Book 15 - Clarissa Oakes

by Patrick O'Brian

  The general roar of honest mirth that followed this might account for the amusement in the next division, the fore-topmen, the youngest, brightest, most highly decorated members of the ship's company, who were led by Mr Oakes. Although he was a plain, thick-faced youth he was unusually popular; he was often drunk, always jolly, with a great flow of animal spirits; he never tyrannized nor did he report any sinner; and although he was no great seaman in the navigational or scientific way he would run up to the iron crosstrees with the best of them and there hang upside down.

  'And then another wonderful thing about Easter Island,' said Owen, 'is what they call moles.'

  'There is nothing wonderful about moles,' said Philips.

  'Pipe off, Philips,' said Stephen. 'Go on, Owen.'

  'Is what they call moles,' said Owen, rather more distinctly than before. 'And these here moles is platforms built on the slopes of hills, with the walls on the seaward side maybe three hundred foot long and thirty foot high, all made of squared stone sometimes six foot long. And on the platforms there are huge great images carved out of grey rock and brought there to be set up, images of coves as much as twenty-seven foot high and eight across the shoulders. Most of them were thrown down, but some of them were still standing, with great red round stone hats on the top of their heads: and these here hats, because I sat on one with my girl, one that had been thrown down, is four foot six across and four foot four high, measured with my thumb.'

  With a certain sense of relief Jack came to the forecastle, where he was received by Mr Bulkeley the bosun and Mr Bentley the carpenter, in their good West-of-England broadcloth coats, grave men, but scarcely graver than the forecastle hands, prime middle-aged seamen who, having taken off their hats to the Captain, smoothed their hair over pates that were sometimes bald on top and whose waist-length pigtails were often eked out with tow. Behind these, in the days when the Surprise was in regular commission, there would have stood the ship's boys, under government of the master-at-arms; but a privateer had no room for boys, and their place, ludicrously enough, was now taken by two little girls of even less value in fighting the ship, Sarah and Emily Sweeting, Melanesians from the remote Sweeting's Island, the only survivors of a community wiped out by the smallpox brought by a South Seas whaler. They had been carried aboard by Dr Maturin, and the task of looking after them naturally fell to Jemmy Ducks, the ship's poulterer, who now whispered to them 'Toe the line, and make your bob.'

  The little girls fixed their bare black toes exactly on a seam in the deck, plucked the sides of their white duck frocks and curtseyed.

  'Sarah and Emily,' said the Captain, 'I hope I see you well?'

  'Very well, sir, we thank you,' they replied, gazing anxiously into his face.

  On to the galley, with its coppers shining like the sun, the cheerful cook and his sullen assistant Jack Nastyface, whose name, like Chips for the carpenter or Jemmy Ducks, went with the office. On to the lower deck, where the hammocks swung by night, but empty now, with a candle in each berth and a variety of ornaments and pictures laid out pretty on the seamen's chests; not a hint of dust, not even a gritting of fine sand underfoot, and the light sloping down through the gratings, such elegant shafts of parallel rays. Jack's heart lifted somewhat, and they came to the midshipmen's berth, cabins built up on either side and reaching as far aft as the gun-room, too small in the days when the frigate carried so many master's mates, midshipmen and youngsters, too big now that she had only Oakes and Reade, particularly as Martin, the surgeon's mate, and Adams, the Captain's clerk, lived and messed in the gun-room, where the purser's, master's and Marine officer's cabins all stood vacant.

  They did not look into the gun-room, though it would have borne the severest, most hostile inspection, even the stretchers of the officers' table having been polished above and below, but went down towards the sick-berth, which Stephen preferred to the traditional bay, airier but far more noisy, a place where affectionate messmates found it easier to make his patients drunk.

  'And another thing that would please you gentlemen,' said Owen, 'is the noddies, or terns as some say. They arrive when the stars and the moon are just so, and the people know it to a day; they arrive in thousands and thousands, all screaming, and make their nests on an island just off shore, rising like the Bass Rock, only much more so.'

  'On Norfolk Island there are millions and millions of mutton-birds,' cried Philips. 'They come in at dusk, dropping out of the sky and going to their burrows; for they live in burrows. And if you go to the mouth of the burrow and call ke ke ke he answers ke ke ke and pokes his head out. We used to kill twelve or fourteen hundred a night.'

  'You and your mutton-birds,' began Owen: then he stopped, his ear cocked.

  Jack opened the door: Stephen, Martin and Padeen stood up: the invalids assumed a rigid posture.

  'Well, Doctor,' said the Captain, 'I hope you find our pumping has answered?' Ever since Stephen had spoken of the Surprise's stench below as compared with the Nutmeg's purity, sea-water had been let into her hold every night and pumped out in the morning, to purify her bilges.

  'Tolerably sweet, sir,' said Dr Maturin. 'But it must be confessed that this is not the Nutmeg; and sometimes, when I recall that the ship was originally French, and that the French bury their dead in the ballast, I wonder whether there may not still be something of a charnel-house down there.'

  'Quite impossible. The ballast has been changed again and again: scores of times.'

  'So much the better. Yet even so I should be grateful for another ventilating pump. In this heavy breathless air the patients have a tendency to grow fractious, even to quarrel.'

  'Make it so, Captain Pullings,' said Jack. 'And if any hand should presume to quarrel, let his name be entered in the defaulters' list.'

  'Here, sir,' said Stephen, 'are the men I was speaking about: Philips, who knows Norfolk Island well, and Owen, who spent several months among the Easter Islanders.'

  'Ah yes. Well, Philips, how are you coming along?'

  'Wery indifferent, sir, I am sorry to say,' said Philips in a weak, gasping voice.

  'And Owen, how are you?'

  'I do not complain, sir; but the burning pain is something cruel.'

  'Then why the Devil don't you keep out of brothels, you damned fool? A man of your age! Low knocking-shops in Sydney Cove of all places, where the pox is the worst in the world. Of course you burn. And you are always at it: every goddam port . . . if your pay were docked for venereals as it is in the regular service you would not have a penny coming to you when we pay off, not a brass farthing.' Captain Aubrey, still breathing hard, asked the other patients how they did—they were all much better, thank you, sir—and returning he said to Philips, 'So you were in Sirius when she was heaved ashore: was there no good holding-ground near the island?'

  'No, sir,' said Philips, speaking like a Christian now. 'It was terrible: coral rock everywhere inshore.'

  'It was far worse off of Easter Island, sir: coral rock far offshore too, then no bottom with the deep-sea line; and an almighty surf,' said Owen, but in an undertone.

  'We could not land on the south side of the island, sir, so we went round to the north-east: and there we were lying to with a light breeze off the shore and all hands fishing for gropers when the Supply brig, who was laying outside of us, hailed Captain Hunt that we was being heaved inshore. Which was true. It was all hands make sail, and make sail we did; but then the flood set in—it sets from the north on that side of the island, sir—and what with that and the swell we could not make head against it, not even with the breeze on our quarter. We let go both bowers, but the coral cut their cables directly; we let go the sheet-anchor and the spare and they parted too; and at one bell in the afternoon watch we struck, drove farther over the reef, and cut away our masts. Our captain gave orders to open the after hatchway and stave all the liquor . . .' All this Philips had delivered with barely a pause; now he drew breath, and in the interval Owen said, 'On Easter Island, sir . . .'


  'Doctor,' said Jack, 'I shall ask Mr Adams to see these men separately and take notes of what they have to say. Now I am going forward to see what your pumping has done about our rats as well as our smell. Colman, the lantern, there.'

  In his hurry Padeen dropped the lantern, lit it again, dropped it once more, and was cursed for an unhandy grass-combing lubber in a tone of much greater severity and exasperation than was usual in Captain Aubrey, who left a disapproving silence behind him, and a certain consternation.

  Stephen did not discuss the ship's captain with anyone, nor obviously did he discuss his friend Jack in the gun-room; but he could perfectly well speak of the patient Aubrey with Martin, a man of strong good sense and exceptionally wide reading. Reverting to Latin he said 'I have rarely, perhaps never, seen such a high degree of irascibility, so continuous and as it were cumulative irritation in this particular subject. It is clear that there has been no good effect from either my enemata or my cholagogue; and this steady and increasing exacerbation makes me fear that this is not an ordinary congestion of the hepatic ducts but some disease acquired in New South Wales.'

  In his medical capacity Martin had nothing to do with moral values and he replied 'When you say disease, do you refer to that which is so usual among seafaring men, high or low?'

  'Not in this case. I put the question directly: had there been any commerce with Venus? No, said he with surprising vehemence, there had most certainly not, adding a remark that I did not catch. There is something strange here; and it is with real concern that I recall dear Dr Redfern's account of the various forms of hepatitis he has seen in the colony, sometimes associated with hydatic cysts . . . he showed me one from a person who had lived entirely on kangaroo and rum, and there was an unparallelled degree of cirrhosis. But worse than that for our purposes was his case-book showing long-drawn-out histories of general bilious indisposition, melancholy, taedium vitae sometimes reaching mere despair, extreme irascibility: all this with no known agent, though autopsy showed an enlarged quadrate lobe studded with yellow nodules the size of a pea. He calls it Botany Bay liver, and it is this or some one of the other New Holland diseases that I fear our patient may have caught. The vexation and more than vexation of spirit is certainly present.'

  'It is deeply saddening to see what disease can do to a whole cast of mind, to a settled character,' said Martin. 'And sometimes our remedies are just as bad. How it appears to draw in the boundaries of free-will.'

  'The Doctor may say what he likes, Tom,' said Captain Aubrey, 'but I think the Surprise smells as sweet as the Nutmeg, or sweeter.' They were approaching the cable-tier now—for the Surprise had a cat-walk that allowed uninterrupted progress from the after-platform right forward—the cable-tier where the great ropes lay coiled, together with the hawsers and cablets. These always came aboard sodden, often stinking and covered with slime, there to lie dripping through spaces between the planks down into the hold, but now, since the Surprise had lain at moorings in Sydney Cove or had tied up to bollards, they were warm and dry: Jack remembered luxuriating in their folds when he was young, sleepy from the morning watch and willing to escape from the din of the reefers' berth.

  'Sweet to be sure, sir,' said Pullings, 'but there are still vermin about for all our pumping. I have seen a score since the sick-berth.' He made a nimble kick at one far-travelled and particularly audacious Norway rat that had come aboard at Sydney and sent it flying over the nearest coil to the lattice bulwark behind. With a shrill screech a figure darted from behind the cables, brushing the rat away.

  'What the Devil are you doing here, boy?' cried Jack. 'Did you not hear the drum beat for divisions? Who the Devil are you?' Then relaxing his iron grip and standing back a little, 'What is this, Mr Pullings?'

  Pullings held up the lantern and said in a neutral voice 'It is a young woman, I believe, sir.'

  'He is wearing a reefer's uniform.' Jack took the lantern, and looking even bigger than usual in its light he studied her for a moment: Pullings was obviously right. 'Who brought you here?' he asked with cold displeasure.

  'I came of myself, sir,' said the girl in a trembling voice.

  This was utter nonsense. It could be demolished in a minute, but he did not wish to make her lie and lie until she was driven into a corner and forced to bring out the name—obvious enough, in all conscience.

  'Let us carry on, Mr Pullings,' he said.

  'What, and leave her here?'

  'You heard me, sir. Take the lantern.'

  They silently inspected the sail-rooms, the bosun's, gunner's, carpenter's store-rooms, the pitch-room and so returned to the open air, where all hats came off once more and where all faces changed at the sight of Captain Aubrey's pale severity.

  'We shall not rig church, Captain Pullings,' he said. 'The Articles will do very well for this occasion.'

  The parade, such as it was, dissolved and the hands moved aft, lining the quarterdeck as far as the companion hatchway and sitting on benches or stools or capstan-bars poised between two match-tubs, or on the belaying-bitts round the mainmast: chairs were placed for the Captain and the officers on the windward side, for the midshipmen and the warrant-officers to the lee.

  A sword-rack covered with an ensign and holding the Articles of War stood in front of Captain Aubrey; and all this time the sun shone from a clear sky, the warm air breathed across the deck, slanting from forward with just enough strength to fill her great array of canvas: there was very little sound from the breeze, the rigging or the blocks, and the water only whispered down the side. Norfolk Island, rising and falling on the long even swell beyond the larboard bow, was perceptibly nearer. Nobody spoke.

  'Silence fore and aft,' called Pullings; and after a moment Jack stood up, opened the thin boards that held the Articles and began: there were thirty-six of them, and nineteen of the offences named carried the death sentence, sometimes qualified by the words 'or such other punishment as the nature and degree of the offence shall deserve, and the court-martial shall impose'. He read them deliberately, with a powerful voice; and the Articles, already inimical, took on a darker, more threatening tone. When he had finished the silence was still quite as profound, and now there was a greater uneasiness in it.

  He closed the boards, looked coldly fore and aft, and said 'Captain Pullings, we will take in the royals and haul down the flying jib. When they are stowed, hands may be piped to dinner.'

  It was a quiet meal, with little or none of the shouting and banging of mess-kids that usually greeted the Sunday plum-duff and the grog; and while it was being eaten Jack walked his quarterdeck as he had so very often walked it before: seventeen paces forward, seventeen paces aft, turning on a ring-bolt long since polished silver by his shoe.

  Now of course the half-heard jokes, the covert allusions to Mr Oakes's weariness, his need for a sustaining diet and so on, were perfectly clear. He turned the situation over and over in his mind; flushes of pure exasperation interrupted his judgment from time to time, but he felt in perfect command of his temper when he went below and sent for the midshipman.

  'Well, Mr Oakes,' he said, 'what have you to say?'

  'I have nothing to say, sir,' replied Oakes, turning his oddly mottled face aside. 'Nothing at all, and I throw myself on your mercy. Only we hoped—I hoped—you would carry us away from that horrible place. She was so very unhappy.'

  'I am to take it she was a convict?'

  'Yes, sir; but unjustly condemned, I am sure.'

  'You know perfectly well that I have turned away dozens, scores of others.'

  'Yet you let Padeen come aboard, sir,' said Oakes, and then clasped his hands in a hopeless, stupid attempt at unsaying the words, doing utterly away with them.

  'Get away forward,' said Jack. 'I shall take no action, make no decision today, this being Sunday: but you had better pack your chest.'

  When he had gone Jack rang for his steward and asked whether the gun-room had finished their dinner. 'No, sir,' said Killick. 'I doubt they are even at their pudd
ing yet.'

  'Then when they have finished—when they have quite finished, mind—I should like to see Captain Pullings. My compliments, and I should like to see Captain Pullings.'

  He looked doggedly through the sheets of physical observations he had made for Humboldt, temperature and salinity of the sea at various depths, barometric pressure, temperature of the air by wet and dry bulb thermometer, a chain of observations more than half way round the world, and he derived a certain satisfaction from them. Eventually he heard Pullings' steps.

  'Sit down, Tom,' he said, waving to a chair. 'I have seen Oakes, and the only explanation he could bring out was that she was very unhappy: then the damn fool threw Padeen in my teeth.'

  'You did not know, sir?'

  'Of course I did not. Did you?'

  'I believe it was common knowledge in the ship, but I had no certainty. Nor did I enquire. My impression was that the situation being so delicate you did not choose to have it brought to your attention or for there to be any question of returning to Botany Bay.'

  'Was it not your duty as first lieutenant to let me know?'

  'Perhaps it was, sir; and if I have done wrong I am very sorry for it. In a regular King's ship with a pennant, a party of Marines, a master-at-arms and ship's corporals I could not have avoided knowing it officially, and then in duty bound I should have been obliged to inform you. But here, with no Marines, no master-at-arms and no ship's corporals I should have had to listen at doors to be certain. No, sir: nobody wanted to tell either me or you, so that you, officially in the dark until it was too late, could not be blamed—could sail on for Easter Island with an easy conscience.'

  'You think it is too late now, do you?'

  'Wittles is up, sir, if you please,' said Killick at the door of the dining-cabin.