The Unknown Shore (14 page)

‘I have got up,’ said Tobias, and this remark seemed to satisfy him for some time. ‘But I regret your dinner,’ he said at last, ‘and if you wish I will fetch you some more.’

Jack was infinitely obliged, infernally grateful, but it so happened that he had no appetite: it had suddenly left him, he said. They sat for some time, while the sun declined on the right hand and the
Wager’s
shadow grew on the smooth sea: it was smooth, with hardly a ripple upon it, but the long slow swell from the south was increasing.

‘It is most significant, Jack,’ said Tobias, peering round the mast, ‘most significant that I am not at all seasick. The motion is very great – it is becoming greater – but there is no nausea, no vertigo.’

‘I am heartily glad of it,’ said Jack, ‘and I dare say it is uncommon significant. But what of?’

‘It signifies that Mr Eliot may be right – that seasickness may be in some degree a creature of the imagination. I am too much preoccupied by terror to be sick. Query: are the timid less seasick than the bold, as being more readily distracted?’

‘I wish you were safely down below,’ said Jack, who had no philosophy to spare. ‘I do indeed.’

Down below the boats were being hauled in, hoisted up by tackles on the yard-arms and brought inboard to be stowed on the booms: the blue watch was on duty, and it had its full share of men who hauled stupidly, at the wrong moment, or not at all; this was a piece of work that called for exact coordination at any time and now it was complicated by the heavy swell. When Jack heard, among the roaring and the fending-off, that a back-stay had parted, he felt sure that all hands would soon be called. A glance round the squadron made him surer still. The signal to make sail was flying aboard the
Centurion;
the
Severn
already had her fore-topsail shaken out, and, as he looked, her main-topsail fell white from the yard and was sheeted home directly; everywhere in the squadron canvas was breaking out. The
Industry
was already under way, flying a signal that said I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO COMMUNICATE
,
but its intention was generally understood to be Farewell, or possibly Merry Christmas. Only the
Wager
was still blundering about with the longboat, later than everybody else, as usual.

‘Listen, Toby,’ he said, ‘we must get you down. I shall have to go on deck in a moment, so let us put you on this preventer-stay at once, and send you down to the foretop. You will not mind climbing down from the foretop.’

‘What stay?’ asked Tobias, looking alarmed.

‘This,’ cried Jack, kicking the block under Tobias’ feet so that the stays vibrated again: there were two, running straight and taut from the main-topmast head to the foretop at an angle of about 45°, and as the staysail was not bent they made an excellent road. ‘Come now, give me your belt. Hold on here. Hook your leg round the stay.’ Jack passed both their belts round Tobias and the stay: as he was fastening them the watches below were called, and there was a general bellowing of ‘All hands on deck. All hands to make sail.’

‘You are as safe as the ark,’ said Jack, ‘but don’t go too fast.’ With these words he vanished, leaving Tobias hanging under the stay,
attached to it by his hands and legs somewhat in the manner of the Brazilian (or three-toed) sloth, except that the sloth would never have been supported by a belt and in general would have been calmer in its mind – the sloth’s bosom would have been less agitated by conjecture and doubt.

‘What did he mean by too fast?’ asked Tobias of the sky. ‘What is considered a moderate speed, in these circumstances?’ He loosened his cataleptic grasp a little and allowed himself to slide a few feet before gripping again: the experiment pleased him, for it proved that he could start and stop. He now had complete confidence in his suspension, and as his face was turned upwards he had no impression of petrifying height, but rather a sense of being pleasingly afloat. He let himself go a little further, and smiled; then further, in a steady glide.

‘This is capital,’ he said aloud. ‘Before we reach the equator I shall accustom myself to the upper rigging; and before we cross the tropic of Capricorn I shall (sub Deo) climb to that ball,’ – nodding to the distant truck of the main-mast, which looked like a ball from below – ‘and put my nightcap upon it.’ So saying he let himself go a little faster, and then faster and faster until at length with a shrill whizzing sound he shot, amazed, feet first into the foretop, scattering its unsuspecting occupants like ninepins.

W
HO SHALL DESCRIBE
the crossing of the equator, with Neptune dispensing the traditional ordeals to all who had not been south of the line? Cozens, with a seaweed beard was Neptune, and it would take a great deal of space to describe the merriment and the jollity, the way everybody was soused, covered with tar, made to drink bilge-water. Tobias did not think it worth describing, but Jack, who had been as nearly as possible drowned – Neptune bawling, and weeping with laughter the while – was not of the same opinion. He had worn the necessary grin throughout the licensed Bedlam and the violent horseplay, but he was still privately indignant, and meditated a satirical poem.

‘You may say that I am not a Pope,’ he said.

‘My dear Jack,’ said Tobias, ‘I am sure of it. A Pope, ha, ha.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Jack in something of a huff; but in a moment he said, ‘I mean Mr Pope, you know: not the gentleman in Rome.’

‘Oh?’

‘Mr Pope, damn it, Toby: the one I hoped to show you at Will’s, only he was not there. Strike me down, I don’t believe he even knows who I mean.’

‘Yes, I do, Jack. The poet. You have often mentioned him, with approval.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, who was easily mollified, ‘you may say that I am not a Pope and that my piece would not be a Dunciad; but I reply, that there is the same disproportion between the subject of his poem and mine – which is pretty well put. What was that?’

‘Six bells. If you do write it, you must not omit the flying-fish.’ He looked out over the sea in case there should be another flight – there had been thousands of flying-fish that afternoon and a good many doradoes. ‘I can conceive nothing more poetic than a flying-fish, unless indeed it is the pelagic loxodrome.’

Jack leaned back with a faint sigh: in spite of the breeze it was too hot to try to make Tobias understand poetry in the correct, or Popish manner. They were sitting in the weather mainchains, which was about the pleasantest place aboard, though damp: strictly speaking they were not aboard at all, for the chains were outboard, they being the very strong projections from the ship’s side that hold the chain-plates and the immense dead-eyes of the shrouds. It was a kind of shelf that they sat upon, and if the
Wager
had been on an even keel they would have been suspended about half-way up the side, six or seven feet from the water and six or seven feet from the rail; but the east-south-east wind was blowing steadily over the
Wager’s
quarter, and with every possible sail set and drawing she heeled so as to raise them much higher from the sea. Even so, spray and sometimes solid water reached them now and then, for the wind was across the current and it chopped the surface into short, steep waves; it was very welcome, the coolness of the water, and it did their clothes no harm, for they were dressed in the simple elegance of calico drawers and nothing more.

‘There is Old Spots,’ said Tobias. In spite of the waves the sea was astonishingly clear, and the dolphin was plainly to be seen: it was a rather large fat dolphin with a protuberant forehead, a contented smile and a particular arrangement of light patches on its shoulders that distinguished it from the others. The
Wager
was making a good ten knots, but the dolphin had leisure to turn half over and scratch its back on the ship’s side before running up to play in the bow wave, to pass down the lee, to cross the wake with divers leaps and bounds and to reappear under their feet with an air of simple-minded joy.

The smile on the face of the dolphin was also to be found on board the
Wager,
this was delightful sailing at last, with the wind so steady and true and the braces untouched day after day: in this weather the watch on deck was occupied with beautifying the ship or preparing gear for harder times ahead, and the watches below really were watches below – that is to say, that they were not roused out the moment they had turned in by piping of all hands for some emergency or other. The watches below took their ease: in the last dog-watch they would often sing and dance to the squeak of the barber’s fiddle, and at other times they would spread abroad for
repose and meditation. This was one of the reasons why Jack and Tobias were sitting in the chains – there was no room anywhere else. The
Wager
was about a hundred feet long, and her people numbered two hundred and twelve; she was not what would have been called a crowded ship, by naval standards, and at all ordinary times the hands loved to huddle into the smallest possible compartments, there to smoke and to work up a truly staggering fug, which left room enough for those who like to breathe; but now the ‘tween decks was untenable even for the whaler’s men (the most devoted to fug) and everyone sought a place in the breeze and out of the sun. Even the sick were on deck, and a short row of hammocks swung in the waist of the ship – the pensioners and a few new cases of tropical calenture, but nothing that disquieted Mr Eliot. In the other ships this was not the case: the
Severn,
next in line, had sick-bay hammocks as far as the catheads, and the
Centurion
was as bad, in spite of the commodore’s scuttles; it was difficult to see into the other ships, for they sailed in so precise a line, two cables’ lengths apart, that the
Gloucester
and the
Pearl
were obscured by the white cloud of sails.

The delight in the weather had many agreeable results, and it tended to make for general civility: Campbell, who was a morose fellow in ordinary weather, had been both friendly and communicative for some time; he too had suffered from Cozens’ hilarity (Tobias had had to sew the top of his left ear on again) and he regarded Jack as a fellow-victim; he and Jack also had this in common, that they both liked navigation, and took a keen pleasure in amplitudes, right ascension and azimuths. Campbell was not an ideal shipmate even now, but he was far less disagreeable than he had seemed to be earlier in the voyage: and at least some of his unattractive ways were due to the fact that he was Scotch, and that he felt slighted and put upon because of it. He had some reason for thinking so, for the Scotch were widely unpopular in England at that time: living in a poorer country, with an even more disagreeable climate, they were obliged to work harder, to live on less and to accept hardship without complaint; this tended to make them offensively virtuous. They were industrious and hardy; they despised the English as being idle and soft; and this alone was enough to make them disliked. But in addition to all this they were said to be rude, dirty and grasping.
Perhaps the lowland Scotch were somewhat coarse in their manners, but as for dirt, there can have been no very strong contrast, seeing that the average Englishman’s washing went no further than his neck, if indeed it reached so far, and the word bathroom had no meaning in domestic architecture. However, when nations are determined to dislike one another they do not let justice or veracity stand in the way, and Campbell, having found out early in his career that his nation was a disadvantage to him, resented the discrimination most bitterly. His cast of mind was dark, unhumorous and grudging, and he exaggerated the villainy of the world. He was also of an ordinary family, which had no interest. The result of this was that if a block fell on his head he was instantly certain that it had done so because he was a Scotchman in the first place, and because he was poor in the second. He often laboured under a sense of grievance, which made him a tedious companion; but at other moments he could be quite human; and at no time could it be denied that he had valuable qualities – he was attentive to his duty, seamanlike and conscientious.

‘Will you make room there?’ he said, swinging over the side.

Jack and Tobias made him a place, and presently he and Jack were deeply engaged on a plan to find out the longitude by watching the moons of Jupiter, while Tobias fixed his gaze upon a very large dirty bird in the distance. It was brown and blackish, with an immense wing-span: yet it was not a sooty albatross. Could it be the giant petrel, the
Procellaria gigantea
of Mumpsimus? He would have to see its beak to make sure, the bony nostrils so typical of the petrel family: Mumpsimus particularly mentioned the point. He pointed out the bird to his companions, who gave it as their opinion that it was a pretty large sort of bird, a sea-bird, no doubt, and went to fetch his telescope from the cabin.

The door offered a slight resistance; Tobias pushed hard, and down came the usual bucket, soaking him and the books that were open on the locker. The iron rim hurt him cruelly, but the pain of seeing water all over his drawings was so much greater that he took no notice of it. There was the usual bellow of laughter from Cozens and the imitative cackle from Morris as they saw the success of their joke. Tobias knew that he must not resent it; Jack (who was a better preacher than a practicer) had told him many and many a time that
it was only a joke, that they meant no harm, that one must take a laugh against oneself; so he closed the door and began to mop the water off his books. He was too late to save the wash drawing of the flying-fish’s muscular processes – many hours’ exact labour – but he was able to preserve some of his notes; and no doubt he would soon have another flying-fish to dissect. The need for putting up with barbarity was something he could not understand, however. He took Jack’s repeated assurance that it was so, but he had never been to school nor mixed with people of his own age, and the whole thing remained incomprehensible and sad.

Yet Cozens, lout though he was, had some seamanlike virtues, prompt decision being among them, and some days later when Moses Lewis, trying to spear a bonito, fell off the starboard bumkin into the sea, Cozens flung a hen-coop at him from the middle of the gangway so quickly that it struck him as he swept by. That is to say, Lewis had travelled from the bumkin to the middle of the
Wager,
some forty feet, at a rate of ten knots, by the time the hen-coop reached him; so Cozens had had a trifle over two seconds in which to roar ‘Man overboard’ and to act.

It is true that the coop not only drove Lewis far below the surface but also caused him to impale himself upon his fizgig, or trident. But this was a small price to pay for being kept afloat until he could be picked out of the sea, and it was generally thought that Moses Lewis should be very grateful to Mr Cozens, for his readiness of mind. Lewis was handed up the side with the fizgig still implanted in his bosom, and he was carried straight down to the cockpit in this interesting condition, looking (as the bystanders remarked) like something out of Foxe’s
Book of Martyrs.

‘Moses Lewis,’ said Mr Eliot, ‘put out your tongue.’ He said this almost automatically, it being his manner of gagging his patients and preventing tedious complaints: there was not much need to silence Lewis, who was still in a dismal and waterlogged condition as he lay there, with the trident’s handle held up in the air over him, but Mr Eliot said it out of habit and went on with his examination.

‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘You will have to cut it out, Mr Barrow. It is the barbs that hold it so. It is of no consequence – you will not find the pleura affected, no, no. Oh no: the cartilago ensiformis and pectoralis major, that is all; and we need not be overtender of the
pectoralis major. Use the great French scalpel, Mr Barrow, or even our dismembering catlin, if you please – it is of no consequence – as you please – I leave it entirely in your hands. Now Moses Lewis, Mr Barrow will kindly perform an ablation of the fizgig: you must not move, you know. If you was to move, the scalpel would slip, and I dare say it would put a stop to your earthly career. Should you like to be held, Moses Lewis? Yes, I think he would like to be held; he would be very sorry to move and spoil Mr Barrow’s professional reputation. Andrew, my compliments to Mr Bean, and may I have two of Moses Lewis’ messmates to hold him?’

Two very strong and eager messmates hurried in, and they pinned him at once (for his own good) with such force that the breath was squeezed from his body in a groan.

‘Now don’t you start a-bellowing,’ said one. ‘What will the doctor think of you, mate, if you start a-bellowing while he is only a whetting of his knife?’

‘Fi, Moses Lewis,’ said the other.

At all ordinary times Lewis would never have borne such liberties, but now they assumed such an overwhelming moral superiority, he being sick and therefore by tradition much the same as a child or a half-wit, that he could only gaze piteously from side to side. This, of course, could not be allowed: each seaman moved his shoulder inwards to clamp the patient’s head, which took on a compressed appearance, not unlike a lemon.

‘I do not suppose that you would have sharpened it so, if you had known where it was going to,’ said Tobias, snipping the last fibres from the nick of the fifteenth barb and disengaging the fizgig.

‘He says if you hadn’t of sharpened it, it wouldn’t of gone in so far,’ said the messmate on the right, in a voice calculated to reach Lewis’s muffled hearing.

‘You don’t want to go sharpening them nasty fizgigs so, he says,’ said the other, in a virtuous tone: the squeezed lemon gave a faint nod, instantly suppressed.

‘There,’ said Tobias, ‘you can let him go now.’

‘It’s all over, mate. We’ve got ‘un out,’ they told him, in a kindly bellow. ‘There, there, you can lay easy now. What a horrible state of dread you was in, to be sure, ha, ha. Didn’t he sweat, mate, when he see the knife a-coming? But it’s all over now, mate,’ they said,
bending low over him, shouting in his ear and patting him heavily. ‘Ah, you’ve missed it all, Mr Byron, sir: we got ‘un out five minutes ago.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘I came down to see how he was. How is he?’

Lewis had been in Jack’s division before Captain Murray’s changes; he smiled to see the midshipman, for whom he had a kindness, but he thought fit to answer Jack’s inquiry by the words ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ in a gasping, fluttering voice. This was a point of manners: if the sick are being visited it is only decent that they should be sick, however well they may feel. A little conversation followed about sharpening fizgigs, edged tools and those to whom they may safely be entrusted; and the general opinion was, that you ought to be very careful; that you don’t want to go a-falling in the sea like that – which there might not be a hen-coop at hand another time, nor such a handy young gentleman as Mr Cozens; and that a bonito, or any other fish that might be named, was not worth being drowned for. An albacore was not worth being drowned for, not a barracuda; and if Moses Lewis thought a flaming dorado was worth being drowned for, he was wrong, mate, wrong.