Book 5 - Desolation Island

by Patrick O'Brian

  'But it is mixed into their grog. With all the perverse wickedness of seamen with regard to their health, they cannot avoid taking it. We use the Devil for a righteous end: execrable in theology, but sound in medicine.'

  'Yes, sir. But Faster Doudle, the tall man, was in my mess, and he often exchanged his grog for tobacco: it may be the same with the others.'

  'The dogs. The wicked dogs. I shall deal with them. A spoon, ho: a spoon, there; and half a pint of juice. I shall put an end to this: they will drink their grog or be flogged. And yet, you know,' he said, pausing, 'it will look strange in me, who have always set my face against their nasty rum—who circulated a petition throughout the fleet calling for the abolition of the monstrous custom by which grog missed during sickness is made up to the patient on his discharge—if I ask the Captain to issue an order requiring each man to drink his tot. Still and all, in this case a citreous drench will answer, I believe.'

  The drench answered; the physical symptoms disappeared; but the gloom remained, and not only in the former patients but throughout the ship—a perfect atmosphere for the breeding of disease, as Stephen pointed out. Apart from a score of the poor flibberty-gibberty creatures who had been left behind by the boats, the men were attentive to their duty, but the fine drive was gone. The leak gained on them as the oakum of the first successful fothering worked through the leak, and the passing of a new sail was a slow, exhausting business that had little evident result: the Leopard drove eastward and a little south under small sail in a rising wind, pumping day and night. At any time the weather, fairly kind for the forties these last weeks, might break: the Leopard might have to run before an enormous storm of wind, with the great seas building up; and the general view aboard was that she could not survive the half of it.

  'Tell me, Mr Herapath,' said Stephen. 'In circumstances like these, were you supplied with a large quantity of opium, should you take a pipe?'

  Herapath shied away from the renewal of their intimacy. He could not tell, he said—probably not—there was perhaps something indecent in its use against mere apprehension—but then again perhaps he might.

  Except when their work required his presence, he avoided Stephen whenever he could, either pumping beyond his time or shutting himself up in the cabin he had inherited from the purser—there were many vacant cabins, both fore and aft. Now he said, 'You will excuse me, sir: I have promised to put in a spell at the pumps.'

  Stephen sighed. He had hoped to engage Herapath on the subject of the Chinese poetry that seemed to be the young man's only consolation when he was deprived of his mistress's company. More than once, in earlier days, Herapath had spoken of his studies, of the language and its poets, and Stephen had listened greedily through half the night. But those days were past, and at present he would flee as he had fled now, leaving his papers on the sickbay table. Standing there alone, Stephen looked at the sheets covered with neat characters: 'It might be directions for making tea,' he reflected, 'or the wisdom of a thousand years.' But on one of the sheets he noticed a small interlined translation, the direct word-for-word method that Herapath had explained:

  Before my bed, clear moonlight

  Frost on the floor?

  Raising head, I gaze at the moon

  Bowing head, think of my own country.

  There was indeed a moon, three days from the full, riding through the sparse clouds beyond the scuttle. He sighed again. It was some time since he had eaten or sat tête-a-tête with Jack: he felt a delicacy about seeming to force his confidence at this juncture, the more so as Jack was more remote, more closed in since the failure off that far island, wholly taken up with the preservation of his ship, very often deep in the after-hold with the carpenter, trying to come at the leak. Yet Stephen missed those brief periods, and he was particularly pleased when, on his way back to his cabin, he met with the youngster Forshaw, the bearer of an invitation 'when the Doctor might have time to spare—there was nothing urgent'.

  As he traversed the quarterdeck he noticed a relative kindness in the air—it was distinctly above freezing—and a peculiarly brilliant star quite near the moon.

  'There you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'How good of you to come so soon. Do you feel in the mind for music? Just half an hour? God knows what state my fiddle will be in, but I thought we might scrape, if only for a glass.'

  'I might,' said Stephen. 'But listen, will you, till I say you a poem:

  Before my bed, clear moonlight

  Frost on the floor?

  Raising head, I gaze at the moon

  Bowing head, I think of my own country.'

  'That is a damned good poem,' said Jack, 'although it don't rhyme.' And after a moment in which he too bent his head he said, 'I have just been gazing at her too, with my sextant: a perfect lunar, with old Saturn there, as clear as any bell. I have my longitude to within a second. What do you say to the Mozart B minor?'

  They played, not beautifully but deep, ignoring their often discordant strings and striking right into the heart of the music they knew best, the true notes acting as their milestones. On the poop above their heads, where the weary helmsmen tended the new steering-oar and Babbington stood at the con, the men listened intently; it was the first sound of human life that they had heard, apart from the brief Christmas merriment, for a time they could scarcely measure. And Bonden and Babbington, who had known Jack for many years, exchanged a glance of significance. The last movement worked up to its splendid end, to the magnificent, inevitable final chord, and Jack laid by his violin. 'I am going to tell the officers presently,' he said in a conversational tone, as though they had been talking about navigation all this time, 'but I thought you might like to know first. There is land laid down in about 49°44'S and 69°E. A Frenchman by the name of Trémarec discovered it—Desolation Island. Cook could not find it, but I think Trémarec was out by ten degrees. I am confident the place exists; the whaler off the Cape spoke of it, and he fixed the position with a lunar. At all events, I am confident enough to prefer the risk of not finding it to the risk of hauling north. I dare not carry a press of sail tonight, for fear of floating ice; but in the morning, wind and weather permitting—and there is a big word, Stephen—I mean to put the ship's head south. I have not said anything before this, partly because I could not fix our position, and partly not to raise the people's hopes; they could not stand out against another disappointment like the Crozets. But I thought you would like to know. You might choose to say a prayer or two. My old nurse always said there was nothing like Latin, for prayers.'

  Prayers or no, the morning broke fair and clear. And secrecy or no, there was already a certain eagerness abroad. The pumps turned somewhat faster, and if the spirit of the crew could be measured by the jet, it had risen by some ten to twelve per cent. The lookouts mounted to the masthead not indeed at a run, but with none of the languor of the day before: almost at once one cried out for a sail far down on the southern horizon, and although this was dismissed as only another ice-mountain—there were two monsters a mile to windward, and in the night the blessed moon had allowed them to avoid two more—the hail brought a new kind of liveliness. And when with infinite care the ship's head was brought due south, and more sail set, this life increased surprisingly, overcoming the immense fatigue that weighed upon the ship's company like a pall of lead—no man or boy had had more than four hours' sleep on end between the spells of heavy pumping for as long as he could remember.

  'Good day to you, ma'am,' said Stephen, opening Mrs Wogan's door. 'I believe you may take some air at last. The sky is clear, the sun shines bright with a surprising warmth, and although our poop is now the scene of strange activity, the gangway remains, the windward, or weather gangway, ma'am. And we had best profit by the morning while it lasts.'

  'Lord, Dr Maturin, that would be Paradise. I have not seen the sky, nor you, this age. We have been a gaggle of women all together, knitting without a moment's pause and trying to keep warm; however, a baby is a great subject for conversation. Is
it true we are going to the antarctic pole? Is there land at the pole? I suppose there must be, or they would not call it the pole: nor, indeed, would they want to go there. Pray try this mitten, for the size. Dear me, your hand is grown horny to a degree—the perpetual pumping, I presume. Land! Of course, we can scarcely hope for shops; but I dare say there will be the equivalent of Eskimoes, with furs for sale. How I yearn for fur, a deep, deep bed of fur, and a fur nightgown too!'

  'I cannot answer for the Eskimoes, but I can guarantee the fur,' said Stephen, yawning. 'These are the seas from which the sealskin comes, the darling of our modern age. I am credibly informed, that the pole itself is ringed with seals three deep; and this morning alone I myself have seen enough to make a cargo for a ship of moderate size, or emplacement, as we say; seals of three several kinds, besides four and twenty whales, and a plethora of birds, including, to my astonishment, a small duck, not unlike a teal, and what may well have been a shag. I am infinitely obliged to you, ma'am, for your kind thought of mittens.'

  All day they sailed, and all day the glass in Jack's cabin sank. It had foretold full gales in the Channel and the Bay, the wicked mistral in the Mediterranean, a hurricane off Mauritius, but rarely had it dropped so fast. When he had taken what few precautions the case would admit, he kept to the poop, watching the western sky out there on the windward beam; and all the while the sun shone bright, the deck gay with drying clothes, among them Leopardina's pink socks and caps. The Leopard heeled pleasantly on the fine blue swell, and Stephen walked Mrs Wogan on the gangway below, pointing out not only the kinds of seal that might make her bed, but those that would not, and eighteen whales, together with so many birds that a less good-humoured woman might have rebelled.

  From time to time Jack looked at the masthead; he did not wish to go up there himself, for fear of raising hopes that might be dashed, but with all his force he willed the man to hail the deck. He was in as high a state of tension and anxiety as he had ever experienced, and Mrs Wogan's gurgling laugh sent a jet of anger through his mind; however, he paced on and on and on, his hands clasped behind his back, from the taffrail to the hances and back again, showing no emotion of any sort. And when the hail did come at last, he still paced on for a while before taking his best telescope to the foretopgallant jacks.

  Yes, there it lay, high land, black rock beneath the snow, broad on the larboard bow. Even with the Leopard's leeway and the current setting east at what he judged to be chose on two miles in the hour, he could still fetch well to the windward of the land. Farther south and east mountain peaks heaved up, a great way off; and in the lie of the land he recognized the Frenchman's description of Desolation Island. He had no doubt of it: this was the landfall that he had prayed for.

  With a sober, contained triumph he climbed down, steadily packed on sail after sail until the Leopard's masts complained in spite of their extraordinary supports. To his surprise—water being but a shifting ballast at the best—she was astonishingly stiff, and once all her vast mass had gathered its momentum, the Leopard ploughed fast across the sea.

  He called young David Allan, the remaining bosun's mate and now the acting bosun, and with him he told over what the ship possessed in the way of anchors and massive cordage. They had done this before the sad day off the Crozets, and the sum was still much the same, amounting to the kedge alone and just enough cablets and hawsers to veer out a reasonable scope. But since then two carronades, intended not for the Leopard but for the settlement of Port Jackson and therefore carried in the hold, had been located and brought within reach of the main hatchway: these, made fast to the kedge, would give them an anchor not far from the weight of the small bower, enough for her to ride at single anchor, given good holding ground and a moderate tide. 'And for the rest, sir?' asked Allan.

  'For the rest, as soon as we are well in with the land, we shall reduce sail. You will have the hawsers from the mastheads, splice 'em end to end, point 'em out of the gun-room port, and then we shall proceed as circumstances may require.'

  Allan looked a little blank, but the Captain's placid assumption that such a task was well within his powers impressed him; and when he was told that he should have all the forecastle-men and quartermasters in the ship, the pumps be damned, he went off cheerfully enough.

  Nearer and nearer, still with the land on the larboard bow. Before dinner the most northerly shore was visible from the deck, right down to the white line where it met the sea. And after that meal had been gulped down it was clear that this land was a bold cape running northwards from the mass. Nearer still: Jack paced up and down the poop with a quicker step; and although he had a crocodile's digestion, the lumps of ancient beef that he had swallowed dwelt there, under his rigid midriff, as firm and solid as when they had left the galley cauldron. Growing cloud in the west; and in the pale sky southwards the beginnings of an aurora, a shimmering curtain that wavered high up there, over a quarter of the sky, faint prismatic streams perpetually falling yet always in the same place. Three huge ice islands to windward, one of them four miles long and perhaps two hundred feet in height, and several smaller masses scattered about the long even swell, sometimes flashing as they rolled.

  When should he begin to reduce sail, to let the bosun get at the precious hawsers? Could he ask the exhausted people to strike the topgallantmasts down on deck against the expected blow, and then call upon them for unknown exertions when it came to securing the ship? How did the tides run in these uncharted waters? The threat grew stronger in the west: lightning flickered on the far horizon—far, but not so very far. The feeling of the day had changed.

  These and many more were decisions that only he could take. Collective wisdom might do better, but a ship could not be a parliament: there was no time for debate. The situation was changing fast, as it often did before an action, when a whole carefully worked-out plan might have to be discarded in a moment, and new steps decided upon. This rested on him alone, and rarely had he felt more lonely, nor more fallible, as he saw the headland advancing towards him, and with it the moment of decision. The lack of sleep, the pain, the confusion of day and night for weeks on end, had told upon him; his head was thick and stupid; yet a mistake in the next hour might cost the ship her life.

  The swell was increasing, and the wind. He knew very well that once it came on to blow, to blow as the wind could blow in the forties, the clouds in the west would cover the sky with extraordinary speed and this seemingly sweet day would turn into a howling darkness, full of racing water. A visit to the cabin showed him the glass lower still: sickeningly low. And back on the poop he saw that he was by no means the only one to have noticed the mounting sea—an oddly disturbed sea, as if moved by some not very distant force; white water too, and a strange green colour in the curl of the waves and in the water slipping by. He glanced north-west, and there the sun, though shining still, had a halo, with sun-dogs on either side. Ahead, the aurora had gained in strength: streamers of an unearthly splendour. Below him, the pumps churned on and on: but both down there and here on the poop he caught an atmosphere of growing apprehension. Stiff though she was, the Leopard was heeling now so that her larboard cathead plunged deep on the leeward swell. And now the surf was rising higher on the icebergs and on the weather face of the headland on the bow. The howl in the rigging was louder and higher by far, and growing fast: a dangerous, dangerous note.

  The broad expanse of water between the Leopard and the cape showed far more white than green; and inshore, where there had been smooth water not half an hour ago, there was the ugly appearance of a tide-rip, a long narrow stretch of pure white that raced eastwards from the headland and that must grow longer, broader, and fiercer by far as the tide reached its full flow.

  The situation had changed indeed; but worse was coming, and coming very fast. A grey haze overspread the sky with the speed of a curtain being drawn, and it was followed by tearing cloud: the lightning increased on the starboard beam, much nearer now. And right ahead, a white squall, the forerunner
of the full almighty gale, swept over the mile or two of the sea northward of the cape, veiling the land entirely.

  It was no longer a question of where and how he should negotiate the tide-race, but of whether he should be able to approach the cape at all, or whether he should be obliged to put the ship before the ever-increasing wind and run before it. Speed was everything: in five or ten minutes at this rate of increase there would be no alternative—he would either have to put before the wind or perish. Or put before the wind and perish: the people could not pump for ever—they were already very near their limit even with this encouragement—and in any case the Leopard would almost surely founder in the kind of seas that would build up before nightfall.

  The tide-race was cutting up higher still, as nasty a race as ever he had seen: yet the Leopard must go through it, whether or not. Go through or run; and running could only mean the end, somewhat delayed.

  'Whether or no, Tom Collins,' said Jack to himself, and raising his voice to the full to be heard over the wind, 'Jib and forestaysail. Mr Byron, give her half a point.'

  He had made his decision: it had formed clear-cut in his mind and now he was quite calm and lucid, somewhat detached. Speed was all, and the only question was whether the sails and masts could drive the waterlogged hull hard enough without giving way, whether the Leopard could race the western gale across that mile of sea before it reached its full force and either flung her on her beam-ends or forced her to run due east. It was a desperate choice: if any sail abaft the foremast gave, if the oar should yield, or any upper mast, then all was lost: but at least the choice was made, and he believed it was the right one. He only reproached himself for not having driven her faster, sooner: for having lost minutes earlier in the day.

  With the greater speed she gave a cumbrous great leap forward, like a carthorse spurred, and ploughed on faster still. The wind was now abaft the beam and she buried her larboard bow so that green seas swept the forecastle. She was madly overpressed, but so far she could just bear it; and now she was racing through the tall waves, their white crests tearing head-high across her waist. A gust on the rise laid her over so that her lee-rail vanished in the foam. He gave her another point—he could afford it—and now she tore towards the terrible zone where the gale screamed round the headland with redoubled force and joined the tide-rip.