Desolation island

by Patrick O'Brian

  At six bells Herapath brought the sickbay papers, and reported uninterrupted progress forward. Before settling to their grim accounts, Jack said, "Herapath, Dr Maturin speaks in high terms of your conduct, and he wishes you to continue as his assistant. The rules of the service do not allow me to enter you on the ship's books as assistant surgeon without the proper certificates, so I propose rating you midshipman. This will enable you to act as his assistant, to live with the oldsters in the after-cockpit, and to walk the quarterdeck. Is that agreeable to you?"

  "I am very much beholden to Dr Maturin for his good

  opinion," said Herapath, "and to you, sir, for your most obliging offer. But perhaps I should observe that I am an American citizen, in case that should be a bar."

  "Are you, though?" said Jack. He looked at the muster, which he had opened to change Herapath's rating. "So you are. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Well, I am afraid that is a bar to your ever becoming a commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. I am very sorry to have to tell you, that advancement beyond master's mate is closed to you."

  "Sir," said Herapath, "I must endeavour to bear it."

  Jack looked at him sharply. No one but Stephen could make game of Captain Aubrey with impunity: but was Herapath in fact guilty of impertinence? The young man's face was calm and grave. There was no hint of a smile on Stephen's face, either. "You have no dislike to fighting the French, I take it?" he went on. "Nor any of the other nations England is at war with?"

  "None in the least, sir. In 'ninety-eight, when I was quite a boy, I was in arms against the French, under General Washington. And I am happy to do what I can against any of your other enemies; unless, of course, England should go to war with the States, which God forbid."

  "Amen," said Jack. "Well, I shall be glad -to welcome you to my quarterdeck. Mr Grant will introduce you to the young gentlemen: here is a note for him. And since poor Stokes was just about your size, you may wish to buy hisuniforms when they are sold at the mainmast.,

  Herapath withdrew: they arranged their papers, and checking with the log book, Jack wrote DD, discharged dead, against the names of one hundred and sixteen men, ranging from William Macpherson, lieutenant, Royal Marines, and James Stokes, master's mate, down to Jacob Hawley, boy, third class. It was a painful task, for again and again the name was that of some former shipmate who had sailed with them in the Mediterranean, the Channel, the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean - sometimes in all - and

  whose qualities they knew intimately well. "One of the saddest things about this tally," said Jack, "is that it hits our volunteers so much harder than the rest. Once I knew a good third of the men aboard. Now it is nothing like. Yet a surprising number of the quota men have come through: how do you account for that, Stephen?"

  "I hazard a guess, no more. A slight attack of smallpox gives immunity; so these men, many of whom have been in prison, may have been infected with an attenuated form of gaol-fever, thus acquiring a resistance the others lacked. Yet I must confess that my reasoning is very loose, because of our convicts no more than three men have survived, and one of them will never make old bones. The women I reckon apart, for not only do they possess the singular toughness of their sex, but one at least is pregnant, a state that seems to confer immunity from so many ills."

  Jack shook his head, looked through the remaining papers, and said, "These are your convalescents, I take it? How soon do you expect them to be fit for duty?"

  "Alas, I cannot hold out any hope of a prompt return except in the case of the few boys. The sequelae are very troublesome in this disease, I am afraid, troublesome and lingering. Of the sixty-five in my list, perhaps in other circumstances you might have a score tolerably brisk in a Mont h; another score might take far longer; while the remaining twenty-five, who only just came through, should not be on a ship at all, whatever the circumstances, but in a well-appointed hospital."

  Jack wrote his sums, and whistled at the result. "So at the best," he paid, "I have about two hundred men. I can watch perhaps a hundred and twenty or so. Sixty hands to a watch: God help us! Sixty hands to a watch, in a fifty-gun ship!"

  "Yet we hear of merchantmen taking their goods to the ends of the earth, with no more to sail their vessel."

  "To sail her, yes. But to fight her, that is quite another

  thing. We reckon the gun-crews can handle five hundredweight a man. Now our long twenty-fours weigh just over fifty hundredweight, and our twelves thirty-four. So to fight the ship one side we need a hundred and ten men on the lower deck and seventy-seven on the upper, to say nothing of the other side or the carronades and the long nines; and as you know very well, Stephen, a great many people are needed to work her, while she is being fought. This is a damned unpleasant kettle of fish."

  "It Is worse than you suppose, Jack. Things are always worse than you suppose. For you are speaking as though my convalescents, my sixty-five convalescents, were presently to be restored: you did not notice that I spoke of other, of favourable circumstances. Now the present circumstances are not favourable: for I must tell you that my medicine-chest is bare. I have no bark, no electuaries, no antimony, no - in short, I have nothing but my venereals and a little alba mistura, or eye-wash - a very little alba mistura - and therefore cannot answer for my three-score convalescents, at all. Unless they have physic and a diet that the ship cannot possibly provide in mid-ocean, a whole series of ailments may carry them away. This applies with the greatest force to my first list, the list on your right, headed by the name of Thomas Pullings, the list of those that require immediate relief."

  "Cannot they hold out until the Cape?"

  "No, sir. Even in this clement weather, we already have the typical swollen leg by the dozen, the very dangerous debility, the severe nervous symptoms. In the cold winds and the boisterous weather south of Capricorn, without a drop of physic, my convalescents, or the greater part of them, would be condemned. And even if my chest were full, those on the first list would stand very little chance of seeing Africa."

  Jack did not reply at once: his mind was dealing with the advantages and disadvantages of touching at a Brazilian port - the loss of the trade-wind inshore, the way the

  south-caster would often hang in the east for weeks on end just under the tropic, so that a ship might have to beat into it, tack upon tack, for very little gain, or else run far south for the westerlies: a whole mass of considerations. His face was already sad; now it grew stern and cold; and when he did speak it was not to tell Stephen what he intended to do but to ask whether Pullings and the people in the sickbay might be allowed wine yet. He was going to see how they did, and would like to take a couple of dozen with him.

  Just when he reached his decision did not appear, but it must have been before the first dog-watch. Stephen brought Mrs Wogan on to the poop, where he was obliged to repel a dangerous attack from Pollux, Babbington's Newfoundland; Pollux did not recognize him in his beard, and being attached to Mrs Wogan, defended her as a matter of duty. Even when she seized its ear, pulled it away, and told it not to be a damned fool - the gentleman was a friend - the animal distrusted him, and kept just behind his hams, uttering an organ-like growl, both with the inspiration and the outward breath. Babbington was below, so when she had reproached the dog and even thumped its loving head in vain, she tied a signal-halliard round its neck and attached it to the fife-rail: they moved aft to stare at the wake, and standing there they heard the aged carpenter, busy at the larboard stern lantern, say to one of his mates, "What's the buzz, Bob?"

  Mr Gray was somewhat deaf, and his mate was obliged to whisper 'We're bearing up for Recife' in a louder tone than he could have wished.

  "Eh?" said the carpenter. "Don't mumble, God pound you alive. Ar-ticulate, Bob, ar-ticulate."

  "Recife. But only touch and go. No watering; no cattle. Greenstuff, belike."

  "I hope there will be time to get Mrs Gray a poll-parrot," said the carpenter. "She grieved after her last poll-parrot something cruel. Look at this here thorough
-piece, Bob. Would you ever of believed that even the Dockyard could

  pass such a rotten bit of wood? And the whole bleeding stern-post is the same. Punk. Incest is nothing to them, nor Sunday travel, so they get us to sea In an ancient sieve, the fucking bastards."

  Bob coughed significantly, gave Mr Gray a great jerk with his elbow, and said, "Company, company, Alfred."

  The rumour about the Leopard's destination, like most ship's rumours, was quite accurate: her head pointed farther west, away from Africa; she brought the wind well abaft the beam, and began to set her upper and lower studdingsalls. But just as she moved much more heavily through the water, now that she had a vast beard of doldrum-weed to drag along, so the diminished watch spent a far longer time in sheeting home; indeed, they had scarcely coiled all down before the drum beat for quarters; and after that ceremony her thin, hesitant gunfire was very different from the full throated roar of a month ago.

  In the evening Jack told Stephen that he had decided to put into the nearest Brazilian port, and asked him to prepare his list of drugs. "We are well found in stores and water," he said, "and I mean only to lie in the outer road, just long enough to get your physic, and, if you tell me that it is of the first necessity, to put those invalids you name on shore. If this wind holds, we should raise St Roque tomorrow, and if it don't come foul inshore, Recife very shortly afterwards. The moment I have finished working out the new watch-lists with Grant, I shall start writing home. Have you any messages?"

  "Love, of course," said Stephen.

  The next day, having made his rounds, he said, "Mr Herapath, the Captain tells me that we are to stop at Recife, in Brazil, where we may replenish our medicinechest. I shall spend much of my time drawing up a statement of our requirements, and writing letters. May I therefore beg you to attend Mrs Wogan to the poop, the unfortunate lady who is confined in the orlop abaft the tiers?"

  "Sir?"

  "You are not yet quite familiar with our sea-terms, I find," said Stephen with great complacency. "I mean the floor below this, in about the middle; and the door is on your right-hand side. Or, as we say, the starboard. No, the larboard, since you will be going backwards. Well, never mind: let us not be pedantic, for all love. It is a small little door with a square holie in the bottom of it - a scuttle - along the passage where there was a Marine for ever walking up and down at one time. But perhaps you will never find it. I remember, years ago, before I became so amphibious an animal, that I wandered in the depths of a vessel much smaller than this, my mind strangely perplexed. Come, I will show you the way, and present you to the lady."

  "Do not trouble, sir. Oh pray do not trouble," cried Herapath, suddenly bursting out of his silence. "I know the door perfectly. I have often - I have often remarked that particular door. It is on the way from here to the after cockpit, where I now sling my hammock. Pray do not give yourself the trouble."

  "Here is the key," said Stephen. "You will make my compliments, if you please."

  Mrs Wogan's appearance under the conduct of the surgeon's mate excited a certain amount of discreet curiosity on the quarterdeck, and much more envy. The older midshipmen still ached for her - their Captain did not beat for the sport of it - but even so, more than one of them found it necessary to visit the poop, to make sure that the ensign-staff was still there, and the taffrail. She was observed to be in remarkable looks, and, although she was decently subdued, as the Leopard's circumstances required, she and her companion seemed to have a great deal to say to one another. Three times her absurd gurgling laugh was heard, and three times the whole quarterdeck, from the officer of the watch to the grim old quartermaster at the con, smiled like fools.

  The third time the sound of the cabin door wiped the smile off their faces. They moved over to the leeward side, with sober looks; for the Captain was among them. The Captain glanced at the sky, the set of the sails, the binnacle, and began his habitual pacing fore and aft, cocking an eye at the masthead every turn, in expectation of a hall. Again the laugh began, low but quite near, by the poop rail: it went on and on, swelling, rolling in pure amusement, and for the life of him he could not resist: disagreeable though his situation was, and heavy his mind, he felt an answering catch in the region of his stomach, and turned square to windward. "Though why in God's name I have to come it the grim old Stoic, would be hard to say," he remarked to himself: then finding that the inward heave would not be quiet, he stepped forward to the shrouds of the mainmast, laid his coat on a gun, swung himself over the bulwark, over the hammocks in their netting, and walked composedly up the ratlines. "Lord," he said as he mounted, "I have scarcely been aloft this commission. That is how captains get fat and ill-conditioned - ill-tempered, bilious, Jupiter Tonans.' fie was old enough not to have to hurry, not to have to outdo a twenty-year-old upper-yardsman; and that was just as well, for as he paused in the top he found that he was already puffing hard. He glanced at his paunch, shook his head, and then looked down at the quarterdeck. "Mr Forshaw," he called, picking out his youngest midshipman, a first-voyager, a slow, stupid, unhappy child, "bring me up my glass."

  He waited, nothing loth, until the boy's anxious head appeared: with a violent, perilous writhe, Forshaw brought his short legs over the rim, landed in the top, and mutely offered the telescope. It was clear to Jack that for the moment the boy could not bring out a steady word, in spite of his studied calm. "Now I come to think of it, Mr Forshaw," he said, "I have not seen you sky-larking with the other reefers. Do you find the height disturbs you?"

  He spoke quite kindly, in a tone of conversation, but even so Forshaw's face turned scarlet, and he gave a hopelessly confused answer: 'it was terrible, sir; he did not mind it at all."

  "Nelson could do this sort of thing," thought Jack, "but I doubt that I can.' Nevertheless he went on. "The great point is not to look down, until you have the knack of it; and to hold on to the shrouds with both hands, not the ratlines. Now, come along with me to the topgallant crosstrees. We will take it easy."

  Up and up towards the sky. "You will find it much like the stairs at home, presently - look up all the time - don't hang on too hard - breathe easy - handsomely round the futtocks, now, always take the outer topgallant shrouds - there now, put your arm round the heel of the royal - that's the royal mast, you see: sometimes we step it abaft the topgallant, running right down to the cap; but that means more weight aloft - and sit on the lacks; they serve to spread the royal shrouds. There, ain't that prime?" He stared over the enormous expanse of ocean at the western horizon, and there, exactly where it should be, lay a dark mass, firmer than any cloud. He unslung his telescope, and in the glass Cape St Roque assumed its well remembered form: the perfect landfall. "There," he said, nodding towards it, "that is America. You may go down now, and tell Mr Turnbull. It is much easier going down, because of gravity: but you must look up all the time."

  Now and then he glanced down at the round face gazing religiously up, and beyond the face to the deck, long, thin, and wonderfully remote, a white rimmed sliver in the sea with little figures moving on it; but most of the time he stared at the cape. "How I hope to God that Stephen will let Pullings stay," he said aloud. "A year or so with that fellow Grant as my first would be . . .

  The lookout's hail broke his train of thought, for by now the cape was visible from the yardarm below him, and he

  heard the cry, "On deck, there. Land two points on the starboard bow."

  From this time on the more loving family Leopards took to pen and ink, and those who could not write dictated to their learned friends, sometimes in plain English but more often in terms as stilted and official as they could contrive, and those uttered in a hieratic tone. According to his promise, Stephen passed on Mrs Wogan's request that she might add a letter to the rapidly filling bay. "I shall be interested to see what it contains," he said; and as he expected, Jack turned away - turned fast, but not quite fast enough to hide his expression of extreme distaste, and of something very near contempt.

  Captain Aubr
ey would do his utmost to deceive an enemy by the use of false colours and false signals, by making him believe that the ship was a harmless merchantman, a neutral, or a compatriot, and by any other ruse that might occur to his fertile mind. All was fair in war: all, except for opening letters and listening behind doors. If Stephen, on the other hand, could bring Buonaparte one inch nearer to the brink of Hell by opening letters, he would happily violate a whole mail-coach full. "You will read captured despatches with open glee and exultation," he said, "for you concede that they are public papers. If you value candour, you must therefore admit that any document bearing on the war is also a public paper: you are to rid your mind of these weak prejudices."

  In his heart Jack remained unconvinced; but Stephen received the letter. He sat there with it in his hands in the guarded privacy of the great cabin as the Leopard lay off Recife early in the morning, well out in the roadstead, with the reef that guarded the inner anchorage the best part of a mile away. The first sight of it struck him with a wholly unexpected force, for it was addressed to Diana: he had never thought of this possibility - had supposed their acquaintance to be slight - and it was some minutes before he could compose himself, and set about the seal. Seals

  and their attendant pitfalls had few mysteries for him, and this one required no more than a thin hot knife: yet even so he had to break off twice, because of the trembling of his hands. If the letter contained proof of Diana's guilty mind, he thought it would kill him.

  At first reading it contained nothing of the sort. Mrs Wogan exceedingly lamented the sudden parting from her dearest Mrs Villiers - the event itself too dreadful and distressing to recall - and at one moment she had thought they were to be separated by the distance between this world and the next, for in her distraction at the sight of those odious ruffians, Mrs Wogan had fired off a pistol, or even two, and another had exploded of its own accord; and that, it appeared, turned a dispute over a harmless piece of gallantry Into a capital crime - but, however, her lawyers had handled the matter very cleverly, and kind friends had come to her support, so that they were to be separated only by the distance of half this present world, and that, perhaps, not for very long. Mrs Villiers would remember her kindly to all their friends in Baltimore, particularly to Kitty van Buren and Mrs Taft, and she would be so obliging as to tell Mr Johnson that all was well, and that as he would hear from Mr Coulson in more detail, no irreparable harm had been done. The voyage had begun in the most shocking manner, and they had had the plague aboard; but for some time now things had been going better. The weather was delightful: her stores were holding out to admiration; and she had made friends with the surgeon. He was an ill-looking little man, and perhaps he was aware of it, for he had now allowed a horrid beard to overspread his countenance, quite frightful to behold; but one could grow used to anything, and his conversation was an agreeable break in the day. He was polite and generally kind; yet he could be snappish - he could give a short answer although hitherto she had not dared to be impertinent, nor anything but most perfectly meek. lie did not need 'fending off' as sailors would say; far from it;