‘None in the least, dear colleague. No one can say that my spirit is affected by six-foot waves: and by the way, what is the difference between a houario and a xebec?’
‘Oh, there are so many regional variations, and without endless technical details it could not be made plain: but very roughly the xebec is longer, stronger, and most remarkably fleet. Dear colleague, here is the boat. Pray urge them to waste not a minute.’
They wasted not a minute, and Mr Candish, having bought hide and, with Dr Jacob’s help, two puncheons of the famous local wine, they returned: but empty-handed as far as news of the Durazzo houario was concerned. The captain of the port, who had sold them the leather and the wine, had no word of any such vessel calling or passing, and
he very much doubted that so light a craft could have survived such a furious blow.
However, he said, they need not be afraid: there would be no wind of any kind for at least three days, only very slight western airs, bringing a very welcome drizzle. If the gentlemen would like company while they lay off the island, he would be happy to send some young women.
His forecast was perfectly accurate: they lay off the island day after day, sometimes seeing it through the drizzle; and the frigate’s people spent their time making and mending, pointing ropes, re-leathering the jaws of booms and gaffs, and of course fishing over the side. The small rain spoilt dancing on the fo’c’sle, but there was a good deal of shipvisiting, and Jack and as many of his officers who could be fitted round the table dined with William Reade aboard Ringle. Jacob’s forecast, however, was not fulfilled. He was the first to admit that Daniel’s thorax no longer made the ugly noises that had alarmed them both; yet he did maintain that the collar-bone was likely to prove long in knitting – that active exercise such as swarming up the masts was not to be countenanced for a moment. ‘Not that I am to tell you anything about a froward clavicle,’ he added. ‘Pray forgive me.’
‘Oh, I entirely agree with what you say,’ said Stephen. ‘When young fellows are returning to health, supervision is often necessary, and when neither Poll nor the other women nor yet his messmates are sitting with him, I shall do so. In a sick-bay so sparsely inhabited as this, boredom is likely to set in, growing to intolerable proportions.’
In fact the Commodore, the master, the other officers and the inhabitants of the midshipmen’s berth looked in often enough to prevent any extremity of tedium; but the shoulder continued painful, and after lights out, which meant no reading, he was very glad of Stephen’s presence. By the time the dreadful calm of Pantellaria ended in light and variable breezes, often bringing rain, and the Surprise was working 157towards Algiers, taking advantage of every favourable shift, he had quite lost his initial shyness of the Doctor.
Cape Bon was a cruel disappointment: they had passed it before the sun was up, and when the unwilling day broke at last, all that could be seen was the distant African shore to a height of twenty feet: everything above that was thin grey cloud, and although the voices of those migrant birds that travelled in groups could be heard – the clangour of cranes, the perpetual gossip of finches – never a one could be seen, though Cape Bon was a famous point of departure for some very uncommon examples of the later migrants at this time of the year.
‘I hope you saw your cranes, sir?’ said Daniel when Stephen came to sit with him that evening.
‘Well, I heard them at least: a great harsh cry up there in the cloud. Did you ever hear a crane, John Daniel?’
‘Never, sir. But I think I heard or saw most of the birds in our parts: herons quite often, and sometimes a bittern. Mr Somerville, our curate and schoolmaster, would point them out: and there were half a dozen of us, mostly farmers’ sons, that he used to give a penny a nest – I mean for particular birds, sir, not any old wood-pigeon or crow. And we were never allowed to touch the eggs. He was very good to us.’
‘Will you tell me about your school?’
‘Oh, sir, it was an ancient old place, one long very high room – you could scarcely see the roof-beams – and it was run by the parson, his son and daughter, and Mr Somerville the curate. It did not set up for a great deal of learning. Pretty Miss Constance taught the little boys reading and writing in a small room of her own – how we loved her!
And then they moved up to the great room, where there would be three lessons going on at once. The boys were mostly farmers’ sons or the better sort of shopkeepers’; and in spite of the din the brighter ones had a fair am9unt of Latin if they stayed long enough, and history and scripture and casting
accounts. I never could get ahead in Latin, but I really did shine at sums and what we called mensuration: I loved numbers even then, and I shall never forget my happiness when Mr Somerville showed me the use of logarithms.’
‘Time for Mr Daniel’s gruel,’ said Mrs Skeeping. ‘Now, sir, let me spoon it into you.’
She heaved him up in his cot
– an accustomed hand, and he was not a great weight – and with professional skill and rapidity fed him a bowlful, stopping only when the spoon had cleaned the sides entirely.
‘Thank you, Poll,’ called Daniel after her, and he lay back gasping. ‘Logarithms,’ he went on presently. ‘Yes, but that was later, when my father had had to take me away from school, and I kept the shop while he catalogued gentlemen’s libraries or went the round of the markets. Mr Somerville used to give me private lessons; and as some sort of exchange I copied his mathematical essays fair: he had a difficult hand and he made many, many corrections, while mine was tolerably neat. He lodged with us, on the first floor, as I think I said; and we were into conic sections when he died.’
‘I am afraid that must have been a sad loss to you.’
‘It was, sir: a cruel, cruel loss.’ After a silence he went on, ‘And although it sounds almost wicked to say so, it could not have come at a worse moment. Trade had dropped away most shockingly, and without his few shillings we were poor indeed. I would sit there in the shop all day, and no one would come in. I read and read – Lord, how I read at that unhappy time.’
‘What did you read, upon the whole?’
‘Oh, Mr Somerville’s mathematical books, as far as I could: but most were beyond me. Nearly all the time it was books of voyages, as it always had been in my childhood.
My father had taken over a stock of such collections – Harris, Churchill, Hakluyt and many another. I had learnt my reading in those heavy great folios. They were beautiful books, full of delight; yet nobody would buy them. People were not buying books any more, and if ever a customer appeared it was to sell, not to buy. In the days when people were buying, my father had sold on credit, long credit; but however long, the bills were not paid. And then an old gentleman whose library my father had been cataloguing for a great while and who owed him a large sum that he relied upon, died. His heirs fell out about the will, and neither side would settle my poor father’s account – the court would decide who was responsible, they said. In the town it was reported that the trial would take years and that my father was penniless. Some tradesmen spoke of suing, for we owed a good deal; none liked to give any more credit. So we lived on very miserably, selling odds and ends, doing what we could. Then a London bookseller from whom my father had had several expensive great books on architecture and the like for gentlemen who had not yet settled, came down, saw how things were with us, and said he must have his money. This came at the same time as rent and taxes, and although one of the gentlemen wrote from Ireland saying that he would deal with the bill on quarter-day, nobody believed him and nobody would lend us a groat. It was clear that my father would be in a debtors’ prison very soon, so I walked down to Hereford, to the rendezvous as they call it, and volunteered for the Navy: they looked rather doubtful, but men were very hard to find, so they gave me the bounty – all in gold – more than a year’s living in a quiet way, our debts paid – and I sent it home by a carrier I knew well. Then the little band of pressed men and . .