Treason's Harbour (14 page)

Captain Aubrey was therefore by no means sorry when dinner was over and he was led to a small cabin where he found Mr Pocock and Stephen, already deep in the tortuous politics of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. They went through the main heads again for his benefit, and Mr Pocock observed 'In the present delicate state of affairs, with Mehemet Ali doing all he can to win Osman Pasha's confidence, there will be no difficulty about your journey overland; indeed, the official at Tina has shown great good will in assembling a competent number of pack animals, such as camels and asses; and of course your Turkish decoration, your chelengk, will make you seem a person of real importance. A person of even greater importance, that is to say. Yet even so it would be as well to keep out of Ibrahim's way, a froward, turbulent fellow, impatient of control; and of course any encounter with the roving Bedouin is to be avoided ? not that they are likely to attack so large and well-armed a party as yours: for I presume your men will march with their weapons well in evidence.' He then returned to the rise of Mehemet Ali and the fall of the beys, unfortunately backed by the English government; but he had scarcely slaughtered the last Mameluke before Sir Francis himself came in.

'Here are your orders, Captain Aubrey,' he said. 'They are short and to the point: I hate verbiage. Now I do not wish to hurry you away, but the last of the Dromedary's remaining stores will be on the wharf in half an hour, far earlier than was expected. Your first lieutenant, what is his name?'

'Mowett, sir. William Mowett, a very capable, active officer.'

'Aye, Mowett. He set all Surprise's people on work, rigging an extra pair of sheets and clearing the fore-hold. So if you choose to make any tender farewells on shore, now is the time.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Jack, 'but I believe I shall leave my farewells for my return and pull across directly: there is not a moment to lose."

'Quite right, Aubrey, quite right,' said the Admiral. 'And what is more, speed is the essence of attack. Goodbye to you, then, and I hope to see you again within a month or so, trailing clouds of glory and perhaps something more substantial too. Doctor, your humble servant.'

Once more the gig sped across the Grand Harbour, and as it sped Stephen observed, 'I had a very pleasant encounter this morning, on leaving the palace. Do you remember Mr Martin, the Reverend Mr Martin?'

'The one-eyed parson? That is to say, the clergyman who preached so well on the subject of quails in Worcester? Of course I do. A chaplain any first-rate would be proud of: and a great naturalist too, as I recall.'

'Just so. He met me as I was turning into the Strada Reale and carried me to Rizzio's, where we had an excellent dinner - octopodes and squids in all their interesting variety. His ship has been among the Greek islands, and being particularly interested in cephalopods he learnt to dive with the sponge-fishers of Lesina; but although he anointed his person with the best olive-oil, and put oil-saturated wool in his ears, and held a large piece of sponge, also soaked with oil, in his mouth, and clung to a heavy stone to carry him down, and although there were cephalopods in plenty, he found he could not stay on the sea-bed for more than forty-three seconds, which gave him pitifully little time to observe their ways or win their confidence, even if he could have seen them clearly which he could not, by reason of the circumambient water; and even then blood would gush from his ears, nose and mouth, while sometimes he would be hauled up insensible, so as to be obliged to be recovered with spirits of camphor. You may imagine, then, how interested he was, when I told him about my bell.'

'I am sure he was. I should like to see it again myself, some day.'

'So you shall. The bell is aboard the good Dromedary once more, and Mr Martin is there too, contemplating it. I had taken him out to show him its finer points after dinner; and it was there that your message found me."

'What in God's name is that machine doing aboard the Dromedary?' asked Jack.

'Sure I could not burden Captain Dundas with it; and I was not going to leave my valuable bell among those thieves at the dockyard. The master of the Dromedary was all complaisance: he was used to the bell, he said, and it was welcome aboard. And I must confess that if we should have any leisure..."

'Leisure!' cried Jack. 'If we are to be south of Ras Hameda by the full of next moon or before, there will be precious little leisure. Leisure, forsooth. Stretch out, there,' he called to the gig's crew. 'Pull hearty.'

The Dromedary had warped across to the dockyard; she was tied up alongside the wharf; and there was no sign, no sign at all of leisure, upon her decks or between them. Sailors carrying their bags, beds and hammocks ran across the brows like ants and vanished down the fore-hatchway, while up the after-hatchway ran others, those charged with cleaning out the holds, carrying huge bales of filth, bilge-soaked straw, light, bulky packing, and broken sproggins - which they threw overboard, together with improbable amounts of dust and spoilt flour. At the same time water was coming aboard, and barrels of beef, pork and wine and bags of biscuits and bales of slops, with Mr Adams, his steward and Jack-in-the-dust, the steward's assistant, skipping about them in a fine frenzy; while the crew of the transport, the Dromedaries proper, were extraordinarily busy about their own affairs, and the whole fore part of the ship rang with the hammering of the carpenter and his crew.

The diving-bell stood like some archaic idol at the main-hatch, but there was no Mr Martin by it; Stephen walked right round the bell as well as he could for the hurrying crowd, and on his second circuit he came face to face with Edward Calamy, a young gentleman belonging to the Surprise. Mr Calamy was technically a youngster, and in fact he had only been at sea a matter of months, coming aboard the Worcester at Plymouth, a pale, nervous little boy; but no one would have thought so from his present hard-bitten, commanding demeanour and his profusion of nautical terms. For some time past he had assumed a kindly, protective attitude towards Dr Maturin, and now he called out 'There you are, sir. I was looking for you. I have nabbed you a little cabin on the larboard side of the cuddy. Come along out of the way. Watch your step on those roban-staves. Mr Martin is down there; I took him; and so is all your dunnage.'

All Stephen's dunnage did not amount to a great deal, his habits being of the simplest; but it did include a hortus siccus, with specimens of the more remarkable Maltese plants, and the volume of the Philosophical Transactions in which Dr Halley described his experiences at the bottom of the sea. Mr Martin and he were deep in these, sheltered from the din, sheltered from the hurrying, urgent world, when the Dromedary cast off her moorings, loosed her foretopsail, and moved out into the harbour, while Captain Pullings, standing desolate on the quay, waved good-bye to those few friends who were not too busy to notice him; nor had they nearly exhausted the subject of sponges before the Dromedary, now under all plain sail, rounded Point Ricasoli and stood away east-south-east with a fine topgallant breeze; still less that of corals.

'I have of course seen coral in the Indian Ocean and the Great South Sea, vast quantities of it,' said Stephen. 'But mine was only a most superficial view, limited in space and time; snatched away and hurried on I was, and often, often have I regretted my lost opportunities. For a contemplative mind, there can be few greater felicities than walking on a coral reef, with nondescript birds above, nondescript fishes below, and an unimaginable wealth of sea-slugs, plumed worms, molluscs, cephalopods in the nearby depths.'

'I am sure there cannot be a much more blessed state this side of Paradise,' said Martin, clasping his hands. 'But you will have plenty of coral again in the Red Sea, will you not?'

'What makes you say that, my dear sir?'

'Is not the Red Sea your destination? Do I mistake? Many people in Valletta spoke of a confidential expedition to those parts, and when the young gentleman brought me down here out of the press he seemed to take it for granted that Captain Aubrey had been entrusted with the command, just as I took it for granted that you had brought your bell to dive upon the reefs at your leisure. But I beg your pardon if I have been indiscreet.'

'Not at all, at all. To dive in the Red Sea would indejed be the rarest joy, above all at my leisure; but that alas is a word that offends the naval ear; and hardly ever, except when we were virtually cast down on Desolation Island, that blessed plot, have I been allowed to do anything at my own pace, at my ease. There is a restless itch to be busy, a tedious obsessive hurry: waste not a minute, they cry, as though the only right employment for time were rushing forwards, no matter where, so it be farther on.'

'Very true. There is also a passionate and perhaps even a superstitious preoccupation with cleanliness. The very first thing I heard on setting foot aboard a man-of-war was the cry "Sweepers!" and I suppose I must have heard it twenty times a day every day since then, although with the perpetual swabbing and scrubbing there is really nothing for a single broom to do, let alone a dozen. But now, sir, I fear I must take my leave: they say you are to sail by the evening, and already the light is growing dim.'

'Perhaps we might take a turn on deck,' said Stephen. 'There seems to be far less noise and hurry, and I am sure Captain Aubrey would be happy to see you again.'

They made their way along the unfamiliar passages to the companion-way; yet even before they reached the deck Stephen felt uneasy in his mind. The ship was leaning over more than she had a right to do tied up against a quay; and the cry of 'Cast loose your guns' did not suit with any kind of preparation for sailing that he knew. But this uneasiness was nothing to the blank consternation that came over both of them when they slowly rose above the coamings and found nothing but pure blue evening sea around them on every hand, the ship bowling along at six and a half knots, and the sun preparing to set in glory right astern, while all along the deck on either side the seamen were wholly taken up with naval activities, as though the land no longer existed. Captain Aubrey had borrowed the Dromedary's six-pounders and by way of recalling the Surprises to some sense of decency, order, and regularity he was putting them through the great-gun exercise, blazing away in dumb-show at a furious rate. 'House your guns,' he said at last. 'A very pitiful exhibition, Mr Mowett. Two minutes and five seconds with little seventeen-hundredweight cannon is a very pitiful exhibition.'

He turned, and his grim expression instantly lightened as he caught sight of Stephen and Martin. They were still both standing transfixed on the penultimate step of the ladder, which cut them off at the knee, and they were both staring away to leeward with their mouths open, looking like a pair of moonstruck landsmen. 'And, poor fellows, I am afraid they are little better,' he thought. 'Mr Martin, sir,' he said, stepping towards them, 'how happy I am to see you again. How do you do?'

'Heavens, sir,' said Martin, weakly shaking his hand and still gazing about the horizon as though land, or a miracle, might appear. 'It seems as though I have been carried away,as though I did not leave the ship in time.'

'No great harm. I dare say we shall see a Valletta fishing-boat that will carry you back, unless you choose to bear us company for a while. We are bound for the Pelusian mouth of the Nile.' A very shocking battle between the Dromedary's carpenter and Hollar, bosun of the Surprise (both irascible men) broke out at this moment, and Captain Aubrey was obliged to break off. But he invited the chaplain to supper, and at this meal Martin said 'Sir, perhaps you were not speaking seriously when you suggested that I should accompany you; but if you were, allow me to say that I should be very happy to do so. I have a month's leave from my ship, and Captain Bennet was good enough to say that he would have no objection whatsoever were I to prolong it by another month, or two, or even more.' Jack knew that Bennet had accepted a parson only under pressure from the former Commander-in-Chief: it was not that Harry Bennet had anticlerical notions, but he dearly loved female company, and as his ship was often on detached service, he often indulged in it. Yet his respect for the cloth was such that he felt he could not ship a miss and a parson at the same time, and this he found a very grievous restraint. 'I should of course pay my battels, and I could perhaps help Dr Maturin, since he has no assistant at the moment: I am not unacquainted with anatomy."

'With all my heart,' said Jack. 'But I must warn you that we do not mean to linger at Tina. We are to march across a desert filled with serpents of various malignity, as the Doctor puts it...'

'I was only quoting Goldsmith,' said Stephen sleepily: the emotions of yesterday and his short night were overpowering him now, and he murmured 'Sopor, coma, lethargy, carus.'

'... as far as the Red Sea, where we must carry out a mission that is sure to be strenuous and very hot and uncomfortable, and that may well be dangerous too.' As he spoke he saw a glow of delight spread over Martin's face in spite of obvious efforts to maintain a grave and serious countenance. 'Furthermore,' said Jack, 'I must tell you that the service is not designed for those that wish to gather beetles and henbane on some far coral strand and that grow snappish and petulant when desired to mind their duty. That murmur and look dogged,' he said a little louder; but seeing that Stephen would not respond he ended 'Apart from that I should be very happy to have your company. And so I am sure would all your shipmates in the Worcester: we have not forgotten how you laboured in preparing the oratorio - perhaps some evening we may have a chorus or two; there are several of your old pupils aboard.'

Mr Martin said that the serpents, the exertion, heat, discomfort and danger were a small price to pay for beholding a coral reef, even though it might not be lingered on; that he should certainly do his duty without murmuring; and that he was very happy to be among his old shipmates again.

'Now that I come to think of it,' said Jack, 'I was regretting the absence of a chaplain only this morning. The people are grown horribly dissipated, and it occurred to me that...'He had been about to say 'that a thundering Hell-fire sermon might terrify them into good behaviour,' but on recollection it did not seem to him quite the thing to dictate his course to a parson and he went on 'that it would be as well to rig church, so that they might hear some suitable words. Against vice and dissipation, I mean. What now, Killick?'