The Hundred Days (12 page)

‘His name is John Daniel, and he comes from Leominster, where his father was a
bookseller in a small way of business: he had a fair amount of education in his
father’s shop and at the town school. But Mr Woodbine, whose family lived
there, tells me that it was not a reading town at all, and with trade
declining, the customers did not pay their bills. The shop was in a sad way,
getting worse and worse, and to preserve his father from being carried off to
the debtors’ prison, young Daniel took the bounty and went aboard the receiving
ship at Pompey. He was drafted with such a hopeless set of quota-men to
Arethusa that he was the only one who could write his name. Nicholls, Edward
Nicholls, who was first of Arethusa, looked at him without much love- no
seaman, too feeble to haul, no handicraft, and he was about to rate him landman
and waister when he happened to ask him what he thought he could do that might
be useful aboard a ship. Daniel said he had studied the mathematics and that he
could cast accounts. Nicholls set him a few questions, saw that he was telling
the truth, and said that if Daniel wrote a neat hand, he could be of some help
to the purser or the captain’s clerk and perhaps the master. This he did to
their satisfaction, but once they were clear of the Channel purser and clerk
had little employment for him and he spent most of his time with the master,
Oakhurst. You remember Oakhurst, Stephen? He was in Euryalus off Brest, a great lunarian. He
dined with us once, and cried out against those ignorant idle swabs who would depend on chronometers.’

‘I remember him as a somewhat passionate, even an
irascible companion.’

‘Yes. But he was kind to Daniel, who was entranced
with the whole idea of navigation - the celestial clock - the circling stars -
the planets among them - the moon - and who, being lent an old quadrant,
perpetually took altitudes or measured the distances between the moon and
various stars. He was a young man who delighted in the beauty of mathematics:
who delighted in number itself...Furthermore, when Arethusa’s people were all
turned over into Inflexible, he was rated ordinary and, being small and light,
he was stationed in the maintop.’

‘He must have found that very hard.’

‘I am sure he did, and I cannot imagine what the
premier was about - to be sure, they were cruel short-handed, yet even so...
But, however, he survived it. He had been at sea for some time, turning out
whenever all hands was piped and he was used to the ways of the Navy: he was
not a stranger, but a well-liked man surrounded with shipmates, and they helped
him. After a year or so of this - for he was a quick learner - he had a fair
notion of sailing a ship as well as navigating her. But he was very happy when
Inflexible went into dock for repair and Oakhurst asked his captain to rate
Daniel master’s mate in the old Behemoth. And then, of course, like most
men-of-war Behemoth was paid off in the peace; and after a while on the shore -
anything for a berth - he joined a privateer fitting out to pursue and take
pirates on the Barbary coast, but in no way suited for
the task. One of the first pirates they met, a Tangerine, so battered her that
she only just reached Oran, where she grounded and
bilged. A Genoese tartan let him work his passage back to Mahon, where he hoped he might
find someone he knew, but they stripped him of all he possessed. He had barely
a shirt to his back when I saw him sitting under the arcades. But now returning
to our dinner, I shall have a word with my cook; and if Mr Wright agrees, we
could play him the Zelenka fugue that the three of us ran through again on
Sunday - a most uncommon piece.’

The frigate’s dinner for Mr Wright was surprisingly
successful: the captain’s cook, with all the delights of Minorca at hand, had
put himself out, and they ate nobly, drinking a great deal of a light local red
from Fornells and then some ancient Madeira; but what particularly pleased
Stephen was the way in which the great engineer, ordinarily a difficult guest
and apt to be sullen, took to Jack Aubrey and even more to Jacob. They had a
lively discussion on the local varieties of modern
Greek and the curious versions of Turkish that had come into being among the
subject nations of the immense Turkish empire. ‘I was a fair hand with
Homer at school,’ said Wright, holding up his glass, ‘- athesphatos oinos, by
the way - but when I was desired to build the wharves and breakwater at Hyla I
found to my dismay that my Greek was no good to me, no good at all, and I was
obliged to employ a dragoman at every turn. No doubt you, sir, were better
prepared for the Eastern Mediterranean?’

‘Why, sir, it was not so much prescience or virtue
on my part as the pure good fortune of having spent my tender years - the years
when a language flows into your mind with no intellectual effort - among Turks,
Greeks and people speaking many varieties of Arabic and Berber as well as the
archaic Hebrew of the Beni Mzab Jews. My people were jewel-merchants, based
mostly in the Levant but travelling very widely indeed, even to Mogador on the
Atlantic coast on the one hand and Baghdad on the other.’

‘Surely, Doctor,’ said Jack, ‘it must be a perilous
business, rambling about mountains and deserts with a parcel of jewels in your
pocket or your saddle-bag? I mean quite apart from the wild beasts - lions
ravening for their prey - there are likely to be bandits, are there not? One
hears sad tales of the Arabs: and I well remember that in the Holy Land, where people were no
doubt a great deal better than they are now, the Good Samaritan came upon a
poor fellow beaten, wounded and robbed on the highway. While a little later in
this watch I am going to send off two convoys, heavily armed, to see some
merchantmen safe into London river, laden with no more than Smyrna figs and the
like - never so much as a pearl or a diamond between the lot of them. For my
part I should never dare wander about a desert carrying a stock of gem-stones
without a troop of horse at my back.’

‘Nor, unless I had a soul triply bound in brass,
should I ever dare to put to sea in a frail wooden affair drifting as the wind
chooses: but as you know, sir, better than I, a little use makes it seem almost
safe, even commonplace. To be sure, both mountain and desert can be mortal for
one not brought up to them; but after some generations they seem little more
dangerous than a journey to Brighton.’

A midshipman came, walked to Commodore Aubrey’s
side and discreetly conveyed Mr Harding’s duty together with the news that the
officer commanding the convoy desired leave to part company.

‘Forgive me, gentlemen,’ said Jack, rising. ‘I
shall not be long.’

Long he was not, but already the talk had flowed
on, and Jacob was repeating the word ‘Mzab’ with some emphasis to Mr Wright,
who leant forward, one hand cupping his ear.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ said Jacob, ‘I was just
explaining how generations of nomadic jewel-trading teach one to survive - the
network of trusted associates, often related - the custom of travelling in
small family groups - middle-aged women, young children - few guards and those
few at a distance - a modest drove of indifferent horses or camels as
ostensible property. I particularly stressed the young and preferably dirty,
shabby children: they do away with any idea of wealth. And I did so partly to
explain to Dr Maturin how I came to be acquainted with the Zeneta dialect of
Berber and the archaic Hebrew of Mzab.’

‘An acquaintance I envy you,’ said Jack.

Jacob bowed and continued, ‘I had been taken along
by some Alexandrian cousins, playing the part of unwashed child to perfection;
but when we came to their usual resting place among the Beni Mzab a camel gave
me so severe a bite - a bite that would not heal - that they were obliged to
leave me and a great-aunt and travel on to an important rendezvous a great way
off. It was there that I learnt the double guttural of the Beni Mzab Hebrew and
that I became thoroughly at home with the triliteral roots of the Berber.’ He
gave a good many examples of the Hebrew in question and of Berber grammar,
illustrating them with quotations from Ibn Khaldun.

‘By your leave, sir,’ cried Killick, to Jack’s
relief, for not only was he thoroughly set up for a reasonable quantity of
spotted dog, but he was afraid that Mr Wright’s interest in archaic Hebrew,
never very strong, was waning fast.

His interest in food, however, was as eager as
Jack’s, in spite of his age; and after a while he said in a voice of real
authority, ‘The French may say what they please, and Apicius, with his
slave-fed moray eels, was no doubt very well; but it seems to me that
civilization reaches its very height in the glistening, gently mottled form of
just such a pudding as this, bedewed with its unctuous sauce.’

‘How wholly I agree with you, sir,’ cried Jack.
‘Allow me to cut you a slice from the translucent starboard end.’

‘Well, if I must, I must,’ said Mr Wright, eagerly
advancing his plate.

Gradually the pudding diminished; the decanters made
their stately round; and Jack Aubrey brought up the subject of music. ‘Until a
little while ago,’ he observed, ‘I had never heard of a Bohemian composer
called Zelenka.’

‘Dismas, I believe.’

Jack bowed and went on, ‘But then I was given a
copy of his Ricercare for Three Voices, which we have now played several times
and which I thought we might offer you with your coffee: unless indeed you
would prefer the Locatelli C major trio.’

‘To tell you the truth, dear Commodore, I should
prefer the Locatelli. There is something truly dispassionate and as it were
geometrical in the trio that touches me, in something of the same manner as
your paper on nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, considered from the
navigator’s point of view, in the Transactions. But before that, may I beg Dr
Maturin to show me his horn? Then while I am listening, being at the same time
in physical contact with the problems posed by this improbable tooth, perhaps
intuition may lead me to the solution, as it has done on three or four very
happy occasions.’

Jack Aubrey had spoken of coffee, and to be sure it
was as inevitable as the setting of the sun; but at present the stronger
constitutions were still engaged with the remains of the spotted dog, and all
hands were still drinking madeira-  most
emphatically all hands, since Killick, his mate and the boy, third class, who
helped him in the background, were very fond of this ancient and generous wine
and had perfected a way of substituting a full for a half-emptied decanter at
the end of each passing: the dwarvish third-class boy wafted the first decanter
out, emptied it entirely into tumblers which the three then drained in hurried
gulps as opportunity offered.

Stephen had been aware of their motions for some
little while - he was, in any case, well acquainted with Killick’s tendency to
finish anything that was left and indeed to encourage the leaving, though
rarely to this remarkable extent: Stephen had little to say about it on moral
grounds, but it appeared to him that the third-class boy, a weedy little
villain of about five feet, was very near his limit - he had had more
opportunity than the other two and of course much less stamina. It was
therefore something of a relief to Stephen when the last decanter, which had
furnished the loyal toast, was removed, and Jack, Mr Wright and Jacob looked
expectantly at him. ‘Killick,’ he said, ‘pray be so good as to step into my
cabin and bring the bow-case hanging behind the door.’

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ cried Killick, paler than Stephen
could have wished, and apt to stare. ‘Bow-case it is.’

But bow-case it was not. Killick had seen fit to
take the horn out and now he could be seen for a moment in the light of the
open door, making antic gestures with its point at the third-class boy, who was
draining the last of the wine. ‘Oh, oh,’ cried the boy, choking, and he plunged
forward in a paroxysm of adolescent drunkenness, spewing improbable jets of
madeira, grasping Killick’s knees and bringing him down. He fell flat on the
deck, holding the horn close to his chest. It broke in the middle with a sharp
crack, sending off a long sliver that shot into the great cabin.

These things took place in the coach, the small
apartment forward and to larboard, generally used on such occasions. Jack
strode through it over the two bodies, calling very loud and clear for his
bosun, swabbers and the master-at-arms.

Bonden took in the situation at once and in a cold,
silent fury he ran the now speechless Killick away forward, while the
master-at-arms dragged the limp wretched boy to the nearest pump. The swabbers,
old hands at this job, set to without a word: and with extraordinary speed - no
comments whatsoever - the frigate’s people cleaned up, cleared away, and even
before the deck was quite dry, restored the cabin to a wholly clean and
civilized condition.

Mr Wright was sitting on
the broad locker that ran across the Surprise’s great cabin, just by the sweep
of stern windows, when Stephen came back, carrying his ‘cello and the scores. The old gentleman had the
pieces of narwhal horn carefully arranged by his side, the broken parts set
together and the eighteen-inch splinter laid so exactly in place that at first sight the horn looked whole. ‘Dear Dr
Maturin,’ he said, ‘I fear you must be grievously distressed.’

‘No, sir,’ said Stephen. ‘I do not mind it.’

Wright hesitated for a moment and then went on,
‘But believe me, this is one of the few things I can do really well. The
providential splinter has shown me the nature of the inner substance; the
breaks are perfectly clean; and I have a cement that
will knit them so firmly that the tooth will retain all its original strength:
a cement that would make dentists’ fortunes, were it less noxious. Pray let me
take it home with me, will you?’

‘I should be infinitely obliged to you, sir, but
...’

‘I used to do the same for Cousin Christine’s
skeletons many years ago. And while you are playing I shall muse with the other
half of my mind on the lower shaft, in which those whorls and spirals are so
startlingly obvious. A very extraordinary puzzle indeed.’