Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  'They could not cure a disease you did not have,' said Stephen. 'But in any event I shall be glad to have you in hospital, where you can with something like decency and comfort be purged and purged again. We must do everything possible to rid your system of this noxious substance.'

  'I was desperate,' said Martin, his mind fixed on that dreadful past. 'I was unclean, unclean: rotting alive, as the seamen say. A shameful death. And I think my mind was disturbed. Until you absolutely asserted that these were salt-sores I was wholly convinced that they were of sinful origin: you will admit they were very like. They were very like, were they not?'

  'When they had been exacerbated by an immoderate use of mercury, perhaps they were; though I doubt an impartial observer would have been deceived.'

  'The wicked fleeth where no man pursueth,' said Martin. 'Dear Marturin, I have been a very wicked fellow. In intention I have been a very wicked fellow.'

  'You must spend the night in drinking fresh rainwater,' said Stephen. 'Every time you wake, you must swallow down a glass at least, to get rid of all you can. Padeen will bring you a rack of necessary-bottles and I trust I shall see them filled by morning: but I cannot wait to get you ashore and to start more radical measures; for indeed, colleague, there is not a moment to lose.'

  There was not a moment to be lost, and happily the harbour formalities in Callao bay did not take long, the Surprise and her valuable train being so welcome to the agent, who had dealt with her prizes on the outward voyage, and to his brother, the captain of the port: as soon as they were over Stephen went ashore pulled by Jemmy Ducks in his little skiff. Well over on the left hand they passed a remarkable amount of shipping for so small a town: vessels from Chile, Mexico and farther north, and at least two China ships. 'Right on our beam, beyond the yellow schooner, in the dockyard itself, that must be the barque from Liverpool,' said Jemmy. 'They are busy in her tops.'

  It was high tide on the dusty strand, and as Stephen walked up it towards an archway in the wall a gritty cloud swept across from the earthquake-shattered ruins of Old Callao. When it had cleared he saw a group of ill-looking men of all colours from black to dirty yellow standing under the shelter. 'Gentlemen,' he said in Spanish, 'pray do me the kindness of pointing out the hospital.'

  'Your worship will find it next to the Dominican church,' said a brown man.

  'Sir, sir, it is just before Joselito's warehouse,' cried a black.

  'Come with me,' said a third. He led Stephen through the tunnel into an immense unpaved square with dust whirling in eddies about it. 'There is the Governor's house,' he said, pointing back to the seaward end of the square. 'It is shut. On the right hand,' he went on, holding out his left, 'your worship has the Viceroy's palace: it too is closed.'

  They turned. In the middle of the square three black and white vulturine scavengers with a wingspan of about six feet were disputing the dried remains of a cat. 'What do you call those?' asked Stephen.

  'Those?' replied his guide, looking at them with narrowed eyes. 'Those are what we call birds, your worship. And there, before Joselito's warehouse, is the hospital itself.'

  Stephen looked at it with some concern, a low building with very small barred windows, the flat mud roof barely a hand's reach from the filthy ground. Prudent, no doubt in a country so subject to earthquakes, but as a hospital it left to be desired.

  'The hospital, with a hundred people at the least, lying on beds raised a good span from the ground. And there I see a vile heretic coming out of it, with his countryman.'

  'Which? The little small fat yellow-haired gentleman, who staggers so?'

  'No, no, no. He is an old and mellow Christian—your honour too is an old and mellow Christian, no doubt?'

  'None older; few more mellow.'

  'A Christian though English. He is the great lawyer come to lecture the university of Lima on the British constitution. His name is Raleigh, don Curtius Raleigh: you have heard of him. He is drunk. I must run and fetch his coach.'

  'He has fallen.'

  'Clearly. It is the tall black-haired villain who is picking him up, the surgeon of the Liverpool ship, that is the heretic. I must run.'

  'Do not let me detain you, sir. Pray accept this trifle.'

  'God will repay your worship. Farewell, sir. May no new thing arise.'

  'May no new thing arise,' replied Stephen. With his pocket spy-glass he watched the birds for a while, their name hovering on the edge of his mind. Presently, as don Curtius' coach rolled into the square, silent on the dust, they flew off, one carrying the desiccated cat, and the other snatching at it. They flew inland, towards Lima, a splendid-looking white-towered city five or six miles away with an infinitely more splendid series of mountains behind it, rising higher and higher in the distance, their snow at last blending with the white sky and the clouds.

  The carriage rolled away, drawn by six mules, don Curtius singing Greensleeves.

  Stephen approached the remaining Englishman, took off his hat, and said, 'Francis Geary, a very good day to you, sir.'

  'Stephen Maturin! I thought for a moment it looked like you, but my spectacles are covered with dust.' He took them off and peered myopically at his friend. 'What happiness to see you! What joy to find a Christian in this barbarous land!'

  'You are just come out of the hospital, I find.'

  'Yes, indeed. One of my people—I am surgeon of the Three Graces—has what looks to me very like the marthambles, and I wished to isolate him, under proper care, until it declares itself, rather than infect the whole ship. It is as deadly as measles or the smallpox to islanders, and we have many of them aboard. But no. They would not hear of it. So I went to see Mr Raleigh, who had travelled out with us, and who is a Roman, in case he could persuade them—he lectures on law at the university: an influential man. But no, no and no. They gave him a bottle or two of excellent wine, as I dare say you noticed, but they would not yield. On the way from Lima he told me that he did not expect to succeed, their memory of the buccaneers, the sacking of churches and so on being so very vivid; and he was right, I suppose. At all events they do not choose to have anything to do with me or my patient.'

  'Then I am afraid my case is hopeless, for my patient is not only a Protestant but a clergyman too. Come and drink a cup of coffee with me.'

  'I should be very happy. But your case would have been hopeless had he been the Pope. The place is so low and airless and fetid, the numbers so great and indiscriminately heaped upon one another, that they would never have left your parson there.'

  Geary and Maturin had studied medicine together: they had shared a skeleton and several unclaimed victims of the Liffey or the Seine. Now, as they sat in the shade, drinking coffee, they spoke with the uninhibited directness of medical men. 'My patient,' said Stephen, 'is also my assistant. He was as devoted to natural philosophy as you, particularly to birds, and although he had followed no regular course, attended no lectures, walked no wards, he became a useful surgeon's mate by constant attendance in the sick-berth and frequent dissection; and since he was a well-read, cultivated man, he was also an agreeable companion. Unhappily, he recently came to suspect that he had contracted a venereal disease, and when during an exceptionally long period without fresh water to wash our clothes he developed salt-sores, he thought his suspicions were confirmed: it is true that his mind was very much perturbed at the time for reasons that it would be tedious to relate and almost impossible to convey—the distress of jealousy, imagined ill-usage and homesickness entered into it—and that his lesions were far more important than any I have seen at any time. Yet even so, how a man of his experience could persuade himself that they were syphilitic I cannot tell; but persuaded he was, and he dosed himself privately with calomel and guaiacum. Naturally enough these had no effect; so he took to the corrosive sublimate.'

  'Corrosive sublimate?' cried Geary.

  'Yes, sir,' said Stephen, 'and in such amounts that I hesitate to name them. He brought himself very low indeed before he told me: our re
lations were by then far from cordial, though there remained a deep latent affection. Fresh water, the proper lotions and a conviction that he was not diseased have improved the state of his skin remarkably, but the effects of this intolerable deal of sublimate remains. Young gentlewoman,' he called towards the dim recesses of the wine-shop, 'be so good as to prepare me a ball of coca-leaves.'

  'With lime, sir?'

  'By all means; and a trifle of llipta too, if you have it.'

  'What are the symptoms at this point?' asked Geary.

  'Strongly marked vertigo, perhaps aggravated by the loss of an eye some years ago; difficulty in following the sequence of letters; some degree of mental confusion and distress; great physical weakness of course; a most irregular pulse; chaotic defecation. Thank you, my dear'—this to the girl with the coca-leaves.

  They carried on with Martin's present state, and when Stephen had said all that occurred to him without reference to his notes Geary asked, 'Is there on the one hand a difficulty in telling right from left, and on the other a certain loss of hair?'

  'There is,' said Stephen: he stopped chewing and looked attentively at his friend.

  'I have known two similar cases, and in Vienna itself I heard of several more.'

  'Did you hear of cures, at all?'

  'Certainly. Both my men walked away from the hospital unaided, one quite well, the other with only a slight impediment: though in his case there had been a baldness of the entire person and loss of nails, which Birnbaum cites as the criterion; but the treatment was long and delicate. What do you intend to do with your patient?'

  'I am at a loss. My ship is about to be docked, and he cannot remain aboard. I had hoped to find him a room in the hospital until I could arrange for his passage home in a merchantman: we may cruise for a great while, and in any case a privateer is no place for an invalid. Perhaps Lima . . .' Stephen fell silent.

  'When you speak of a passage,' said Geary, 'I presume the gentleman is not the usual indigent surgeon's mate?'

  'Never in life. He is an Anglican clergyman with two livings; and he has done well in prize-money. If you were to look into the bay you would see two captured ships, a clearly-determined share of which belongs to him.'

  'I say this only because our captain, a paragon of nautical virtue and of many others, is answerable to his owners, insatiable men who know nothing of charity or good-will. Yet since there is no question of either, why does not your patient sail in the Three Graces? We have two empty state-rooms amidships; and she is a remarkably steady ship.'

  'This is very precipitate, Francis Geary,' said Stephen.

  'So it is,' replied Geary, 'but the voyage itself will be tranquil and deliberate: Captain Hill very rarely spreads royals; we are to touch at Iquique and Valparaiso and perhaps at another port in Chile—so many pauses for refreshment on shore—and we are to prepare ourselves at the entrance to the Magellan Straits at the very best time of the year for the eastward passage. Captain Hill does not choose to risk his owners' spars off the Horn: furthermore, he is an acknowledged expert on the intricate navigation of the channel—has threaded it again and again. It would be infinitely more suitable for a man in a delicate state of health. Will you not come with me and look at the ship?'

  'If you please, sir,' said Jemmy Ducks, 'the tide is on the turn: which we ought to shove off directly.'

  'Jemmy Ducks,' said Stephen, 'when you have drank a moderate dram, you shove off by yourself. I am going to walk to the dockyard to see the Liverpool ship.'

  'My dear love to you, sir,' said Jemmy Ducks, lowering a quarter of a pint of Peruvian brandy without a wink, 'and my duty to the gentleman.'

  As they walked back from the tall headland from which they had waved to the Three Graces for a great while as she sailed away into the south-west, Stephen, Padeen and the little girls were low in their spirits, mute. It was not that the tropical day was oppressive, for an agreeable breeze blew in from the sea, but the dry hard pale-yellow ground under foot had nothing whatsoever growing on it, no life of any kind, and the arid sterility had a saddening effect on minds already disappointed. The distance to their lofty cliff had been greater than they thought, their pace slower; the Liverpool ship was already clear of the coast by the time they got there, and even with Stephen's spy-glass they could not be sure they had seen Martin, though he had gone aboard with no more than a hand to help him over the gangway and had promised to sit there by the taffrail.

  In silence they walked, therefore, with the ocean on their left and the Andes on their right, both admittedly majestic, indeed sublime, but perhaps beyond all human measure, at least to those who were sad, hungry and intolerably dry; and it was not until their stark plateau fell abruptly away, showing the green valley of the Rimac far below, with Lima apparently quite close at hand, sharply defined by its walls, and in the other direction Callao, the busy port, the dockyard and the exactly squared town, that they came to sudden cheerful life, calling out to one another 'There is Lima, there is Callao, there is the ship, poor thing'—for to their astonishment she was already in the yard, stripped to the gant-line and partially heaved down—'And there,' cried Sarah, pointing to the shipping along the mole, 'there is the Franklin's handmaiden.'

  'You mean tender,' said Emily.

  'Jemmy Ducks says handmaiden,' replied Sarah.

  'Sir, sir,' cried Emily, 'she means the Alastor's big schooner-rigged launch, lying there next to the Mexico ship.'

  'With the barky all sideways, will there ever be tea?' asked Padeen, with quite extraordinary fluency for him.

  'There will certainly be tea,' said Stephen, and he stepped forward briskly to the path winding down the slope.

  He was mistaken, however. The Surprise was in far too much of a hullaballoo for any form of quiet enjoyment. The word that she might be heaved down without waiting for her turn had reached Tom Pullings only after Stephen set out, and he and the carpenter and the only valid bosun's mate were already as busy as bees among the port's stores of copper, cordage, ship's timber and paint, with Jack's words 'Spend and spare not' in their ears when the launch appeared, sent in to carry out a large number of men for the short-handed Franklin.

  'We had foreseen it, in course,' said Pullings, receiving Stephen on the sloping deck, 'The Captain would not have had enough people to send a prize in, else. But it came at an awkward moment, before we could arrange for a gang of dockyard mateys. As soon as I heard we could dock well before our time, I hauled alongside the Alastor and shifted all your things and the sick-berth into her: and then when we were in dock and barely half stripped, the launch brought her orders and everything had to be changed. She also brought a hand by the name of Fabien, who belonged to the Franklin and who helped Mr Martin when he was aboard; the Captain had meant to send him across before we parted company, but he forgot. Oh, Doctor,' he cried, striking his forehead, 'here am I, forgetting likewise—when we were all ahoo a clergyman came aboard, the same that we saw on the way out; the gentleman very like the Captain, only rather darker. He had heard the Captain was wounded—was much concerned—enquired for you—said he would come again at noon tomorrow—begged for paper and ink and left you this note.'

  'Thank you, Tom,' said Stephen. 'I shall read it aboard the Alastor. May I beg for a boat? And perhaps the man the Captain sent might come with us.'

  In the Alastor's great cabin, now thoroughly clean at last and smelling only of sea-water, tar and fresh paint—there had been a truly shocking carnage—Stephen sat drawing in sips of scalding tea, a drink he ordinarily despised, though not as much as he despised Grimshaw's coffee, but one that he found comforting after the high Peruvian desert; and as he did so he re-read the note.

  My dear Sir,

  When I came back from a retreat with Benedictines of Huangay last night I heard that the Surprise had put into Callao once more, and I had great hopes of news of you and of Captain Aubrey. But on sending to your agent in the morning it appeared that although he had indeed been aboard her he was now in the
captured American privateer Franklin: at the same time to my consternation I learnt that he had been wounded in taking the infamous Alastor. I hurried down to the port at once where Captain Pullings reassured me to some degree and told me of your very welcome presence.

  I propose therefore to do myself the honour of waiting on you at noon tomorrow, to assure you that I remain, dear Sir,

  your most humble, obliged, and obedient servant,

  Sam Panda

  Neither Jack nor Sam acknowledged the relationship in so many words but it was clearly understood by both, as it was by all those members of the crew who had first seen the younger man come aboard the Surprise in the West Indies: it was indeed obvious to anyone who saw them together, for Sam, borne by a Bantu girl after Jack had left the Cape station, was an ebony-black version of his father: somewhat larger, if anything. Yet there were differences. Jack Aubrey neither looked nor sounded sharply intelligent unless he were handling a ship, fighting a battle, or speaking of navigation: in fact he also possessed uncommon mathematical powers and had read papers on nutation to the Royal Society; but this did not appear in his ordinary conversation. Sam, on the other hand, had been brought up by singularly learned Irish missionaries; his command of languages, ancient and modern, did the Fathers infinite credit; and he had read voraciously. Stephen, a Catholic himself with a certain amount of influence in Rome, had procured him the dispensation necessary for a bastard to be ordained priest, and now Sam was doing remarkably well in the Church: it was said that he might soon become a prelate, not only because at present there were no black monsignori—some yellowish or quite dark brown, to be sure, but none of such a wholehearted gleaming black as Sam—but also because of his patristic learning and his exceptional and evident abilities.

  'I look forward to seeing him,' said Stephen; and after a pause in which he drank yet another cup of tea, 'I believe I shall walk along the road to Lima and meet him half way. Who knows but what I may see a condor?' He hailed William Grimshaw, Killick's mate, who had been detached to look after him, in spite of the fact that Tom Pullings had a perfectly good steward of his own. 'William Grimshaw,' he said, 'pray desire the Franklin the Captain sent to step below.' And when the Franklin appeared, a tall, thin, nervous young man with receding hair, he went on, 'Fabien, sit down on that locker. I understand you were an apothecary's assistant in New Orleans—but first tell me which language you speak more readily.'