H.M.S. Surprise (16 page)

'We have a short way with mutineers, sir. We hanged all we could lay our hands on; ran 'em up the yardarm directly, with the "Rogue's March" playing. An ugly business, however,' he added; he had known the infamous Captain Pigot, the cause of the mutiny, and he had known several of the decent men who had been goaded into it. An odious memory. 'Now, sir, if you will forgive me, I believe I must go on deck, to see what Dr Maturin has brought us.'

'Dr Maturin is returning? I rejoice to hear it. I will come with you, if I may. I have a great esteem for Dr Maturin: a most valuable, ingenious gentleman; I have no objection to a little originality - my friends often quiz me for it myself. May I beg you to give me your arm?'

Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, and perjured. He had voluntarily sworn to have no truck with vampires, and there, attached to his bosom, spread over it and enfolded by one arm, was a greenish hairy thing, like a mat - a loathsome great vampire of the most poisonous kind, no doubt. 'I should never have believed it of him:

his sacred oath in the morning watch and now he stuffs the ship with vampires; and God knows what is in that bag. No doubt he was tempted, but surely he might blush for his fall?'

No blush; nothing but a look of idiot delight as he came slowly up the side, hampered by his burden and comforting it in Portuguese as he came.

'I am happy to see that you were so successful, Dr Maturin,' he said, looking down into the launch and the canoes, loaded with glowing heaps of oranges and shaddocks, red meat, iguanas, bananas, greenstuff. 'But I am afraid no vampires can be allowed on board.'

'This is a sloth,' said Stephen, smiling at him. 'A three-toed sloth, the most affectionate, discriminating sloth you can imagine!' The sloth turned its round head, fixed its eyes on Jack, uttered a despairing wail and buried its face again in Stephen's shoulder, tightening its grip to the strangling-point.

'Come, Jack, disengage his right arm, if you please: you need not be afraid. Excellency, pray be so good -the left arm, gently disengaging the claws. There, there, my fine fellow. Now let us carry him below. Handsomely, handsomely; do not alarm the sloth, I beg.'

The sloth was not easily alarmed; as soon as it was provided with a piece of hawser stretched taut in the cabin it went fast to sleep, hanging by its claws and swaying with the roll as it might have done in the wind-rocked branches of its native forest. Indeed, apart from its candid distress at the sight of Jack's face it was perfectly adapted for a life at sea; it was uncomplaining; it required no fresh air, no light; it throve in a damp, confined atmosphere; it could sleep in any circumstances; it was tenacious of life; it put up with any hardship. It accepted biscuit. gratefully, and pap; and in the evenings it would hobble on deck, walking on its claws, and creep into the rigging, hanging there upside down and advancing two or three yards at a time, with pauses for sleep. The hands loved it from the first, and would often carry it into the tops or higher; they declared it brought the ship good luck, though it was difficult to see why, since the wind rarely blew east of south, and that but feebly, day after day.

Yet the fresh provisions had their astonishingly rapid effect; in a week's time the sick-bay was almost empty, and the Surprise, fully manned and cheerful, had recovered her old form, her high-masted, trim appearance. She returned to her exercising of the great guns, laid aside for the more urgent repairs, and every day the trade-wind carried away great wafts of her powder-smoke: at first this perturbed the sloth; it scuttled, almost ran, below, its claws going clack-clack-clack in the silence between one broadside and the next; but by the time they had passed directly under the sun and the wind came strong and true at last, it slept through the whole exercise, hanging in its usual place in the mizen catharpins, above the quarterdeck carronades, just as it slept through the Marines' musketry and Stephen's pistol-practice.

All through this tedious, tedious passage, even in the north-east trades, the frigate had not shown of her best, but now with the steady urgent rush of air, this strong ocean of wind, she behaved like the old Surprise of Jack Aubrey's youth. He was not satisfied with her trim, nor with the present rake of her masts, nor with the masts themselves, far less with the state of her bottom; yet still, with the wind just far enough abaft the beam for the studding-sails to set pretty, she ran with the old magical life and thrust, a particular living, supple command of the sea that he would have recognised at once, if he had been set down upon her deck blindfolded.

The sun had gone down in a brief crimson blaze; the night was sweeping up from the east over a moonless sky, a deeper blue with every minute; and every wave-top began to glow with inner fire. The acting third lieutenant paused in his strut on the windward side of the sloping quarterdeck and called over to leeward, 'Mr Braithwaite, are you ready with the log, there?' Babbington did not dare come it very high with his former messmates yet, but he cut many a charming caper over the midshipmen of the starboard berth - balm to his soul - and this unnecessary question was intended only to compel Braithwaite to reply, 'All ready and along, sir.'

The bell struck. Braithwaite heaved the log clear of the stronger phosphorescence racing down the frigate's side: the line tore off the reel. At the quartermaster's cry he checked the run, jerked the pin, hauled the log aboard and shouted, 'We've done it! We've done it! Eleven on the nose!'

'It's not true!' cried Babbington, his dignity all sunk in delight. 'Let's have another go.'

They heaved the log again, watched it dwindle in the shining turmoil of the wake, more brilliant now with the darkening of the sky, and with his fingers on the running line Babbington nipped on the eleventh knot itself, shrieking 'Eleven!'

'What are you at?' asked Jack, behind the excited huddle of midshipmen.

'I am just checking Mr Braithwaite's accuracy, sir,' said the third lieutenant. 'Oh sir, we are doing eleven knots! Eleven knots, sir; ain't it prime?'

Jack smiled, felt the iron-taut backstay, and walked forward to where Stephen and Mr White, the envoy's chaplain, were crouching on the forecastle, braced against the lean of the ship and clinging haphazard to anything, kevils, beckets, even the burning metal of the horse. 'Is it settled yet?' he asked.

'We are waiting for the agreed moment, sir,' said the chaplain. 'Perhaps you would be so good as to keep time and see all's fair: a whole bottle of pale ale depends upon this. The moment Venus sets, Dr Maturin is to read from the first page he opens, by the phosphorescence alone.'

'Not footnotes,' said Stephen.

Jack glanced up, and there against the Southern Cross, high on the humming topgallant forestay, was the sloth, rocking easy with the rhythm of the ship. 'I doubt you have too much starlight,' he said. At this speed the frigate's bow-wave rose high, washing the lee head-rails with an unearthly blue-green light and sending phosphorescent drops over them, even more brilliant than the wake that tore out straight behind them, a ruled line three miles long gleaming like a flow of metal. For a moment Jack fixed the glowing spray as it was whirled inboard and then across the face of the foresail by the currents from the jibs and staysail, and then he turned his eyes westwards, where the planet was as low on the horizon as she could be. The round glow touched the sea, reappeared on the rise, vanished entirely; and the starlight distinctly lost in power. 'She dips,' he cried.

Stephen opened the book, and holding it with the page to the bow-wave he read,

'Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul

And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Mr White, I exult, I triumph. I claim my bottle; and Lord, Lord, how I shall enjoy it - such a thirst! Captain Aubrey, I beg you will share our bottle. Come, Lethargy,'

he called directing his voice into the velvet sky.

'Oh, oh!' cried the chaplain, staggering into the booms. 'A fish - a fish has hit me! A flying-fish hit me in the face.'

'There is another,' said Stephen, picking it up. 'You notice that your high fishes fly paradoxically with the wind. I conceive there must be an upward draught. How they gleam - a whole flight, see, see! Here is a third. I shall offer it, lightly fried, to my sloth.'

'I cannot imagine,' said Jack, recovering the chaplain and guiding him along the gangway, 'what that sloth has against me. I have always been civil to it, more than civil; but nothing answers. I cannot think why you speak of its discrimination.'

Jack was of a sanguine temperament; he liked most people and he was surprised when they did not like him. This readiness to be pleased had been damaged of recent years, but it remained intact as far as horses, dogs and sloths were concerned; it wounded him to see tears come into the creature's eyes when he walked into the cabin, and he laid himself out to be agreeable. As they ran down to Rio he sat with it at odd moments, addressing it in Portuguese, more or less, and feeding it with offerings that it sometimes ate, sometimes allowed to drool slowly from its mouth; but it was not until they were approaching Capricorn, with Rio no great distance on the starboard bow, that he found it respond.

The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast - unaccountable headwinds by night - and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again.

Some minutes later he felt a touch on his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying towards the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness.

'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London and Paris combined: these animalculae

- what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable, bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep.

Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.'

On the other side of the cabin-bulkheads Mr Atkins said to Mr Stanhope, 'High words between the Captain and the Doctor, sir. Hoo, hoo! Pretty strong - he pitches it pretty strong: I wonder a man of spirit can stomach it. I should give him a thrashing directly.'

Mr Stanhope had no notion of listening behind bulkheads, and he did not reply; but he could not prevent himself from catching isolated sentiments, such as '.

tes moeurs crapuleuses... tu cherches a corrompre mon paresseux... va donc, eh, salope... espèce de fripouille', for the dialogue had switched to French on the entrance of the wooden-faced Killick. 'I hope they will not be late for our whist,' he murmured. Now that the air had grown breathable Mr Stanhope's strength had revived, and he looked forward keenly to these evenings of cards, the only break in the unspeakable tedium of ocean travel.

They were not late. They appeared at the stroke of the hour; but their faces were red, and Stephen was seen to cheat in order to have the envoy as his partner. Jack played abominably; Stephen with a malignant concentration, darting out his trumps like a serpent's tooth; he excelled himself in post-mortems, showing clearly how his opponents might have drawn the singleton king, saved the rubber, trumped the ace, and the evening broke up with no slackening of the tension; they looked at him nervously as they settled the monstrous score, and with a factitious air of cheerfulness Jack said, 'Well, gentlemen, if the master's reckoning. is as deadly accurate as Dr Maturin's leads, and if the wind holds, I believe you will wake up tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro: I feel the loom of the land - I feel it in my bones.'

In the dead hour of the middle watch he appeared on deck in his night-shirt, looked attentively at the log-board by the binnacle-light, and desired Pullings to shorten sail at eight bells, He appeared again, like a restless ghost, at five bells, and backed his topsails for a while. His calculations were remarkably exact, and he brought the frigate into Rio just as the sun rose behind her and bathed the whole fantastic spectacle in golden light. Yet even this did not answer: even this did not close the breach: Stephen, on being routed out of bed to behold it, observed 'that it was curious how vulgar Nature could be at times - meretricious, ad captandum vulgus effects -very much the kind of thing attempted to be accomplished at Astley's or Ranelagh, and fortunately missed of'. He might have thought of other observations, for the sloth had been very slowly sick all night in his cabin, but at this moment the Surprise erupted in flames and smoke, saluting the Portuguese admiral as he lay there in a crimson seventy-four under Rat Island.

Jack went ashore with Mr Stanhope after breakfast, his bargemen shaved and trim in sennit hats and snowy duck and himself in his best uniform; and when he came back there was not the least trace of reserve, propitiation or hauteur in his expression. Bonden was carrying a bag, and from far off the cry of Post went round the waiting ship.