The Surgeon's Mate (9 page)

She changed colour at this, stood up and walked nervously about the room. Passing by the table where his cigars were laid out she picked one up. He lit it for her, and out of the cloud of smoke she said, 'Stephen, I love you dearly and if ever I were to ask any man's charity it would be yours. By my dear I know very well that you do not want to marry me in the least; I have known it ever since I recovered my wits after that appalling time in Boston. I should have known it at once, the minute I saw you again, if I had not been so utterly destroyed, and terrified of that man. No: do not lie, Maturin. It is infinitely kind in you, but it is no use. No use at all. And in any case,' she said, looking at him defiantly while a great flush mounted in her cheeks, 'I would not marry any man when I was in child by another. No, by God, not to save my life. There. Give me a drink, Stephen: these confessions are perfectly exhausting.'

'There is nothing here but rum,' said Stephen, looking round for a clean glass, 'And that is the very last thing for you. I had meant to mention it to you some weeks ago: no spirits. Strait-lacing too is to be avoided, and tobacco.'

'You knew?' she cried.

He nodded, and said, 'You exaggerate the importance of this, my dear, you do indeed. But it is not unnatural that you should; for you are to consider, that not only is your present physical condition well known to warp the judgment - and here I speak as a physician, Villiers - but that the recent turmoil of spirits, the escape, the rescue, the battle with the Chesapeake, must necessarily carry the process much farther, and cause your mind to make grave mistakes. You are mistaken, for example, in your estimate of my feelings. I may not appear as the trembling suppliant of former days, of my almost-youth; but that is the effect of age, no more. An outward display of emotion is indecent when one's hair is grey; but upon my honour, my essential attachment is unchanged.'

She laid her hand upon his sleeve without a word and gave him such a sad, disillusioned smile that he faltered, took a turn to the window and back, put on his blue spectacles, and lit a cigar for himself before going on, 'But even if you were right, which I deny entirely, there is the question of expediency - there is the question of your civil status. A marriage, even a nominal marriage, at once restores your nationality: perhaps even more important, it gives your child a name. Reflect, my dear, upon the condition of a bastard. His state is in itself an insult. He is born with heavy disadvantages under all the codes of law I know; he is penalized from birth. He is debarred from many callings; if he is admitted to society at all, he is admitted only on sufferance; he meets the reproach at every turn all through his life - any tenth transmitter of a foolish face, any lawfully begotten blockhead can throw it in his teeth, and he has no reply. I believe you are aware that I am myself a bastard: I speak with full knowledge when I say that it is a cruel, cruel thing to entail upon a child.'

'I am sure it is, Stephen,' she said, deeply moved. She pressed his hand, and they sat for a while without speaking. Then she said in a low voice, 'But that is why I have come to you, the only friend I can rely on. You understand these things; you are a physician. Stephen, I could not bear to have that man's child. It would be a monster. I know that in India women used to take a root called holi..."

'There, my dear, there is a certain proof that your judgment is astray: otherwise you would never have thought of such a course, nor would you ever have said such a thing to me. My whole function is to preserve life, not to take it away. The oath I have sworn, and all my convictions - '

'Stephen,' she said, 'I beg of you not to fail me.' She sat, twisting her fingers together, and in a low, pleading voice she murmured 'Stephen, Stephen..."

'Diana,' he said, 'you must marry me.'

She shook her head. Each knew that the other was immovable, and they sat in a miserable silence until the door burst open and a very young officer, pink and white, extremely cheerful, cried 'There you are, ma'am; there you are, sir. I have found you both at the same time. I can deliver both my messages at once.' And then, very rapidly, as by rote, and in an official tone he said, 'Admiral Colpoys presents his best compliments and respects to Mrs Villiers; has the honour to acquaint her that the packet sails directly, and begs her to repair aboard at her earliest possible convenience.' He drew breath and went on, 'The Commander-in-chief informs Dr Maturin that Diligence sails on the next tide but one, and directs him to proceed to the man-of-war's hard with the utmost dispatch. There she lies, sir,' he went on in a natural voice, pointing out of the window, 'the brig just beyond Chesapeake. She has the blue peter flying.'

The Diligence tided it down the long harbour during the night, and before daybreak she was clear of the Little Thrumcap: by the time the dim sun began to whiten the eastern sky she had made a good offing, and with a moderate breeze on her starboard beam she was steering a little north of east under all plain sail, to leave Sable Island well to the south. Astern there was nothing to be seen: even if the weather had not been so hazy, she had long since sunk the high land of Cape Sambro. But six points on her starboard bow there lay a vessel dark against the light, a tall schooner, not five miles away. Not a sloop, not a man-of-war, but unmistakably a schooner: and in any case the Nova Scotia, given a whole tide's start, was at least forty miles beyond the horizon.

She was lying there with no way on her, breasting the swell under her reefed fore-and-aft mainsail; yet it was clear that she was no fisherman, since she had no dories anywhere around her, and in any case no skipper making a voyage for cod would have brought a long slim rakish schooner with little room for his catch to a place where there were even fewer fish.

The second mate, who had the watch, saw her as soon as the lookout on the forecastle, and after one hard stare across the lightening sea he stepped below to the cabin, where the Captain and Jack Aubrey were eating steak. 'I believe we have the Liberty to windward, sir,' he said.

'Is that so, Mr Crosland?' said the Captain. 'And how far off might she be?'

'A matter of five mile, sir.'

'Then bear up, Mr Crosland, and set the foretop-gallantsail. I shall be on deck presently.'

Mr Dalgleish, the owner - literally the owner - of the Diligence, emptied his cup deliberately, took his spyglass from the rack, and walked up the companion-ladder, followed by Jack.

The stranger had already filled and worn on the same course, and as they watched, gazing over the starboard quarter, a signal broke out at her masthead: she fired a windward gun.

It was clear to Jack, as he considered her, that there was a strong possibility of her being an American privateer - no one else would lie there in the middle of the main shipping-lane between England and Canada -and he was not particularly surprised when Dalgleish, passing the telescope, said, 'Yes. She is the Liberty; and I see Mr Henry has given her a new coat of paint. Tom,' - to a nimble youth, his son - 'jump to the masthead and tell me whether Mr Henry's signal means anything or whether it is just another wicked falsehood. Mr Crosland, flying-jib... '

While Dalgleish was giving orders for more sail Jack studied the Liberty: a long low schooner painted black, about seventy-five feet in length and twenty in beam, a vessel of perhaps a hundred and fifty tons, built for speed. As far as he could see she carried eight broadside guns, probably twelve-pounder carronades, and something in the way of a bow-chaser. Her deck was crowded with men. She had set a square foretopsail and she was coming down goosewinged; but no schooner could show her best paces before the wind, goosewinged or not, and during his long study of her it did not appear to him that she gained much, if indeed she gained at all.

'Good morning, sir,' said a voice by his side.

'Good morning, Mr Humphreys,' said Jack rather coolly. Humphreys was the officer chosen to carry the duplicate dispatch rather than any of the master's mates who had fought in the action with the Chesapeake. In the opinion of the service it was a vile job, designed to secure Humphreys' advancement. There was no possible doubt of the Shannon's officers being promoted, and Falkiner was in fact aboard the Nova Scotia, heading straight for a commander's commission; but even so it was felt that one of the younger men should also have shared in the glory at home.

'What do you see, Tom?' called Mr Dalgleish.

'Well now, Dad,' said Tom, 'I believe I make out a sail, hull-down, two or maybe three points abaft the beam. But it is cruel hazy there in the eye of the sun, and it may be an ice-mountain.'

'What away to leeward, Tom?'

'Nothing to leeward, Dad, bar a pod of whales - there she blows again! - and north I see clear to the horizon.' A pause; and then from on high, 'Harkee, Dad, that is a sail to windward. A schooner, too.'

'Thanks be,' murmured the master of the packet; and turning to Jack he said, 'I am right glad I said we should go south about Sable Island. With t'other beating up from leeward, they would have pinched us between them like..." With one eye to his glass, and that glass trained on the Liberty, he sought for some likeness that might strengthen the idea of two vessels gradually closing in upon a third from either side over an enormous stretch of sea, found none, and repeated 'Pinched us between them, like..." his hand imitating the movement of a lobster's claw.

'You think they had intelligence of your sailing, then?'

'Bless you,' said Mr Dalgleish, 'in Halifax you can scarcely piss against a wall, without the Yankees know next day. While we were waiting for the dispatches I was in the King's Head - a roomful of people - and I just happened to remark that I should go south about as soon as I had the bag aboard, ha, ha!'

'So you were not altogether surprised to find them waiting for you, on the southern course?'

'No, sir, I was not. Not Liberty, at all events. Mr Henry there,' - nodding over the miles of sea - 'has laid for me many and many a time, hoping to come up from leeward - for she lies uncommon close to the wind, and sails uncommon swift - to carry us by boarding. Which was how she took Lady Albemarle and Probus, both neat, fast-sailing packets; to say nothing of other prizes. A pretty good seaman, Mr Henry: I knew him well before the war. He was a packet-captain too, before he took to privateering. But t'other, his friend, I am surprised to see. They never hunt in pairs unless there is a fat merchantman to be looked for; and there ain't no merchantman, fat or thin, due to sail or to come in this fortnight and more. And a packet - why, 'tis a feather in their caps, to be sure, and one in the eye for King George, but it don't hardly answer the expense, if you have something like a hundred men aboard, at American rates of pay, eating their heads off; to say nothing of the wear and tear and the risk of carrying away a spar. And to say nothing, neither, of the clawing you may get in the last moments before you board.'

'I believe you could give him a rare old clawing, Captain Dalgleish,' said Jack, looking at the brig's array of carronades, five twelve-pounders to a side.

'So I could,' said Dalgleish, 'and so I shall, if he comes alongside. But never you fear, Captain, we have the legs of her, before the wind; and I have not even set my studdingsails yet. With this nip in the air there is sure to be fog on the Middle Bank or the Banquereau; we will shake them off there, and carry on with our course as before, if they don't give over first, as I dare say they will. A packet is no great prize; no cargo, and no market for the hull in the States; nothing worth cracking on for regardless all day, let alone by night, with all this summer ice coming down.'

After a silence Jack said, 'Have you ever thought of the lame-duck caper, Captain Dalgleish? Starting your sheets a trifle - steering rather wild - slipping a drag-sail over the blind side - sending half your people below? If you could lure her up in the next hour or so, you could deal with her long before her friend came up. You could take the Liberty, as one might say, ha, ha!'

Dalgleish laughed, but Jack saw that he might as well have been whistling psalms to the taffrail: the master of the packet was quite unmoved, was perfectly satisfied with his role - a strong, self-reliant man, confident that his was the right conduct. 'No, sir,' he said, 'that would never answer with Mr Henry. I know him and he knows me; he would smell a rat directly. And even if he did not, Captain Aubrey, even if he did not, it is no part of my business to take the Liberty, as you put it so wittily. I am not a man of war, and my brig is not a man-of-war neither, but an unestablished temporary packet - temporary these last twelve years and more: a contract-vessel, as we say. For you gentlemen in the glory-line it is quite different: you are answerable to King George, whereas I am answerable to Mrs Dalgleish, and they see things in quite a different light. Then again, you can go to the dockyard and indent for half a dozen topmasts, any number of spars, nay, a whole new suit of sails, any day in the week you choose. But if I went to the Postmasters General and asked them for half a bolt of number three canvas, they would laugh in my face and remind me of my contract. And my contract is to provide a vessel at my own charges for His Majesty's mails, and to carry them, as per contract, as fast as is consistent with their safety: for the mails are sacred, sir. The mails and dispatches are sacred: particularly this blessed dispatch about the victory.' Here he looked significantly at Mr Humphreys, who gave a solemn nod; he did not say anything, however, for Jack was very much superior to him in rank, an awe-inspiring figure; and Humphreys, although he would not have relinquished it for the world, was conscious of his position, painfully conscious that he might be looked upon as a well-connected intruder, even perhaps as a scrub. 'What is more,' added Dalgleish, 'this brig is my livelihood, and no one will give me another if she is taken.'

'And a very handsome brig she is,' said Jack. 'I doubt I have ever seen finer lines.' He could not dislike Dalgleish: although his whole being was alive with the prospect of an action, laid on with cunning, ending with extreme violence, and very probably the capture of the Liberty, he found the packet-captain's calm, assured attitude convincing and indeed respectable.