Authors: Patrick O'Brian
Back to Surprise and her great cabin, familiar,
elegant, but in spite of its conventional name not really spacious enough for
all the administrative work he had to do. There were no more than six ships or
vessels in the squadron, but their books and papers already overflowed the
Commodore’s desk: not much more than a thousand men were concerned, but all
those of real importance in the running of the squadron had to be entered on
separate slips together with what comments he had so far been able to make on
their abilities; and to house these slips he had called upon his joiner to make
temporary tray-like wings to his desk, so that eventually he should have all
the elements at his disposal laid out, to be rearranged according to the tasks
the squadron might be called to undertake. In these quite exceptional
circumstances, with no settled ships’ companies apart from those
in Surprise and to some extent Briseis, he would have an equally
exceptional free hand.
But Jack Aubrey was a neat creature by temperament
and rigorous training, and he had set no more than one foot in the cabin before
he saw that order was confounded, that some criminal hand had merged at least
three complements into one unmeaning heap, and that this same hand had spread
out several manuscript sheets of music, the score of a pavan in C minor.
‘Oh I do beg your pardon, Jack,’ cried Stephen,
walking quickly in from the quarter-gallery. ‘I had a sudden thought to be set
down - but I trust I have not disturbed anything at all?’
‘Not in the least,’ said Jack. ‘And Stephen, I
believe I have solved your problem. I believe I have found you a loblolly-boy
you will thoroughly approve of.’
Stephen, concerned though he was with his music -
only two bars yet to write, but the magical sound already fading from his inner
ear - and filled though he was with a conviction that Jack’s mild ‘not in the
least’ concealed an intense irritation, made no reply other than a questioning
look. He owed his survival as an intelligence-agent to an acute ear for
falsity, and Jack’s last words were certainly quite untrue.
‘Yes,’ Jack went on, ‘together with a draft of
hands turned over to the squadron out of Leviathan, refitting, Maggie Cheal and
Poll Skeeping have come aboard; and Poll was trained at Haslar. She is up to
anything in the way of blood and horrors.’
‘You are speaking of women, brother? You who have
always abominated so much as the smell of a skirt aboard ship? The invariable cause of trouble, quarrelling, ill-luck. Wholly out of place in any ship, above all in a man-of-war.
I have never seen a woman aboard a man-of-war.’
‘Have you not, my poor Stephen? Did you never see
them helping with the guns and passing shot in Bellona?’
‘Never in life. Am I not always shut up in the cockpit
during an action?’
‘Very true. But if Jill Travers, for
example, the sailmaker’s wife who helped serve number eight, had been wounded,
you would have seen her.’
‘But seriously, Jack, are you obliged to take these
women aboard? You who have always inveighed against the
creatures.’
‘These are not creatures, in the sense of
whore-ladies or Portsmouth trollops: oh no. They are
usually middle-aged or more, often the wife or widow of a petty or even of a
warrant-officer. One or two may have run away like the girl in the ballad,
wearing trousers, to be with her Jack when he sailed; but most have used the
sea these ten or twenty years, and they look like seamen, only for the skirt
and maybe shawl.’
‘And yet I have never seen one, apart from the odd
gunner’s wife who looks after the very little fellows: and apart, of course,
from that poor unhappy Mrs Homer on Juan Fernandez.’
‘To be sure, they do keep out of the way. They
don’t belong to any watch, of course, and they don’t appear at quarters, no,
nor anywhere else, except when we rig church.’ At any other time he would have
added that for all his botanizing and stuffing curious birds, Stephen was a
singularly unobservant cove: he had not even noticed the brilliant flint-locks
that now, by grace of Lord Keith, adorned Surprise’s guns, doing away with
those potential misfires when the linstock wavered over the touch-hole or was
doused by flying spray - misfires that might make those few seconds’ difference
between defeat and victory. Yet they blazed with all the splendour of
guinea-gold, the pride of the crews, who surreptitiously breathed upon them,
wiping off the mist with a silk handkerchief.
‘A loblolly-girl, for all
love? I
wonder at it, Jack.’
‘Come, come, Stephen: you say a loblolly-boy for an
ancient of sixty or even more: it is only a figure of speech, a naval figure of
speech. And speaking of figures, Poll’s is very like a round-shot; she is a
kind, cheerful, conscientious soul, but she is not likely to stir the amorous
propensities of the sick-berth. Besides, she is perfectly used to seamen, and
would instantly put them down. Will you at least have a word with her? I said I
should mention her name. We were shipmates once, and I can answer for her being
kind - no blackguarding, no bawling out orders, not topping it the ship’s
corporal; kind, honest, sober, and very tender with the wounded.’
‘Of course I will see her, brother: a kind, honest
and sober nurse is a rare and valuable creature, God knows.’
Jack rang the bell and to the answering Killick he
said, ‘Tell Poll Skeeping the Doctor will see her directly.’
Poll Skeeping had been at sea, off and on, for
twenty years, sometimes under harsh and tyrannical officers; but for her
‘directly’ still allowed latitude enough for putting on a clean apron, changing
her cap and finding her character: thus equipped she hurried to the cabin door,
knocked and walked in, a little out of breath and obviously nervous. She bobbed
to the officers, holding her character to her bosom.
‘Sit down, Poll,’ said Captain Aubrey, waving to a
chair. ‘This is Dr Maturin’ who would like to speak to you.’
She thanked him and sat, bolt upright, the envelope
of her character held like a shield.
‘Mrs Skeeping,’ said Stephen, ‘I am without a
sick-berth attendant, a loblolly-boy, and the Captain tells me that you might
like the post.’
‘That was very kind in his honour,’ she said,
bowing to Jack. ‘Which I should be happy to be your
sick-berth attendant, sir.’
‘May I ask about your experience and professional
qualifications? The Captain has already told me that you are kind,
conscientious, and tender to the wounded; and indeed one can hardly ask more. But what of amputation, lithotomy, the use of the trephine?’
‘Bless you, sir, my father, God rest his soul’
(crossing herself) ‘was a butcher and horse-knacker in the wholesale line, down
Deptford way, and my brothers and me used to play at surgeons in the jointing
house: then when I was at Haslar they put me almost straight away into the
theatre. So, do you see, sir, I am hardly what could be called squeamish. But
may I show you my character, sir? The surgeon of my last ship, a very learned
gentleman, tells what I can do better than ever I could manage.’ She passed the
somewhat aged cover, and begging Jack’s pardon Stephen broke the seal. The
elegant Latin testimonial to Mrs Skeeping’s worth, capabilities, and
exceptional sobriety was written in a remarkably familiar hand but one to which
he could not give a name until he turned the page and saw the signature of
Kevin Teevan, an Ulster Catholic from Cavan, a friend of his student days and
yet another Irishman who saw the Napoleonic tyranny as a far greater and more
immediate evil than the English government of Ireland.
‘Well,’ he said, patting the letter affectionately,
‘anyone so highly spoken of by Mr Teevan will certainly answer for me; and
since I do not yet have an assistant surgeon - he will be coming aboard this
afternoon - I will show you the sick-berth myself, if the Captain will excuse
us.’
‘There,’ he went on at last, having displayed the
neat arrangements of the Surprise, ‘that deals with the ventilation system: no
ship of the line can show a better. Now pray tell me how Mr Teevan was when
last you saw him.’
‘He was brimming full of joy, sir. A cousin with a
practice in some grand part of London and with too many
patients, offered him a partnership, and he left Mahon that very evening in
Northumberland, going home to pay off and lay up. For that was when we thought
it was all over, the pity and woe... that Boney.’
‘The pity and woe indeed,’ said Stephen. ‘But with
the blessing we shall soon settle his account.’ And running his eye over the
neat shelves of the forward medicine chest, he said, ‘We are short of blue
ointment. Do you understand the making of blue ointment, Mrs Skeeping?’
‘Oh dear me yes, sir: many is the great jar I have
ground in my time.’
‘Then pray reach me down the little keg of hog’s
lard, the jar of mutton suet, and the quicksilver. There are two mortars with
their pestles just below the colcothar of vitriol.’
When they had ground away companionably at their
ointment for perhaps half a glass Stephen said, ‘Mrs Skeeping, in my sea-time I
have seen few, very few women at all, although I am told they are not in fact
so very rare. Will you tell me how they come to be aboard and why they stay in
a place so often damp and always so bare of comfort?’
‘Why, sir, in the first place a good many
warrant-officers- like the gunner, of course - take their wives to sea, and
some captains allow the good petty-officers to do the same. Then there are
wives that take a relation along - my particular friend Maggie Cheal is the
bosun’s wife’s sister. And some just take passage, with the captain’s or first
lieutenant’s leave. And there are a few in very hard times by land that dress
as men and are not found out until very late, when no notice is taken: they
speak gruff, they are good seamen, and there is not much odds after forty. And
as for staying aboard, it is not a comfortable life to be sure, except in a
first or second rate that does not wear a flag; but there is company, and you
are sure of food; and then men, upon the whole, are kinder than women - you get
used to it all, and the order and regularity is a comfort in itself. For my
part it was as simple as kiss your hand. At Haslar I was put to look after an
officer, a post-captain that had lost a foot - there had been a secondary
resection and the dressing was very delicate. His wife, Mrs Wilson, and the
children came to see him every day, and when the wound was healed and he posted
to a seventy-four in Jamaica she asked me to go with
them, looking after the little ones. It was a long, slow voyage with no foul
weather and everybody enjoyed it, most of all the children. But they had not
been there a month before they were all dead of the Yellow Jack. Luckily for
me, the officer who took over Captain Wilson’s ship brought a great many
youngsters aboard, more than the gunner’s wife could deal with; so we having
made friends on the way over, she asked me to give her a hand - and so it went,
relations in ships - I had a sister married to the sailmaker’s mate in Ajax -
friends in ships, with a spell or two in naval hospitals - and here I am,
loblolly-boy in Surprise, I hope, sir, if I give satisfaction.’
‘Certainly you are, particularly as I learn from Mr
Teevan that you do not play the physician, puzzle the patients with long words
or criticize the doctor’s orders.’
Mrs Skeeping thanked him very kindly; but having
taken her leave she paused at the door, and blushing she said, ‘Sir, might I
beg you to call me just Poll, as the Captain does, and Killick and all the
others I have been shipmates with? Otherwise they would think I was topping it
the knob; and that they will not abide, no, not if it is ever so.’
‘By all means, Poll, my dear,’ said Stephen.
He read a couple of pages on leeches and their
surprising variety in the Transactions, and then, judging his time, summoned
their common steward and said, ‘Preserved Killick, I am going to fetch Dr
Jacob, my assistant surgeon, who as you know is to mess in the gunroom.’
‘Which the Captain told me,’ said Killick with a
satisfied smile. ‘So did Mr Harding.’
‘And I should like you to find him a stout boy to
be his servant and to bring his sea-chest down from Thompson’s in their little
two-wheeled cart. You will give the gunroom cook good warning, I am sure.’
The introduction went as well and easily as Stephen
could have wished. Harding, Somers and Whewell were hospitable, civilized men,
and the quiet, unpretentious Dr Jacob, willing to please and to be pleased,
succeeded in both: he was somewhat older than the lieutenants, which ensured a
certain respect; his friendship with their much esteemed Doctor gave rise to
more; and when Woodbine, the master, hurried in he found the gunroom in a fine
buzz of conversation. He excused his lateness to the president: ‘That sudden gust took Elpenor the Greek over the side, and
we have been fishing him out - a very strong and sudden gust indeed:
north-east. How do you do, sir?’ - this to Jacob.
‘You are very welcome, I am sure. A glass of wine with you, sir.’
With shore supplies at hand it was a pleasant meal,
with a steady flow of talk, much of it about the sea and its wonders - the
enormous rays of the West Indies, albatrosses nesting on Desolation Island (one
of the many Desolation Islands) and their tameness, St Elmo’s Fire, the
Northern Lights. Woodbine belonged to an older generation than the lieutenants:
he had travelled even more widely, and encouraged by the close attention of the
medical man he spoke at considerable length about some pools or natural
resurgences of pitch in Mexico. ‘Not to be compared to
the Pitch-Lake in Trinidad for size, but much more interesting: there is one
where the tar comes bubbling up in the middle, so liquid you can take it with a
ladle; and every now and then a white bone comes surging up in the great
bubble. Such bones! People may prate about their Russian mammoths, but these
creatures - or some of them - would make mammoths look like pug-dogs. The
gentleman that took me there, a natural philosopher, collects the most curious,
and he showed me great curved tusks, oh, three fathoms long and.. .’ Another of
those curious furious blasts came down from the face of the Rock, ruffling the
whole bay and heeling the Surprise so that all hands automatically reached for
their glasses and the mess-servants grasped the backs of the chairs. The
master, an unusually truthful, scrupulous man, an elder of the congregation of
Sethians in Shelmerston, checked himself and said, ‘Well, perhaps ten foot, to be on the safe side. And I tell you what,
gentlemen, I have known this gust or warning foretell a seven-day blow out of
the north-east four or even five times when my ship has been lying here.’