‘Were they indulged in either?’
‘Of course not. They would have been scattered among any number of shorthanded ships. As for our case, or what looks
something like our case, I shall advise with James Wood when we reach Freetown, and see what can be done by a thorough
shake-up and perhaps some more transfers. But for now let us have another glass of wine – the port stands up wonderfully
well in this heat, don’t you find? – and go back to our Boccherini.’
They did so; but Jack played indifferently – his heart was no longer in the music, and Stephen wondered how he could have been so heavy, knowing his friend’s devotion to the service, as to raise the subject in spite of his own misgivings. He consoled himself with the reflexion that salt water washes all away, that another hundred miles of this perfect sailing would
raise Jack’s spirits, and that Freetown would see his difficulties resolved.
Freetown on a fine clear afternoon, the immense harbour dotted with ships belonging to the Royal Navy and some
Guineamen, who began saluting Commodore Aubrey’s pennant with seamanlike promptitude. The Ringle had been sent ahead of the squadron, carrying word to the Governor? and as soon as the Bellona was comfortably anchored and the whole squadron trim, with yards squared by lifts and braces, Jack, followed by his subordinate commanders, went ashore in style to wait upon his Excellency number one uniform, presentation sword, gold-laced hat, Nile medal for as soon as the ship had made his number Government House had thrown out the signal inviting him and his captains to dinner. The Bellona’s barge was a fine spectacle, new painted, pulled by as neat a set of bargemen as any in the fleet, most of them Jack’s followers from ship to ship, and steered by Bonden, grave, conscious of the occasion, in exactly the same rig as Tom Allen,
Nelson’s coxswain, whom he resembled, with Mr Wetherby beside him, an infant from the gunroom, who had to be shown how to deal with such ceremonies.
The Bellona’s barge (it was in fact her launch, but being rowed by bargemen and acting as a barge, it assumed the somewhat grander name) pulled fourteen oars, and when these fourteen men were not wholly taken up with the exact regularity of their stroke they looked aft with a certain disapproval:
their surgeon and his man had come for the ride, and they let the side down – shabby, unbrushed, and carrying an old green umbrella, badly furled. ‘Why that idle sod Killick ever let him out looking like George-a-Green, I cannot tell,’ whispered bow oar.
‘Never mind,’ replied his mate out of the side of his mouth.
‘He ain’t going to the palace.’
He and Square were in fact going to the market-place to seek out Houmouzios at the earliest possible opportunity and then to hurry over the swamp, there to sit under his umbrella, contemplating the long-legged wading birds – even perhaps the fishing vulture –
with his perspective-glass; and he was strangely dashed when, on coming to the money-changer’s stall, they found only Socrates, who said that Mr Houmouzios was gone on a journey into the interior, but would be back on Friday.
Stephen was strangely dashed, strangely put about; but having considered for a while he told Square to go and rejoice with his family and walked slowly off in the direction of the fetid swamp, much reduced in this dry season, but still fetid, still a swamp, and with the birds concentrated in a smaller area. And what might he not hope for? Adanson had worked extremely hard, but he had been farther to the north, on the banks of the Senegal; and even Adanson had not turned every egg.
‘Doctor,
Doctor!’
they
cried, hallooing far behind.
‘They are calling for a doctor, the creatures,’ he reflected. ‘Don’t they wish they may find one? Does the chanting goshawk come so far south, I wonder?’
‘Doctor, doctor!’ they called, hoarse with running, and at last he stopped.
‘The Commodore says pray come directly,’ gasped a mid~: shipman. ‘His Excellency invites you to dinner.’
‘My compliments and thanks to his Excellency,’ said Stephen, ‘but regret I am unable to accept.’ He moved on towards the fetid swamp.
‘Come, sir, that won’t do,’ said a tall sergeant. ‘You will be getting us into cruel trouble. Which we have orders to escort
you back, and we shall be brought to the triangle and flogged, else. Come sir, if you please.’
Stephen looked at the three breathless but determined master’s mates, the powerful Marine, and gave in.
‘My dear sir,’ cried the Governor, ‘I beg you will overlook the short notice, the unceremonious invitation, but the last time you were here I did not have the pleasure, the honour,
of meeting you; and when my wife heard that Dr Maturin, Dr Stephen Maturin, had been in Sierra Leone without dining here she was infinitely distressed, desolated, quite put out.
allow me to introduce you.’ He led Stephen up to a very good-looking young woman, tall, fair, agreeably plump, smil ing at him with the utmost benevolence.
‘I ask your pardon, ma’am, for appearing before you in this squalid…’
‘Not in the very least,’ she cried, taking both his hands. ‘You are covered, covered with laurels. I am Edward Heatherleigh’s
sister, and I have read all your lovely books and papers, includ ing your address to the Institut, which Monsieur Cuvier sent
over to Edward.’
Edward Heatherleigh, a very shy young man, a naturalist and
a member (though rarely seen) of the Royal Society, with a moderate estate in the north of England, where he lived as quietly as possible with this sister, both of them collecting, botanizing, drawing, dissecting, and above all comparing. They had articulated skeletons of all the British mammals, and Edward had told Stephen, one of his few intimates, that she knew bones far better than he did – she was unbeatable on bats. This passed through or rather appeared in his mind so
rapidly that there was no measurable pause before his reply of ‘Miss Christine! I am delighted to see you, ma’am; and now I do not mind my squalor in the least.’
Captain James Wood, the Governor, possessed a maiden sister who had looked after much of his official entertaining before his marriage, which was just as well; for although Mrs Governor kept remembering her duty, and doing it, few sailors could engage her real attention when a famous natural philosopher was by.
‘You must certainly come tomorrow,’ she said as they parted, ‘and I will show you my garden and my creatures – I have a chanting goshawk and a brush-tailed porcupine!
And perhaps you might like to see my bones.’
‘Nothing could possibly give me greater pleasure,’ said Stephen, pressing her hand.
‘And perhaps we might walk by the swamp.’
‘Well, Stephen, you were in luck, upon my word,’ said Jack, as they walked down to the boat. ‘The only pretty woman of the party, and you completely monopolized her. And in the drawing-room she came and sat at your knee and talked to no one else for hours on end.’
‘We had a great deal to talk about. She knows more on the subject of bones and their variations from species to species than any woman I am acquainted with; much more, indeed, than most men, and they professed anatomists. She is sister to Edward Heatherleigh, whom you may have seen at the Royal. A fine young woman.’
‘What a pleasure. I love talking to women like that. Caroline Herschel and I used to prattle away about Pomeranian sludge and the last stages of a telescope’s mirror half way through the night. But knowing and beautiful too – what bliss. Yet how she ever came to marry James Wood I cannot tell. A fair practical seaman and an excellent fellow, but never an idea in his head; and he is at least twice her age.’
‘Other people’s marriages are a perpetual source of amazement,’ said Stephen.
They walked on, rejecting first the offer of a sedan-chair and then that of a hammock slung on a pole and carried by two men, a usual conveyance in those parts.
‘You too seemed to be enjoying yourselves very heartily at your end of the table,’
said Stephen, after a while.
‘So we were. There were some people from the viceadmiralty court, and the civil secretary, and they were telling us how well we had done, how very much better than anyone
else, how much wealthier we should be when everything was settled up, above all if none of the alleged Americans or Spaniards won an appeal against their decisions, which was most
improbable, and how well our hands would do with their undisputed share, which was ready in canvas bags in the tress ury – ready to be paid out. And Stephen, now it is the dry season, you will not keep them aboard all night?’