Desolation Island (16 page)

'showing Herapath the ropes'. They paused for a while out on the yardarm to let a couple of skylarking youngsters hurtle past, and Joe showed him how to run out on the yard. 'Now for the jack,' said Joe. 'You want to look out here, mate; there ain't no ratlines.'

The fore royal yard itself, six inches across at the slings and fine footing; an incredible expanse of sea on either hand, of sky above and of canvas below. 'This is magnificent,' cried Herapath. 'I had no conception...'

'Watch me shin up to the truck,' said Joe.

'I shall run out on the yard,' said Herapath. This he did, and Joe, reaching the truck, looked down in time to see him miss his hold. He saw Herapath's face, diminishing with hideous speed, staring up at him in total horror:

Herapath struck the starboard topgallant lift a glancing blow that bounced him well clear of the foretopsail, and he plunged into the sea with an enormous splash. Joe let out a shrill, broken-voiced screech of 'Man overboard', and instantly the cry was taken up on deck. Seamen milled about the forecastle, their long hair flying loose: a Marine flung a swab and a bucket somewhere near the splash.

Jack was already mother-naked when he heard the cry and saw the splash. He slipped from the gunwale into the clear water, made out the vague form at a surprising depth, dived, fished it up, swam to the ship, now a hundred yards away, roared for a line, passed the inanimate Herapath up the side, and followed himself. 'Mr Pullings,' he cried, very angry. 'Put an end to this infernal hallooing instantly. Always the same God-damned foolery, every time a man goes overboard. Damn you all for a mob of mad lunatics. Get along forward. Silence fore and aft.' Then, in an ordinary tone, 'Pass the word for the Doctor.'

Stephen had been standing with Mrs Wogan on the poop, and Jack, glancing round to see whether he were on his way, caught Mrs Wogan's astonished gaze full in the eye. He blushed like a boy, seized the fully-clothed Pullings as a shield, and darted down the main hatchway. The event caused a certain amount of ribaldry and a fair number of sentences depriving men of their grog for playing the God-damned fool, an offence that came under Article Thirty-six: 'All other crimes not capital, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea', also known as the captain's cloak, or cover-all. Otherwise it was taken as a matter of course that Captain Aubrey should rescue a drowning man; it was perfectly well known in the service that he had already saved a score or so, most of them, as he freely admitted, quite worthless. Two were aboard the Leopard at this very moment, the one a monoglot Finn and the other a harsh, deeply stupid man called Bolton; the Finn said nothing, but Bolton conceived a mortal jealousy of Herapath, and spoke of his foolhardy presumption, infamous character, and contemptible physique in very shocking terms. 'He'll live, mark my words,' he said. 'He'll live, until they hang him by the - neck: he would have been a gallows deal better off, left where he was, the toad.'

'Of course he'll live,' said his messmates. 'Ain't the Doctor pumped him dry, and blown out his gaff with physic?' For it was just as much part of the natural order of things that Dr Maturin should preserve those who came under his hands: he was a physician, not one of your common surgeons - had cured Prince Billy of the marthambles, the larynx, the strong fives - had wormed Admiral Keith and had clapped a stopper over his gout - would not look at you under a guinea, five guineas, ten guineas, a head, by land.

The incident caused no great stir; it never appeared in the log; and Jack did not mention it when he continued his letter to Sophie.

'Leopard

in the harbour of Porto Praya

'Here we are, my dearest soul, not at Madeira, nor at the Grand Canary, but at St Jago in the Cape Verdes! That will make you stare, I believe. The wind stood so fair and steady from the moment we cleared the Bay, that I could not bear not to make the most of it, and indeed we picked up the north-east Trades far higher than I expected and so cut the tropic of Cancer in twenty-six days, counting our tedious time in the Channel and our lying-to. The Leopard, apart from her new-fangled stern-post and pin-ties, which give us some little concern, pleases me extremely; she reaches almost as well as the Surprise, is brisk in stays, steers easy, and once we have ate up a few more tons of our provisions, she will veer as well as any ship in the fleet - at present she is by the stern, which makes her a trifle sluggish. In a word, she is more than I had hoped; and I had hoped for much. Most of the new hands are shaping well, and my old shipmates are what they have always been, thorough-going seamen, attentive to their duty, and only rather too inclined to get drunk whenever they can. There is a distillery on this island, alas; but I am doing all I can to keep them out of it.

'Tom Pullings keeps the ship in capital order. He relieves me of almost all the work; I grow fat and idle, and Stephen and I have had many a fine concert together. Stephen seems more settled in his mind, and this heat suits him: it nearly killed me, when I put on full dress and made my call on the Governor, sweating up a vile path cut in the cliff with droves of lizards gasping in the sun, "What kind of lizards, Jack?" says he.

"Lizardi percalidi," said I, by which I meant, d-d hot lizards. I think I was mistaken, when I said our female convict was the dead spit of Diana. Stephen smoked the difference right away, no doubt; and now it is plain to me. Though on the other hand, she is very like the woman we saw with Lady Conyngham's party at the races, whose clothes you remarked; and perhaps she is the same. Diana in the colouring, but not otherwise. She is not so tall, for one thing; and for another, she does not come down on you so uncommon sharp; and for another, she has such a laugh -it starts low, and goes on and on, so that I have seen the whole quarterdeck on the grin and have been obliged to stare out to windward to hide my own. Not that she has much cause for mirth, poor soul; yet when Stephen is up there on the poop with her, she laughs away so that even Stephen makes that odd creaking noise of his: I never heard Diana laugh, that I recall. At least, not wholeheartedly, like Mrs Wogan. So I take it he is not kept too much in mind of her. Just at present, however, he is tolerably fretful, being torn between his longing to walk about St Jago and the other islands, one of which rejoices in a peculiar sort of puffin, and his duty to these unhappy creatures we are obliged to transport. Some of them continue sick, and he cannot make out what it is that ails them.

'He does not miss much by staying aboard, however, for these islands really are most uncommon black and desolate, having been volcanoes and having a strong inclination to be volcanoes again. As we stood in, we saw Fogo, which is a little to the south of west and some twenty leagues from here, sending up a fine cloud of smoke. I went ashore yesterday to stretch my legs and to see whether I could knock over a few quails for the table and perhaps some curious birds or monkeys for Stephen, and I took Grant with me, in the hope of getting on better terms. But I am afraid I did more harm than good. We fagged over miles and miles of pumice and lava with scarcely a blade of green, but never a thing did we bring home, except for two ill humours; we grew very hot and dusty and tired and thirsty - never a drop in the dried-up streams - and all the way he kept pointing out places where he had seen bustards and guinea-fowl last time he was here. He perpetually proposed fresh paths, as though he owned the island, and in passing he observed that in my place he would have anchored the ship nearer the watering-place: yet in spite of all his local knowledge we lost ourselves in the end, and had to come down to the shore and creep along among the blazing boulders to find the village. He dropped his gun and hurt the lock, and grew pretty sullen with the heat; but I did my best to bear with him. You would have applauded me, Sophie. He is an older man than I by ten or fifteen years, a very fine navigator, and has been badly used. But from our first meeting aboard the flagship, I was sure it would never answer: you cannot have two captains in a ship, and his long independent command, his remarkable voyage in the Lady Nelson, and his knowledge of those waters, have set him above subordination. He might make a good commander, but he is too old and too high to be a second lieutenant. Oh, if only the Admiralty had attended to my plea for Richardson or Ned Summerhayes - but if only pigs had wings, we should have no need for tinkers' hands, as they say. Stephen is of much the same opinion with me, I believe, though of course I cannot discuss my officers with him, seeing that he is their messmate. Indeed, I cannot discuss them with anyone but you, my dear: and in your private ear, I will tell you that I shall be glad to see Turnbull leave the ship at the Cape, and to receive young Mowett again. But good Lord, what an ungrateful fellow I am: I may have a couple of lieutenants, a master, and a bosun I do not much care for, but on the other hand I have Pullings and Babbington, two good master's mates, four or five decent midshipmen, a prime carpenter and gunner, and close on half of a crew of the kind of men I love. Not many captains can say as much, in a fresh commission. And then again, this is such a rest, after having been a commodore, with awkward captains to manage, each more like Beelzebub than the last- a positive sea-going picnic.

'Sweetheart, since I wrote those words, Phoebe has come in, homeward bound from the Cape, and precious short of water. (shall give these letters to Frank Geary, who has her now (poor Deering and half his ship's company died of the yellow jack when she was on the Leeward Islands station) and you will have them, with my dear love, far earlier than I had hoped. Before I forget it, here is the power of attorney, so that you will get my pay; and here is a letter for Kimber - you will read it, if you please: he is to confine himself to the strict minimum, as we agreed - and another for Collins, about the horses. Do not let him forget to buy Wilcox's hay, and let it be stacked, and very well thatched (Carey is the man to do it) in the angle between the new stables and the coach-house.

'God bless you, Sophie, and kiss the dear children for me. When I think that George will be breeched before I see him again, it makes my heart quite low: but if we go on at the present rate, I shall be home early enough to set him on a pony for his first time out, perhaps to see Mr Stanhope's hounds.

'In haste, my dear, for my bosun is fuming at the cabin door. I dare say he has already sold our cables to some rogue on shore, and wants me to slip so that they may be delivered: he really carries corruption far too high, and I shall have to bring him up.

'So with my fondest love once more,

Yours ever faithfully and affectionately Jno Aubrey.'

While Jack was writing this, Stephen was ashore with Mr Fisher. They visited the church, and there, meeting with the priest, they fell into conversation with him. Father Gomes was his name, a short, fat, elderly half-caste with a dark face - his white hair made his tonsure look almost black. He was a man who radiated goodness, and he was obviously much loved and respected by his parishioners: at his desire one of them undertook to find Stephen three sacks of physic-nuts, which the island produced in rare perfection, new-season nuts which had not yet reached the open market, while another offered to lead him to a cousin's house, where he had often seen the bird the Doctor described: the cousin sold young Branco puffins by the barrel - salted nestlings, permissible in Lent - and had an adult bird nailed to his door by way of a sign.

Stephen left the chaplain and the priest in the cool of the porch: Fisher's English pronunciation of Latin made some part of what he said incomprehensible to a Portuguese, and Father Gomes's piety so far exceeded his learning that he was often at a loss for a word, but they certainly communicated, talking away at a great rate. It appeared to Stephen that they did so less by language than by sympathy and intuition.

The physic-nuts proved of excellent quality, the puffin the true Branco puffin and not, as Stephen had feared, a cormorant or gull. A splendid acquisition, though in so advanced a state of decomposition that it was obliged to be hurried back to the ship before it should fall apart. After a brief tour of his patients and a word with Martin, he took the bird into his cabin, wrote an exact description of its plumage and outward members in his journal, and then, gasping from the stench, clapped it into spirits of wine for a later dissection.

He lit a cigar, considered for a while, and continued: 'Thanks to that dear priest, I can now renounce the Ilheu Branco without vexing my heart. It did me great good to see him, perhaps the third saintly man I have met. How it shines out, that rarest of qualities! Fisher was strongly aware of it. Poor man, he is in the sad way, I perceive; but where the trouble may lie, I cannot tell at all. I should be sorry if it were anything so commonplace as a hidden pox: though the Dear knows I have seen that often enough, and in all ranks and orders, old Adam being so strong and untimely. Quaere: would a man like Grant be moved by Fr Gomes? If time permit, I shall make the experiment. A profoundly embittered man, with long, painful service unrewarded, hopes disappointed for perhaps five and twenty years on end. How he resents JA! He has seen no action, as I understand, whereas Jack's body is pierced and criss-crossed with the evidence of battle: Macpherson pointed this out when Jack was stripped for his swim, the young gentlemen gazing with awe, and Grant cried in a passion " 'twas all luck, all luck - no man was wounded from choice - a man might have all the courage and conduct in the world, and no wound to show for it." He puts his lack of promotion down to a general plot in Whitehall and elsewhere; to jealousy; and to the fact that his birth is obscure. "Had my father been a country gentleman, a general and a member of Parliament (a palpable fling at JA) I might have been a post-captain fifteen years ago and more."

Though the imbecility of this argument must be apparent to him, since he served under Admiral Troubridge, a baker's boy. Like most sailors, he is widely ignorant outside his own profession; he has indeed read a certain amount, more than most of his kind, but late reading, useless as a foundation; he is convinced that no one else has ever done so, and he is a fountain of gratuitous instruction. A want of modesty: a fine fund of self-complacence. He certainly made a most admirable voyage, but to hear him relate it, one might suppose that he had discovered both New Holland and Van Diemen's Land single-handed: which is not the case. Yet even JA, whose standard is very high, confesses that he is a capital seaman. He is a most conscientious man too, and dutiful: keeps an ancient mother and two unmarried sisters on his lieutenant's pay, eight guineas a month. Talks no bawdy, and endeavours to repress loose talk among the Marine officers. A precise and formal man, destitute of the graces. He is at his best with Fisher, who hears his remarks on the Pelagian heresy with a wonderful forbearance; and he appears to know his Bible as well as he knows the Articles of War. I am no theologian and I know little of the tenets of these recent sects, except that they reject what they are pleased to call the abominable superstition of the Mass, but as far as my experience goes, they are primarily concerned with ethics: mysticism and the ancient pieties seem alien to them and to their respectable and sometimes splendid modern buildings. How, then, would one of their more rigid members perceive Fr Gomes?