Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  'No, no. I mean our ceremony in the gun-room.'

  'Oh, of course,' said West. 'What with Reade going overboard and the chase stopping us dead and tearing away like smoke and oakum just as we were overhauling her, it slipped my mind. Masthead, there,' he hailed. 'What do you see?'

  'Precious little, sir,' the voice came floating down. 'It is cruel hazy—orange sorts of haze—in the south-east; but sometimes I catch what might be a twinkle of topgallants.'

  West shook his head, but went on, 'No, no, Doctor; never you fret about our dinner. Cook and steward laid it on handsome, and though we may be a little late I am sure we shall eat it—there, do you see, the crosstrees go aloft. They will be swaying up the mast directly.'

  'Will they indeed? Order out of chaos so soon?'

  'Certainly they will. Never you fret about your dinner.'

  'I will not,' said Stephen, who accepted what seamen told him about ships with the same simplicity as that with which they accepted what he told them about their bodies. 'Take this bolus,' he would say. 'It will rectify the humours amazingly,' and they, holding their noses (for he often used asafoetida) would force the rounded mass down, gasp, and feel better at once. With his mind at ease, therefore, Stephen said to Martin 'Let us make our forenoon rounds,' and went below.

  West, left to his solitude, returned to his own fretting—an inadquate word for his concern for the future and his anxiety about the present. Captain Aubrey had begun this much-interrupted voyage with his old shipmate Tom Pullings acting as his first lieutenant and two broken officers, West and Davidge, as second and third. He did not know them as anything but competent seamen, but he was aware that the sentences of their courts-martial had been thought extremely harsh in the service—West was dismissed for duelling, Davidge for signing a dishonest purser's accounts without checking them—and that reinstatement was their chief aim in life. Up until recently they had been in a fair way to it; but when the Surprise was nearly a thousand miles out of Sydney Cove, sailing eastwards across the Pacific Ocean, it was found that a senior midshipman named Oakes had stowed a young gentlewoman away in the cable-tier; and this had led almost all the gun-room officers except Dr Maturin to behave extremely badly. Her instant marriage to Oakes had set her free in that she was no longer a transported convict liable to be taken up again, but it did not liberate her from the adulterous wishes, motions, and jealousies of her shipmates. West and Davidge were the worst and Captain Aubrey, coming late to an understanding of the position, had told them that if they did not put aside the barbarous open enmity that was spreading discord and inefficiency in the ship he would turn them ashore: farewell for ever to any hope of reinstatement.

  Davidge had been killed in the recent action that made the Polynesian island of Moahu at least a nominal part of the British Empire and Oakes had gone off for Batavia with his Clarissa in a recaptured prize; but so far Captain Aubrey had said nothing. West did not know whether his zeal in the approaches to Moahu and in getting the carronades up through rough country and his modest part in the battle itself had earned him forgiveness or whether he should be dismissed when the ship reached Peru: an agonizing thought. What he did know, here and in the immediate present, was that a valuable prize, in which he would share even if he were later dismissed, had almost certainly escaped. They would never catch her before nightfall and in this hazy, moonless darkness, she could run a hundred miles, never to be seen again.

  That was one torment to his spirit: another was that this morning Captain Aubrey had promoted Grainger, a forecastle-man in the starboard watch, to fill the vacancy left by Davidge's death, just as he had raised a young fellow called Sam Norton to replace Oakes. West had to admit that Grainger was a capital seaman, a master-mariner who had sailed his own brig on the Guinea run until he was taken by two Salee rovers off Cape Spartel; but he did not like the man at all. He had already known what it was to be shut up in the gun-room with a shipmate he detested, seeing him at every meal, hearing his voice; and now it seemed that he should have to go through the odious experience again for at least the breadth of the Pacific. Yet more than that, far more, he felt that the gun-room and the quarterdeck, the privileged places in a man-of-war, were not only sacred in themselves but that they conferred a kind of sanctity on their rightful inhabitants, a particular being and an identity. He felt this strongly, though he found the notion difficult to express; and now that Davidge was dead there was nobody with whom he could discuss it. Pullings was a small tenant-farmer's son; Adams, though he acted as purser, was only the Captain's clerk; and Martin did not seem to think either family or caste of much importance. Dr Maturin, who lived almost entirely with the Captain, being his particular friend, was of illegitimate birth and the subject could not be raised with him; while even if West had been in high favour with his commander it would have been quite useless to suggest that if it was necessary to promote foremast jacks, as it was in this case, then they might be made master's mates, herding with the midshipmen, so that the gun-room should be preserved: useless, because Jack Aubrey belonged to an older Navy in which a collier's mate like James Cook could die a much-honoured post-captain, and a foremast-hand like William Mitchell might begin his career by being flogged round the fleet and end it as a vice-admiral, rather than to the modern service, in which an officer had not only to pass for lieutenant but also for gentleman if he were to advance.

  Dr Maturin and his assistant had the usual seamen's diseases to treat and a few wounds to dress, not from the recent battle, which had been a mere point-blank butchery of an enemy caught in a narrow rocky defile, but from the wear and tear of dragging guns up and down a jungly mountainside. They also had one interesting case of a sailor who, less sure-footed by land than by sea, had fallen on to the pointed end of a cut bamboo, which let air into the cavity of his thorax, into his pleura, with the strangest effect on one lung. This they discussed at length, in Latin, to the great satisfaction of the sick-berth, where heads turned gravely from one speaker to the other, nodding from time to time, while the patient himself looked modestly down and Padeen Colman, Dr Maturin's almost monoglot Irish servant and loblolly-boy, wore his Mass-going reverential face.

  They never heard the orders that attended the swaying-up of the new topgallantmast, an anxious business at such a height and with such a swell; nor did they hear the cry of 'Launch ho!' as the bosun's mate at the topmast head banged the fid home through the heel of the topgallantmast, thus supporting it on the topmast trestle-tree. The complex business of securing the long unhandy pole escaped them too—an exceedingly complex business, for although before the swaying-up the shrouds had been placed over the head of the mast, followed by the backstays, the preventer-stays and the very stay itself, they all had to be made fast, bowsed upon and set up simultaneously with all possible dispatch so that they exerted an equally-balanced force fore and aft and on either side. The rigging of the topgallant yard with all its appurtenances also passed unnoticed; so did two typical naval illogicalities, for whereas by tradition and good sense only the lightest of the topmen laid out on the lofty yard to loose the sail, this time, once it was loosed, sheeted home and hoisted, the Captain, with his acknowledged sixteen stone, ran aloft with his glass to sweep what vague horizon could still be distinguished through the growing haze.

  But the medical men and their patients did make out the cheer as the ship returned to her former course, and they did feel her heel as she gathered way, running with a far more lively motion, while all the mingled sounds of the wind in the rigging and the water streaming along her side took on the urgent note of a ship chasing once more.

  Almost immediately after the Surprise had settled into her accustomed pace, shouldering the strange-coloured sea high and wide, the hands were piped to dinner, and in the usual Bedlam of cries and banging mess-kids that accompanied the ceremony, Stephen returned to the quarterdeck, where the Captain was standing at the windward rail, gazing steadily out to the eastward: he felt Stephen's presence and called him over. 'I have
never seen anything like it,' he said, nodding at the sea and the sky.

  'It is much thicker now than it was when I went below,' said Stephen. 'And now an umber light pervades the whole, like a Claude Lorraine run mad.'

  'We had no noon observation, of course,' said Jack. 'There was no horizon and there was no sun to bring down to it either. But what really puzzles me is that every now and then, quite independent of the swell, the sea twitches: a quick pucker like a horse's skin when there are flies about. There. Did you see? A little quick triple wave on the rising swell.'

  'I did, too. It is extremely curious,' said Stephen. 'Can you assign any cause?'

  'No,' said Jack. 'I have never heard of such a thing.' He reflected for some minutes, and at each lift of the frigate's bows the spray came sweeping aft. 'But quite apart from all this,' he went on, 'I finished the draft of my official letter this morning, before we came within gunshot, and I should be uncommonly obliged if you would look through it, strike out errors and anything low, and put in some stylish expressions, before Mr Adams makes his fair copies.'

  'Sure I will put in what style there is at my command. But why do you say copies and why are you in haste? Whitehall is half the world away or even more for all love.'

  'Because in these waters we may meet with a homeward-bound whaler any day.'

  'Really? Really? Oh, indeed. Very well: I shall come as soon as our dinner is properly disposed of. And I shall write to Diana too.'

  'Your dinner? Oh yes, of course: I do hope it goes well. You will be changing very soon, no doubt.' He had no doubt at all, because his steward Killick, who also looked after Dr Maturin on formal occasions, had made his appearance, standing at what he considered a respectful distance and fixing them with his shrewish, disapproving eye. He had been with them for many years, in all climates, and although he was neither very clever nor at all agreeable he had, by mere conviction of righteousness, acquired an ascendancy of which both were ashamed. Killick coughed. 'And if you should see Mr West,' added Jack, 'pray tell him I should like to see him for a couple of minutes. I do hope your dinner goes well,' he called after Stephen's back.

  The dinner in question was intended to welcome Grainger, now Mr Grainger, to the gun-room; Stephen too hoped that it would go well, and although he ordinarily ate his meals with Jack Aubrey in the cabin he meant to take his place in the gun-room for this occasion: since in principle the surgeon was a gun-room officer his absence might be taken as a slight. Grainger, a reserved, withdrawn man, was much respected aboard, for although he had not belonged to the Surprise during her heroic days as a privateer, when she recaptured a Spaniard deep-laden with quicksilver, took an American commerce-raider and cut out the Diane from the harbour of St Martins, he was well known to at least half the crew. He had joined at the beginning of this voyage, very highly recommended by his fellow-townsmen of Shelmerston, a port that had provided the Surprise with scores of prime seamen, a curious little West Country place, much given to smuggling, privateering, and chapel-going. There were almost as many chapels as there were public houses, and Grainger was an elder of the congregation of Traskites, who met on Saturdays in a severe, sad-coloured building behind the rope-walk. Although the Traskites' views were controversial, he and the younger men who came aboard with him were perfectly at home in the Surprise, which was an ark of dissent, containing Brownists, Sethians, Arminians, Muggletonians and several others, generally united in a seamanlike tolerance when afloat and always in a determined hatred of tithes when ashore. Stephen was well acquainted with him as a shipmate and above all as a patient (two calentures, a broken clavicle) and he valued his many qualities; but he knew very well how such a man, dignified and assured in his own circle, could suffer when he was removed from it. Pullings would be kindness itself; so would Adams; but kindness alone was not necessarily enough with so vulnerable a man as Grainger. Martin would certainly mean well, but he had always been more sensitive to the feelings of birds than to those of men, and prosperity seemed to have made him rather selfish. Although he was sailing as Stephen's assistant he was in fact a clergyman and Jack had recently given him a couple of livings in his gift with the promise of a valuable third when it should fall in; Martin had all the particulars of these parishes and he discussed them over and over again, considering the possibility of different modes of gathering tithes or their equivalent and improvement of the glebes. But worse than the dullness of this conversation was a self-complacency that Stephen had never known in the penniless Martin of some years ago, who was incapable of being a bore. West he was not sure of. Here again there had been change: the moody, snappish, nail-biting West of their present longitude was quite unlike the cheerful young man who had so kindly and patiently rowed him about Botany Bay, looking for seaweed.

  'Oh, Mr West,' he said, opening the gun-room door, 'before I forget it—the Captain would like to see you for a minute or two. I believe he is in the cabin.'

  'Jesus,' cried West, looking shocked; then recollecting himself, 'Thank you, Doctor.' He ran into his cabin, put on his best coat, and hurried up the ladder.

  'Come in,' called Jack.

  'I understand you wish to see me, sir.'

  'Oh yes, Mr West; but I shall not keep you a minute. Push those files aside and sit on the locker. I had meant to speak to you before, but I have been so taken up with paper-work that I have left it day after day: it is just to tell you that I was thoroughly satisfied with your conduct through our time at Moahu, particularly your exertion in getting the carronades up that infernal mountain: most officerlike. I have mentioned it in my official letter; and I believe that if only you had contrived to be wounded you might have been fairly confident of reinstatement. Perhaps you will do better next time.'

  'Oh, I shall do my very best, sir,' cried West. 'Arms, legs, anything . . . and may I say how infinitely I am obliged to you for mentioning me, sir?'

  'Mr Grainger, welcome to the gun-room,' said Tom Pullings, splendid in his uniform. 'Here is your place, next to Mr West. But first, messmates, let us drink to Mr Grainger's health.'

  'Good health,' 'Hear him,' 'Huzzay,' and 'Welcome,' cried the other four, emptying their glasses.

  'My dear love to you all, gentlemen,' said Grainger, sitting down in a good blue coat borrowed from his cousin the carpenter, looking pale under his tan, grim and dangerous.

  But grimness could not withstand Pullings' and Stephen's good will, far less West's surprising flow of spirits: his happiness broke out in an extraordinary volubility—a thoroughly amiable volubility—and he rose high above his ordinary powers of anecdote and comic rhyme; and when he was not proposing riddles he laughed. There was no doubt that Grainger was pleased with his reception; he ate well, he smiled, he even laughed once or twice; but all the time Maturin saw his quick nervous eyes flitting from plate to plate, seeing just how the gun-room ate its dinner, managed its bread and drank its wine. Yet by pudding-time and toasts the anxiety was gone; Grainger joined in the song Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies and even proposed one of his own: As I walked out one midsummer's morning, for to view the fields and the flowers so gay.

  'From what I could make out here on deck,' said Jack, when Stephen joined him for coffee, 'your dinner seemed quite a cheerful affair.'

  'It went off as well as ever I had hoped,' said Stephen. 'Mr West was in a fine flow of spirits—jokes, riddles, conundrums, imitations of famous commanders, songs—I did not know he possessed such social gifts.'

  'I am heartily glad of it,' said Jack. 'But Stephen, you look a little worn.'

  'I am a little worn. All the more so for having first stepped on deck for a breath of air: the appearance of the ocean appalled me. I asked Bonden what he thought—was it often like this? He only shook his head and wished we might all be here come Sunday. Jack, what do you think? Have you considered it?'

  'I considered it most of the time your Nebuchadnezzar's feast was going on, and I cannot remember ever having seen or read of anything like it; nor can I tell what it m
eans. When you have glanced over my draft, perhaps we might go on deck again and see whether we can make it out.'

  Jack always sat uneasy while his official letters were read: he always broke the current of the reader's thoughts by saying 'The piece about the carronade-slides ain't very elegantly put, I am afraid . . . this is just a draft, you understand, not polished at all . . . Anything that ain't grammar or that you don't quite like, pray dash it out . . . I never was much of a hand with a pen,' but after all these years Stephen took no more notice of it than the thin drifting Irish rain.

  With Jack's voice in the background, the roll and pitch of the ship and the crash of the sea on her weather-bow never affecting his concentration he read a succinct narrative, cast in the wooden service style: the Surprise, proceeding eastwards in accordance with their Lordships' instructions, had been overtaken in latitude 28°31'S, longitude 168°1'E by a cutter from Sydney with official information that the inhabitants of the island of Moahu were at war with one another and that the British seamen were being ill-used and their ships detained: Captain Aubrey was to deal with the situation, backing whichever side seemed more likely to acknowledge British sovereignty. He had therefore changed course for Moahu without loss of time, pausing only at Anamooka for water and provisions: here he found the whaler Daisy, recently from Moahu, whose master, Mr Wainwright, informed him that the war between the chief of the northern part of Moahu and the queen of the south was complicated by the presence of a number of French mercenaries on the chief's side and of a privateer under American colours, the Franklin, commanded by another Frenchman allied to the chief, a Monsieur Dutourd. Acting upon this information, Captain Aubrey therefore proceeded with the utmost dispatch to Pabay, the northern port of Moahu, in the hope of finding the Franklin at anchor. She was not there, so having released the detained British ship, the Truelove, together with her surviving crew, and having destroyed the French garrison with the loss of one officer killed and two seamen wounded, he hastened to the southern harbour, which was about to be attacked from the mountains by the northern chief and probably from the sea by the privateer. The Surprise arrived in time: her people had the happiness of defeating the northern land forces without loss before the arrival of the privateer, and Captain Aubrey received the assurance of the Queen's willingness to be a faithful ally to His Majesty. Here followed a more detailed account of the two actions and the letter returned to the appearance of the Franklin next morning—her inferior force—her flight—and Captain Aubrey's hope that in spite of her excellent sailing qualities she might soon be captured.