Hitherto, Jack had been too busy working up his crew to pay much attention to the education of his midshipmen, but he had looked at yesterday’s slips and they, with a very suspicious unanimity, had shown the Sophie in 39°2I’N, which was fair enough, but also in
a longitude that she could only have reached by cleaving the mountain-range behind Valencia to a depth of thirty-seven miles.
‘What do you mean by sending me this nonsense?’ he asked them. It was not really an answerable question; nor were many of the others that he propounded, and they did not, in fact, attempt to answer them; but they agreed that they were not there to amuse themselves, nor for their manly beauty, but rather to learn their professions; that their journals (which they fetched) were neither accurate, full, nor up to date, and that the ship’s cat would have written them better; that they would for the future pay the greatest attention to Mr Marshall’s observation and reckoning; that they would prick the chart daily with him; and that no man was fit to pass for a lieutenant, let alone bear any command (‘May God forgive me,’ said Jack, in an internal aside) who could not instantly tell the position of his ship to within a minute – nay, to within thirty seconds. Furthermore, they would show up their journals every Sunday, cleanly and legibly written.
‘You can write decently, I suppose? Otherwise you must go to school to the clerk.’ They hoped so, sir, they were sure; they should do their best. But he did not seem convinced and desired them to sit down on that locker, take those pens and these sheets of paper, to pass him yonder
book, which would answer admirably for them to be read to out of from.
This was how it came about that Stephen, pausing in
the quietness of his sick-bay to reflect upon the case of the patient whose pulse beat weak and thin beneath his fingers, heard Jack’s voice, unnaturally slow, grave and terrible, come wafting down the wind-sail that brought fresh air below. ‘The quarter-deck of a man-of-war may
justly be considered as a national school for the instruction of a numerous portion of our youth; there it is that they
acquire a habit of discipline and become instructed in all the interesting minutiae of the service. Punctuality, cleanliness,
diligence and dispatch are regularly inculcated, and such a
habit of sobriety and even of self-denial acquired, that cannot fail to prove highly useful. By learning to obey, they are also taught how to command.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Stephen to himself, and then turned his mind entirely back to the poor, wasted, hare-lipped creature in the hammock beside him, a recent landman belonging to the starboard watch. ‘How old may you be,
Cheslin?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I can’t tell you, sir,’ said Cheslin with a ghost of impatience in his apathy. ‘I reckon I might be about thirty, like.’ A long pause. ‘I was fifteen when my old father died; and I could count the harvests back, if I put my mind to it. But I can’t put my mind to it, sir.’
‘No. Listen, Cheslin: you will grow very ill if you do not eat. I will order you some soup, and you must get it down.’
‘Thank you, sir, I’m sure. But there’s no relish to my meat; and I doubt they would let me have it, any gate.’
‘Why did you tell them your calling?’
Cheslin made no reply for a while, but stared dully. ‘1 dare say I was drunk. ‘Tis mortal strong, that grog of theirn. But I never thought they would be so a-dread. Though to be sure the folk over to Carborough and the country beyond, they don’t quite like to name it, either.’
At this moment hands were piped to dinner, and the berth-deck, the long space behind the canvas screen that Stephen had had set up to protect the sick-bay a little, was filled with a tumult of hungry men. An orderly tumult, however: each mess of eight men darted to its particular place, hanging tables appeared, dropping instantly from the beams, wooden kids filled with salt pork (another proof that it was Thursday) and peas came from the galley, and the grog, which Mr Pullings had just mixed at the scuttle-butt by the mainmast, was carried religiously below, everyone skipping out of its way, lest a drop should fall.
A lane instantly formed in front of Stephen, and he passed through with smiling faces and kind looks on either side of him; he noticed some of the men whose backs he had oiled earlier that morning looked remarkably cheerful, particularly Edwards, for he, being black, had a smile that flashed far whiter in the gloom; attentive hands tweaked a bench out of his way, and a ship’s boy was slewed violently round on his axis and desired ‘not to turn his back on the Doctor – where were his fucking manners?’ Kind creatures; such good-natured faces; but they were killing Cheslin.
‘I have a curious case in the sick-bay,’ he said to James, as they sat digesting figgy-dowdy with the help of a glass of port. ‘He is dying of inanition; or will, unless I can stir his
torpor.’
‘What is his name?’
‘Cheslin: he has a hare lip.’
‘I know him. A waister – starboard watch – no good to man or beast.’
‘Ah? Yet he has been of singular service to men and women, in his time.’
‘In what way?’
‘He was a sin-eater.’
‘Christ.’
‘You have spilt your port.’
‘Will you tell me about him?’ asked James, mopping at the stream of wine.
‘Why, it was much the same as with us. When a man died Cheslin would be sent for; there would be a piece of
bread on the dead man’s breast; he would eat it, taking the sins upon himself. Then they would push a silver piece into his hand and thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away.’
‘I thought it was only a tale, nowadays,’ said James.
‘No, no. It’s common enough, under the silence. But it seems that the seamen look upon it in a more awful light than other people He let it out and they all turned against him immediately. His mess expelled him; the others will not speak to him, nor allow him to eat or sleep anywhere near them There is nothing physically wrong with him, yet he will die in about a week unless I can do something.’
‘You want to have him seized up at the gangway and given a hundred lashes, Doctor,’
called the purser from the
cabin where he was casting his accounts. ‘When I was in a
Guineaman, between the wars, there was a certain sorts of blacks called Whydaws, or Whydoos, that used to die by the
dozen in the Middle Passage, out of mere despair at being taken away from their country and their friends. We used to save a good many by touching them up with a horse-whip in the mornings. But it would be no kindness to preserve that chap, Doctor: the people would only smother him or scrag him or shove ‘him overboard in the end. They will abide a great deal, sailors, but not a Jonah. It’s like a white crow -the others peck him to death. Or an albatross. You catch an albatross – it’s easy, with a line – and paint a red cross on his bosom, and the others will tear him to pieces before the glass is turned. Many’s the good laugh we had with them, off the Cape. But the hands will never let that fellow mess with them, not if the commission lasts for fifty years: ain’t that so, Mr Dillon?’
‘Never,’ said James. ‘Why in God’s name did he ever come into the Navy? He was a volunteer, not a pressed man.’
‘I conceive he was tired of being a white crow,’ said Stephen. ‘But I will not lose a patient because of sailors’ prejudices. He must be put to lie out of reach of their malignance, and if he recovers he shall be my loblolly boy, an isolated employment. So much so, indeed, that the present lad -‘
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but Captain’s compliments and would you like to see something amazingly philosophical?’ cried Babbington, darting in like a ball.
After the dimness of the gun-room the white blaze on deck made it almost impossible to see, but through his narrowed eyelids Stephen could distinguish Old Sponge, the taller Greek, standing naked in a pool of water by the starboard hances, dripping still and holding out a piece of copper sheathing with great complacency. On his right stood Jack, his hands behind him and a look of happy triumph on his face: on his left most of the watch, craning and staring. The Greek held the corroded copper sheet out a little farther and, watching Stephen’s face intently, he turned it slowly over. On the other side there, was a small dark fish with a sucker on the back of its head, clinging fast to the metal.