Desolation Island (5 page)

'And silver-mining.'

'That is entirely different,' cried Jack. 'As I keep telling Sophie, the Lowthers did not have to understand coal when it was found on their land: all they had to do was to listen to experts, see that proper measures were taken, and then set up a coach and six, become the richest family in the north, with God knows how many members in Parliament and one of them now a lord of the Admiralty at this very minute - but no, she cannot abide poor Kimber, though he is a very civil, obliging little man: calls him a projector. We went to the play last time we were in town, and there was a fellow there, on the stage, that said he could not tell how it was, but every time he and his wife disagreed, it so happened that she was invariably in the wrong: and although everybody simpered and clapped, I thought he put it very well, and I whispered "Coal" in Sophie's ear; but she was laughing so hearty she did not catch it.' He sighed: and then, in a different tone, he said, 'Lord, Stephen, how Arcturus blazes! The orange star up there. We shall have such a blow from the south-west tomorrow, or I'm a Dutchman: still, 'tis an ill wind that spoils the broth, you know.'

Their broth was waiting for them at the cottage, with Sophie, pink and sleepy, the very type of dutiful wife, to ladle it out for them. While Stephen was supping his, Jack left the room and came back with a beautiful model of a ship. 'There,' he said, 'that's Moses Jenkins' work, the Dockyard sculptor. Now that's what I call art - Pheidias ain't in the running. You recognize her, of course?'

Stephen bent low to see the ship as she would appear from the waterline. The figurehead, a lady in a flowing gown, mysteriously opening a covered dish, or perhaps playing cymbals, was vaguely familiar, but he could not put a name to her until his eye caught a bulbous yellow spotted dog in the sweep of the head just behind. 'The horrible old - that is to say, the Leopard,' he said.

'Exactly so,' said Jack, with an affectionate, approving look. 'I was afraid her altered stern-transom might have thrown you out, but you smoked her right away. The new-built Leopard. Here is her diagonal bracing, do you see? Roberts's iron-plate knees. Everything abaft the clamps of the quarterdeck refashioned. The only thing I do not quite care for is the new-fangled stern-post. it is all exactly to scale, and her measurements are, gundeck one hundred and forty-six foot five inches, keel one hundred and twenty foot and three-quarters of an inch, beam forty foot eight, and tonnage by our measurement, one thousand and fifty-six. The very thing for a really distant voyage! She only draws fifteen foot eight abaft, light, yet she has seventeen foot six depth of hold! You remember how we cried out for tenpenny nails in the dear old Surprise? Leopard's maw will be stuffed with tenpenny nails, and with all kinds of other stores too, such quantities of 'em. And she has plenty of teeth, as you see: twenty-two twenty-four-pounders on the lower deck, twenty-two twelve-pounders on the upper deck, a couple of six-pounders on her forecastle, and four five-pounders on the quarterdeck; and I shall take my brass nines as stern-chasers. A broadside weight of metal of four hundred and forty-eight pound, more than enough to blow any Dutch or French frigate out of the water: for they have no ship of the line in the Spice Islands, so far away.'

'The Spice Islands,' murmured Stephen; and then, feeling that something more was called for, 'What would her complement be, now?'

'Three hundred and forty-three. Four lieutenants, three Marine officers, ten midshipmen: and even the surgeon has two mates, Stephen. No want of company, nor no want of room. And another charming thing about this commission is that at last I have time to prepare for it, and have people after my own heart. Tom Pullings is to be my first lieutenant, Babbington is on his way back from the West Indies, and I hope to pick up Mowett at the Cape. You will see Pullings on Thursday, along with Heywood.

And Tom will be as eager as we arc to hear about those waters and about Bligh, because obviously he takes over if- l mean, he would be in command if I were on shore.'

Thursday brought Mr Pullings, and in his candid pleasure at seeing Jack and Stephen again he seemed scarcely to have changed from the long-legged, long. armed, shy, friendly, tubular youth Stephen had first met as a midshipman so many years ago; but in fact he was a man of far greater weight, more burly both in character and person. It was apparent, from his competent handling of young George, produced for his inspection, and from his behaviour to Captain Heywood, that he was now in the full tide of his life, and swimming well. his behaviour was of course perfectly deferential, but it was that of a man who had seen a great deal of service, and who thoroughly understood his profession.

Yet in spite of their eagerness, they learnt little about Bligh. 'He did not wish to say anything against Captain Bligh - a capital navigator - very touchy himself, but had no notion of how he offended others - would give you the lie in front of all hands one day and invite you to dinner the next - you never knew where you were with him - led Christian, the master's mate, a sad life of it, yet probably liked him in his own strange way - never knew where he was with Bounty's people - no idea at all - was amazed when they turned on him - an odd, whimsical man: had gone to great pains to teach Heywood how to work his lunar observations, yet had sworn his life away with a most inveterate malice - had also brought his carpenter to court-martial for insolence, and that after they had survived the voyage in the launch together - four thousand miles in an open boat, and you bring a man to trial at Spithead!'

A silence followed this, broken only by the cracking of nuts. Heywood had been a boy at the time: waking from a deep sleep, he found the ship in the hands of armed, angry, determined mutineers, the captain a prisoner, the launch going over the side; he hesitated, lost his head, and went below. It was not very criminal, but it was not very heroic either: he did not like to dwell upon it.

Jack, aware of his feelings, sent the bottle round; and after some time Stephen asked Captain Heywood what he could tell him about the birds of Tahiti. Precious little, it appeared: there were parrots of different sorts, he recalled, and some doves, and gulls 'of the usual kind'.

Stephen lapsed into a reverie while they discussed the Leopard's little ways, and he did not emerge from it until Heywood cried, 'Edwards! There's a man I don't mind telling you my opinion of. He was a blackguard, and no seaman neither; and I hope he rots in hell.' Captain Edwards had commanded the Pandora, which was sent to capture the mutineers, and which found those who had remained on Tahiti. Heywood looked back to the boy he had been, putting off from the shore as soon as the ship was seen, delighted, and sure of a welcome: he emptied his glass, and with bitter resentment he said, 'That damned villain of a man put us in irons, built a thing he called Pandora's Box on the quarterdeck, four yards by six, and crammed us into it, fourteen men, innocent and guilty all together - kept us in it four months and more while he looked for Christian and the others - never found them, of course, the lubber - in irons all the time, never allowed out, even to go to the head. And we were still in the box and still in irons when the infernal bugger ran his ship on to a reef at the entrance to the Endeavour Straits. And what do you think he did for us when she went down? Nothing whatsoever. Never had our irons taken off, never unlocked the box, though it was hours before she settled. If the ship's corporal had not tossed the keys through the scuttle at the last moment, we must all have been drowned: as it was, four men were trodden under and smothered in the wicked scuffle - water up to our necks

Then, although the wretched fellow had four boats out, he had not the wit to provision them: a little biscuit and two or three beakers of water were all we had until we reached the Dutchmen at Coupang, a thousand miles away and more: not that he would ever have found Coupang, either, but for the master. The soundrel. If it were not uncharitable, I should drink to his damnation for ever and a day.' Heywood drank, in any case, but silently; and then, his mood changing abruptly, he told them about the East Indian waters, the wonders of Timor, Ceram, and the tame cassowaries stalking among the bales of spice, the astonishing butterflies of Celebes, the Java rhinoceros, the torrid girls of Surabaya, the tides in the Allus Strait. It was a fascinating account, and in spite of messages from the drawing-room, where the coffee was growing cold, they would have listened for ever; but while he was speaking of the pilgrim dhows bound for Arabia, Heywood's voice faltered. He repeated himself once or twice, looking anxiously from side to side, took a good hold on the table and rose to his feet, where he stood swaying, speechless, until Killick and Pullings led him out.

'It would be the voyage of the world,' said Stephen. 'How I wish I could make it, alas.'

'Oh, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'I had counted on you.'

'You know something of my affairs, Jack: I am not my own master, and I am afraid that when I return from London - for I must go up on Tuesday, I find - I shall have to decline. It is scarcely possible at all. But at least I can promise you will have an excellent surgeon. I know a very able young man, a brilliant operator, a profound naturalist - an authority on corals - who would give his eye-teeth to go with you.'

The Mr Deering, to whom you sent all our Rodriguez coral?'

'No. John Deering was the man I spoke of this afternoon. He died under my knife.'

When his post-chaise reached the outskirts of Petersfield, Stephen Maturin opened his bag and drew out a square bottle: he looked at it with an anxious longing, but reflecting that in spite of his present craving, by his own rules the crisis itself was to be faced without allies of any kind, he lowered the glass and flung it out of the window.

The bottle struck a stone rather than the grassy bank, exploding like a small grenade and covering the road with tincture of laudanum: the post-boy turned at the sound, but meeting his passenger's pale eyes, fixed upon him in a cold, inimical stare, he feigned interest in a passing tilbury, calling out to its driver 'that the knacker's yard was only a quarter of a mile along the road, first turning on the left, if he wanted to get rid of his cattle'. At Godalming, however, where the horses were changed, he told his colleague to look out for the cove in the shay: a rum cove that might have a fit on you, or throw up quantities of blood, like the gent at Kingston; and then who would have to clean up the mess? The new post-boy said in that case he would certainly keep an eye on the party; no move should escape him. Yet as they drove along it came to the post-boy that all the vigilance in the world could not prevent the gentleman from throwing up quantities of blood, if so inclined; and he was pleased when Stephen bade him stop at an apothecary's shop in Guildford - the gentleman was no doubt laying in some physic that would set him up for the rest of the journey.

In fact the gentleman and the apothecary were searching the shelves for a jar with a neck wide enough to admit the hands that Stephen carried in his handkerchief: it was found at last, filled, and topped up with the best rectified spirits of wine; and then Stephen said, 'While I am here, I might as well take a pint of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum.' This bottle he slipped into his greatcoat pocket, carrying the jar naked back to the chaise, so that all the post-boy saw was the grey hands with their bluish nails, brilliantly clear in the fine new spirits. He mounted without a word, and his emotion communicating itself to the horses, they flew along the London Road, through Ripley and Kingston, across Putney Heath, through the Vauxhall turnpike, across London Bridge and so to an inn called the Grapes in the liberty of the Savoy, where Stephen always kept a room, at such a pace that the landlady cried out, 'Oh, Doctor, I never looked for you this hour and more. Your supper is not even put down to the fire! Will you take a bowl of soup, sir, to stay you after your journey? A nice bowl of soup, and then the veal the moment it is enough?'

'No, Mrs Broad,' said Stephen. 'I shall just shift my clothes, and then I must go out again. Lucy, my dear, be so good as to take the small little bag upstairs: I shall carry the jar. Post-boy, here is for your trouble.'

The Grapes were used to Dr Maturin and his ways: one more jar was neither here nor there - indeed it was rather welcome than not, a hanged man's thumb being one of the luckiest things a house can hold, ten times luckier than the rope itself; and in this case there were two of them. The jar, then, caused no surprise; but Stephen's reappearance in a fashionable bottle-green coat and powdered hair left them speechless. They looked at him shyly, staring, yet not wishing to stare: he was perfectly unconscious of their gaze, however, and stepped into his hackney-coach without a word.

'You would not say he was the same gentleman,' said Mrs Broad.

'Perhaps he is going to a wedding,' said Lucy, clutching her bosom. 'One of them weddings by licence, in a drawing-room.'

'No doubt there is a lady in the case,' said Mrs Broad. 'Who ever saw such a dusty gentleman come out so fine, without there was a lady in the case? Still, I wish I had taken the price-ticket off his cravat. But I did not dare: no, not even after all these years.'

Stephen told the man to set him down in the Haymarket, saying he would walk the rest of the way. He had in fact the best part of an hour to spare, so he walked slowly through St James's market in the general direction of Hyde Park Corner and took half a dozen turns round St James's Square. At this end of the town his clothes excited no attention, except from the women who shared the streets with him, a great number of them, in arcades, shop doorways, and porticoes, some of them fierce, angry, scornful creatures with their bosoms laid out, the caterers to special tastes, others so young - mere slips - that it was a wonder they should find customers, even in so huge a city. One assured him she would give him a good breakfast, with sausages, if he came with her; and although he civilly declined her offer on the grounds that be was going to see his sweetheart, the idea of food so spurred his mind that he walked into one of the alleys haunted by footmen behind St James's Street and bought a mutton-pie of an old lady with a glowing brazier, to eat in his hand as he walked. He moved on, carrying it, until he reached Almack's, where they were giving a ball: here he paused in the little crowd that was watching the carriages arrive. He took a bite or two, but his appetite, a purely theoretical appetite, was gone. He offered the pie to a tall black dog that belonged to a neighbouring club and that was watching by his side: the dog sniffed it, looked up into his face with an embarrassed air, licked its lips, and turned away. A dwarfish boy said, 'I'll eat it for you, governor, if you like.'