‘I do most earnestly hope that you are satisfied with your
progress?’
‘Well, Stephen, it sounds boastful, but I must admit I am. With the help of that excellent young man Whewell, Tom and Mr Woodbine and I have worked out a series of movements that, given moderate luck, should be quite successful. The only thing I very much regret is that I see no possibility whatsoever of making a prodigious great thundering din on our first arrival, as their Lordships desire me to do.’
Lowering his voice and steering the Doctor right aft so that they stood by one of the splendid great stern-lanterns, swaying to the even pitch and roll, he went on, ‘It may seem wicked, even blasphemous, to say that my orders might have been written by a parcel of landsmen, accustomed to the regularity of travelling by stage-coach, or by navigation on an inland canal: yet on the other hand some of the lords are mere landborne politicians, and anyhow the orders pass down through the secretary, that ass Barrow, to a number of clerks who may never have been afloat at all – but all that to one side. I have received orders that make no account of wind or tide before this, and so have all other sea-officers.
I do not complain. But what I really cannot understand is that the Ministry should expect me to take the slavers by surprise when our expedition has been advertised to the world in half a dozen daily sheets, including The Times. For do not tell me that those paragraphs appeared without Whitehall’s knowledge. No: the only thing that I can think of doing is to have a full-blown great-gun exercise as soon as we are lying before the town. At least that will make an infernal uproar. But it is vexing, for Whewell tells me that as soon as the preventive squadron was withdrawn the trade started again, even in the Gallinas river, and on Sherbro Island, right next to Freetown, and with a little discretion we might have seized on half a dozen, loading slaves in the estuary. However, I shall send the Ringle in
tomorrow to have some powder waiting for us. It is only a day’s sail for her, with this breeze.’
May you not be doing the Ministry an injustice, my dear? Conceivably they reflected that whereas the French intelligence people are among the most attentive readers of The Times and the Post, few slavers in the Bight of Benin subscribe to either; and that the French, convinced that you are busy south of the tropic line – a conviction reinforced by reports of the noise in question – will carry on with their knavish tricks, their plans, in spite of the sailing of this squadron.’
‘Oh,’ cried Jack. ‘Do you really think that could be so?’
‘I have known the stratagem succeed: but it has to be used with great delicacy, lest the overreacher find himself overreached.’
‘Well, I was certainly overreached, though I have a tolerable knowledge of the world, I believe. There are no doubt some uncommon deep old files in Whitehall, and I had better keep to navigation and the fiddle. Lord,’ – laughing heartily – ‘there I was, setting up for a political cove.’ They paced for a while, and then he said ‘I tell you what it is, Stephen: ever since you told me about that good-natured, honest fellow Hinisey, music has been fairly bubbling up in me. Shall we play this evening?’
Dr Maturin had many of the virtues required in a medical man: he listened to what his patients had to say; he wished even the most repulsive of them well, once they had committed themselves to his care; he was indifferent to their fees; and with a great deal of reading and a great deal of experience, he was fully aware of the narrow limits of his powers – an awareness that on occasion he disguised, but only to keep their spirits up (he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of inquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru.
These he chewed with a little lime, carrying the leaves in a leather pouch and the lime in a heart-shaped Peruvian silver box: but of late he had seemed to observe a diminution in their powers, possibly caused by long keeping. He did not appear to feel quite the same markedly anaesthetic effect in his mouth and pharynx: it might be no more than the result of long habituation, but he resolved that as soon as the squadron was within reach of Brazil he would send over for a new supply, and this evening, since he wished to play particularly well, he took an unusually large dose. He did play well: they both played well, and they thoroughly enjoyed their music. But whereas the Commodore, heavy with work, port and toasted cheese, went straight to sleep the moment his head touched the pillow of his swinging cot, Stephen found the wakeful coca-leaves as active as ever – they far outdid coffee in banishing even the thought of sleep – and as he wished to write up his notes in the morning he took a powerful sleeping draught, together with a bolus of Java mandragore, and thrust balls of wax deep into his ears against the ship noises, the changing of the watch, the eventual holystoning, scrubbing and swabbing of the decks, the screech and thump of the pumps. Long practice had made him proficient at
this exercise; but he was in some ways a simple creature and he had never perceived that on every succeeding Lady Day he was a year older, and that he was now exhibiting a vigorous young man’s dose for a middle-aged body.
It was often difficult to wake him in these circumstances. Today it was harder still.
‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said Wilkins, the senior master’s mate, to Harding, now the Bellona’s first lieutenant, ‘but I can’t wake him. I plucked off the clothes – he offered to bite, and
then curled up again, though We both hallooed in his ear and shook the cot.’
It was Killick who brought him on deck at last, partly washed, partly clothed, but unshaven; stupid, sullen, blinking in what light there was.
‘There you are, Doctor,’ cried Jack, very loud. ‘Good morning to you. I hope you slept?’
‘What’s afoot?’ asked Stephen, peering heavily about. The squadron was hove to, and in their midst, with her topsails struck, lay a shabby merchantman, wearing Spanish colours, somewhat to the windward of the Bellona. As he looked so the breeze wafted a sickening reek across the deck, and he was not surprised to hear Jack say ‘She is a slaver. Mr Whewell knows the vessel, the Nancy, formerly belonging to Kingston but lately sold. The master is coming aboard. I should like you to make out his nation if you can, and look at his papers, if they are foreign.’ (‘Lord, how I hope he is a wrong ‘Un’ he added in a private undertone.)
Aboard the slaver smoke was already pouring from the galley; large numbers of black, naked women, girls and children stood about the deck; the boat was slowly lowered down, and as the rim of the sun blazed above the horizon the master came across with his papers and an interpreter.
‘Do you speak English, sir?’ asked Captain Pullings.
‘Very little, señor,’ said the master in a foreign accent. ‘Him interpret.’
‘You speak Spanish, however?’ said Stephen in that language.
‘Oh si, si, señor,’ with an attempt at cheerful ease.
They exchanged a few sentences. Stephen held out his hand for the passport, and after a glance he tossed it overboard. The man uttered a howl and made as though to dive after it, but checked at the view of the populated sea. ‘He is an imposter,’ said Stephen.
‘An Englishman. He knows no Spanish. His papers are false. You may safely seize the ship.’ And to Jack, ‘Let us go across.’
Jack nodded and called to Whewell. ‘There is nothing like the dawn for these discoveries,’ he said as they pulled over the water in his barge. ‘Time and again I have found a prize, and to leeward too, just before the first light.’
But his voice changed entirely as they neared the slaver:
the stench grew worse, the water still more filthy, and he fell abruptly silent at the sight of two small girls, grey and dead, going over the side. For a moment they were disputed by sharks hardly longer than themselves, until a huge fish, gliding from under the keel, tore them apart.