The Surgeon's Mate (25 page)

'This is more like a proper life for a man,' he observed to Stephen, after one of these exercises had caused the Heligoland Bight to ring again.

'Sure, even the complexity of a vessel with as many masts as this, with all their ropes and the nice adjustment of their dependent sails, is nothing to the difficulties of life ashore,' replied Stephen, pulling up his collar. He had always noticed that Jack was quite another man at sea, a bigger man, capable of dealing both with strange surprising situations and the common daily round, and usually a happier one; but he had rarely seen the change so strongly marked before. A bitter drizzle was sweeping down from the North Frisian islands; a short cross-sea kept sending irregular dashes of spray across the windward side of the quarterdeck; and Jack's face rose above his inadequate, hastily-purchased pea-jacket, streaming with wet but beaming like a somewhat battered rising sun. 'Perhaps to some degree it may lie in the altumal simplicity of our diet, a diet produced by no effort of our own, and served up at stated intervals; whereas on land food is a frequent subject of consideration, and the gastric juices are therefore perpetually solicited; but no doubt a more important factor on shore is the presence of an entirely different sex, of the excitation of other appetites, and of the appearance of a whole new set of social and even moral values.'

'Why, as to that,' said Jack: but he was peering and craning to see the foretopmast crosstrees, and for the moment his mind was elsewhere. 'Mr Rowbotham,' he called to a midshipman on the leeward side, 'jump up to the foretopmast crosstrees and tell Mr Jagiello, with my compliments, that I would like to speak to him, when he is at leisure. And harkee, Mr Rowbotham, he is to come down through the lubber's hole, d'ye hear me? There is to be no skylarking, no sliding down the backstays.'

'No, sir. Yes, sir,' said Rowbotham, and shot into the rigging with the speed if not the grace of his cousin the ring-tailed lemur.

'I beg your pardon,' said Jack, 'but I really cannot have him wandering aloft like that, above all with his wounded hand. He is an unlucky wight, and will certainly break his neck.' It was true. Jagiello had already taken advantage of a temporary gap in the hammock-netting to fall into the sea, from which he had been plucked, laughing heartily, by a well-aimed log-line; and of the only time a hatchway had ever been left uncovered to plunge into the hold, where nothing but a heap of empty sacks preserved him; and he had very, very nearly been destroyed when Awkward Moses dropped the mizen topgallantmast fid just between his feet from such a height that the massive piece of iron stuck in the deck like a bar-shot; while only yesterday the lock of a nine-pounder had slipped its sear when he was being shown the mechanism, almost severing one finger and pinching the rest most cruelly. He was a popular figure aboard: the hands liked him not only because he had begged Awkward Moses off his flogging but also because he was always cheerful, and apparently quite devoid of fear; the gunroom liked him because he was good company, attentive to their anecdotes and appreciative of their wit. The stupider officers, like Mr Hyde, still addressed him in a loud, slow, barbarous jargon calculated for halfwitted children and foreigners, but Graham the surgeon, a reading man when he was sober, and Fenton, the second lieutenant, maintained that it was great nonsense to

say "I'm called dog's body. 'Tis pease-pudden really, but we say dog's body. You - like - 'im, dog's body?' to a man who could play such a hand at whist and beat all comers at the chess-board. And in both cases his absurd beauty and an indefinable sweetness of manner no doubt had their effect.

'Ah, Mr Jagiello,' said Jack, 'how kind of you to come. I wanted to ask you in the first place whether you would favour us with your company at dinner - I am also asking Mr Hyde - and in the second whether you have any military connections in the town of Gothenburg. Our lower tier of powder proves sadly damp, and I should very much like to replace it.'

'I should be very happy, sir,' said Jagiello. 'Thank you very much. And as for Gothenburg, I know the commandant; I am sure he will be delighted to give you powder, all the more since his mother is a Scotch.'

Stephen had spoken of the simplicity of their diet, and the Captain's dinner was a fair example of it. Apart from the marine glue, flavoured with sherry and thickened with crushed biscuit, that began the feast, and a dwarfish fowl which Stephen carefully divided into four wizzened pieces that tasted of tar, and some of yesterday's dried peas, boiled in a cloth until they merged into a homogenous mass, it was exactly the same salt horse and biscuit that had nourished the gunroom, the midshipmen's berth, and the mess-deck a little earlier in the day; for the Ariel, hurried so untimely to sea, had not had the leisure to lay in private stores. What little she had left had been devoured before she reached 54°N., and now all hands would have to be content with what the Victualling Office allowed them, at least until they reached Swedish waters.

'Perhaps you would be so kind as to cut up Mr Jagiello's beef for him,' said Jack to Mr Hyde, nodding at his guest's bandaged hand.

'By all means, sir,' cried the lieutenant, and he set to his laborious task. The beef had been to the West Indies and back, and now, in its raw state, it could be carved and filed into durable ornaments; and even after some hours in the steep-tubs and the galley copper it still retained something of its heart of oak. Stephen noticed that Hyde was left-handed, which gave him an awkward air; but his left hand was obviously powerful, obviously used to salt horse; and using immense pressure he was dividing the lump into reasonable gobbets. As he did so he said to Jagiello in an undertone, 'I hope 'im no hurt too much?'

'You are very good, sir,' replied Jagiello. 'It is nothing at all. I must confess that this morning I found a little inconvenience in shaving and in putting on my pea-jacket, but Dr Maturin' - bowing to Stephen - 'and Dr Graham... '

Here the beef shot into Jack's bosom with surprising force. It was in vain that they laughed, it was in vain that Jack told Hyde he should certainly be hanged for directing a lethal weapon at a superior officer: the poor man could scarcely smile, and when, the meal having begun again, he passed the pease-pudding to Jagiello, saying 'A little god's body, sir - dog's body, I mean?' he did so in a low and melancholy voice.

This was not the first time that Stephen had noticed Hyde's tendency to displace letters, and he wondered whether it might be connected with his left-handedness -whether the confusion of right and left (and he had seen Hyde pass the port the wrong way round) might not be related to the inversion of sounds, particularly at a time when the mind itself was confused. He did not pursue the reflection however but said, 'A little while ago we were speaking of sex. But now I come to think of it, perhaps this is not a proper subject for the Captain's table, from which politics and religion are excluded -a subject laudable on the deck but forbidden below it?'

'I believe I have known it raised at table,' said Jack.

'It was the sense of freedom, and of simplification, that prompted my observation. In this ark, this floating community, we are all of the same sex: what would be the effect if our numbers were evenly divided between the two, as it is the case on land?' He addressed himself more particularly to Jagiello, who blushed, and said he could not tell. 'I know very little of women, sir,' he said. 'You cannot make friends with them: they are the Yews of the world.'

'Yews, Mr Jagiello?' cried Jack. And to himself, chuckling much, he added, 'It would be a damned odd thing if they proved rams, you know.'

'Jews, I mean,' said Jagiello. 'You cannot make friends with Jews. They have been beaten and spitted on so long they are the enemy, like the Laconical helots; and women have been domestical helots for oh so much longer. There is no friendship between enemies, even in a truce; they are always watching. And if you are not friends, where is the real knowledge?'

'Some speak of love,' suggested Stephen.

'Love?' cried the young man. 'But love is a creature of time, whereas friendship is not. Your own Shakespeare says..."

The sailors never learnt what their own Shakespeare said, because a midshipman, sent by the officer of the watch, came to say that the weather, lifting to leeward, had disclosed twenty-eight sail of merchantmen, together with a frigate and a brig, thought to be Melampus and Dryad.

'A Baltic convoy for sure,' said Jack. 'No one could mistake Melampus. But still I think we may as well have a look. Doctor, will you entertain Mr Jagiello with reasons until we come back? I have great hopes we may finish our dinner with something better than condemned Essex cheese.'

'Mr Jagiello,' said Stephen, when they had gone, 'I should like to ask you about the ancient gods of Lithuania, which, I understand, still lead a ghostly life among your boors, about the worship of oak-trees, the white-tailed eagle and the plica Polonica, the beaver, the mink, and the wisent or European bison; but first, before it should slip my mind, I must tell you I am charged with a message, to be delivered in a most tactful, diplomatic way, so that it does not in the least resemble an order - so improper to a guest - but so that it shall have an equivalent force and effect. Your agility in the upper rigging excites wonder and admiration, my dear sir; but at the same time it causes a very great uneasiness of mind, an uneasiness proportionable to the esteem in which you are held; and it would please the Captain if you would confine yourself to the lower platforms, technically known as tops.'

'Does he believe that I shall fall?'

'He believes that the laws of gravity bear more severely on soldiers than on seamen; and since you are a hussar, he is convinced that you will fall.'

'I shall do as he wishes, of course. But he is mistaken, you know: heroes never fall. At least, not fatally.'

'I was not aware that you were a hero, Mr Jagiello.'

The Ariel took on a surprising lean as she brought the stiff breeze abaft the beam, set her topgallants and weather studdingsails and dashed down on the Melampus at a good ten knots, her lee-rail buried in the foam. Jagiello had a good hold on the table, but a lee-lurch unseated him and he slid to the deck, where for a moment his spurs, caught in the matting, held him prisoner. 'Of course I am a hero,' he said, getting up and laughing very cheerfully. 'Every man is a hero of his own tale. Surely, Dr Maturin, every man must look on himself as wiser and more intelligent and more virtuous than the rest, so how could he see himself as the villain, or even as a minor character? And you must have noticed that heroes are never beaten. They may be undone for a while, but they always do themselves up again, and marry the virtuous young gentlewoman.'

'I have noticed it, indeed. There are some eminent exceptions, sure, but upon the whole I am convinced you are right. Perhaps it is that which makes your novel or tale a little tedious.'

'Ah, Dr Maturin,' cried Jagiello, 'if I could find an Amazon, one of a tribe of women that never have been oppressed, one that I could be friends with, equal friends, oh how I should love her!'

'Alas, my dear, men destroyed the last Amazon two thousand years ago; and I fear your heart must go virgin to the grave.'

'What is that noise, like bears on the roof?' asked Jagiello, breaking off.'

'It is the launching of a boat. And from the howling of the mariners I collect that it will be some time before we see our dessert. What say you to a game of chess while we are waiting? It may be no conclusive test of our relative wisdom, virtue, or intelligence, but I can think of no better.'

'With all my heart,' said Jagiello. 'But if I lose, you are not to suppose that it will make the least difference to my conviction.'

The game might not prove much about the intelligence of the players, but it provided certain evidence that Jagiello's virtue or at least his kindness was greater than Stephen's: Stephen, playing to win, had launched a powerful attack on the queen's side; he had launched it one move too early - a vile pawn still masked his heavy artillery - and now Jagiello was wondering how he could play to lose, how he could make a mistake that should not be woundingly obvious to his opponent. Jagiello's chess was far beyond Stephen's; his power of dissembling his emotions was not, and Stephen was watching his expression of ill-assumed stupidity with some amusement when the boat was heard to return.

A moment later Jack came in, followed by his steward bearing a plum-cake the size of a moderate cart-wheel and by two powerful hands with a hamper that clanked glassy as they set it down, while the pitter of hoofs overhead and a melancholy baa told of the presence of at least one devoted sheep. Jagiello, with a look of relief, instantly moved the board to make room for the cake, solving his problem by upsetting all the pieces.

'I am sorry to have been so tedious long,' said Jack. 'But I am sure you will find it worth the wait: Melampus has always done herself as proud as the Mansion House. Cut and come again, Mr Jagiello: this only has to last us until Gothenburg.'

Gothenburg, a melancholy town, most of it quite recently burnt, inhabited by tall spare melancholiacs dressed in grey wool, much given to drinking and self-murder (the river brought three suicides past the Ariel during her brief stay), but kind to strangers if not to themselves. The Commandant at once provided powder, best red-letter cylinder powder, together with a present of smoked reindeer's tongues and a barrel of salted honey-buzzards. These he gave to Stephen, saying, 'Pray accept this small keg of buzzards.'

'Buzzards, my dear sir?' cried Stephen, startled from his usual calm.

'Oh, not common buzzards,' said the Commandant, 'nor rough-legged buzzards; you need not be afraid. They are all honey-buzzards, I do assure you.'

'I am fully persuaded of it, sir, and return my best thanks,' said Stephen. 'May I ask how they came there?' he added, looking attentively at the cask.

'I put them there myself,' said the Commandant with pride, 'I put them there with my own hands, choosing each one. Fine plump birds, though I should not say it.'