‘Aye aye, sir: pull in and sail back it is.’
Jack and Bonden had served many years together; they understood one another perfectly well, and it appeared to Stephen that in spite of their matter-of-fact words and everyday expression some message passed between them; yet though he knew both men intimately he could not tell what that message was.
They pulled away and away, and once it had set a rise of the swell between itself and the ship the jolly-boat disappeared, reappeared, disappeared, reappeared, smaller each time, heading straight for the land, two miles away. White water on the small island with trees close inshore to the east; white water between that island and the iron-bound coast; white water on the headland to the west; and the bay between had a fringe of white. Yet whereas all the rest of the coast in sight had cliffs dropping almost sheer, this bay possessed a beach, probably a sandy beach, running well back to a moderate slope; and there seemed to be a fairly clear passage in.
They watched intently, saying little; but at five bells Jack, turning abruptly from the weather-rail, said ‘Captain Pullings, we will stand off and on until the boat returns.” And pausing on the companion-ladder he added ‘On the inshore leg we might try for soundings’ before hurrying below.
‘Philips tells me that there are also parrots, parakeets, gan-nets and pigeons on the island,’ said Martin. ‘How I hope we may go ashore! If we cannot land on this side, do you think we may be able to do so on the other?’
For once Stephen found Martin a tedious companion. Was it possible that the man did not know what landing on Norfolk Island might entail? Yes: on reflexion it was quite possible.
Just as Captain Aubrey had been the last person to know that there was a woman aboard his ship, so Nathaniel Martin might be the last to know that this woman and her lover were in danger of being marooned there. The threat was after all very recent: the officers were unlikely to have discussed it in the gunroom and it could scarcely have reached Martin from the lower deck – Martin had no servant of his own and Padeen was hardly capable of telling him even if he had wished to. On the other hand it was possible that Martin, having heard of the threat, did not take it seriously. For his own part Stephen did not know what to say. There were times when Jack Aubrey was as easy to read as a well-printed book; others when he could not be made out at all, and this formal, public dispatch of the boat seemed to Stephen incomprehensible, in total contradiction with the cheerful, familiar, sea-wet Jack of early breakfast.
The Surprise edged nearer to the wind and Pullings gave orders for the deep-sea line.
Stephen walked along the gangway to the bows: as he reached the forecastle the hands gathered round the bitts fell silent and slowly dispersed. From the rail he had a perfect view of the bay, and his pocket-glass showed him the jolly-boat’s crew pulling steadily in; they were more than half way now, and as he watched Bonden took the boat round a sunken rock with an ugly swirl of water over it. The ship barely had steerage-way and although the shrouds gave a creaking sigh each time the long swell raised her up or let her down there was very little noise in the bows. He heard the cry of ‘Watch, there, watch,’
as each man in succession along the side let go his last turn of the deep-sea line, and then Reade’s shrill report ‘Sixty-eight fathom, sir: coral sand and shells.’
Six bells. The boat had reached the edge of the breakers over by the small island and was working its way westwards along the shore. The triangular sail in front of him, the foretopmast staysail in all likelihood, filled, and the Surprise began her turn, sailing gently away from the land. Martin, who could take a hint as well as any man, had retired to the mizen-top, which now commanded an excellent view of Norfolk Island, and Stephen thought of joining him there. But a disinclination for talk combined with the exaggerated movement of the mast now that the ship was heading directly into the swell kept him to the quarterdeck, where he stood at the taffrail and watched the jolly-boat making its way
towards the cape that limited the bay, keeping to the edge of the surf – from this level the little boat seemed to be almost in the breaking rollers, and in great danger of being swamped.
He was still there, pondering, when the jolly-boat reached the far end, hoisted a sail and stood out to sea; and he was so lost in his reflexions that he was quite startled when Jack tapped him on the shoulder, saying with a smile, ‘You are in a fine study, Doctor. I hailed you twice. How did your patients do? I see’ – nodding at the dried blood on Stephen’s hand
-‘that you have been opening them.’
‘Quite well, I thank you: they are as comfortable as can be expected, and with the blessing they will soon be more so.’
‘Capital, capital. I shall pay them a visit.” Then in a much lower tone he added ‘I have been to the head myself. I thought you might like to know.’
‘I am heartily glad of it,’ said Stephen, and asked him exact and particular questions; but Jack Aubrey was more prudish than might have been supposed about such matters and he only answered ‘Like a horse,’ walking forward out of range.
He brought the ship round again to meet the boat, but Stephen stayed where he was. With the turn the island slid out of view, to be replaced by a vast expanse of ocean; and today the ocean had a horizon as taut and sharp as could be desired, except in the west-south-west, where the early morning’s cloudbank had grown, working up against the wind as thunder-clouds and squalls so often did, contrary to all sense of what was right and natural by land.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Reade at his side, ‘but the Captain thought you might like me to pour this water over your hand.’
‘God love you, Mr Reade, my dear,’ said Stephen. ‘Pray pour away, and I will rub. I did wash at one time, I recall; but I dare say I adjusted a dressing afterwards. Fortunately, however, I turned back the cuffs of my coat, or I should be in sad trouble with …” He stopped abruptly, for here was Bonden coming up the side.
‘Well, Bonden?’ asked Captain Aubrey on the silent, listening quarterdeck.
‘No landing, sir,’ said Bonden. ‘A wicked surf and a worse undertow, though the tide was on the ebb.’ ‘No landing at all?’ ‘None at all, sir.’
‘Very good. Captain Pullings, since there is no possibility whatsoever of landing we will hoist in the jolly-boat and make all possible sail on our former course.’
‘On deck there,’ hailed the lookout at the masthead. ‘A sail right astern. Fore-and-aft, I reckon.’
Jack took the watch telescope and ran aloft. ‘Where away, Trilling?’ he called from the crosstrees.
‘Right astern, sir, on the edge of that ill-looking bank,’ replied Trilling, who had moved out along the yard. ‘I can’t see her.’
‘Why, to tell you the truth nor can I now, sir,’ said Trilling in that amused, conversational tone more usual in a letter of marque than a man-of-war. ‘She comes and goes, like. But you could see her from the deck, was it to clear a little: she ain’t a great way off.’
Jack returned to the deck by way of a backstay, as he had done when he was a boy. ‘As I was saying, Captain Pullings,’ he went on, ‘we will make all possible sail on our former course. There is not a moment to be lost.’
The jolly-boat was hoisted in and made fast, the topgallants were sheeted home and hoisted to the strange musical cries of the Orkneymen aboard, the bowlines hauled to the
one chant the Royal Navy countenanced ‘One! Two! Three! Belay oh!’, and Martin said to Stephen ‘I was much astonished to hear that the surf made landing impossible. From my vantage-point I could have sworn I saw a relatively smooth stretch just this side of the cape. I hope you are not too deeply disappointed, Maturin?’
‘Faith, if I were to repine at every promising island I have been swept past in my naval career, I should have run melancholy mad long since. We have at least seen the mutton-bird and the monstrous pines, bad luck to them. I think them as ugly as they are tall; the ugliest vegetables known to man except for that vile Araucaria imbricata of Chile, which in some ways it resembles.’