But even in a pitch of distress that had cut his appetite, his pleasure in tobacco and his sleep, his intense curiosity lingered on and now he asked why the doctors were swearing so.
‘Well, Killick,’ said Poll Skeeping. ‘I am surprised you should not know, being it was your so-called Hand of Glory, that was to make us all so rich.’
‘Oh no,’ whispered Killicj.
‘Oh yes,’ cried Poll, tossing her head. ‘As you know very well, the doctors kept it in a jar of double-refined spirits of wine so that it should stay fresh and clean: and what happened? I’ll tell you what happened, if you really need to be told. Some God-damned villain or villains had been drawing off the spirit and replacing it with water, so now it’s just bloody water and damn all else, while the Hand has grown gamy, like. It is all up with the finer tissues, but at least
they have put it out to dry and they hope to draw the tendons and wire the bones together tomorrow evening.’
Alas for their hopes. When in one of their few free moments (Pomone’s working-up was proving quite exceptionally bloody; and a surprising crop of boils, disturbingly like the Aleppo button, had broken out in Surprise) the medical men approached the table next to a scuttle where the poor hand had been left to dry – indeed to desiccate – they found nothing but a very faint bloody trace, the wooden dissecting board and the print of a large dog’s right forefoot on the padded stool.
‘Your beautiful present utterly desecrated, deep in the maw of that vile mongrel’ –
‘All our work wasted,’ they cried, and they cursed the dog with extreme violence in Berber and Gaelic.
Stephen found Hobden in the gunroom, fingering his unlucky flute while the two off-duty lieutenants played backgammon. ‘Sir,’ he said, pale with anger, ‘I must have your dog. He has stolen my preserved hand and I must either open him or exhibit a powerful emetic before it is too late.’
‘How do you know it was my dog? There are all the ship’s cats, thieves to a man.’
‘Come with me to the galley and I will show you.’
Naseby was indeed in the galley, comfortably installed among the women, who started up. Stephen seized the dog, raised his deeply-scarred right fore-paw, showed it to Hobden and said, ‘There’s your proof.’
‘You never stole anything, did you, Naseby?’ asked Hobden. Naseby was a clever dog: he could find a hare and do all sorts of things like counting up to eight beUs and opening a latched door; but he could not lie. Perfectly aware of the accusation, he drooped ears and body, licked his lips and confessed total guilt.
‘I must either cut him and recover my hand or give him a very strong emetic: and if the emetic does not work, then it must be the knife.’
‘It was your own silly fault for leaving it about,’ cried Hobden. ‘You shall not touch my dog, you pragmatical bastard.’
‘Will you stand by those words, sir?’ asked Stephen after a short pause, his head cocked to one side.
‘Until my dying day,’ said Hobden, rather too loud. Stephen left the room, smiling.
He found Somers, the second lieutenant, standing on the forecastle and gazing up at the beauty of the headsails, brilliant in the sun and scarcely less so in the white shadow. ‘Mr Somers,’ he said, ‘I beg pardon for interrupting you – a glorious sight, indeed – but I have had a disagreement with Captain Hobden, who used, and stood by, a very blackguardly insult, made in public – in the galley itself, for God’s sake. May I beg you to be my second?’
‘Of course you may, my dear Maturin. How very much I regret it. I shall wait upon him at once.’
‘Come in,’ cried Jack Aubrey, looking up from his desk.
‘I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir,’ said Harding, the frigate’s first lieutenant, ‘but I have some awkward, pressing things to tell you.’ He said this in a low voice, and Jack led him aft to the locker under the stern windows, where he could speak in perfect safety – in a ship a hundred and twenty feet long with two hundred men crammed into her, privacy was a rare commodity, as he knew from very long experience.
‘Well, sir,’ Harding went on, obviously disliking the role of informer, ‘Dr Maturin has challenged Hobden, Hobden’s dog having eaten a preserved hand; and Hobden, having been told that the hand must be recovered by knife or purge, gave Maturin the lie. I tell you this because the people are very much upset. I do not have to tell you, sir, that seamen or at least our seamen, are as superstitious as a parcel of old women: they looked upon the horn; sir, as the surest possible guarantee of luck: and next to the horn, or even
before it, this Hand of Glory . . . you know about it, sir?’
‘Of course I do. Thank you for telling me all this, Harding: it was very proper in you. Now pray be so good as to tell Hobden that I wish to see him at once. He will waste no time with uniform.’
A minute later he called ‘Come in’ again, and a shirtsleeved, duck-trousered Hobden appeared.
‘Captain Hobden,’ said Jack in a tone of the deepest displeasure, ‘I understand that your dog ate Dr Maturin’s preserved hand, and that when he checked you with the fact you gave him the lie or something worse. You must either withdraw the insult and let him retrieve the hand as best he may, or you must leave this ship at Malta. I cannot give you more than five minutes to reflect, dogs’ powers of digestion being what they are. But while you are reflecting, remember this: in the heat of the moment any man may blurt out a blackguardly expression: yet after a while any man worth a groat knows he must unsay it.
A note of apology would answer, if you find the spoken word stick in your gullet.’
Hobden changed colour once or twice – a variety of emotions appeared upon his face, all of them wretchedly unhappy.
‘If you choose to write it now, here are pens and paper, said Jack, nodding to his desk and chair.
For some time Jacob and Stephen Maturin had been talking about the pleasanter sides of their evening with Mr Wright as they sharpened their instruments on variety of hones and oilstones by the Argand light in the orlop. When they had finished discussing their dispassionate and geometrical treatment of the Locatelli, Jacob said, ‘Yet earlier on I fear I was somewhat too loquacious, with my examples of the Zeneta dialect and the double gutturals of the local Hebrew; but at least I did not bore the company with an account of what is perhaps the most curious thing about the Beni Mzab – curious, but difficult to explain in a few words.
I mean the fact that not only are the Moslems Ibadite heretics, but many of the Jews are Cainites, equally erroneous according to the orthodox.’
Stephen reflected, grinding still, and then said, ‘I do not think I know about Cainites.’
‘They derive their descent from the Kenites, who themselves have Abel’s brother Cain as their common ancestor:
furthermore, the initiated still bear his mark; though discreetly, since they do not choose to have it generally known, there still being so many vulgar prejudices against him. This shared mark of Cain forms the strongest bond imaginable, far outdoing that between Freemasons, and of infinitely greater antiquity.’
‘So I should imagine.’
‘In early Christian times some of them formed a Gnostic sect; but those belonging to the Beni Mzab have returned to the ancient ways, maintaining that Cain was brought into being by a superior power and Abel by an inferior; and that he was the ancestor of Esau, Korah and the Sodomites.’
‘Come in,’ called Stephen.
Captain Hobden came stooping under the lintel. ‘I beg pardon for interrupting you, Doctor Maturin. I beg your pardon. Here is my apology’ – handing his letter – ‘and here is my dog.’
‘You are very good, sir,’ cried Stephen, starting up and shaking his hand. ‘Do not fear for Naseby: these are very simple operations, and I would not hurt him for the world.’
Seamen, according to Dr Maturin’s experience, were even fonder of remedies that could be seen and felt to work at once than most people; and the Surprise’s medicine-chest was well stocked with powerful emetics.
‘There is little hope,’ said Stephen as he slid the dose down Naseby’s unresisting throat. ‘At this late hour there is little hope, at all.’
‘On the other hand, the animal’s early detection and
subsequent evident guilt may well have diminished or even arrested his digestive secretions.’
‘Hold the bucket and belay, there. Stand back.’