Book 19 - The Hundred Days

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Then they share our fate: for with us too it is the males alone that wear the horns.' After a moment Mr Wright began to laugh—a low, creaking sound that went on and on. 'Forgive me,' he said at last, taking off his spectacles and wiping them. 'I am facetious at times. You were speaking of ivory?'

  'Yes, sir: a particularly hard and dense ivory. The infant narwhal has but two teeth, both in his upper jaw. That on the right usually remains in a rudimentary state: the other develops into a tapering column that may protrude for six or seven feet and weigh a stone or more.'

  'What is its function?'

  'That appears to be unknown. There are no reports of its use as a weapon—no boat has ever been attacked—and although sportive narwhals have been seen to cross their tusks above the surface, no fighting ensued, and it was thought to be done in play. As for its alleged use as a fish-spear, an animal with no hands would be puzzled to transfer its transfixed prey from tusk to mouth: besides, the females are tuskless: yet they do not starve. There are innumerable suppositions, all based upon very little knowledge indeed; but there is one undoubted, instantly observable phenomenon—the very curious shape of the horn. Not only does it bear a large number of parallel spirals ascending in half a dozen left-hand turns from the base almost to the bare, smooth tip, but it also has several much larger tori or undulating turns, rising in the same direction. All this puzzles me extremely, though I am something of a physiologist, devoted to comparative osteology; and I should very much like to ask whether these adaptations of the tusk are designed to strengthen it, without adding to its already considerable bulk, and whether the much larger tori help the animal, a very rapid swimmer, to diminish the turbulence it must encounter at every stroke. I am aware sir, that turbulence is one of the chief studies among gentlemen of your profession.'

  'Turbulence. Aye, turbulence,' said Mr Wright, shaking his head. 'Any man that means to build a lighthouse, or a bridge, or a jetty, must think long and hard upon turbulence, and the enormous force exerted by water in violent motion. But oh the wearisome calculations, the uncertainty! On the face of it, sir, your suppositions seem reasonable: surface corrugation does often increase resistance to certain forms of stress; and conceivably your tori might have a favourable effect in directing a spiral flow past the advancing body and in counteracting the rotary force—for your animal is propelled by his tail, is he not?'

  'Just so. A horizontal tail, of course, like the rest of his kind.'

  'It is an interesting problem: but any suggestion that I might put forward, based solely on a verbal description, however well-informed, would scarcely be worth the air expended. If I could see the horn, measure the depth and angle of the spiral and of the larger processes, my opinion might possibly have some slight value.'

  'Sir,' said Dr Maturin, 'if you would honour me with your company at dinner, let us say tomorrow, I should be delighted to show you my tusk, a small but perfect specimen.'

  Jack and Stephen met again, almost on the very steps of the Crown. 'Well met, brother,' cried Jack from a little distance. Stephen considered the Commodore's face and his gait: was he sober? 'You look uncommon cheerful, my dear,' he said, leading him in the direction of the Pigtail Steps. 'I wish you may not have met with some compliant young person, overwhelmed with all the gold lace upon your person.'

  'Never in life,' said Jack. 'Aubrey the Chaste is what I am called throughout the service. I did indeed meet a young person, but one that shaves, when he can afford it. Stephen, you may remember that I have told you about our grievous lack of master's mates, and how I yearned to replace poor Wantage?'

  'I do not suppose you have mentioned it much above ten times a day.'

  'It is not a question of those midshipmen who are promoted master's mate merely so that they may pass for lieutenants at the end of their servitude—you know of course that they have to show certificates proving that they have served in that rating for two years—no, no, it is your true master's mate, the mate to the master of the ship, if you follow me, whose only ambition is to become a master himself, an expert navigator and ship-handler, but as an officer with a warrant from the Navy Board rather than the King's commission. Admittedly we have Salmon, but how I longed for another, if only to second poor tired old Woodbine! Our mids are good young fellows, but they are not mathematicians, and their navigation is brutish, brutish.'

  A vigilant eye aboard Surprise had caught the Commodore's broad gestures, designed to illustrate the brutishness of the ordinary midshipman's navigation, and his boat set off across the harbour at once. It took some time to thread its way through the crowded shipping and smallcraft—the whole squadron was refitting at the utmost speed—and Jack went on, 'Well, the young person I met was John Daniel.' He looked into Stephen's face for some gleam of intelligence, recognition of the name: no gleam of any kind whatsoever. 'John Daniel,' repeated Jack, 'we were shipmates for a short while in Worcester. And he was in Agamemnon: Woodbine knows him well, and many other officers. He was paid off at the peace and joined a privateer . . .'

  'Sir, sir, oh sir, if you please,' called a shrill boy, purple in the face from running, 'the Admiral's compliments and desires you will hand this to Dr Maturin.'

  'My compliments and duty to the Admiral,' said Jack, taking the letter and passing it to Stephen, 'and you may tell him that his orders have been carried out.'

  They walked down the steps to the waiting boat, and as they walked Stephen turned the letter over and over, looking thoughtful. 'Do not mind me, I beg,' said Jack; but already bow-oar, an old seaman who knew Stephen well, was at hand to ensure that he cleared the gunwale with one firm stride.

  Bonden shoved off the moment the Commodore was settled, cried 'Give way,' and the launch weaved through the mêlée with never a bump until he brought it alongside with his usual perfection.

  In the cabin Stephen said, 'Jack, I fear I have been so indiscreet as to ask Mr Wright to dine aboard without consulting you. I particularly wish to hear his view on the action of water flowing the whole length of the horn you so very kindly gave me long ago, upon the nature of the turbulence set up by the whorls or convolutions, and upon the effect of the more delicate ascending spirals.'

  'Not at all, not at all,' said Jack. 'I should very much like to hear him: no man more. Although I have been waterborne most of my days, I am sadly ignorant of hydrostatics except in a pragmatic, rule-of-thumb kind of fashion. We could invite Jacob too, and have some music. I know that Mr Wright, like some of the other mathematical Fellows, delight's in a fugue. Oh, and Stephen, let me go back to John Daniel, Wantage's replacement: he is so prodigiously shabby it would be cruel to introduce him to the berth. He is a poor, short, bent, meagre, ill-looking little creature, very like . . . that is to say, you are the only grown person aboard whose clothes would fit him. You shall have them back of course, as soon as he can whip up something to appear on the quarterdeck in.'

  'Killick,' called Stephen, barely raising his voice, since he knew that their valuable common servant was listening behind the door—Killick had something of a cold in his chest and his heavy breathing could have been heard at a far greater distance. 'Killick, be so good as to bring a respectable white shirt, the blue coat whose button you were replacing, a neck-cloth, a pair of duck trousers, stockings, shoes—buckled shoes—and a handkerchief.'

  Killick opened his mouth: but to Captain Aubrey's astonishment he shut it again, paused, said, 'Aye-aye, sir: respectable white shirt it is, the blue coat, neck-cloth, ducks, stockings, buckled shoes, wipe,' and hurried away. Stephen was not surprised: it was but another example of that singular deference that attended not only his state but also that of men condemned to death. 'Jack, pray tell me about your master's mate,' he said.

  'His name is John Daniel, and he comes from Leominster, where his father was a bookseller in a small way of business: he had a fair amount of education in his father's shop and at the town school. But Mr Woodbine, whose family lived there, tells me that it was not a reading town at all, and with
trade declining, the customers did not pay their bills. The shop was in a sad way, getting worse and worse, and to preserve his father from being carried off to the debtors' prison, young Daniel took the bounty and went aboard the receiving ship at Pompey. He was drafted with such a hopeless set of quota-men to Arethusa that he was the only one who could write his name. Nicholls, Edward Nicholls, who was first of Arethusa, looked at him without much love—no seaman, too feeble to haul, no handicraft, and he was about to rate him landman and waister when he happened to ask him what he thought he could do that might be useful aboard a ship. Daniel said he had studied the mathematics and that he could cast accounts. Nicholls set him a few questions, saw that he was telling the truth, and said that if Daniel wrote a neat hand, he could be of some help to the purser or the captain's clerk and perhaps the master. This he did to their satisfaction, but once they were clear of the Channel purser and clerk had little employment for him and he spent most of his time with the master, Oakhurst. You remember Oakhurst, Stephen? He was in Euryalus off Brest, a great lunarian. He dined with us once, and cried out against those ignorant idle swabs who would depend on chronometers.'

  'I remember him as a somewhat passionate, even an irascible companion.'

  'Yes. But he was kind to Daniel, who was entranced with the whole idea of navigation—the celestial clock—the circling stars—the planets among them—the moon—and who, being lent an old quadrant, perpetually took altitudes or measured the distances between the moon and various stars. He was a young man who delighted in the beauty of mathematics: who delighted in number itself . . . Furthermore, when Arethusa's people were all turned over into Inflexible, he was rated ordinary and, being small and light, he was stationed in the maintop.'

  'He must have found that very hard.'

  'I am sure he did, and I cannot imagine what the premier was about—to be sure, they were cruel short-handed, yet even so . . . But, however, he survived it. He had been at sea for some time, turning out whenever all hands was piped and he was used to the ways of the Navy: he was not a stranger, but a well-liked man surrounded with shipmates, and they helped him. After a year or so of this—for he was a quick learner—he had a fair notion of sailing a ship as well as navigating her. But he was very happy when Inflexible went into dock for repair and Oakhurst asked his captain to rate Daniel master's mate in the old Behemoth. And then, of course, like most men-of-war Behemoth was paid off in the peace; and after a while on the shore—anything for a berth—he joined a privateer fitting out to pursue and take pirates on the Barbary coast, but in no way suited for the task. One of the first pirates they met, a Tangerine, so battered her that she only just reached Oran, where she grounded and bilged. A Genoese tartan let him work his passage back to Mahon, where he hoped he might find someone he knew, but they stripped him of all he possessed. He had barely a shirt to his back when I saw him sitting under the arcades. But now returning to our dinner, I shall have a word with my cook; and if Mr Wright agrees, we could play him the Zelenka fugue that the three of us ran through again on Sunday—a most uncommon piece.'

  The frigate's dinner for Mr Wright was surprisingly successful: the captain's cook, with all the delights of Minorca at hand, had put himself out, and they ate nobly, drinking a great deal of a light local red from Fornells and then some ancient Madeira; but what particularly pleased Stephen was the way in which the great engineer, ordinarily a difficult guest and apt to be sullen, took to Jack Aubrey and even more to Jacob. They had a lively discussion on the local varieties of modern Greek and the curious versions of Turkish that had come into being among the subject nations of the immense Turkish empire. 'I was a fair hand with Homer at school,' said Wright, holding up his glass, '—athesphatos oinos, by the way—but when I was desired to build the wharves and breakwater at Hyla I found to my dismay that my Greek was no good to me, no good at all, and I was obliged to employ a dragoman at every turn. No doubt you, sir, were better prepared for the Eastern Mediterranean?'

  'Why, sir, it was not so much prescience or virtue on my part as the pure good fortune of having spent my tender years—the years when a language flows into your mind with no intellectual effort—among Turks, Greeks and people speaking many varieties of Arabic and Berber as well as the archaic Hebrew of the Beni Mzab Jews. My people were jewel-merchants, based mostly in the Levant but travelling very widely indeed, even to Mogador on the Atlantic coast on the one hand and Baghdad on the other.'

  'Surely, Doctor,' said Jack, 'it must be a perilous business, rambling about mountains and deserts with a parcel of jewels in your pocket or your saddle-bag? I mean quite apart from the wild beasts—lions ravening for their prey—there are likely to be bandits, are there not? One hears sad tales of the Arabs: and I well remember that in the Holy Land, where people were no doubt a great deal better than they are now, the Good Samaritan came upon a poor fellow beaten, wounded and robbed on the highway. While a little later in this watch I am going to send off two convoys, heavily armed, to see some merchantmen safe into London river, laden with no more than Smyrna figs and the like—never so much as a pearl or a diamond between the lot of them. For my part I should never dare wander about a desert carrying a stock of gem-stones without a troop of horse at my back.'

  'Nor, unless I had a soul triply bound in brass, should I ever dare to put to sea in a frail wooden affair drifting as the wind chooses: but as you know, sir, better than I, a little use makes it seem almost safe, even commonplace. To be sure, both mountain and desert can be mortal for one not brought up to them; but after some generations they seem little more dangerous than a journey to Brighton.'

  A midshipman came, walked to Commodore Aubrey's side and discreetly conveyed Mr Harding's duty together with the news that the officer commanding the convoy desired leave to part company.

  'Forgive me, gentlemen,' said Jack, rising. 'I shall not be long.'

  Long he was not, but already the talk had flowed on, and Jacob was repeating the word 'Mzab' with some emphasis to Mr Wright, who leant forward, one hand cupping his ear.

  'Forgive me, sir,' said Jacob, 'I was just explaining how generations of nomadic jewel-trading teach one to survive—the network of trusted associates, often related—the custom of travelling in small family groups—middle-aged women, young children—few guards and those few at a distance—a modest drove of indifferent horses or camels as ostensible property. I particularly stressed the young and preferably dirty, shabby children: they do away with any idea of wealth. And I did so partly to explain to Dr Maturin how I came to be acquainted with the Zeneta dialect of Berber and the archaic Hebrew of Mzab.'

  'An acquaintance I envy you,' said Jack.

  Jacob bowed and continued, 'I had been taken along by some Alexandrian cousins, playing the part of unwashed child to perfection; but when we came to their usual resting place among the Beni Mzab a camel gave me so severe a bite—a bite that would not heal—that they were obliged to leave me and a great-aunt and travel on to an important rendezvous a great way off. It was there that I learnt the double guttural of the Beni Mzab Hebrew and that I became thoroughly at home with the triliteral roots of the Berber.' He gave a good many examples of the Hebrew in question and of Berber grammar, illustrating them with quotations from Ibn Khaldun.

  'By your leave, sir,' cried Killick, to Jack's relief, for not only was he thoroughly set-up for a reasonable quantity of spotted dog, but he was afraid that Mr Wright's interest in archaic Hebrew, never very strong, was waning fast.

  His interest in food, however, was as eager as Jack's, in spite of his age; and after a while he said in a voice of real authority, 'The French may say what they please, and Apicius, with his slave-fed moray eels, was no doubt very well; but it seems to me that civilization reaches its very height in the glistening, gently mottled form of just such a pudding as this, bedewed with its unctuous sauce.'

  'How wholly I agree with you, sir,' cried Jack. 'Allow me to cut you a slice from the translucent starboard end.'

  'Well, if
I must, I must,' said Mr Wright, eagerly advancing his plate.

  Gradually the pudding diminished; the decanters made their stately round; and Jack Aubrey brought up the subject of music. 'Until a little while ago,' he observed, 'I had never heard of a Bohemian composer called Zelenka.'

  'Dismas, I believe.'

  Jack bowed and went on, 'But then I was given a copy of his Ricercare for Three Voices, which we have now played several times and which I thought we might offer you with your coffee: unless indeed you would prefer the Locatelli C major trio.'

  'To tell you the truth, dear Commodore, I should prefer the Locatelli. There is something truly dispassionate and as it were geometrical in the trio that touches me, in something of the same manner as your paper on nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, considered from the navigator's point of view, in the Transactions. But before that, may I beg Dr Maturin to show me his horn? Then while I am listening, being at the same time in physical contact with the problems posed by this improbable tooth, perhaps intuition may lead me to the solution, as it has done on three or four very happy occasions.'

  Jack Aubrey had spoken of coffee, and to be sure it was as inevitable as the setting of the sun; but at present the stronger constitutions were still engaged with the remains of the spotted dog, and all hands were still drinking madeira—most emphatically all hands, since Killick, his mate and the boy, third class, who helped him in the background, were very fond of this ancient and generous wine and had perfected a way of substituting a full for a half-emptied decanter at the end of each passing: the dwarvish third-class boy wafted the first decanter out, emptied it entirely into tumblers which the three then drained in hurried gulps as opportunity offered.

  Stephen had been aware of their motions for some little while—he was, in any case, well acquainted with Killick's tendency to finish anything that was left and indeed to encourage the leaving, though rarely to this remarkable extent: Stephen had little to say about it on moral grounds, but it appeared to him that the third-class boy, a weedy little villain of about five feet, was very near his limit—he had had more opportunity than the other two and of course much less stamina. It was therefore something of a relief to Stephen when the last decanter, which had furnished the loyal toast, was removed, and Jack, Mr Wright and Jacob looked expectantly at him. 'Killick,' he said, 'pray be so good as to step into my cabin and bring the bow-case hanging behind the door.'