Desolation Island (9 page)

'Alas, my dear,' said Stephen, sighing, 'even if he did, which I must beg leave to doubt, in this matter intelligence is neither here nor there. Jack is no more of a fighting man than' - he was on the point of saying 'than I ', but having a regard for truth when he was speaking to Sophie he said, 'than your parson here. He has too much sense. But since men have agreed, this past age and more, to exclude from their society those who refuse a challenge, his views have nothing to do with it. His hands are tied. Custom is everything, above all in the Army and the Navy. If he were to refuse, that would be the end of his career; and he could never live in comfort with himself.'

'So to live comfortably, he must let himself be killed.

Oh, what a world you men have made of it, Stephen,' she said, groping for her handkerchief.

'Sophie, treasure, you are being womanish; you are being a blockhead. You will allow yourself to weep presently, at this foolish rate of going on. You are to consider, that very few reencounters result in so much as a scratch, if that. No, no: a great many of them are made up by a trifling redefinition of the words exchanged, or so managed by the seconds that they end with a few passes in the empty air, or a pistol barely charged at all. Yet still, I do think that Jack should be out of the way. I do think that he should go aboard this Leopard, sail off to the far side of the world, and stay there for a considerable time.'

'Do you, Stephen?' said Sophie, eagerly searching his face.

'I do so. He is behaving as I have seen so many sailors behave when they are ashore with a pocket full of guineas; and presently he too will be on his scuppers, as we say in the Navy. Running-horses, cards, building, and even God forbid silver-mining. All that lacks is a navigation-canal at ten thousand pound a mile, and the perpetual motion.'

'Oh, how glad I am that you have said this,' cried Sophie. 'I have been longing and longing to open my mind to you, but how can a woman possibly say anything about her husband's conduct, even to his best friend? But now you have spoken, I may reply, may I not, without being disloyal? I am not disloyal, Stephen, not in my least, most secret thought, but it breaks my heart to see him flinging his fortune to the winds, earned so hard, with such dreadful wounds - to see his dear open confiding trustful nature imposed upon by vulgar card-sharpers and horse-racing men and projectors - it is like deceiving a child. And I hope it is not mercenary or interested in me when I say I must think of my babies. The girls have their portions, but how long they will last I cannot tell; and as for George... One thing that Mama did teach me was keeping accounts, and when we were poor I kept them to the farthing, so proud and happy when we could round the quarter clear of debt. Now it is very hard to see plain, with so many vast payments in and out and with so many strange gaps, but at least I do know that there is much, much more out than in, and it cannot go on. I am quite terrified, sometimes. And sometimes,' she added in a low voice, 'I have an even more terrifying thought: that he is not really happy on shore, and that he plunges into one wild extravagant scheme after another to escape from a dull life in the country; and from a dull wife too, perhaps. I do so want him to be happy. I have tried to learn astronomy, like that Miss Herschel he is always talking about, and who treats me as though I were a child; but it is no use - I still cannot understand why Venus changes shape.'

'These are mere whimsies, my dear, vapours, megrims,' said Stephen, darting a covert glance at her, 'and I see you must be let an ounce or two of blood. But for the rest, I believe you are right: Jack must go away, grow used to himself as a man of means, and learn to swim on an even keel when he is ashore again.'

There was no hint of unhappiness in the voice that came booming along the passage as Jack shepherded his flushed and vinous guests through the builders' ladders towards the drawing-room; but there was a touch of petulance and even doggedness to be heard some hours later when, pulling his nightcap firmly over his ears and tying the tapes, he replied, 'Sweetheart, nothing on earth will induce me to accept the Leopard on those terms, so you might as well save your breath to cool your porridge.'

'What porridge?'

'Why, porridge - burgoo. It is what people say, when they mean to give you a hint that it is no use carping on the same string. Besides, there is a parcel of women to be sent into her, and you know very well that I have always abhorred women. Women aboard, that is to say. They cause nothing but trouble and strife. Sophie, do you mean to blow out the candle? Moths are coming in.'

'I am sure you are right, my dear, and I shall never for a moment presume to set my opinion against yours, above all in anything to do with the service.' Sophie was well acquainted with her husband's power of going instantly to sleep and of staying asleep whatever the circumstances, and at this point, taking particular care of the carpet, she flung down the candlestick, sconce, and extinguisher. Jack leapt out of bed, put all to rights, and she continued, 'But there is just one thing that I must say, because with all this hurry and unpleasantness, and the Fencibles, and the builders, you may not have seen it quite as I do. There is Stephen to be considered, and his sad disappointment.'

'But Stephen cried off in the first place. Heart-broken, said he, but he almost certainly could not come: and never a word has he said since he returned.'

'Heart-broken he is, I am very sure: he does not say so, but it is as clear as the day. that Diana has wounded him again. You had but to look at his poor face when he came back from town. My dear, we owe Stephen a great deal. A voyage to Botany Bay would do him all the good in the world. The peace and the quiet and all those new creatures to keep his mind from dwelling on her. Do but imagine him brooding for months and months in some horrid lodgings, until the Ajax is launched - he would mope away, and eat himself up with misery.'

'Lord, Sophie, perhaps there may be something in what you say. I was so taken up with this damned business of Kimber and the Leopard and my letter to the Admiralty that I hardly considered - of course, I saw he looked hipped, and I supposed she had played him some vile trick. But he never gave me so much as a hint of it; he never said, "My affairs don't run as smooth as I could wish, in a certain quarter, so I will go with you in the Leopard", or "Jack, I could do with a change of climate, I could do with a tropical climate". I should have smoked that instantly.'

'Stephen is far too delicate. Once he had seen that you had changed your mind about the ship, he would never mention his own concerns. But if you had heard him speak of wombats - oh, just in passing, and not with any sense of ill-usage - it would have brought tears to your eyes. Oh, Jack, he is so very low.'

The north-westerly gale had built up a wicked sea in the Bay of Biscay, and for two nights and a day the Leopard had been lying to under a close-reefed maintopsail and no more, her topgallant masts struck long since and her foretopsail yard on deck, her head to the north. Every time a tall sea struck her larboard bow, its white head racing towards her in the pitch-black night, solid water poured over her waist, tearing at the double-lashed boats and spars and forcing her head off to the north-north-east; but every time she came up again to within four points of the wind, the water pouring from her scuppers. She laboured, she wallowed heavy - and as every seaman knew, the ironbound coast of Spain was no great way off in the leeward darkness - black reefs, black cliffs, and the huge waves breaking to an enormous height upon them. Just how far off , no one could tell, for no observation had been possible in this low racing murk for three days past; but they felt the loom of the land, and many an anxious eye peered south.

She had had a rough time of it, rough even for the Bay; she had been tossed and bucketed about like a skiff, particularly in the early part of the blow, when the north-wester came shrieking across the western swell, cutting up a steep, confused, tumbling cross-sea that heaved her in all directions until she groaned again, and her working brought so much water through her sides that the pumps had been going watch and watch: a good sea-boat, a weatherly ship, always attentive to her helm; yet even her commander could not maintain that she was a dry one.

But her trials were coming to an end: the howl of the wind in her rigging had dropped half an octave, losing the hysterical edge of malignance, and there were a few breaks in the cloud. Captain Audrey had been standing in streaming oilskins under the break of the poop these twelve hours past, learning the ways of his new charge; and at this point he held his sextant under his arm. The sextant was already set to something near the position of Antares, in the hope of a fleeting glimpse through the rifts: and an hour after the first break the noble star appeared, racing madly northwards through a long thin gap, showing just long enough for him to fix it and bring it down to the horizon. To be sure, his horizon was very far from perfect, more closely resembling a mountain range than an ideal line, but even so the reading was better than he had hoped - the Leopard still had sea-room in plenty. He returned to the wheel, the figures turning smoothly in his mind, checked and rechecked with the same satisfying result. Then, having stepped to the lee-rail, there to throw up the aged Bath bun and the glass of Marsala that he had just swallowed, committing them to the sea with long-accustomed ease, he addressed the officer of the watch:

'Mr Babbington,' he said, 'I believe you may bear up. She will wear foretopmast- and main-staysails. Course southwest a half west.' As he spoke he saw the quartermaster's hairy face move into the glow of the binnacle-light as he stared at the half-hour glass: the last grains of sand ran out, the quartermaster murmured, 'Shove off, Bill', and a tarpaulined figure, bent low against the driving rain and spray, hurried forward, holding tight to a lifeline stretched fore and aft, to strike seven bells in the middle watch - half past three in the morning. Babbington reached for his speaking-trumpet to call all hands to wear ship. 'Stay,' said Jack. 'Half an hour will make no odds. Wear her at eight bells - there is no point in turning the larbowlines up.'

He was strongly tempted to stay until the change in the watch, to see the manoeuvre carried out: but he had a thoroughly competent lieutenant in Babbington, a young

man he had formed himself, and his remaining on deck would show a want of confidence, would diminish Babbington's authority, He stayed another ten minutes and then went below, hanging his oilskin over a tub and wiping the mixture of salt sea and rain-water from his face with a towel placed there for that purpose: in the sleeping-cabin a very cross Killick, torn from the arms of his delight after little more than a week, was busy reslinging the cot, which a leak overhead had soaked through and through. 'Those bleeding caulkers at the Yard,' he muttered, 'don't know their fucking business... I'd caulk 'em... oh, I'd caulk 'em, and with a red-hot caulking iron in their... 'The fancy pleased him; his face grew less surly; and with something approaching amenity he said aloud, 'There you are, sir: you can turn in now. Which you ain't dried your hair.' The last severely; and in fact Jack's hair was hanging in long yellow streamers down his back. Killick wrung it out like a cloth, remarked that it worn't so thick nor it was once upon a day, whipped it into a tight plait, and so took his leave.

Ordinarily Jack would have gone straight to sleep with an equal lack of ceremony, like an extinguished candle, but now from his waving cot he kept his eye on the tell-tale compass overhead. He had not been staring for long before a deeper thunder joined the roaring of the storm, the crash of the seas on the Leopard's side, and the song of the innumerable taut ropes and lines that communicated their general voice to her hull, where, resounding, it took on a deeper note: this was the rush of the larboard watch, racing through the after hatchway - the fore and main were battened down to take up their duties after four hours' sleep. Almost at once the card began to turn against the lubber's point as the Leopard fell off: north-north-east, north-east by north, north-east, then faster to south of east, where the wind's voice almost died away, and round slower and slower to south-west and south-west and a half west, where it steadied. The Leopard had worn: she was on the starboard tack, flanking across the seas with a fine lively corkscrew motion. Jack's eyes closed: his mouth opened, and from it (for he was lying on his back, with no wife to pinch or turn him round) came a deep, rasping, guttural snore of prodigious volume.

The screeching, hallooing, piping, and running about on the poop a few feet from the sleeper's head never disturbed him for a moment; his face remained blankly unconscious, though sometimes a smile crossed it, and once, in a dream, he laughed; yet some areas of the sailor's mind was still at work, for at two bells in the forenoon watch the waking Captain Aubrey was aware that the sea had steadily diminished throughout the remainder of the night, that the wind had hauled southwards, and that the Leopard was making a comfortable five knots. 'This coffee has been heated up. Boiled,' he said, looking at his purplish brew. Killick's face assumed a mean, pinched expression, and the thought 'If people lay in their cots till all hours while others is toiling and moiling, they gets what they deserve' very nearly found expression; but in fact the coffee had been boiled, a crime not far short of hanging at this time of the Captain's day, and Killick contented himself with a disobliging sniff and the words, 'There's another pot coming up.'

'Where is the Doctor? And take your thumb out of the butter.'

'At work since six bells in the morning watch, your honour,' said Killick, with intent; and in a very low voice, 'It worn't in it: nowhere near.'

'Then jump forward and tell him there is some vile boiled coffee, if he can bear it. And my compliments to Mr Pullings: I should be happy to see him.'

'Good morning, Tom,' he cried, as his first lieutenant appeared. 'Sit down and take a cup. You look as though you could do with it.'