Padeen began to speak, pointing down the fore hatchway: his stammer allowed him no more than ‘Muc – muc – muc’ but his pointing finger and the increasing noise from below were eloquent enough. Stephen climbed to the forecastle, where Martin was staring at the starboard pen. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he cried. ‘Here’s a pretty kettle of fish.’
‘Good morning to you, colleague,’ replied Stephen, ‘and an elegant kettle it is.’
Over by the larboard pen, where he and some forecastle hands were reinforcing the barriers, Weightman was saying that he had fed the hell-damned swine – details of what they had been offered – swill that would have graced the cabin table – Lord Mayor’s banquet – and they would not touch a morsel, drink a drop – and (lowering his voice) he would be buggered if he would try it again or listen to any prating poultryman -he was the barky’s butcher, and he was not going to be taught his trade by any . . . His voice died away altogether.
‘You don’t want to starve pigs,’ said Joe Plaice. ‘They want feeding regular, or they go out of condition directly.’
‘I call it a cruel shame,’ observed Slade.
‘Why don’t you feed them poor unfortunate buggers below?’ asked Davies.
Weightman answered these remarks and others, laying out his case with such increasing emphasis that his voice grew to resemble that of the swine at their shrillest and most passionate.
At this moment the frigate’s executive officers were all either on shore or below. ‘This is a matter for the Captain,’ said Stephen privately. ‘He has already put off.’
They walked back along the gangway, and sitting on the brace bitts, the most secluded place they could find, they watched the Captain’s boat pull out through the many inshore canoes.
‘Sarah and Emily tell me that just a little taro would do,’ said Martin. ‘They ran off, took a piece from that pile there, and the forecastle pigs flung themselves upon it. I pointed this out to Weightman, but he would have none of it. He is a disagreeable surly fellow at the best of times, and now he is beyond the reach of reason. Pig-headed, one might almost say.’
‘Perhaps one might. How I long to be ashore.’
‘Oh, so do I, Lord above! The moment we have finished our rounds, we may surely ask for leave with clear consciences. My nets, cases, paraphernalia, are all ready. What shall we find? The Polynesian owl, ha, ha, ha? But before I say anything else I must tell you two pieces of news that it was not fit to bring out on the forecastle. The one will rejoice your heart; the other I fear will sadden it. First, among the presents sent by the chief this morning were two rails of a kind unknown to the learned world, two different rails, and a great purple coot.’
‘Never a gallinule, for all love?’
‘No. Far larger and of a far richer purple. Without mentioning it to anyone, there being such abundance, I appropriated them, as objects more fit for philosophic examination than the gunroom table.’
‘Very right and proper. What a treat in store! But you spoke of bad news.’
‘Yes, alas. Last night I was turning over our collections, renewing the pepper and camphor, and on reaching the lories I went to bed, leaving the skins on the locker. This morning all the lories with red feathers had been plucked bald; and those of the cockatoos that had scarlet on their tails were mutilated.’
‘The wicked false lecherous dogs know they can get anything on this island with red feathers: and there is only one thing they want. Pox and eternal damnation on the whole vile crew.’
Jack came aboard on the larboard side – this was no time for the slightest ceremony – and he was at once seized by Pullings and Adams with a host of questions: seeing that he could not be free for some time Stephen hurried below to see the rails and the coot. They were fascinating objects in their mere outward form, but they also promised osteological peculiarities and Stephen said ‘It is our clear duty to skin them at once, and then Padeen will gently seethe the flesh from their bones in the sick-berth cauldron: the liquid will no doubt strengthen the invalids’ soup and we shall have the skeletons entire. Carry them into your cabin – it would be more discreet – and I shall fetch the instruments.’
He was down in the dim sick-berth, rattling among saws, forceps and retractors, and he had just called ‘Mr Reade there: I can hear you perfectly well from here, and if you persist in trying to get up I shall desire the Captain to have you whipped,’ when Oakes appeared.
‘There you are, Doctor,’ he cried. ‘They told me I might find you here. May I beg you to do me a kindness, sir?’
‘Pray name it, Mr Oakes.’
‘If you go ashore, please would you take my wife with you? She is wild to set foot on a South Sea island, and I cannot have leave with the ship to sail so soon and so much still to be done.’
‘Very well, Mr Oakes,’ said Stephen with a smile as cordial as he could make it. ‘I should be happy to wait on Mrs Oakes in forty minutes time.’
‘Oh thank you, sir. She will be so very grateful . . .’
Stephen followed him, but more slowly, up the ladders. ‘Mr Martin,’ he said, ‘here are scalpels for two. If you will take the nearer rail, I will tackle the coot. I have just agreed that we shall take Mrs Oakes ashore. You have no objection?’
Martin’s expression changed. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said after a very slight pause, ‘but I forgot to tell you I was engaged to Doctor – to the surgeon of the whaler.’
The Captain’s gig ran hissing up the coral sand; bow-oar leaped out, placed the gangboard, and two seamen, one beaming, one severe, handed Mrs Oakes ashore; she thanked them prettily. Stephen followed: they passed him his fowling-piece, powder-flask, game-bag; Plaice, a very old friend, begged him to take care of the lions and tigers and them nasty old wipers, and the gig instantly put off again.
‘Should you like to look at the market?’ he asked.
‘Oh, if you please,’ cried Mrs Oakes. ‘I am excessively fond of markets.”
They walked up and down in the sunshine, the object of lively but amiable curiosity, much less invasive than he had expected. Seeing that he was with a woman, even his talkative girl of yesterday said no more than ‘Ho aia-owa,’ with a discreet but knowing smile, and a wave of her hand; and importunate children were restrained.
Wainwright and the South-Seas speaking Surprises showed them the wonders Annamooka had to offer and even those who were not or who were no longer ardent supporters of Clarissa were pleased that she should behold their fluency and the extent of their knowledge.
Twice at least they made the tour, pausing sometimes to look at the exquisite workmanship of the canoes hauled up for caulking, of the nets, the matting of the sails, Clarissa as eager as a child to see and understand, delighted with everything. But while she was watching a man inlay mother-of-pearl eyes on the blade of his steering-paddle she caught Stephen’s wistful eye following a pair of doves – ptilopus? – and after a decent pause she said ‘But come, let us go a-botanizing. I am sure this island must have some wonderfully curious plants.’
‘Should you not like to look at the newly-arrived fishes at the other end of the strand?’
asked Stephen; yet although Clarissa could be imperceptive and even stupid on occasion there were times when no amount of civil disguise could hide a man’s real desires from her; and in this case the disguise called for no great penetration. ‘Let us take the broad path,’ she said. ‘It seems to lead to well you can hardly call it a village but to most of the houses, and I believe it wanders off into – could you call it a jungle?”
‘I am afraid not. It is at the best but open brushwood until the distant reed-beds before the forest: but you are to observe that in true jungle, in the rainy season, there is no seeing a living creature at all. You may hear birds, you may see the tail-end of a serpent disappear,
you may sense the vast looming form of the buffalo, but you may come home, if indeed you are not lost entirely, bleeding from the thorn of the creeping rattan, devoured by leeches, and empty-handed, with no acquisition of knowledge. This is much better.’
They walked along, following the stream and passing three or four wide-spaced houses –
little more than palm-thatched roofs on poles, with a raised floor – all empty, their people being at the market: other houses could be seen no great way off, half hidden by palms or paper-mulberry-trees; but there was little sense of village. And since the breeze was blowing off the land they soon left the noise of the throng behind and walked in a silence barely altered by the rhythmic thunder of surf on the outer reef. When they had skirted three remarkably neat fields of taro and sugar-cane a little flock of birds flew up. Stephen’s gun was at his shoulder in one smooth movement; he fixed on his bird and brought it down. ‘A nondescript parrot,’ he observed with satisfaction, putting it into his bag.