What merriment or wanton brutality there was soon died away and I was able to prevent some unnecessary suffering with a scalpel. It was an extraordinarily bloody, extraordinarily unpleasant exercise, carried out for the most part in a phlegmatic, workaday fashion. It distressed most of the boys extremely: excited a few others. By good fortune or perhaps I should say good management we had salt in plenty: so there is our hold, and Ringle’s hold, filled with barrels of seal and sea-lion flesh, as rich and nourishing a meat as you could wish.
‘I did however notice that although the very real fear of running out of provisions in the far south sea had certainly vanished, yet a certain cloud hung over the ship. It disappeared after grog and an enormous supper of fresh seal steaks: and stupidly I did not attend to the proportion of those who were affected and those (mostly countrymen and accustomed to killing as a matter of course from childhood) who were not; yet I did notice, since we were in the same boat, that Hanson and his particular friend Daniel did what little they could to hide their distress in our many bloody voyages to and fro, with the skuas screaming just over our heads.’
Chapter Eight
Jack Aubrey turned away, having said the oh so familiar last words over his old shipmate Henry Woodbine, and he had not walked the length of the deck before the look-out hailed a signal from Ringle, far away in the clear north-north-west.
‘Jump up with a glass, Mr. Hanson,’ he said, and stood there waiting while the young man raced up to the fore-topgallant crosstrees.
‘Sir,’ his clear young voice came floating down, ‘Ringle says: believe Cape Pilar north a half west perhaps thirty-five miles’
With a greater deliberation but with an even more beating heart Jack rose to an even greater height, settled himself comfortably on his familiar perch and directed his telescope to the horizon well beyond the distant schooner. The cold clarity of the air made for excellent visibility: yet there was the inescapable curvature of the earth’s surface, and a moment’s calculation assured him that what could just be made out from the distant
Ringle’& masthead would not be seen from Surprise for the best part of an hour, even if she maintained her present beautiful ten knots.
Nevertheless he lingered, the cold biting through his dreadnought griego and his wonderfully unbecoming woollen bonnet; and in time he half persuaded himself that he could make out a nick in the horizon within five degrees of the required position – a horizon otherwise as taut as a hard-stretched line.
Slowly, easily down, and he walked aft through the questioning gaze of the watch on deck
– a sadly diminished watch by now – to the cabin, where he found Dr. Maturin stirring a tankard of mulled claret over a spirit-stove. ‘Take a sip of this, brother,’ said Stephen. ‘It will help dispel the cold: I have added a pinch of ginger to the nutmeg and the cloves.’
‘It goes down very well,’ said Jack, ‘and if anything could replace coffee, right Mocha freshly roasted and freshly ground, it would be this. Many thanks. Have you heard the news?’
‘Not I. Poll, Maggie and a horse-leech from the starboard watch have been administering enemas to the many, many cases of gross surfeit that have now replaced the frostbites, torsions and debility of the recent past, the very recent past. Strong fresh seal-meat has not its equal for upsetting the seaman’s metabolism: he is much better kept on biscuit, Essex cheese, and a very little well-seethed salt pork – kept on short commons. What is the news, tell?’
‘William signals land thirty-odd miles to the northward that may be Cape Pilar, which is laid down in just about that position.’
‘I am so sorry. I thought we had done with capes. Take a little more wine, for your stomach’s sake.’
‘Well, if you insist . . . but let me tell you, Stephen, that although Cape Pilar or Cape Deseado as some say, forms part of Desolation Island – yet another Desolation Island, for all love – it is a wonderfully comfortable sight to a seaman bound for the Chilean coast, because just beyond that blessed cape lies the Pacific Ocean.’
‘Do you mean we may survive?’
‘Oh, I should not go as far as that; but presently I shall desire Ringle to reduce sail and ask William to dine with us after we have both made a very, very careful noon-observation.
Then we shall compare positions and rejoice or lament as the case may be. Killick. Killick, there.’
‘Sir?’
‘Pass the word for the acting-master.’
‘Pass the word for the master it is, sir,’ replied Killick with (for him) an extraordinary degree of good humour.
‘And Killick, tell my cook to lay on as decent a dinner as the barky can provide: Ringle will be coming aboard.’ When Killick had gone, Jack said, ‘Stephen, I do not suppose the sick-bay’s comforts could be laid under contribution for the feast?’
‘I might be able to spare a little, a very little, portable soup,’ said Stephen, ‘and I will myself look through my stores for two or three decent bottles of wine. And so this, you tell me, is virtually the Pacific?’
‘Unless dear William has totally lost his wits with longing, the waters of the two oceans mingle off the seaward point of that Cape Pilar; and the Pacific, you will recall, bathes the coasts of Chile and Peru, stretching up to the Isthmus of Panama, on and on to Nootka Sound and the frigid Canadian shore. Come in, Mr. Daniel: let me tell you that one of your
first duties as master’s mate of this ship is to make a most meticulously exact noon-observation. For as I dare say you have heard, Ringle, far ahead, has signalled a probable sighting of Cape Pilar, with something very near the right bearing. And please tell Mr.
Harding, with my compliments, that I should like him to make all reasonable sail to close the schooner.’
Within moments there was the sound of intense activity on deck: the bosun’s oddly cracked bellow urging people ‘to tally and belay’, the thump of racing feet and the creak of blocks; and all the countless notes that made up the ship’s voice rose in pitch and intensity, while the run of the sea from her cutwater aft grew more urgent by far.
The sea, if it teaches nothing else, does at least compel a submission to the inevitable which resembles patience. And all those concerned contained themselves with a decent appearance of that virtue through the clear hours of approach. To be sure, for both cabin and gunroom there was the delightful discovery (at least for those who understood navigation) that their positions coincided in the most gratifying manner; and then of course there was the feast, during which it was found that a really full-bodied burgundy went admirably with seal steaks. But the real, truly relished delight came well after this, when, well topped up with American rum, they stood in the foretop, Jack Aubrey calling up the midshipmen one by one and bidding them take the most particular note of that tall naked mountain at the tip of the island just ahead, the mountain with two pillars of rock on the seaward side, the higher quite black. They were never to forget that landfall, because it marked the western end of Magellan’s Strait: and then from these tolerable luck and a west or north-west breeze a ship could be carried through to the Atlantic in a week.
They had perfectly delightful weather after Cape Pilar, with clear skies, topgallant western breezes with none of that cruel bite of ice, a truly blessed sea with great smooth rollers riding gently in towards a shore so distant that it was only the faintest loom, a sea with here and there a whale, and fine fresh fish taken over the side in God’s plenty. And above all this sea was pacific – no sudden dreadful squalls, never a night when all hands were called, plucked from their half-warmed hammocks to confront hail and ice-caked decks, tops and ratlines: health began to return, and with it laughter, capers, mirth; and at last the African cats came from their refuge in the galley, where they had what very little warmth was available, south of the Horn.
This enchanting weather lasted from one Wednesday until the next, and on the intervening Sunday they rigged church, all hands in pretty good clothes (though few chests had escaped a soaking), trimmed by the barber and his mate, pigtails combed and replaited, and the singers, who made up most of the ship’s crew, in good, hearty voice.
Jack read them one of Taylor’s sermons on intemperance, to which they listened gravely; while the Ringles, just under their lee, had to put up with the Articles of War yet again, Mr.