spirit. Now, Sam?’

  Samuel Stook, AB, had been hailing ‘The hut, ahoy,’ for some minutes. ‘I come up,’ he said, in a strong shout, ‘to see the doctor – heard he was better – brought him a crab – ha, ha – not at all.’ A friend of Mr Stook’s falling sick on the West Indies station, had recovered (a rare thing in naval experience) with no ill effects other than the loss of his hearing. Recovered invalids were therefore deaf, as like as not, and Stook roared away with the unimpaired force of his lungs; the effect, combined with Cozens’ way of thumping his back to emphasise a point, was shattering indeed, and when they proposed carrying Tobias down to the beach for a little company, he had not enough energy left to resist their kindly-meant importunity.

  They set him on a barrel by the side of the sea, and as the rising tide drove the men from their perpetual hungry searching of the shore, he received a great number of visits. He learnt that all hands were discontented, that many were almost out of control and that some were armed. He also learnt that a sick medical man is not an omniscient pontiff any more: none of his former patients scrupled to suggest remedies, to advise him to take care, to eat more, to eat less, to sit out of that nasty draught; they told him of former cases in their experience not unlike his – the death of relatives and friends from high living, blows on the head, gout that settled in the vitals, and taking cold. They gave him edible seaweed (good for him: would strengthen the tubes), limpets and four splendid mussels, the last a gift from Bosman, a gi
gantic sailor whose wisdom teeth Tobias had extracted to the deafening roll of a drum on successive Sundays.

  When it came on to rain, as it did just before the serving out of the rations at noon, they carried him into the square house, and there Cozens and the carpenter invited him (Jack being still at sea in the yawl) to eat with them. It was a big mess, a score of men who ate in common, and if it was not very well provided with victuals, at least it was rich in wine and spirits: Diego, the Portuguese stowaway, hurried down the long plank table clapping a pint pot before each man, either filled with wine or half filled with rum; and the whole place had a pleasant taverny smell.

  ‘Not Taffy Powell,’ said the boy, putting an empty mug before a seaman of that name. ‘Purser damn your eyes, idle dog.’

  Powell was strongly moved by this, and his eager examination of Diego drowned all conversation, because as Diego was a foreigner, with very little English, it was necessary to shout very high and clear to make him understand. After a great deal of bellowing, interference and cross-questioning, it seemed to the company that the purser had stopped Powell’s allowance, either at the captain’s order or perhaps of his own mere motion.

  ‘I am knocking off her head, isn’t it?’ cried Powell. ‘Yis, yis.’

  A good many people called out that the purser was a beast, a swab, a thief; and in the clamour the gunner, passing quickly behind the bench, whispered in Cozens’ ear. Cozens started up, grasped Powell’s mug and swore he would get it filled or know the reason why. Powell cried out, ‘No, no,’ the carpenter shouted to him not to meddle and several of the men clutched at him; but he would be going, and he went.

  ‘What a spirited young fellow he is, to be sure,’ said the carpenter, wagging his head. ‘He had a regular set-to with one of the land-officers the other day – it is only his fun. The captain was vexed to a very savage pitch, Mr Barrow; but it was only his fun. He will be argyfying with the purser now – ha, ha, ha. Take a little piece of thrumbo, Mr B; it will rectify the humours, being, as I may say, a deep-sea weed, and very suitable for the vagrant humours. Though if you take more than a little in a day, you will bring it up again, Mr B. Mr Byron will be getting some, if he takes the yawl beyond the point: I fancy that must have been him – two shots. Did you hear? Perhaps he has shot a race-horse: if he should have shot a race-horse, how happy he will be.’

  ‘Is it likely that he will shoot a race-horse, Mr Cummins?’

  ‘We only call it a – what?’

  The lieutenant was in the door calling all hands. ‘All hands to the captain, all hands.’

  And at once the news flew round: the captain had shot Cozens down for mutiny.

  ‘This will bring it all to a head,’ said Jack, in the privacy of their hut. He was right, but he was right with a strange delay, for it was weeks and even months before the death of Cozens had its full effect.

  At the very first moment, when an open mutiny might have broken out, Mr Bean, the master and his mates, and the marine officers all stood armed behind the captain: the men were overawed – they were brutally reminded of a captain’s legal powers. Yet soon the ugly caballing began again. The gunner, at first timidly and then with more confidence, pursued his busy undermining of the captain’s authority: his plan was to persuade the whole crew to vote for going home – to make for Brazil by way of the Straits of Magellan. At the same time the purser intrigued with the deserters in their camp on the other side of the swamp below the bay, supplying them with rum in order to buy their support. There were parties for going north; there were parties for going south; and there were some who were for wandering off on wild adventures by themselves. Most of the men were thoroughly disturbed and uncertain: but there was not one who dared defy the captain to his face, and they went no further, the most rebellious of them, than sending messages and committee resolutions through Plastow, the captain’s steward and prime favourite, insisting upon a double ration of spirits. The habits of the service clung hard; the word mutiny still had a dreadful ring, and the shadow of the English gallows stretched out half across the world. None knew this better than the gunner – there was safety in numbers and in numbers alone: if the whole crew could be brought over, the captain would be persuaded, and no one man could be blamed. It was essential for the gunner to implicate as many as he possibly could, to cajole or frighten them into signing or putting their mark to his papers – legal-looking documents with ‘whereas’ and ‘above-mentioned’ and ‘these are to certify the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral of Great Britain', all over them.

  The gunner was not a very intelligent man, but fear of the northward journey and hatred for Captain Cheap lent him powers that he would not otherwise have possessed. His chief point in favour of a return by way of the south was that as they had had foul winds all the way to this point, the same winds would be fair for carrying them back again: but more than that, he had cunning political sense enough to profit by the ill-feeling between the soldiers and the sailors. It seems that two services can never agree for long, and it was certainly so in the case of the marines and the seamen of the Wager. Apart from the natural dislike between the two bodies, the marines, acting as sentries, stole the stores more often than the sailors could, and they were very much hated for this. No less than nine at one time were detected: the marine officers were bitterly reproached for their men’s wretched discipline, and the alliance between them and the captain was finally broken. Bulkeley drew Captain Pemberton over to his side, and although he could not reconcile the soldiers with the sailors, he removed their support from the captain.

  Now it only remained to persuade the captain that resistance was useless, and to induce him to sign a paper agreeing to go away to the south – a paper that would protect them all against future accusations. It had taken weeks and months to reach this point, but in spite of the gunner’s zeal he would never have succeeded so far had it not been for Cozens’ death. Cozens had been very much loved by the men; they loved his gaiety, courage and good-natured bounding energy, and they did not count any of his vices against him: in killing him Captain Cheap had killed all the affection the hands might ever have had for him, and nearly all their loyalty.

  This unsavoury business had taken time, a long season in which Jack and Tobias searched the shore, the nearer woods and swamps and even (thanks to a vessel made of empty barrels) the rocks within a mile or two of the coast; for they were much more interested in staying alive than in the politics of the camp – and if you did not find something more to eat you starved, for rations were down to a quarter of a pound of flour a day. For his part, Jack said that he was thoroughly disgusted with everybody concerned: he was convinced that it would all right itself as soon as they got to sea; but until then, he said, he would have nothing to do with any of them – none of them, for the captain’s loudest personal supporters, apart from his countrymen, Campbell and Hamilton, were toad-eaters, favourites and tale-bearers, the purser, the steward and a few others of that kidney.

  In this long period, then, while the plot was hatching and the long-boat was slowly turning into a schooner, Jack and Tobias became intimately acquainted with the unpromising coast of Wager Island, every cove and almost every rock. Tobias, as he grew stronger, sorted out and classified the few available birds, which ranged from the condor to the humming-bird, the greatest wing-span to the least. He did not believe his first sight of the tiny bird, no bigger than a hawk-moth, nor his second, for their name alone evokes the tropics, not a dismal, half-frozen, dripping swamp; but he was obliged to yield to the evidence in time. Yet he candidly confessed that all the humming-birds in creation did not interest him so much as the fowl that they called a race-horse: it was a huge loggerheaded duck that lived on shellfish, and, being much better equipped for the task than the shipwrecked crew, it grew fat on them. A good one would weigh over twenty pounds – a delightful unctuous roast, an honour to applied ornithology; but unfortunately very rare and rapidly becoming rarer, bec
ause the bird was unable to fly. The race-horse could only splash away with wings and legs, thrashing and running over the surface of the water, and although it moved very fast, the ravening mariners moved faster still.

  Tobias also resumed his duties: there was very little for him to do, for although they had fished up some of his instruments, the medicine-chest was gone; and apart from that nearly everybody who had survived to this point was healthy. But there were a few sprains, broken bones and agonising teeth to be dealt with, and he moved about among the men, kindly received by all parties, the perfect neutral. When the long-boat was nearly ready he told Jack that there was a new plan in motion, a scheme to arrest the captain: Captain Cheap had proved obstinate beyond all calculation – he would yield to none of their solicitations – and the new scheme was to arrest him for the murder of Cozens and carry him aboard. There were some who still hoped that he would embark of his own free will, and go for the south under oath and with strict limitation of his command; but the plan of placing him under arrest was gaining favour very fast.

  ‘I know,’ said Jack, ‘but to tell you the truth, Toby, I don’t care how they get him aboard. Once we are at sea there will be a prodigious change, I assure you. There are a good many who think as we do, and who only go along with the herd to avoid wrangling. I am sure Mr Bean does, although he says nothing, and I will answer for Rose, Buckley, Noble and plenty more. You will see, as soon as we have made a decent offing. Once we are well out to sea we shall turn everything the right way up again, and set course for Baldivia or Juan Fernandez. I do not love the captain any more than you do, but at least he is determined to rejoin the squadron. Let them arrest him, I say, and so much the better, if it means less delay.’