‘Would you expect a mutiny?’
‘Mutiny in the sense of outright revolt and refusal of command? No. But from some of the people I expect muttering, discontent, ill-will; and nothing makes work slower or more inefficient or more unsafe than ill-will and its perpetual quarrels. It is horrible having to drive even half a resentful, sullen
crew. Then again whenever a King’s ship is lost there are always a few clever fellows who tell the rest that since the officers are commissioned to a particular ship they have no authority once that particular ship is gone. They also say the seaman’s pay stops on the day of the wreck, so no service or obedience is due – the Articles of War no longer apply.’
‘Are these things true?’
‘Lord, no. They were once upon a time, but that was knocked on the head after the loss of the Wager in Anson’s day. Still, a good many of the hands are quite willing to believe they are going to be done in the eye again; the service has a shocking reputation where pay and pensions are concerned.’ At this point the level strand was broken by the bank of debris brought down by the torrential rain: they climbed it, and there below, in the natural slip, lay the schooner, as neat an anatomy of a vessel as could be wished. ‘There,’ cried Jack. ‘Ain’t you amazed?’
‘Extremely so,’ said Stephen, closing his eyes.
‘I thought you would be,’ said Jack, nodding and smiling. ‘It must be two or even three days since you saw her, and since then we have reached not only the fashion-pieces but the transoms and ribbands. There are only the counters, and then we start planking.’
‘The counters, indeed?’
‘Yes. Let me explain. You see the stern-post, of course. The fashion-pieces rise on either side, and then curving out from them you see the counter-timbers . . .’ Jack Aubrey spoke with great animation; he and Mr Hadley the carpenter were particularly proud of this elegant stern; but his enthusiasm led him to go on rather long, and in too great detail about the rabbets and the cant-frames.
Stephen was obliged to interrupt him. ‘Forgive me, Jack,’ he said; and turning aside he was extremely sick.
Few things could have been more disconcerting. Dr Maturin, no mere surgeon but a physician, possessed a perfect command of health, other people’s and of course his own: disease had no hold on him: he had undergone antarctic cold and equatorial heat with equal immunity, he had nursed a
whole ship’s company through a murderous outbreak of gaol-fever quite unscathed, he treated yellow fever, plague and smallpox as fearlessly as the common cold; and here he was as pale as an ostrich-egg.
Jack led him gently up the hill. ‘It is only a passing fit,’ said Stephen. And then, as they approached the earthwork, ‘I believe I shall sit here and get my breath again.’ This he did, in the corner of the camp where the gunner and one of his mates were turning a meagre sand-castle of gunpowder on a piece of sailcloth. ‘Well, Mr White,’ he said, ‘how are you coming along?’
Both gunner and mate stopped their work, turned towards him, leaning on their wooden shovels, and shook their heads. ‘Well, sir,’ said White in his usual shattering roar, ‘I boiled out the peter from the ruined barrels, like I said, and it crystallized and mixed and ground down quite pretty with a little old piss, as we say. But will it dry in this cruel wet air? No, sir, it will not. Not even in the sun. Not even if we turn it ever so.’
‘I think we shall have a wind in the east tomorrow, Master Gunner,’ said Jack, so quietly that the gunner stared. ‘Then you will have no trouble.’ He took Stephen’s elbow, heaved him up, led him to their tent, and sent a boy running for Macmillan, the assistant surgeon.
‘The Doctor looked wholly pale,’ said the gunner, staring still.
He was looking paler by far when Macmillan arrived. The young man was fond of his chief, but even after so long a voyage in such very close proximity he was still in great awe of him and now he was sadly at a loss. Having made the usual gestures – tongue, pulse and so on – he said very diffidently, ‘May I suggest twenty drops of the alcoholic tincture of opium, sir?’
‘No, sir, you may not,’ cried Stephen with surprising vehemence. He had been very deeply addicted to the drug for years and years, reaching such monstrous doses that they hardly bear repetition, and suffering in due proportion when he gave it up. ‘But,’ he added when the pain of his own cry had died away, ‘as you will have perceived there is an increasing febrility, and our best course is no doubt bark, steel, saline enemata, rest and above all quiet. True quietness, as you know very well, is not to be expected in a camp full of sailors; but balls of wax provide something not unlike it. They are behind the balm of Gilead.’
When Macmillan came back with all these things Stephen said to him, ‘There will of course be no true physical effect for some time; and in the meanwhile it is possible that I shall grow light-headed. I am aware of a rapid increase in the fever and already there is a slight inclination to wandering fancies, disconnected thoughts, hallucination – the first hint of delirium. Be so good as to pass me three coca leaves from the box in my breeches pocket and sit as comfortably as you can on the folded sail.’ Having chewed the leaves for some time he went on, ‘One of the miseries of medical life is that on the one hand you know what shocking things can happen to the human body and on the other you know how very little we can really do about most of them. You are therefore denied the comfort of faith. Many and many a time have we seen patients in real distress declare themselves much relieved after a draught of some nauseous but wholly neutral liquid or a sugared pill of common flour. This cannot, or should not, happen with us.’
Each retired into his memory, recalling cases where in fact it had happened; sometimes, perhaps, in his own person; and presently Stephen said ‘But I will tell you another misery that is not to be denied. In the common, natural course of events physicians, surgeons and apothecaries are faced with enormous demands for sympathy: they may come into immediate contact with half a dozen deeply distressing cases in a single day. Those who are not saints are in danger of running out of funds and becoming bankrupt; a state which deprives them of a great deal of their humanity. If the man is in private practice he is obliged to utter more or less appropriate words to preserve his connexion, his living; and the mere adoption of a compassionate face as you have no doubt observed goes some little way towards producing at least the ghost of pity. But our patients cannot leave us.
They have no alternative. We are not required to put on a conciliating expression, for our inhumanity in no
way affects our livelihood. We have a monopoly; and I believe that many of us pay a very ugly price for it in the long run. You must already have met a number of callous idle self-important self-indulgent hard-hearted pragmatic brutes wherever the patients have no free choice: and if you remain in the Navy you will meet a great many more.’
Monopoly had not yet turned Macmillan into a pragmatic brute, however. He and Ahmed sat all that stifling humid night at Stephen’s side, fanning him, giving him water from the cool depths of the well and rocking his hammock with an even motion: before sunrise the promised east wind began to steal in across the sea, bringing coolness with it, and they had the satisfaction of seeing him lapse into a quiet, untroubled sleep.
‘I believe, sir, he may do very well,’ said Macmillan, when Jack beckoned him out of the tent. ‘The fever fell as suddenly as it rose, with a profuse laudable sudation; and if he lie quiet today, taking a little broth from time to time, he may get up tomorrow.’
Stephen was mistaken in supposing that quietness was not to be had in a camp full of sailors: while stars were still in the sky they tiptoed off in a silent body, carrying their meagre breakfast to eat at the slip, leaving only a few men whose work made almost no noise at all – the rope-making party with their junk, yarns and wheel; the gunner, ready to spread his powder as soon as the sun should give him some hope of drying it; the sailmaker, who had reached the schooner’s jibs; and Killick, who intended to overhaul the Doctor’s wardrobe (Ahmed was no hand with a needle), and, glorious task, to polish the entirety of the Captain’s silver.