Desolation Island (37 page)

For the first few days Jack let the Leopards take it easy, mounting no more than an anchor-watch, so that they might take their fill of sleep, which by this time had become almost as important to them as food. Where food itself was concerned, there was no difficulty: fresh meat lay there at hand, for the taking. And taken it was, often in bloody excess, for this was almost virgin land, and the creatures did not fear the men: not quite virgin, however, for a bottle at the foot of the broken studdingsail boom they called the flagstaff contained a paper stating that the brig General Washington of Nantucket, Wm Hyde master, had been there, and that if Reuben should come in for cabbages, he was to tell Martha that all was well, and that Wm reckoned he might be home before the fall, with a tidy lading.

After this period of rest, with all hands recovered, fat and greasy from their four meat-meals a day, Jack set them to work, and the stores piled up on Flagstaff Beach: neatly squared arrays, covered with sailcloth, heaps so high and wide that long before even half the after hold was cleared it seemed impossible that any single ship should have contained so much. The work was steady, even quite severe upon occasion, hut the summer days were long and the men had plenty of time to wander off, murdering sea-elephants, seals, albatrosses, giant petrels, small petrels, Cape pigeons, terns, any of the tame creatures that lay or nested in their path. Stephen was perfectly aware that these creatures too lived by incessant carnage, that the skuas wreaked perpetual havoc among eggs and chicks of every kind, that the sea-leopards ate anything warm-blooded they could catch, and that none of the birds showed the smallest mercy to a fish; but at least they respected a certain established hierarchy in their killing, whereas the sailors respected none, slaughtering indiscriminately. He reasoned with them; they listened gravely and carried straight on, only keeping somewhat more out of sight, rambling farther afield, up to the great albatross colonies on the higher slopes or the seal rookeries in the neighbouring cove. He knew that his words did not carry full conviction, since he himself spent all the daylit hours collecting specimens of everything from the sea-elephant to the very small wingless flies and the fresh-water tardigrades, and much of the night dissecting them or ranging eggs, bones and plants. He knew that some of the killing had real point, and that the barrels of penguins, young albatrosses, and seal-flesh could be justified; but it sickened him, and after some weeks he withdrew to an island in the bay, an island forbidden to all but the Leopard's surgeon.

They made him a little canvas boat, and it was thought that if he were obliged to wear two sea-elephant's bladders, blown up and attached to his person, he could not come to harm in such a placid sea; but after an unfortunate experience in which he became involved in his umbrella and it was found that the bladders buoyed up his meagre hams alone, so that only the presence of Babbington's Newfoundland preserved him, he was forbidden to go unaccompanied.

The duty of going with him generally fell to Herapath, who was of little more use in the rummaging of a hold than Stephen himself. The common world of papers and intelligence, of people walking about the paved streets of towns, was so very far away, so nearly dream-like, that his conduct towards Dr Maturin seemed to wound him less; and so much close-packed experience lay between his copying of the poisoned documents and the antarctic present that it might have occurred in years gone by. Their former intimacy revived to some extent, and although Herapath loathed walking knee-deep in the rank sodden grass that covered much of the lower ground, and although he did not greatly care whether the huge nesting fowl upon which they pored was a royal or a wandering albatross, he did not dislike these expeditions so long as he was not too often called upon to admire a pool of algae or an infant blue-eyed shag. He had built a shelter by the water's edge, and there he sat with an angle for hours on end while Stephen walked about. It was almost always too wet to read or write, but he was a contemplative young man, and the sight of his cork bobbing away out there allowed his mind to drift far away, yet with a local attachment; and sometimes he would take a fish. When the rain was too heavy even for Dr Maturin they would sit there together, talking of Chinese poetry, or, more often, of Louisa Wogan, who at present lived on shore, and who could sometimes be seen in the distance, a straight, fur-clad figure, walking with Mrs Boswell's baby in the rare gleams of sun; for now the women's imprisonment was merely nominal.

'This is Paradise,' said Stephen as they landed.

'A little damp for Paradise, perhaps,' suggested Herapath.

'The terrestrial Paradise was no howling desiccated waste of sand, no arid desert,' said Stephen. 'Indeed, Mandeville particularly mentions its mossy walls, a sure proof of abundant moisture. I have already found fifty-three kinds of moss on this island alone; and no doubt there are more.' He gazed about the black streaming crags, the slopes between them covered with coarse matted grass, yellow viscous cabbages, many of them in a state of slow decay, or raw spewy earth, the dung of seabirds everywhere, and the whole enveloped in drifting swatches of mist or rain. 'This is very like the north-western parts of Ireland, but without the men: it reminds me of a promontory in the County Mayo where first I beheld the phalarope.. Shall we visit the giant petrels first, or should you prefer the terns?'

'To tell the truth, sir, I believe I had rather sit in the shelter for a while. The cabbage seems to have turned my inward parts to water.'

'Nonsense,' said Stephen, 'it is the most wholesome cabbage I have ever come across in the whole of my career. I hope, Mr Herapath, that you are not going to join in the silly weak womanish unphilosophical mewling and puling about the cabbage. So it is a little yellow in certain lights, so it is a little sharp, so it smells a little strange: so much the better, say I. At least that will stop the insensate Phaeacian hogs from abusing it, as they abuse the brute creation, stuffing themselves with flesh until what little brain they have is drowned in fat. A virtuous esculent! Even its boldest detractors, ready to make the most hellish declarations and to swear through a nine-inch plank that the cabbage makes them fart and rumble, cannot deny that it cured their purpurae. Let them rumble till the heavens shake and resound again; let them fart fire and brimstone, the Gomorrhans, I will not have a single case of scurvy on my hands, the sea-surgeon's shame, while there is a cabbage to be culled.'

'No, sir,' said Herapath. He could not but agree: he had seen the cure. The Leopard's crew, having killed a seaelephant early in their stay, ate its enormous liver by way of a change; they came out in dull blue, clearly-defined blotches, about two inches across. Stephen instantly prescribed the cabbage that he had found and that he had tried upon himself and the loblolly-boy, an unattractive plant with a startling smell. It did away with the blotches: as Jack observed, 'it made the Leopards change their spots'

- the first really full-hearted laugh, eyes vanishing in a face scarlet with mirth, that he had uttered in the last five thousand miles. And since the ship was short of lime-juice, and since the practice was sound even if the ships had been swimming in anti-scorbutics, Stephen insisted upon the cabbage's being mixed with dinner every day: as to its alleged laxative properties, he had not perceived any inconvenience; and if they had an existence outside a hypochondriacal high-fed cosseted fancy, it was all to the good. Men, said he, looking sharply at his Captain, men who would breakfast on two albatross eggs, weighing close on a purser's pound apiece, should be purged of their gross humours daily.

'No, sir,' said Herapath again. 'But if you will forgive me, I am a little weary, and should like to fish awhile. You will recall that last time, when the giant petrel covered me with oil, you said I might be excused.'

'It was only that you startled the poor bird by falling down, and by falling down, as you must allow me to observe, in a singularly abrupt and awkward fashion, Mr Herapath.'

'The ground was wet, and deep in the excrement of seals.'

'Petrels cannot abide the least gaucherie,' said Stephen. But it was true that Herapath was an unlucky wight; many of the petrels had shot their evil-smelling stomach-oil at him, quite unprovoked, whereas they never resented Stephen; and an albatross had given him a cruel nip, sheering quite through his inoffensive sleeve. 'Well,' he said, 'you shall do as you please. Let us share out the sandwiches, for I mean to stay until sunset.'

Stephen's Paradise was quite large, an hour's walk from the inner to the outer side, and unlike most of the islands, which were broken masses of rock, rising sheer, it possessed little in the way of cliffs except for two on the seaward side, being for the most part a smooth dome. Yet although it had a fine and park-like extent of many hundred acres, it was scarcely big enough for all the creatures that hurried to it for the breeding season, coming in from the limitless southern ocean, an ocean almost devoid of land, where they roamed for the rest of the year. The few resident birds, the curious teal, the blue-eyed shag, perhaps the sheathbill, could scarcely find room to turn, and Stephen himself had to walk very carefully not to step on eggs or plunge into the burrows made by the countless whale-birds. The top of the dome was occupied by the great albatrosses, and here it was easier to walk; the grass was not so long, and the nests were well spaced out. He knew many of the members of the colony quite well, having seen them in their courting, building, and mating, and now he recognized several as they walked about visiting other nests - the place was something like a common with white geese upon it, but gigantic geese, coming and going on wings like those of the genii in the Arabian tale, or walking, or sitting on their hollowed mounds. Most, indeed, were sitting now - few nests without an egg - and he made his way through the throng to the first nest in which he had seen a clutch, if a single egg could be called a clutch. The sitting bird was fast asleep, with its head along its back; it was so used to him that it only opened one eye and grunted when he pushed gently into its breast to find whether the egg were chipping yet. It was not, and he sat on a vacant nest close by to gaze about. A great rush of air - a distinct warmth and the smell of fishy bird, and the albatross's mate landed by him, staggering on the ground as it folded its enormous wings -and waddled over to address soft mutterings to its spouse and nibble her outstretched neck. At his feet a minute dull black petrel scrambled awkwardly among the tussocks, and at head-height the piratical skuas planed, glaring from side to side for an unguarded prey. The rain had stopped: he laid his sealskin aside - he wore it as farm-hands wear a sack, over his head and shoulders - brought out his lunch, swivelled round upon his nest, and surveyed the part of the island he had traversed. On the right hand, down by the sea, the sea-elephants, each weighing several tons. Most of them were kind or at least indifferent, but there was one old twenty-foot bull with a remarkable collection of wives that still would not suffer him to come close to, although they had been acquainted for such a while: it would still rear up and writhe its person, gibbering, gnashing its teeth, blowing out its inflatable nose, and even roaring aloud. 'Did he but know,' reflected Stephen, 'could he but imagine the present mildness of my carnal desires with regard to Mrs Wogan, he would not fear for his harem.' Then came the little fur-seals with their charming pups: he knew them well. Still farther to the left, and straggling high up the slope, the enormous penguin rookeries, myriads upon myriads of birds. And almost beyond his view, the place where sea-leopards bred: yet although in one sea-leopard's stomach he had found eleven adult penguins and one small seal, by land they were on civil terms with their prey: indeed, all the various creatures shuffled and walked about in mingled crowds, abiding by some social contract that dissolved in the sea. Another rush of wings, a screech, and the biscuit with a slice of seal that he had placed upon a tuft, vanished, born off by a skua. 'Oh the thief,' he said, 'the black anarchist,' but in fact he had already had enough, and he gazed on without the least vexation.

There, between him and the little settlement, lay the ship, the very awkward-looking ship: once the bay had been surrounded in every part, the Leopard had been warped across until she lay so close to a sheer-to rock that she could be partially heaved down. They had found the leak, a most terrible long gash, almost a death-wound, and it had long since been dealt with: now the great trouble was the rudder, and she lay there with staging about her stern, absurdly down in front and up behind so that they might struggle the more effectively with her sternpost, gudgeons, pintles, and the like.

And now the jolly-boat swam into his field of vision, rowed by Bonden, with Jack and the little Forshaw jammed into the stern-sheets, it stopped at a given buoy. Jack peered at various points with his sextant, calling out figures that the midshipman wrote down in his book: he was obviously carrying on with his survey, as he did whenever the tide was unsuitable for work on the Leopard's hull. Stephen walked to the edge of the declivity from which the albatrosses commonly launched themselves, and here, as six of the enormous birds plunged into the breeze on either side and even over him, he called out, 'Hola.'

Jack turned, saw him, and waved: the boat pulled in. it disappeared under the land and presently Jack came toiling up the slope. It was not his leg that made him toil and puff, for the numbness had passed off some time ago, but rather his bulk. While he had only been able to stump for a hundred yards or so he had nevertheless eaten voraciously; and greed growing with its indulgence, he was now walking up the hill for his breakfast eggs.

'It seems almost sacrilegious,' said Stephen, as Jack held them out. 'When I think of how I prized mine, perhaps the only specimen in the three kingdoms, how I preserved it from the slightest shock in jeweller's cotton, the idea of deliberately breaking one..

'You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs,' said Jack quickly, before the chance should be lost for ever. 'Ha, ha, Stephen, what do you say to that?'