The Wine-Dark Sea (15 page)

She was still lying there when the Surprise came up with the eastern boats strung out behind her; Jack rounded to and ranged up on the whaler's starboard side.

'I have left her for you, sir,' called Pullings across the prize's deck.

'Quite right, Tom,' replied Jack, and wiping the spray from his face - for even here, in the lee of two ships, the waves were chopping high - he gave the order 'Blue cutter away. Mr Grainger, go across, if you please: take possession and send the master back with his papers. The whaler, ahoy!'

'Sir?'

'Start a couple of casks fore and aft, d'ye hear me, there?'

'Aye aye, sir,' said the master, a sparse, hard-featured man, now awkwardly willing to please; and a moment later whale-oil poured from the scuppers, spreading with extreme rapidity. The sea did not cease heaving, but the spray no longer flew - there was no white water, no breaking between the ships nor away to leeward.

'Should you like to go, Doctor?' asked Jack, turning kindly. 'I believe you have always wanted to look into a whaler.' Stephen bowed, and quickly tied a length of bandage over his hat and wig, tying it under his chin. Jack directed his voice towards the half-swamped whale-boats astern: 'You fellows had better go aboard, before you are drowned.'

It took some little time to get the Doctor safely down into the blue cutter; it took longer to get him up the oily side of the whaler, where the master stretched down an officious hand and Bonden thrust him from below. But he was scarcely on the filthy deck before the whale-boat crews came swarming aboard with their gear, the headsmen carrying their lances, the boat-steerers their shining harpoons. They boarded mostly on the quarter, coming up nimbly as cats, and raced forward with a confused bellow. The master backed to the mainmast.

'You left us to starve on the ocean, you rat,' roared the first headsman.

'You made all sail and cracked on - cracked on,' roared the second, shaking his lance, barely articulate.

'Judas,' said the third.

'Now Zeek,' cried the master, 'you put down that lance. I should have picked you up...'

The broad-shouldered harpooner, the man who had been fast to the big bull whale, was last up the side; he heaved his way through the shouting, tight-packed throng; he said nothing but he flung his iron straight through the master's breast, deep into the wood.

Returning to the Surprise covered with blood - a useless investigation, heart split, spinal cord severed - Stephen was met with the news that Martin had been taken ill. He dabbled his hands in a bucket of sea-water and hurried below. In spite of the activity on deck the gunroom was an example of the inevitably promiscuous nature of life at sea, with two anxious-looking officers sitting at the table with biscuit and mugs of soup in front of them, the cook standing at the door with the bill of fare in his hand and the grizzle-bearded lady of the gunroom at his side, all of them listening with concern to Martin's groans and stifled exclamations in the quarter-gallery, or rather the nasty little enclosure just aft by the bread-bins that served the gunroom for a quarter-gallery or house of ease, the deck being too low for anything more luxurious than a bucket.

Eventually he came out, fumbling at his clothes, looking inhuman; he staggered to his cabin and fell on to his cot, breathing quick and shallow. Stephen followed him. He sat on a stool and said in a low voice, close to Martin's head, 'Dear colleague, I am afraid you are far from well. May I not do something - mix a gentle palliative, a soothing draught?'

'No. No, I thank you,' said Martin. 'It is a passing... indisposition. All I need is rest... and quiet,' He turned away. It was clear to Stephen that at this stage there was nothing more he could usefully say. And when Martin's breathing grew easier he left him.

The rest of the ship was full of life, with prisoners coming aboard with their chests and a prize-crew going across to take over; and as usual the whaler's hands were being checked against her muster-book by Mr Adams, the Captain's clerk, in the great cabin. Jack and Tom Pullings were there, watching the men, listening to their answers, and making up their minds how they should be divided. They were heavy, sad, disappointed men at present, with the whole of their three-years cruise taken from them in a moment; but their spirits would revive, and many an enterprising band of prisoners had risen upon their captors and seized the ship. Moreover sailors from the northern colonies could prove as troublesome and pugnacious as Irishmen.

It appeared, however, that no more than a score of them belonged to the original crew from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and New Bedford. In three years many had died by violence, disease or drowning, whilst two or three had run, and their places had been filled with South Sea islanders and what could be picked up in the odd Pacific port: Portuguese, Mexican, half-castes, a wandering Chinese. A fairly simple division, though the Surprise was already somewhat short of hands.

The last, a thick-set youngish man who had lingered behind, came to a halt before the table and called out, 'Edward Shelton, sir, headsman, starboard watch: born in Wapping,' in a strong, undoubted Wapping voice.

'Then what are you doing in an enemy ship?' asked Adams.

'Which I went a-whaling during the peace and joined this here ship long before the American war was declared,' said Shelton, his words carrying perfect conviction. 'May I speak a word to the Captain?'

Adams looked at Jack, who said, 'What have you to say, Shelton?' in a tone that though mild enough promised nothing.

'You don't know me, sir,' said Shelton, putting a doubled forefinger to his forehead in the naval way, 'but I seen you often enough in Port Mahon, when you had the Sophie: I seen you come in with the Cacafuego at your tail, sir. And many a time when you came aboard Euryalus, Captain Dundas, Captain Heneage Dundas, in Pompey: I was one of the side-men.'

'Well, Shelton,' said Jack, after a question or two for conscience' sake, 'If you choose to return to your natural service, to enter volunteerly, you shall have the bounty and I will find you a suitable rating.'

'Thank you kindly, your honour ,' said Shelton. 'But what I mean is, we cleared from Callao on the seventh, and while we were getting our stores aboard - tar, cordage, sail-cloth and stockfish - there was a merchantman belonging to Liverpool, homeward-bound from the northwards, in dock, tightening up for her run round the Horn. We cleared on the seventh which it was a Tuesday, homeward-bound too though not really full: not a right good voyage, not heart's content as you might say, but middling. And off the Chinchas at break of day, there was a four-masted ship directly to windward. Man-of-war fashion. The master said, "I know her, mates: she's a friend. A Frenchman out of Bordeaux, a privateer," and he lay to. There was nothing else he could do, dead to leeward of a ship of thirty-two guns with yards like Kingdom Come and the black flag flying at her masthead. But as we lay there he walked fore and aft, gnawing his fingers and saying, "Jeeze, I hope he remembers me. God Almighty, I hope he remembers me. Chuck" - that was his mate and aunt's own child - "Likely he'll remember us, don't you reckon?"

'Well, he did remember us. He hauled down his black flag and we lay alongside one another, matey-matey. He asked after the Liverpool ship and we told him she would be out of dock in under a month. So he said he would stretch away to the westward for a while on the chance of an English whaler or a China ship and then lie off the Chinchas again: and he told us the sea thirty leagues to the west-north-west was full of whales, thick with whales. We sailed together, separating gradually, and the day after we had sunk his topgallants there we were in the middle of them, spouting all round the compass.'

'Tell me about her guns.'

'Thirty-two nine-pounders, sir, or maybe twelves; in any case all brass. Besides her chasers. I never seen a privateer so set out. But I did not like to go aboard or look too curious, let alone ask no questions, not with that crowd of villains.'

'Was their black flag in earnest?'

'Oh yes, sir; deadly earnest. They were as thorough-paced a no-quarter-given-or-asked as ever I see - trample the Crucifix any day of the week. But you and your consort could deal with her. I dare say Surprise could do so on her own, though it might be nip and tuck; and she would buy it very dear, they having to sink or be sunk. Which I mean if they are killed they are deaders, and if they are taken they are hanged. It is half a dozen of the one and..." His voice died away; he hung his head, a certain coldness having told him that he had been talking too much.

'As taut as it is long,' said Jack, not unkindly. 'Well, Shelton, is Mr Adams to write you down as pressed or volunteer?'

'Oh volunteer, sir, if you please,' cried Shelton.

'Make it so, Mr Adams, and rate him able for the moment: starboard watch,' said Jack. He wrote on a piece of paper. 'Shelton, give this to the officer of the watch. Well, Tom,' he went on after the man had gone, 'what do you think?'

'I believe him, sir, every word,' said Pullings. 'I am not to put my opinion before yours; but I believe him.'

'So did I,' said Jack, and the old experienced Adams nodded his head. Jack rang the bell. 'Pass the word for Mr Vidal.' And a few moments later, 'Mr Vidal, when we have seen the whaler's mate and her charts, and when we have shifted as much water out of her as can be done in thirty minutes, you will take command and steer for Callao under moderate sail. We are running down no great way in the hope of a Frenchman, and it is likely we shall overtake you. If we do not, wait there. Mr Adams will give you the necessary papers and the name of our agent: he looked after the frigate's prizes on the way out. You may take the whaler's mate, bosun and cook - no arms, of course, either on themselves or in their chests - and several of our people.'

'Very good, sir,' said Vidal, unmoved.

'As for getting the water across, you have half an hour: there is not a minute to lose; and since the sea is a little choppy, spend the oil and spare not. A couple of casks are neither here nor there.'

'Aye, aye, sir: spend and spare not it is.'

'Jack!' cried Stephen, coming in to their strangely late and even twilit dinner, 'did you know that those active mariners have brought a large number of hogsheads aboard, and they filled with fresh water?"

'Have they, indeed?' asked Jack. 'You amaze me.'

'They have, too. May I have some to sponge my patients and have their clothes washed at last?'

'Well, I suppose you may have a little for sponging them - a very small bowl would be enough, I am sure - but as for washing clothes - washing clothes, good Lord! That would be a most shocking expenditure, you know. Salt does herrings no harm, nor lobsters; and my shirt has not been washed in fresh water since Heaven knows how long. It is like coarse emery-paper. No. Let us wait for the rain: have you looked at the glass?'

'I have not.'

'It began dropping in the first dog. It has already reached twenty-nine inches and it is still falling: look at the meniscus. And the wind is hauling aft. If the rain don't come down in great black squalls tonight or tomorrow, you shall have one of these hogsheads - well, half a hogshead - for your clothes.'

After a short, dissatisfied silence Dr Maturin said, 'It will be no news to you, sure, that the whaler has slipped away, going, they tell me, to Callao, if ever they can find the place God be with them.'

'I had noticed it,' said Jack through his sea-pie.

'But you may not know that two of her men forgot their pills entirely or that in his legitimate agitation Padeen gave Smyth a liniment, not telling him it was to be rubbed in rather than drunk. However, nobody, nobody has told me why we are rushing in this impetuous manner through the turgid sea, with sailors whose names I do not even know, rushing almost directly away, to judge by the sun, away from the Peru I had so longed to see and which you had led me confidently to expect before Bridie's birthday.'

'I never said which birthday, this or the next.'

'I wonder you can speak with such levity about my daughter. I have always treated yours with proper respect.'

'You called them a pair of turnip-headed swabs once, when they were still in long clothes.'

'For shame, Jack: a hissing shame upon you. Those were your very own words when you showed them to me at Ashgrove before our voyage to the Mauritius. Your soul to the Devil.'

'Well, perhaps they were. Yes: you are quite right - I remember now - you warned me not to toss them into the air, as being bad for the intellects. I beg pardon. But tell me, brother, has nobody told you what is afoot?'

'They have not.'

'Where have you been?'

'I have been in my cabin downstairs, contemplating on mercury.'

'A delightful occupation. But he is not to be seen now, you know: he is too near the sun. And to tell you the truth he is neither much of a spectacle nor a great help in navigation, though charming from the purely astronomical point of view.'

'I meant the metallic element. In its pure state quicksilver is perfectly neutral; you may swallow half a pint without harm. But in its various combinations it is sometimes benign - where would you portly men be without the blue pill? - and sometimes, when exhibited by inexpert hands, its compounds are mortal in doses so small they can hardly be conceived.'

'So you know nothing of what is going forward?'

'Brother, how tedious you can be, on occasion. I did hear some cries of "Jolly rogers - jolly rogers - we shall roger them." But in parenthesis, Jack, tell me about this word roger. I have often heard it aboard, but can make out no clear nautical signification.'

'Oh, it is no sea-term. They use it ashore much more than we do - a low cant expression meaning to swive or couple with.'

Stephen considered for a moment and then said, 'So roger joins bugger and that even coarser word; and they are all used in defiance and contempt, as though to an enemy; which seems to show a curious light on the lover's subjacent emotions. Conquest, rape, subjugation: have women a private language of the same nature, I wonder?"