the other side of the town. If I can deal with my rounds early enough, we might go. there this afternoon; and in the following days we may ascend the lofty hill beyond.’
Captain Pullings was quite willing to take Square aboard as a supernumerary for victuals (though not for tobacco, or the purser would grizzle and moan for the rest of the commission), and he said he might stow his canoe in the jolly-boat, as being more suitable for landing the Doctor on so rough a coast.
This was most satisfactory; so was the almost universal cheerfulness as the boats came alongside to carry the libertymen ashore. There were a few anonymous hoots of
‘What cheer, Old Saturnino?’ – a nickname given him by some dissolute Maltese hands –
but generally it was smiles and nods, yesterday’s vehement feelings quite forgotten, while many of his older shipmates asked what they might bring him back.
Yet his rounds were less so. The great cannonade may not have killed all the slavers aboard the Nancy (an article of belief throughout Freetown) but it had certainly mangled several of the more impetuous and less nimble first-voyagers belonging to the squadron, in spite of their frequent exercise; and although the Belllona’s sickberth was as clean and airy as that of any line-of-battle ship in the fleet, the singular damp, oppressive heat was not well suited to those who had to lie there. Wind-sails there were, well-spread and efficient windsails, but they could not make the air they brought down any fresher than it was on the deck, where people walked about panting and mopping themselves. Several of the wounds and burns threatened to turn ugly, and after dinner – a dinner eaten in the gasping wardroom, for Jack and his captains were all invited by the Governor, and which consisted for the main part of steak and kidney pudding – Stephen returned for another session with his assistants, amiable young men, but slow, lacking in experience. This went on until, just as he was administering a last soothing draught of hellebore, Stephen heard the sound of a returning barge, the wail of bosun’s calls as the Commodore and Captain were piped aboard, the thump and clash of Marines presenting arms. ‘There, gentlemen,’
he said, ‘now I believe we may allow the berth to take a little rest. Evans,’ he said to the loblolly boy, an aged farrier who had run away to sea, escaping from a devilish shrew, ‘you will call Mr Smith at the least emergency. For my own part,’ he added, ‘I mean to view the swamp behind the town.’
‘Well, my dear, and so you are back, I find,’ he said, walking into the great cabin, where Jack was sitting at the stern window in his shirtsleeves, with his breeches undone at the knees and waist. ‘I trust you enjoyed your dinner?’
‘James Wood did us proud as Pompous Pilate, bless him,’ said Jack. ‘Four hours, and never without a glass in my hand. Though Lord, sometimes I feel I am no longer twenty:
perhaps it is the heat. Don’t you find it damnation hot? Damp, close, oppressive? I suppose not, since you have a coat on.’
‘I do not find the heat exorbitant or disagreeable; though I admit the dampness. You portly subjects feel it more than we spare men, men of a more elegant shape. But take comfort:
they tell me that the dry season is at hand, when the air, though hotter by far on occasion, is perfectly dry, so dry that the blacks anoint themselves with palm-oil to prevent their skins from cracking: or in default of palm-oil, with tallow. Dry, and sometimes accompanied by an interesting wind, the harmattan; though that may also be the name of
the season itself. As for my coat, I wear it because I mean to view the swamp behind the town, and do not choose to risk the falling damps.’
‘My dear Stephen, what are you thinking of? Have you forgot your orders that no one was to go ashore after sunset? Though by the way you never told us why. It could not be the falling damps, since there are no falling damps in taverns or bawdy-houses, which is where sailors go by instinct, like the hart to the water-brook.’
‘It is because of the miasmata.’
‘Are they like miasmas?’
‘Much the same, I do assure you, Jack; and they are at their worst after sunset.’
‘Look at him now,’ said Jack, nodding westwards through the stern-window, where the sun glowed red, his brilliance dimmed by the thick and heavy air. ‘He will be down before you have contemplated your swamp for five minutes. No, Stephen. Fair’s fair, you know. You cannot deny all hands liberty and then go rioting among the owls and night-birds yourself.’
Jack’s total sincerity and conviction overcame Stephen’s protests – his cries of special cases – inherent exceptions to be understood – certain qualifications to be taken for granted – and eventually he said, ‘Well, I should not have seen much, anyhow; and there is always tomorrow.’
‘Stephen,’ said Jack, ‘I grieve to say it, but as far as your great dismal swamp is concerned, there is no tomorrow. We weigh at the turn of the tide: the Governor says that with this wind the news of our coming and of our capers cannot yet have reached Philip’s Island; that there are several slavers due there to complete their cargoes; and that we may catch them in the act of doing so.’
‘Oh, indeed,’ said Stephen, taken aback.
‘We must take every possible advantage before the whole coast is warned. There is not a moment to lose; and as soon as the tide turns we can stem the current and stand out of the bay.’
Stephen could not but agree, and after a moment’s cursing of his own tongue for its absolute, domineering, prating folly, its lack of ponderation and decent restraint, which would have led to provisoes, to certain exemptions for the common good, he took a turn on deck, where he was comforted first by an uncommonly numerous school of flying fishes that skimmed well above the surface, quite high in the air, there to be snapped up in the fading light by the frigate-birds, darting and flashing among them with breath-taking rapidity; and second by the fact that the Philip Island river was a fine stream, well known to Square, who said that although at the height of the rainy season it flowed broad and fast, lapping far in among the forest trees, making a fall at its mouth and a great bar, once the very heavy rains were over it began to shrink, leaving a clear bank along which one could walk through the forest, where chimpanzees were often to be seen, and beyond into the more open country, much frequented by elephants. He had also spoken of a small plain above the second set of falls almost entirely covered by baobabs, in which there lived fourteen different kinds of bat, some huge, with monstrous faces.
He was reflecting upon the delightful possibilities – the West African eagle-owl, the blue plantain-eater, the many brilliant weavers and sun-birds, conceivably even the potto, when he heard the cry ‘All hands to weigh anchor,’ an expected order that was instantly followed by the bosun’s call and the powerful voices of his mates roaring ‘All hands to weigh anchor’ down the hatchways, and he hurried off to be out of the way: well did he
know the frightful eagerness and activity set off by this corninand – the swarms of men racing across the deck regardless of those who might be in their path, the cries, the stretching forth of ropes. Coming into the cabin he found Jack sitting placidly on a locker, treating his fiddle to a fresh set of strings.
‘Why, Stephen,’ he said, looking up, ‘I was so sorry to dash your spirits about the fetid swamp; but I dare say the miasma would have done you as much harm as an ordinary unlearned cove.’
‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Stephen. ‘I contemplated on the delights of the Sinon, the river that comes down by Philip’s Island. I reflected upon the variety of vegetables and animals, of the very real possibility of a potto, and soon recovered my native ebullience.’
‘What is a potto?’
‘It is a little furry creature that sleeps all day curled up in a ball with its head between its legs and then walks about very, very slowly all night, high in the trees, slowly eating leaves and creeping up on birds as they roost and eating them too. It has immense eyes, which is but reasonable. Some call it the sluggard; some the slow lemur; some the sloth, but quite erroneously, for the two have nothing in common but their modest demeanour, their inoffensive lives. The potto is the most interesting of the primates, from the anatomical