Sunday came and went with no funeral, and on Tuesday Smith and Macaulay came and said ‘Sir, we are now convinced you have avoided the third stadium. Your pulse, though still faint, is a delight to feel, so regular and true; your excrements a pleasure to inspect. The inner loss of blood has been negligible since Friday, and already your strength is returning: you can almost raise a half-filled glass; your voice reaches the sterngallery. It will be a long, long, very long while before you can roam the forest again, yet even so we feel that now we may properly congratulate you and give you joy of your recovery.’
‘Give you joy, sir, give you joy of your recovery,’ said Macaulay, and both gently shook his hand.
Long, long it was before Stephen could roam even the sleeping-cabin, but once he could really walk, and that on a moving deck, with his stick-like calfiess legs, strength returned fast, and a remarkable degree of appetite. While long before he could reach the stern-gallery unaided he sickened of the state of invalidity.
‘Sickness has innumerable squalors, many of which you know far too well, my dear,’ he said when Jack and he were sitting together in the great cabin, ‘and among them, in some ways the nastiest, is the sufferer’s total selfishness. Admittedly, a body doing all it can to survive will naturally turn in upon itself; but the mind inhabiting that body is so inclined to feast on the indulgence, carrying on and on long after the necessity is gone. To my bitter shame I am almost entirely ignorant of our expedition’s success, and even of its whereabouts. From time to time you have told me, in passing, of various captures – emergencies – storms – the all-dreaded harmattan itself – but little did I hear, and little did I retain, of a connected narrative. Be so good as to pass another slice of pineapple.’
‘Why, Mr Smith said you were not to be disturbed or excited, above all not to be excited; and anyhow when something really interesting happened, like theAwvra and Laurel running down the big Havana schooner, you were always fast asleep.’
‘Lord, how I slept, indeed: a benign swimming in and out of rosy hibernation –
nothing more healing. But will you not tell me how this side of our mission has gone – what stages we have reached – whether your expectations are answered?’
‘As far as the stage is concerned, we have almost completed our run along the coast. We have gone as far east into the Gulf as I had planned – perhaps farther than I
can afford, in time – right down to the Bight of Benin. We are now lying off the Slave Coast itself, and tomorrow or the next day I hope the inshore
brigs will raise Whydah, the great slave-market. Once we have cleaned that up, I shall hand over command of the inshore vessels to Henslow, the senior brig commander, and head for
St Thomas to pick up the south-east trades.’
‘I remember: then hey for Freetown and the north!’
‘Just so. As for our success, I do not think anyone could have expected more or even as much. We have taken eighteen slavers and sent them in with prize-crews: all, or almost all, will be condemned, particularly as most of them, taken unawares, we having run ahead of the news – fired upon us, which constitutes piracy.’
‘Well done, upon my honour! That must surely amount to some five thousand black men released. I had no notion that you could accomplish so much.’
‘Six thousand one hundred and twenty, counting the women: but there were some Portuguese we had to let go, they having a special status if they load in a Portuguese settlement; and a few doubtfuls; for any commander who seizes a vessel that is not breaking the law is liable to be cast in damages, tremendous damages. Yet even so, it was very well. There were some fine active officers aboard the inshore craft and the boats. Whewell was one of them, of course: he comes off tomorrow for orders about Whydah, and if you feel strong enough I shall ask him to come and read you the log, describing each action in turn. He was in the thick of it, whereas I saw nothing at all, except for the taking of the Havana prize.’
‘I should like that of all things. And yet, brother, in spite of this striking success, you look sad and worn and anxious. I do not wish to force the least confidence and if my words are as indiscreet as I fear they may be I shall not resent a civil evasion. But your violin, which has sustained me all these weeks from the stern-gallery, speaks pian-pianissimo and always in D minor. Has the poor ship a hidden leak that cannot be come at? Must she perish?’
Jack gazed at him for a long considering moment and said, ‘Sad: yes, I have never liked leading from behind; and the death of many of those young men I have sent in has saddened me deeply. Worn and anxious: I have two reasons, two very good reasons for being both worn and anxious. The first is that the winds, having been so favourable for so long, have now turned cruelly baffling, real Bight of Bemn weather, and I am very much afraid – so is Whewell – that they may carry on in the same way for months, preventing us from reaching St Thomas until it is too late. The second is that if I do succeed in carrying my squadron up to the rendezvous in time to meet the French, I am not sure how all my ships will behave. It grieves me to say this, Stephen, though a ship being a sounding-board I do not suppose that much of it will be news to you. The fact of the matter is that two, representing forty per cent of our guns and about fifty per cent of our broadside weight of metal, are in very bad order. As a result of all our exercising they can fire tolerably well and they can get their boats over the side tolerably quick; but they are still in very bad order. Neither is in any way what you would call a happy ship; and both are commanded by men who are not fit to command them. The one is a sodomite, or reputed to be a sodomite, and he is utterly at odds with his officers, while discipline among
the hands is all to seek; the other is a bloody tyrant, a flogger, and no seaman. If I did not continually check him, he would have a mutiny on his hands, a very ugly mutiny indeed.’
Jack paused, absently cut Stephen another slice of pineapple, and passed it over.
Stephen acknowledged it with a bob of his head but said nothing. It was very unusual for Jack to speak in this way: the flow was not to be interrupted. ‘I hate using the ordinary coarse word about Duff, whom I like and who is a fine seaman, and whether he is a sodomite or not I do not give a damn. But as I tried to make him see, you have to check it aboard a man-of-war. A girl on board is a bad thing: half a dozen girls would be Bedlam.
But if a man, a man-lover, is an unchecked sodomite, the whole ship’s company is his prey. It will not do. I tried to make him see that, but I am not a very eloquent cove and I dare say I put it wrong, being so God-damned tactful, because all that worried him was that his manhood, his courage, his conduct as we say, should be impugned. So long as he was happy to attack, whatever the odds, all was well. It is very difficult. His officers want to arrest him, to bring him to a court-martial, he having angered them so with his favourites.
They are said to have witnesses – damning evidence. If he is found guilty he must be hanged: that is the only sentence. It is very bad. Very bad for the service, very bad in every way. I have done what I can in shifting his officers – with the inshore fever and the casualties there have been several promotions – but his ship is still. . .’ He shook his head.
‘And as for the Purple Emperor, who is not on speaking terms with Duff, by the way, and scarcely with me, he has contrived to gather a set of officers very like himself: not a seaman among them, and even the master needs both watches to put the ship about in anything like a Christian manner. It is the usual West Indies
discipline – spit and polish all day long, and flog the last man off the yard, all combined with fine uniforms, brutal ignorance of their profession, and a contempt for bo’sun captains. Such a band of incompetents as I have never seen gathered together in any one ship belonging to His Majesty.’