The Hundred Days (11 page)

‘If you would let me have this information, I
should be very much obliged,’ said Stephen.

‘Of course. You shall have it this
very evening...’ Colvin hesitated and then went on, ‘Though now I come to
reflect, I am by no means sure that I have the papers with me.’ Another pause,
and he said, ‘I dare say you were surprised at finding me here rather than in Malta or Brindisi?’

‘Not at all,’ said Stephen.

‘There was a certain amount of unpleasantness over
that indiscretion I mentioned and I am on my way either to Gibraltar or even
perhaps London to clear it up; and knowing that Commodore Aubrey’s squadron
must touch here I thought I should wait, in order to tell you about the general
aspect of affairs in the Adriatic. Those particulars will of course be at your
disposal as soon as you reach Malta.’

Stephen made the necessary acknowledgements and
they talked for a while about colleagues in Whitehall before he took his leave,
saying that he must rejoin the Commodore without delay - it was death to keep
the Commodore waiting.

‘Well, sir,’ said Jack Aubrey, looking up from his
notes and counting the slips that would enable the officers in charge of the
base to revictual and refit the squadron with all the astonishing variety of
objects it might need, from musket-flints to dead-eyes, hearts and euphroes. ‘I
think that sets us up very handsomely: many, many thanks. And now, sir, if I
may I will beg leave to retire. I have an appointment with my surgeon at the
Crown, and it would never do to vex a man you next meet in the cockpit, with you
flat on your back and he standing over you with a knife. He is not ordinarily
an irascible creature, but I know that today he is with child to call upon your
engineer.’

‘James Wright, that prodigy of learning? I would
give a five-pound note to see them together.’

In fact the sight was not worth nearly so much,
particularly at first. Dr Maturin, holding his visiting-card in his hand, was
about to knock at the door of Mr Wright’s house when it flew open from within and
an angry voice cried, ‘What do you want with me? Eh? What do you want with me?’

‘Mr Wright?’ asked Stephen, with a hint of smiling
recognition. ‘My name is Maturin.’

‘It might just as well be Beelzebub,’ said Mr
Wright. ‘Not a brass farthing will you fork out of me before the end of the
month, as I told that pragmatical bastard, your chief.’

‘My dear sir,’ cried Stephen, ‘I have ventured to
call upon you as a fellow member of a learned society, not, upon my soul and
honour, as a dun: bad luck to them all.’

‘You belong to the Royal?’ asked Wright, bending
from the uppermost step and peering into Stephen’s face with narrowed,
suspicious eyes.

‘Certainly I belong to the Royal,’ said Stephen,
now somewhat warm. ‘Furthermore, Mr Watt did me the honour of introducing me to
you. I was sitting next to him, and old Mr Bolton was on the other side. It was
the evening you read the paper on screwing.’

‘Oh,’ said Wright, taken aback. ‘Pray walk in - I
beg pardon - I have lost my spectacles. And from what little I could make out
your uniform looked like that of a bailiff’s man. I beg pardon. Pray walk in.’
He led Stephen into a large, well-lit room with exactly-drawn plans on the
walls, on high tables and on a pair of rollers that could bring any corner of
the port or dockyard before the viewer’s eye. He found his spectacles, one of
the pairs that lay about on chairs and desks, and putting them on he gazed at
Stephen. ‘Sir,’ he said, rather more civilly now, ‘may I ask what that uniform
is? I do not believe I have seen it before.’

‘Sir,’ replied Stephen, ‘it is the uniform that was
laid down for surgeons of the Royal Navy some time ago: it is rarely worn.’

Having considered this, cocking his head like an
intelligent dog, Mr Wright asked how he might serve his visitor, whom he now
remembered from their meeting at the Royal Philosophers’ Club, before the
formal session.

‘I have presumed to wait upon you, sir,’ said
Stephen, ‘because some of our more eminent colleagues, particularly those
distinguished in the mechanical and mathematical sciences, have assured me that
you know more than any man living about the physical properties of substances -
their inherent strength and the means of increasing it - their resistance to
the elements - and if I may I should like to ask whether in the course of your
studies you have ever been brought to reflect upon the narwhal’s horn?’ During
his last few words Stephen noticed a total absence of attention come over the
aged face before him and he was not surprised to hear Mr Wright cry, ‘Dr Maturin,
Dr Maturin of course: I grow more forgetful day by day, but now I recall our
meeting even more perfectly. And what is of much greater consequence, I recall
a letter from my young cousin Christine - Christine Heatherleigh as she was,
but now the widow of Governor Wood of Sierra Leone. It was her usual birthday
letter, and among other things she said she had prepared the articulated bones
of some creature that interested you - she was always a great anatomist, even
as a child - and would it be right to send the specimen to Somerset House?’

‘How very kind. I have the fondest
recollections of dear Mrs Wood. It was no doubt my tailless potto, one of the
most interesting of the primates: but alas short-lived.’

‘So I said Somerset House by all means: Robertshaw
and his people take the greatest care of Fellows’ specimens. But I believe,
sir, that you mentioned a narwhal. Pray what is a narwhal?’

‘A cetacean of the northern, the far northern seas,
a moderate whale of about five yards long; and the male possesses a horn that
may be half as long again. I say “horn” sir, because that is the term commonly
used; but in fact the object is made of ivory.’

       ‘And only the males wear it?’

‘So I am told by whalers and by those few who have
had the happiness of dissecting the creature.’

‘Then they share our fate: for with us too it is
the males alone that wear the horns.’ After a moment Mr Wright began to laugh -
a low, creaking sound that went on and on. ‘Forgive me,’ he said at last,
taking off his spectacles and wiping them. ‘I am facetious at times. You were
speaking of ivory?’

‘Yes, sir: a particularly hard and dense ivory. The
infant narwhal has but two teeth, both in his upper jaw. That on the right
usually remains in a rudimentary state: the other develops into a tapering
column that may protrude for six or seven feet and weigh a stone or more.’

‘What is its function?’

‘That appears to be unknown. There are no reports
of its use as a weapon - no boat has ever been attacked - and although sportive
narwhals have been seen to cross their tusks above the surface, no fighting
ensued, and it was thought to be done in play. As for its alleged use as a
fishspear, an animal with no hands would be puzzled to transfer its transfixed
prey from tusk to mouth: besides, the females are tuskiess: yet they do not
starve. There are innumerable suppositions, all based upon very little
knowledge indeed; but there is one undoubted, instantly observable phenomenon -
the very curious shape of the horn. Not only does it bear a large number of parallel
spirals ascending in half a dozen left-hand turns from the base almost to the
bare, smooth tip, but it also has several much larger tori or undulating turns,
rising in the same direction. All this puzzles me extremely, though I am
something of a physiologist, devoted to comparative osteology; and I should
very much like to ask whether these adaptations of the tusk are designed to
strengthen it, without adding to its already considerable bulk, and whether the
much larger tori help the animal, a very rapid swimmer, to diminish the
turbulence it must encounter at every stroke. I am aware sir, that turbulence
is one of the chief studies among gentlemen of your profession.’

‘Turbulence. Aye, turbulence,’ said Mr
Wright, shaking his head. ‘Any man that means to build a lighthouse, or a
bridge, or a jetty, must think long and hard upon turbulence, and the enormous
force exerted by water in violent motion. But oh the wearisome calculations,
the uncertainty! On the face of it, sir, your suppositions seem reasonable:
surface corrugation does often increase resistance to certain forms of stress;
and conceivably your tori might have a favourable effect in directing a spiral
flow past the advancing body and in counteracting the rotary force - for your
animal is propelled by his tail, is he not?’

‘Just so. A
horizontal tail, of course, like the rest of his kind.’

‘It is an interesting problem: but any suggestion
that I might put forward, based solely on a verbal description, however
well-informed, would scarcely be worth the air expended. If I could see the
horn, measure the depth and angle of the spiral and of the larger processes, my
opinion might possibly have some slight value.’

‘Sir,’ said Dr Maturin, ‘if you would honour me
with your company at dinner, let us say tomorrow, I should be delighted to show
you my tusk, a small but perfect specimen.’

Jack and Stephen met again, almost on the very
steps of the Crown. ‘Well met, brother,’ cried Jack from a little distance.
Stephen considered the Commodore’s face and his gait: was he sober? ‘You look
uncommon cheerful, my dear,’ he said, leading him in the direction of the
Pigtail Steps. ‘I wish you may not have met with some compliant young person,
overwhelmed with all the gold lace upon your person.’

‘Never in life,’ said Jack. ‘Aubrey the Chaste is
what I am called throughout the service. I did indeed meet a young person, but
one that shaves, when he can afford it. Stephen, you may remember that I have
told you about our grievous lack of master’s mates, and how I yearned to
replace poor Wantage?’

‘I do not suppose you have mentioned it much above
ten times a day.’

‘It is not a question of those midshipmen who are
promoted master’s mate merely so that they may pass for lieutenants at the end
of their servitude - you know of course that they have to show certificates
proving that they have served in that rating for two years - no, no, it is your
true master’s mate, the mate to the master of the ship, if you follow me, whose
only ambition is to become a master himself, an expert navigator and
ship-handler, but as an officer with a warrant from the Navy Board rather than
the King’s commission. Admittedly we have Salmon, but how I longed for another,
if only to second poor tired old Woodbine! Our mids are good young fellows, but
they are not mathematicians, and their navigation is brutish, brutish.’

A vigilant eye aboard Surprise had caught the
Commodore’s broad gestures, designed to illustrate the brutishness of the
ordinary midshipman’s navigation, and his boat set off across the harbour at
once. It took some time to thread its way through the crowded shipping and
smallcraft - the whole squadron was refitting at the utmost speed - and Jack
went on, ‘Well, the young person I met was John Daniel.’ He looked into
Stephen’s face for some gleam of intelligence, recognition of the name: no
gleam of any kind whatsoever. ‘John Daniel,’ repeated Jack, ‘we were shipmates
for a short while in Worcester. And he was in Agamemnon:
Woodbine knows him well, and many other officers. He was paid off at the peace
and joined a privateer...’

‘Sir, sir, oh sir, if you please,’ called a shrill
boy, purple in the face from running, ‘the Admiral’s compliments and desires
you will hand this to Dr Maturin.’

‘My compliments and duty to the Admiral,’ said Jack,
taking the letter and passing it to Stephen, ‘and you may tell him that his
orders have been carried out.’

They walked down the steps to the waiting boat, and
as they walked Stephen turned the letter over and over, looking thoughtful. ‘Do
not mind me, I beg,’ said Jack; but already bow-oar, an old seaman who knew
Stephen well, was at hand to ensure that he cleared the gunwale with one firm
stride.

Bonden shoved off the moment the Commodore was
settled, cried ‘Give way,’ and the launch weaved through the mêlée with never a
bump until he brought it alongside with his usual perfection.

In the cabin Stephen said, ‘Jack, I fear I have
been so indiscreet as to ask Mr Wright to dine aboard without consulting you. I
particularly wish to hear his view on the action of water flowing the whole
length of the horn you so very kindly gave me long ago, upon the nature of the
turbulence set up by the whorls or convolutions, and upon the effect of the
more delicate ascending spirals.’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Jack. ‘I should very
much like to hear him: no man more. Although I have been waterborne most of my
days, I am sadly ignorant of hydrostatics except in a pragmatic, rule-of-thumb
kind of fashion. We could invite Jacob too, and have some music. I know that Mr
Wright, like some of the other mathematical Fellows, delights in a fugue. Oh,
and Stephen, let me go back to John Daniel, Wantage’s replacement: he is so
prodigiously shabby it would be cruel to introduce him to the berth. He is a
poor, short, bent, meagre, ill-looking little creature, very like...that is to say, you are the only grown person aboard whose clothes
would fit him. You shall have them back of course, as soon as he can whip up
something to appear on the quarterdeck in.’

‘Killick,’ called Stephen, barely raising his
voice, since he knew that their valuable common servant was listening behind
the door - Killick had something of a cold in his

chest and his heavy breathing
could have been heard at a far greater distance. ‘Killick, be so good as to bring
a respectable white shirt, the blue coat whose button you were replacing, a
neck-cloth, a pair of duck trousers, stockings, shoes - buckled shoes - and a
handkerchief.’

Killick opened his mouth: but to Captain Aubrey’s
astonishment he shut it again, paused, said, ‘Aye-aye, sir: respectable white
shirt it is, the blue coat, neck-cloth, ducks, stockings, buckled shoes, wipe,’
and hurried away. Stephen was not surprised: it was but another example of that
singular deference that attended not only his state but also that of men
condemned to death. ‘Jack, pray tell me about your master’s mate,’ he said.