‘Jack, when I said aged I referred only to the generations, or ages, of filth that have accumulated below; I did not mean to blackguard her any more than I should blackguard dear Sophie, God forbid.’
‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘I am sorry I flew out. I am sorry I spoke so chuff. My tongue took the bit between its teeth, so I was
laid by the lee again; which is very absurd, because I had meant to be particularly winning and agreeable. I had meant to say that yes, there was a hundred tons of shingle ballast down there that should have been changed long ago; and after having admitted so much and said that we intended to open the sweetening-cock and pump her cleaner, I was to go on and ask whether you would consider selling her to me. It would give me so much pleasure.’
Stephen was chewing a large, rebellious piece of cheese. As it went down at last he said indistinctly, ‘Very well, Jack.’ And covertly looking at the decently-restrained delight on his friend’s face he wondered ‘How, physically speaking, do his eyes assume this much intenser blue?’
They shook hands on it, and Jack said ‘We have not talked about her price: do you choose to name it now, or had you rather reflect?’
‘You shall give me what I gave,’ said Stephen. ‘How much it was I do not at present recall, but Tom Pullings will tell us. He bid for me.’
Jack nodded. ‘We will ask him in the morning: he is deadbeat now.’ And raising his voice,
‘Killick!’
‘Sir?’ answered Killick, appearing within the second.
‘Bring the Doctor the best punch-bowl and everything necessary; then clear away his ‘cello and my fiddle in the great cabin, and place the music-stands.’
‘Punch-bowl it is, sir; and the kettle is already on the boil,’ said Killick, almost laughing as he spoke.
‘And Killick,’ said Stephen, ‘instead of the lemons, pray bring up the smaller keg from my cabin: you may take it from its sailcloth jacket.’
The bowl appeared, together with its handsome ladle; then a long pause before Killick could be heard stumping along the half-deck. From the peevish oaths it was clear that one of his mates was giving him a hand, but he came in alone clasping the keg to his belly.
‘Put it on the locker, Killick,’ said Stephen.
‘Which I never knew you had it,’ said Killick with an odd mixture of admiration and resentment as he stood away from the barrel, oak with polished copper bands and on its head the
stamp Bronte XXX with an engraved plate below To that eminent physician Dr Stephen Maturin, whose abilities are surpassed only by the gratitude of those who have benefited from them: Clarence.
‘Bronte!’ cried Jack. ‘Can it be . . . ?’
‘It can indeed. This is triple-refined Sicilian juice from his own estate, a present from Prince William. I had meant to keep it for Trafalgar Day, but seeing this is a special occasion perhaps we may draw off an ounce or so and drink the immortal memory tonight.’
The steaming bowl, the melted sugar, the heady smell of arrack; and as Stephen stirred in his concentrated lemon-juice he said ‘I must tell you that there may possibly be some hint of scurvy aboard your ship. It was Martin that noticed it first, to my shame, the valuable man.’
‘Certainly. All hands say how lucky we are to have him.’
‘He suggested, and I heartily concur, that we should steer for some fruitful island. There is no urgent necessity, with what I have brought with me; but from the medical point of view we should certainly have a relief at some half-way stage, if ever you can find one in the limitless ocean.’
Chapter Eight
It was from the mizentop that they first saw this island, or rather the little isolated flat cloud that marked its presence. So many leagues, so many degrees of longitude had passed under the Surprise’s keel, that now, patiently taught by Bonden, the medicos came up by the futtock-shrouds like Christians; and for the last fortnight they had done so without attendance, without life-lines or anything to break a headlong fall, although reaching the top in this, the seaman’s, way entailed climbing what was in effect a rope ladder inclined some fifty-five degrees from the vertical, fifty-five degrees backwards, so that one hung, like a sloth, gazing at the sky. Their movements were not unlike those of a sloth, either; but both confessed that this was a far more compendious method, and far more agreeable than their former writhing through the tightly-clustered rigging; and they were not displeased at hearing Pullings say, in the course of a dinner at which the gunroom was entertaining the Captain, that the Surprise was the only ship he had ever known in which both the doctors went aloft without using the lubber’s hole.
Yet though they had made such progress, and though the ship had advanced so far eastwards, they had not yet exhausted Martin’s South American observations – he was still engaged with his particular part of the Amazonian forest, with its extraordinary floor of dead vegetation, huge fallen trees lying across one another, so that in some places there was a great depth of rotting wood and a man had to choose the most recent (hardly discernible sometimes because of the dense clothing of lianas) and soundest trunk in
order not to fall twenty and even thirty feet into a chaos of decay: twilight at noonday in those deeper parts and almost devoid of mammals, birds – all high, high above in the sunlit tops – and even reptiles, but oh Maturin what a wealth of beetles!
Nor had they done more than touch upon some aspects of Java, with Pulo Prabang still to come (though the bird-skins and the deeply interesting foot-bones of Tapirus indicus had been shown), when they heard the cry of ‘Land ho!’ from the lookout, high above them on the maintopmast crosstrees. ‘Land one point on the larboard bow.’
The cry cut their conversation short. It also cut short many a quiet flatter in the waist or on the forecastle, for this was during the afternoon watch of a make-and-mend day: and many of the younger, more ardent Surprises flung down their needles, thread, thimbles and ditty-bags. They ran eagerly aloft, crowding the upper yards and shrouds: they made way for Oakes however, since as the lightest and nimblest of those who walked the quarterdeck he had been sent up to the jack itself with a telescope.
‘I have it, sir,’ he called down. ‘I have it on the top of the rise: green with a broad rim of white. About five leagues, almost exactly to leeward, just under that little cloud.’
Jack and Tom Pullings smiled at one another. This was as pretty a landfall as could be wished, and although each had independently fixed the ship’s position by several excellent lunars these last few days as well as by the ship’s two chronometers neither had supposed that they could reach Sweeting’s Island without altering course by more than half a point and that within two or three hours of the predicted time.
‘The sails are in the way,’ said Martin, ‘and we are too low down. Do not you think that by climbing higher still, say to the mizen crosstrees, above this frustrating topsail, we might get a better view?’
‘I do not,’ said Stephen. ‘And even if we did, would a wise, prudent man with a duty towards his patients creep to that dizzy height for a nearer view of an island that we shall walk upon, with the blessing, tomorrow itself or even this very evening? An island that promises little to the natural philosopher; for you are to consider that these very small, very
remote little islands do not possess the superficies for anything considerable in the way of flora or fauna peculiar to themselves. Do but think of the shocking paucity of land birds in Tahiti, so very much greater in mass. Banks remarked upon it with sorrow, almost with reprehension. No, sir. As I understand it, Sweeting’s Island is of value to the medical man in search of anti-scorbutics rather than to the philosopher; and you will allow me to say, that I wonder at your impatience.’
‘It arises from a humbler cause altogether, though in passing I may observe that St Kilda has a wren of its own and the Orkneys a vole-mouse. The fact of the matter is that I am not so truly amphibious a creature as you or Captain Aubrey. Though few people would believe it, I am essentially a lands-man, descended no doubt from Antaeus, and I long to set foot on land again – to draw new strength from it to withstand the next few months of oceanic life. I long to walk upon a surface that is not in perpetual motion, rolling, pitching,