Once again the ship broke into the most intense activity. Few could help in the long and complex rigging of the oar, but once the sails were so trimmed as to bring her head as far
north of east as possible, they could all set to the pumps, they could all lighten the ship, so that she would answer her helm the quicker, when she had a helm to answer to.
‘Huzzay, heave round,’ they cried, and again the water
gushed out in a stiff, prodigious jet. Stephen stood between Moore and his remaining sergeant, both of them experienced theoretical seamen, and in gasps they kept him informed of the progress aft. It was maddeningly slow: they kept glancing at the mountain, clearer now that the clouds had dissolved in rain, and saying that the ship was not to leeward, no not by a mile and more. It was plain, from their talk of preventer-guys, double-rove, and the like, that the Captain was leaving nothing to chance: that was wisdom, no doubt, yet a huge impatience welled up, a violent longing for the oar to be tried, perfectly rigged or not.
An hour passed by: the rain beat on the pumpers’ steaming backs; and at last some hands were called away to the poop. Those at the pumps saw the head of the oar rise to its place just abaft the mizenmast; they saw the tackles tighten; and after a pause in which the rain turned to sleet, they heard the cry, ‘Stand by, starboard: handsomely now, handsomely, and half a fathom. Larboard ease away.’ The Leopard’s motion changed perceptibly. Still heaving the winches round like fury, the pumpers tended their faces to the wind, felt it come full abeam, and then a little forward. They heard the familiar call of the men at the bowlines, ‘Heave one, heave two, heave belay,’ that meant the ship was sailing on a wind – a call they had not heard for weeks. One point free: but no farther. In spite of all the orders from the poop, all the movements of the enormous oar, the Leopard would not lie closer. Jack could not set the driver, and all their recent labour to get the ship by the stern so that she would wear prevented her from coming up, or at least from coming up with any headway still on her.
‘Still,’ said Moore, ‘she will do. A near-run thing, but she will do.’ And indeed Stephen, looking forward, saw that the Leopard was heading not straight for the island, but a very little to the windward of it.
Now began a long series of operations carried out with extraordinary speed: yards were braced, jibs hauled down, set again and flatted in, staysails flashed out, hands sent to the larboard side of the forecastle and head so that their weight might help – every conceivable manoeuvre to get the ship a few yards to windward, to overcome her natural leeway, the effect of the waves that kept knocking her head off the wind, and that of the powerful current perpetually setting east. At first Moore explained these one by one, but presently he fell silent; and as Stephen watched the island he saw it gradually move from the right of the bowsprit to a point where the bowsprit bisected the peak, and at last, when
it was within a mile, well to the left. He had never seen leeway more clearly exemplified: all this time the Leopard had been pointing due north, yet all the time she had slipped a little sideways in a sea that was itself in motion, moving bodily away to the east, so that with the two the island itself appeared to travel west.
Although the light was fading fast by now – a growing purple low in the south-west – the rocky shores were well in sight, with clouds of sea-birds over them, and the minute forms of penguins, crowds of penguins, standing on the beaches or emerging from the sea. And what is more, there was a small sheltered bay, clear of surf, just under the lee of an outward-running spur.
More orders from the poop. ‘He is going to commit all his forces now,’ said Moore. ‘Throw in his last reserves.’
‘Half a fathom, handsomely. Half a fathom more,’ said Jack, and the island moved to the right: the little bay opened wider. ‘Half a fathom – Christ!’
A long rending crack and the oar broke at the head. The loom and paddle went astern, held by a guy, the Leopard’s head swung from the wind, the island moved to the left in a long, slow, even motion until it lay on the larboard quarter, dwindling astern, as inaccessible as the moon.
‘In mizen topsail and topgallant,’ said Jack in the midst of the heavy silence.
It was within three days of this that the first cases of scurvy appeared in the sickbay. All four of them were prime seamen, broad-shouldered, long-armed, powerfully-built, responsible men, cheerful in an emergency, valuable members of the crew. Now they were glum, listless, apathetic; and only a sense of what was right kept them from complaining or open despondency. Stephen pointed out the physical symptoms, the spongy gums, the offensive breath, the extravasated blood, and in two cases the old reopening wounds; but he insisted even more upon the gloom as the most significant part of the disease. ‘I must confess, Mr Herapath,’ he said, ‘that nothing grieves me more than this dependence of the mind upon the body’s nutriment. It points to a base necessitarianism that I rebel against with all the vehemence my spirit can engender. And here, in the particular instance, I am at a loss. These men have had their sovereign lime-juice. Perhaps we must inspect the cask: most merchants are a sort of half-rogues, and quite capable of supplying a sophisticated juice.’
‘With submission, sir,’ said Herapath, ‘it occurs to me that these men may not have had their juice.’
‘But it is mixed into their grog. With all the perverse wickedness of seamen with regard to their health, they cannot avoid taking it. We use the Devil for a righteous end: execrable in theology, but sound in medicine.’
‘Yes, sir. But Faster Doudle, the tall man, was in my mess, and he often exchanged his grog for tobacco: it may be the same with the others.’
‘The dogs. The wicked dogs. I shall deal with them. A spoon, ho: a spoon, there; and half a pint of juice. I shall put an end to this: they will drink their grog or be flogged. And yet, you know,’ he said, pausing, ‘it will look strange in me, who have always set my face against their nasty rum
– who circulated a petition throughout the fleet calling for
the abolition of the monstrous custom by which grog missed during sickness is made up to the patient on his discharge – if I ask the Captain to issue an order requiring each man to drink his tot. Still and all, in this case a citreous drench will answer, I believe.’
The drench answered; the physical symptoms disappeared; but the gloom remained, and not only in the former patients but throughout the ship – a perfect atmosphere for the breeding of disease, as Stephen pointed out. Apart from a score of the poor flibberty-gibberty creatures who had been left behind by the boats, the men were attentive to their duty, but the fine drive was gone. The leak gained on them as the oakum of the first successful fothering worked through the leak, and the passing of a new sail was a slow, exhausting business that had little evident result: the Leopard drove eastward and a little south under small sail in a rising wind, pumping day and night. At any time the weather, fairly kind for the forties these last weeks, might break: the Leopard might have to run before an enormous storm of wind, with the great seas building up; and the general view aboard was that she could not survive the half of it.
‘Tell me, Mr Herapath,’ said Stephen. ‘In circumstances like these, were you supplied with a large quantity of opium, should you take a pipe?’
Herapath shied away from the renewal of their intimacy. He could not tell, he said –
probably not – there was perhaps something indecent in its use against mere apprehension – but then again perhaps he might.
Except when their work required his presence, he avoided Stephen whenever he could, either pumping beyond his time or shutting himself up in the cabin he had inherited from the purser – there were many vacant cabins, both fore and aft. Now he said, ‘You will excuse me, sir: I have promised to put in a spell at the pumps.’
Stephen sighed. He had hoped to engage Herapath on the subject of the Chinese poetry that seemed to be the
young man’s only consolation when he was deprived of his mistress’s company. More than once, in earlier days, Herapath had spoken of his studies, of the language and its poets, and Stephen had listened greedily through half the night. But those days were past, and at present he would flee as he had fled now, leaving his papers on the sickbay table.