‘Bonden,’ he called to his old friend the Captain’s coxswain, ‘pray desire your mates to pause for a moment. I wish to go downstairs, and I would not tread on their work for the world.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Bonden. ‘Make a lane, there: make a lane for the Doctor.’ He led him by hand through the pots and brushes to the companion-ladder, for the Nutmeg was lying to
across the swell and Dr Maturin had never had much sense of balance except on a horse; and leaving him firmly attached to the hand-rail he said ‘I believe we may have some fun after dinner, sir,’ with a conspiratorial smile. Stephen found Macmillan by the medicine-chest, trying to get paint off his trousers, and after some conversation about spirits of wine as a solvent and the extraordinary zeal of seamen in any faintly illegitimate and deceptive ploy he said ‘And yet as I am sure you have noticed, the ordinary work of the ship carries on as it were by its own momentum: the glass is turned, the bell is struck, the watch is relieved; when a brace is required to be adjusted, or rounded-in, as we say, the hands are there; the salt pork is already in its steep-tubs, growing a little more nearly edible; and I have no doubt that at eight bells it will be eaten. Let us walk into the sick-berth.’
Here they changed into Latin, and having looked at one hernia and the two obstinate remaining Batavia poxes he asked ‘How is our fourth man?’ meaning Abse, a member of the afterguard, whose complaint was known as the marthambles at sea and griping of the guts by land, a disease whose cause Stephen did not know and whose symptoms he could only render more nearly bearable by opiates: he could not cure it. ‘He will go in an hour or so, I believe,’ said Macmillan, opening the screen. Stephen looked at the comatose face, listened to the shallow breathing, felt the almost imperceptible pulse. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘A release, if ever there was one. I should like to open him: I should like it of all things.’
‘So should I,’ said Macmillan eagerly.
‘But it does so upset their friends, their messmates.’
‘This man had none. He was a galley-ranger and had to mess by himself. Nobody came to see him but the Captain and his divisional officer and mid.’
‘Then perhaps we have a chance,’ said Stephen. And pushing back the screen, ‘God rest his soul.’
Dr Maturin was mistaken about the salt pork. The breeze, against the promise of the sky and against the evidence of the barometer, so declined in the course of the forenoon watch that Captain Aubrey advanced his plan by an hour; and the pork was eaten, raw inside, at six bells.
The hands did not complain. By this time the Nutmeg had been made to look as shabby as the Alkmaar and they were standing in with the prospect of an uncommonly brisk action within an hour or so; there was not so much a high degree of tension as of enhancement of all feelings; and when their grog came below this did not seem so much increased as infused with a great share of mirth – witty remarks exchanged between those who were to be allowed on deck, looking like Dutch
sailors during the approach, and those who were not. ‘There are some slab-sided Dutch-built buggers that are allowed to show themselves. Because why? Because they look so harmless no one would be frightened of them. A maid would not be frightened of them, ha, ha; nora wife, ha, ha, ha!’
‘I have rarely heard the people so cheerful,’ said Stephen in the Captain’s store-room.
They arranged Abse’s body neatly between two chests and he went on, ‘I believe I shall go up and ask the Captain whether we shall have leisure before the engagement: it is so tedious, struggling with the rigor mortis.’
But when he had climbed the successive ladders he saw to his surprise and regret that the Nutmeg was already well in with the land and that although her pace was sober, moderate, mercantile, there would be no time for the autopsy he had in mind. Jack was eating a ham sandwich and talking to Richardson, but he looked across as Stephen appeared and smiled: Dr Maturin had slipped on the old black coat he usually operated in and he could easily pass for a down-at-heel merchant’s supercargo. Jack himself was in loose trousers and shirtsleeves and on his head he wore a Monmouth cap, a villainous flat worsted affair, still to be seen among old-fashioned seamen, which had the advantage of containing his long yellow hair, no longer so bright as it was in the days when he was familiarly known as Goldilocks, but still conspicuous.
‘There she lies,’ he said, turning to Stephen; and there indeed she lay under the blue sky, a trim and elegant ship with her red gunports open to air the deck. She was two thirds of the way down the bay the Nutmeg was now entering, framed by the shore with its white rim and by the rising forest-land behind, bright green in places. There was quite a surf running, and white water could be seen beyond the Cornélie’s starboard bow and here and there in other parts of the bay.
‘The tide is at the full,’ said Jack. ‘Slack water this last half hour. Have you been busy?
There are sandwiches in the quarter-gallery, and a pot of coffee, if you feel so inclined.
Dinner may be rather late: the galley fires have been out this age.’
‘We have been as active as ants, carrying our sick to their
bay and making all ready in the berth: lint galore, swabs, pledgets, chains, saws, gags.
When do you suppose the action will begin?’
‘Not for an hour or so, unless she smokes us first. As you see, there is no plain ring of coral enclosing a lagoon: it is more a question of independent reefs with a winding passage between them and a surprising great bar off the mouth of the stream. That is why she is lying so far out, no doubt. It is awkward for her boats, and when one of her cutters went in just now I think she touched on the tail of the bank. Do you see the watering-party?’
‘I believe so.’
‘At the foot of the black cliffs two points on the starboard bow: take my glass.’
The black cliff, the stream leaping down it, and the seamen gathered round their casks came startlingly close in the brilliant light. ‘There may be some extremely interesting plants on that damp rock-face,’ said Stephen. ‘May I look at the Cornélie?’
‘It might be indiscreet from the quarterdeck: the sash-light in the quarter-gallery would be better. Do you see Dick on the foretopsail yard? He is going to con the ship from there. It ought to be the master, but his bowels are upset. We have to head almost for the watering-place, then there are two dog-legs half a mile apart before we can luff up and run under her lee.’
‘I shall go and peer at them from the lavatory, eating a sandwich as I do so.’
‘Stephen,’ said Jack in a low tone, ‘look for Pierrot, ChristyPallière’s boy, will you? I hope you do not see him, because that would confirm my idea he is ashore. I fairly dread killing him.’
‘You mean the young French officer you met in Pulo Prabang, our friend’s nephew? But you forget I never saw him, either as a boy or as a man.’
‘Very true,’ said Jack. ‘Forgive me.’
The Nutmeg stood on, with her captain alone on his quarterdeck, apart from a single man at the wheel and Hooper by the lee rail, looking like a ship’s boy. Richardson stood high on
the yard, looking down into the clear water ahead, dark blue for the deep water of the channel, light for the shoals on either side. A score of seamen stood about on the forecastle, their hands in their pockets, or lounged on the gangway, even leaning on the rail. All the rest of the ship’s company were out of sight under the forecastle, under the gangways, on the half-deck and in the cabin. All the gun-crews were at their stations, and those who could make out anything through the cracks of their portlids or through holes in the canvas strips, told their friends what they saw in a low voice, with striking accuracy.
The boarders had their weapons at hand, cutlasses, pistols, boarding-axes, pikes; slow-match smoked in tubs beside the carronades – Jack would never trust to the flint-lock alone; and now the atmosphere was grave.
Behind its sliding door the quarter-gallery was quite cut off from the close-packed attentive crowd and its rumble of voices:
it was the Captain’s washing, shaving and powdering closet, and together with its companion on the other side (his privy) it was one of the few upper parts of the ship left undisturbed when she was cleared for action. With its wash-basin removed it made a pleasant little place from which to view proceedings; and Stephen was luckier with his sash-light than any of the hundred-odd below decks, except for those who could command a scuttle.