more affected – quite knocked up; and the thieves’ cat had made an ugly mess of thief Carlow’s back, the bosun’s mate being first cousin to the man he robbed.
He came on deck again shortly before the men were piped to dinner, and seeing the first lieutenant walking up and down looking pleased with himself, he said to him, ‘Mr Parker, will you indulge me in the use of a small boat in let us say an hour? I could wish to walk upon the Goodwin sands at low tide. The sea is calm; the day propitious.’
‘Certainly, Doctor,’ said the first lieutenant, always good-humoured after a flogging. ‘You shall have the blue cutter. But will you not miss your dinner?’
‘I shall take some bread, and a piece of meat.’
So he paced this strange, absolute and silent landscape of firm damp sand with rivulets running to its edges and the lapping sea, eating bread with one hand and cold beef with the other. He was so low to the sea that Deal and its coast were Out of sight; he was surrounded by an unbroken disc of quiet grey sea, and even the boat, which lay off an inlet at the far rim of the sand, seemed a great way off, or rather upon another plane.
Sand stretched before him, gently undulating, with here and there the black half-buried carcasses of wrecks, some massive, others ribbed skeletons, in a kind of order whose sense escaped him, but which he might seize, he thought, if only his mind would make a certain shift, as simple as starting the alphabet at X – simple, if only he could catch the first clue. A different air, a different light, a sense of overwhelming permanence and therefore a different time; it was not at all unlike a certain laudanum-state. Wave ripples on the sand: the traces of annelids, solens, clams: a distant flight of dunlins, close-packed, flying fast, all wheeling together and changing colour as they wheeled.
His domain grew larger with the ebbing of the tide; fresh sandpits appeared, stretching far, far away to the north under the cold even light; islands joined one another, gleaming water disappeared, and only on the far rim of
his world was there the least noise – the lap of small waves, and the remote scream of gulls.
It grew smaller, insensibly diminishing grain by grain; everywhere there was a secret drawing-in, apparent only in the widening channels between the sandbanks, where the water was now running frankly from the sea.
The boat’s crew had been contentedly fishing for dabs all this time, and they had filled two moderate baskets with their catch.
‘There’s the Doctor,’ said Nehemiah Lee, ‘a-waving of his arms. Is he talking to hisself, or does he mean to hail us?’
‘He’s a-talking to hisself,’ said John Lakes, an old Sophie. ‘He often does. He’s a very learned cove.’
‘He’ll get cut off, if he don’t mind out,’ said Arthur Simmons, an elderly, cross-grained forecastleman. ‘He looks fair mazed, to me. Little better than a foreigner.’
‘You can stow that, Art Simmons,’ said Plaice. ‘Or I’ll stop your gob.’
‘You and who to help you?’ asked Simmons, moving his face close to his shipmate’s.
‘Ain’t you got no respect for learning?’ said Plaice. ‘Four books at once I seen him read.
Nay, with these very eyes, here in my head,’ – pointing to them – ‘I seen him whip a man’s skull off, rouse out his brains, set ’em to rights, stow ’em back again, clap on a silver plate, and sew up his scalp, which it was drooling over one ear, obscuring his dial, with a flat-seam needle and a pegging-awl, as neat as the sail-maker of a King’s yacht.’
‘And when did you bury the poor bugger?’ asked Simmons, with an offensive knowingness.
‘Which he’s walking the deck of a seventy-four at this very moment, you fat slob,’ cried Plaice. ‘Mr Day, gunner of the Elephant, by name, better than new, and promoted. So you can stuff that up your arse, Art Simmons. Learning? Why, I seen him sew on a man’s arm when it was hanging by a thread, passing remarks in Greek.’
‘And my parts,’ said Lakey, looking modestly at the gunwale.
‘I remember the way he set about old Parker when he gagged that poor bugger in the larboard watch,’ said Abraham Bates. ‘Those was learned words: even I couldn’t understand above the half of ’em.’
‘Well,’ said Simmons, vexed by their devotion, that deeply irritating quality, ‘he’s lost his boots now, for all his learning.’
This was true. Stephen retracted his footsteps towards the stump of a mast protruding from the sand where he had left his boots and stockings, and to his concern he
-found that these prints emerged fresh and clear directly from the sea. No boots: only spreading water, and one stocking afloat in a little scum a hundred yards away. He reflected for a while upon the phenomenon of the tide, gradually bringing his mind to the surface, and then he deliberately took off his wig, his coat, his neckcloth and his waistcoat.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ cried Plaice. ‘He’s a-taking off his coat. We should never have let him off alone on those – -sands. Mr Babbington said “Do not let him go a-wandering on them –
– sands, Plaice, or I’ll have the hide off your
– back”. Ahoy! The Doctor ahoy, sir! Come on, mates, stretch out, now. Ahoy, there!’
Stephen took off his shirt, his drawers, his catskin comforter, and walked straight into the sea, clenching his mouth and looking fixedly at what he took to be the stump of mast under the pellucid surface. They were valuable boots, soled with lead, and he was attached to them. In the back of his mind he heard the roaring desperate hails, but he paid no attention: arrived at a given depth, he seized his nose with one hand, and plunged.
A boathook caught his ankle, an oar struck the nape of his neck, partly stunning him and driving his face deep into the sand at the bottom: his foot emerged, and he was seized and hauled into the boat, still grasping his boots.
They were furious. ‘Did he not know he might catch cold?
– Why did he not answer their hail? It was no good his telling them he had not heard; they knew better; he had not got flannel ears – Why had he not waited for them?
– What was a boat for? – Was this a proper time to go a-swimming? – Did he think this was midsummer? Or Lammas? – He was to see how cold he was, blue and trembling like a fucking jelly. – Would a new-joined ship’s boy have done such a wicked thing? No, sir, he would not. – What would the skipper, what would Mr Pullings and Mr Babbington say, when they heard of his capers?
– As God loved them, they had never seen anything so foolish: He might strike them blind, else. – Where had he left his intellectuals? Aboard the sloop?’ They dried him with handkerchiefs, dressed him by force, and rowed him quickly back to the Polychrest. He was to go below directly, turn in between blankets – no sheets, mind -with a pint of grog and have a good sweat. He was to go up the side now, like a Christian, and nobody would notice. Plaice and Lakey were perhaps the strongest men in the ship, with arms like gorillas; they thrust him aboard and hurried him to his cabin without so much as by your leave, and left him there in the charge of his servant, with recommendations for his present care.
‘Is all well, Doctor?’ asked Pullings looking in with an anxious face.
‘Why, yes, I thank you, Mr Pullings. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, sir, seeing your wig was shipped arsy-versy and your comforter all ends up, I thought may be you had had a misfortune, like.’
‘Oh, no: not at all, I am obliged to you. I recovered them none the worse – I flatter myself there is not such a pair in the kingdom. The very best Cordova ass’s leather. They will not suffer from a thoughtless hour’s immersion. Pray, what was all the ceremony as I came into the ship?’
‘It was for the Captain. He was only a little way behind you – came aboard not five minutes ago.’
‘Ah? I was not aware he had been out of the ship.’
Jack was obviously in high spirits. ‘I trust I do not disturb you,’ he said. ‘I said to Killick, “Do not disturb him on any account, if he is busy.” But I thought that with such a damned unpleasant night outside, and the stove drawing so well in, that we might have some music. But first take a sup of this madeira and tell me what you think of it. Canning sent me a whole anker – so good-natured of him. I find it wonderfully grateful to the palate. Eh?’