‘How I long to spend an hour or two among them. Will you tell me about the surface of the rocks, the vegetation, the places where the birds were sitting, for I presume they had made their nests?’
‘Certainly they had, and right on top of one another almost like the people in Seven Dials; but the petrels, as far as I could see, came mostly from the cave. It was full of crevices and ledges and holes.’
‘What joy. But the vegetation, now; and a very rough description of the fowls themselves?’
They talked on until well after the evening gun, supping together and going back over that voyage to Portugal in the Surprise during which Stephen would dimly have perceived the Berlings had he been on deck, and in which, after their going ashore at Lisbon, they heard of Sam’s being ordained
– Sam Panda, Jack’s black love-child, begotten at the Cape – and they were still discussing his chances of a prelacy when the tender came alongside. Jack Aubrey was as solid a Protestant as ever abjured the Pope and the Pretender, but he was deeply attached to Sam, as well he might be, and he was now as expert in the intricacies of the Catholic hierarchy as he was in the succession of admirals. He was speaking eagerly of the Prothonotaries Apostolic and their varying rows of little violet buttons when Reade came in, took off his hat, and said, ‘Tender hooked on, sir, if you please, and all is laid along,’
this last, with a significant look at Stephen, meant that Killick had carried over a small valise holding all that he thought proper for Dr Maturin to wear during this absence, and a supply of shirts.
‘Thank you, Mr Reade,’ said Stephen: he hurried into the sleeping-cabin that he shared with Jack, put a considerable sum of money into his pocket, and a llama-skin pouch holding his coca-leaves and their necessary phial of vegetable ash into his bosom,
together with the revolving pistol. ‘Farewell, Jack,’ he said, coming out, fastening his coat.
‘Pray watch your bowels. There is something a trifle more liverish in your visage than I could wish for: should nothing occur this evening, desire Mr Smith to give you rhubarb tomorrow. My dear love to Sophie, of course. I shall be as quick as ever I can, so I shall.
God bless, now.’
The sense of hurried urgency that had been with him ever since he received Sir Joseph’s message, at some point now removed by a vast extent of space rather than of time, had revived as he groped his way down the Bellona’s side in the darkness; and now its long-frustrated desire was fulfilled, even beyond his hopes.
The wind, a strong reef ed-topsail breeze in the south-west, was kicking up an odd little cross-sea in the harbour, and as Reade, who had brought the Ringle round to face Southsea Castle, filled his forestaysail, leaving the Bellona’s towering side and getting under way, the long low schooner took on a
curious fidgeting motion like a horse held in, dancing on his toes, cager to be off.
The gaff rose, the foresail shivering and fluttering like an enormous washing-day; the sheet came hard aft, and at once the deck leaned sharply, the whole motion changing to a long, slightly pitching glide. She ran straight out of the harbour – Reade and Bonden had spent every spare hour they could and they handled her beautifully, with love – set her full mainsail
and jib, and with Bonden at the helm and Reade at the con 1 she raced for the ships moored off St Helens.
When Stephen came on deck – he had been desired to go below during these manoeuvres and to stow his belongings as
well as he could with so little headroom – she had brought the wind on her starboard quarter: both great fore-and-aft sails were drum-tight, she had set her square foretopsail as well as everything the forward stays could bear, and now
Reade, Bonden and two elderly Shelmerstonians were wondering whether they might venture upon a weather studdingsail.
The Shelmerstonians, Mould and Vaggers, were fine examples of what might be called nautical relativity: they were both Sethians and respected members of their congregation,
yet neither had ever found any difficulty in reconciling the importation of uncustomed goods with the strictest probity
in all personal dealings; and now one was saying that if the studdingsail in question had been the King’s he would have risked it without hesitation, but since the clipper was Captain Aubrey’s private property, why.. . and he shook his head.
This kind of discussion was neither usual nor encouraged in the Royal Navy, but the-present occasion was quite exceptional. Mould and Vaggers, not to put too fine a point upon
it, were smugglers, and both their living and their freedom
–
depended on their outsailing the Revenue cutters or the faster men-of-war that tried to detain them. They were the most successful smugglers in Shelmerston, and although they usually sailed in a lugger called the Flying Childers they had also had great success in a topsail-schooner, not indeed as sharp-built as the Ringle but the fastest in home waters; their opinion on the studdingsail was therefore the opinion of eminent practitioners, and its authority was increased by the fact that they were not sailing again
with Captain Aubrey because they needed wages. Far from it, indeed: all those who had shipped with him in the Surprise so long ago, and who had survived, had done so well in prize-money that if they wished they could set up as their own masters. Some preferred wild spending followed by extreme penury; but this was not the case with the serious men of the town, elders, deacons, presbyters of the many sects and chapels; and the reason for the continued presence of Mould, Vaggers and several of their friends was a revelation, perhaps illusory, certainly ill-timed, to the effect that polygamy was now allowed and indeed recommended to the Sethians of Shelmerston, a revelation so very ill-received by Mrs Mould and Mrs Vaggers (to speak only of them) that the Bellona, though a man-of-war, seemed a haven of peace.
Stephen had been aboard the clipper from time to time during their homeward voyage, but in calm weather, and in daylight. Now, as he came up the companion-ladder on to the dark, steep-sloping deck, he could not recognize his surroundings. Little could he see, and that little was unfamiliar – the great boom of the mainsail, the haze of white low to leeward meant nothing to him, and although on consideration he would almost certainly have made out the fundamental difference between fore-and-aft and square rig, he had no leisure to do so. His groping foot came up against a cleat, a chance caper of the deck flung him off his balance, and he trundled along until he came firmly against one of the Ringle’s carronades, to which he clung. –
They picked him up with the usual sea-going questions – ‘Was he hurt? Did he not know he must always keep one hand for himself and the other for the ship? Why had he not asked one of them to help him?’
For once he answered rather shortly, which made them stare, the Doctor being the meekest of landlubbers, always attentive to good advice and admonition, always grateful for being set on his feet again and if necessary helped below; but they were forgiving creatures, and when they understood that their old shipmate wished to stand there, near to what little prow the Ringle could be said to possess, where those sails did not obscure his view, stand there in the dark and the cold, they kindly told him that it would never do, not in this sort of a barky, which was more what might be called a racing-craft than a Christian schooner, with no more of a bulwark than would keep a kitten aboard – it would never do, without he was made fast to this here stanchion.
And so, fast to that there stanchion, he stood, hour after hour: and while one part of his being lived in this great rushing stream of air, with the dead-white bow-wave flying out, flung
wide on his right hand and the black, pale-flecked sea racing close below him, the whole in a vast and all-embracing medley
of sound, the rest of him peered into the immediate future with all the acuity and concentration that he could bring to bear. Very early his hand had of itself reached for the pouch of coca-leaves, but he had deliberately checked the movement. ‘This I justify on the grounds that although the present crisis
seems to call for all possible clarity of thought and foresight, the leaves should be reserved in case another, even more exigent crisis, should arise; but I fear it may be mere superstition, the passionate desire to succeed overwhelming reason entirely, leaving mere sophistry behind.’