The Commodore, page 28
'It will mean the loss of a day,' said Jack. 'Though I must admit that I did hear some obscure, muttered complaints about bark, both in quantity and quality.'
'Jesuit's bark is the one sovereign specific against fever,' said Stephen. 'We must have Jesuit's bark.'
In circumstances that he could no longer exactly recall, probably during a feast at the Keppel's Head in Portsmouth, Jack had once said that 'a Jesuit's bark was worse than his bite,' a remark received with infinite mirth, cordial admiration. He smiled at the recollection, and looking at his friend's earnest, guileless face - no parthenogenetic lizards there - he said 'Very well. But it must be touch and go - just the time to hurry ashore, buy a dozen bottles of bark and away.' 'And don't I wish that may be the case,' he added to himself.
It was not, of course: it never was the case in any but a British port. First there was the matter of the salute: none of His Majesty's ships might salute any foreign fort, governor or local dignitary without having first made certain that the same number of guns would be returned. This meant sending in an officer, accompanied by an interpreter - fortunately Mr Adams had a certain amount of Portuguese. Then there was the question of pratique: after the fifteen covenanted guns had boomed to and fro across Chaves Bay, a man from the captain of the port came out in a handsome galley, and on hearing that the squadron was last from the Slave Coast he looked grave and said that since there had been an outbreak of the plague in Whydah three years ago they would have to perform quarantine before anyone could be allowed on shore. Stephen reasoned with him privately, so convincingly that the regulations were slightly eased: the Doctor and a boat from each ship might spend a few hours ashore, but no one was to go more than a hundred paces from the high-tide mark.
As most people in the squadron expected, the second lieutenant of the Thames and the young Marine officer from the Stately who had been Stephen's neighbour at dinner took this opportunity, the first, to settle their disagreement. They and their seconds went more than a hundred paces from the shore, but not much, there being a convenient coconut grove at hand. Here the ground was measured out, and at the drop of a handkerchief each young man shot the other in the belly. Each was carried back to his boat, and the question of the Stately's manliness and fighting qualities remained undecided.
'Did you know about this rencontre, Stephen?' asked Jack that evening, when St Thomas was sinking on the southern rim of the sea and the Bellona making up for the loss of time with studdingsails aloft and alow, spread to the south-east trades.
'Faith, I was there when the provocation was given.'
'If you had told me, I might have prevented it.'
'Nonsense. There was a direct offence, and the Stately's Marine was bound to resent it. No apology was offered, no withdrawal; and this was the necessary result, as you know very well.'
Jack could not deny it. He shook his head: 'How I hope the young fellow don't die. If he do, poor Duff is like to hang himself. Do you think he will recover? The Stately, I mean.'
'The Dear knows. I have not seen him. It was over before I had done with the apothecary, and all I saw was their blood on the strand. But an abdominal,wound very often has a fatal issue, if the viscera are injured.'
In the event both young men died, though not before the second lieutenant, at the urging of the Thames's chaplain, had acknowledged that he was in the wrong and had sent a proper message to Willoughby, the Royal Marine, who returned his thanks and best wishes for a prompt recovery. This reconciliation, however, was confined to those who had fought. The hostility between the two ships increased, and it was made evident on all possible occasions by cries of 'What ho, the molly-ship' if there was time, or 'The pouffes ahoy,' and if there was not, on the part of the Thames, and of 'Slack in stays,' or 'Make more sail, there,' from the Stately. Not that there were many occasions for rudeness, for although the beautiful trade-wind varied in strength it never declined to anything near enough to one of those calms so usual in the doldrums for ordinary ship-visiting among the hands to be possible, or for it to be easy for the officers of any one ship to invite those of another: nor did the Commodore ever create an artificial calm by lying-to, even on Sundays. He was haunted by the dread of being late; and although on days less blowy than usual he would summon the Ringle and run up the line to see how his captains were coming along, he consistently urged his maxim 'Lose not a minute: there is not a minute to be lost', and obeyed it himself even to the point of forbidding the ships he visited to reduce sail to let him come aboard more easily.
He dined once in the Stately, and although he had shifted her first lieutenant, the most inveterate against Captain Duff and the man who had wished to arrest him, to the command of a brig, he was sorry to find a marked degree of tension at the captain's table: the officers ill at ease, and Duff, though a good host, anxious and wanting in authority. 'He is a good, kind fellow, and he handles his ship like a prime seaman, but he seems incapable of taking a hint,' said Jack on returning.
Yet this was the one sad day out of the ten - ten, no more; and but for the heavy-sailing Thames it would have been eight- that it took to run up to Freetown, and the rest of the time was delightful sailing, a world to which they had grown so accustomed in the vast stretches of the Pacific and to which they returned as to the natural way of life, with all the ship. board ceremonies and routines in their due order, as exactly marked by bells as those of a monastery. Eight bells in the middle watch, when those whose duty it was to show the sun a spotless deck had to leave their hammocks two hours before he rose; eight bells in the forenoon watch, when the officers fixed the height of the noonday sun and hands were piped to dinner: bells and pipes all day long, with some music too - the drum beating 'Heart of Oak' for the wardroom dinner (though Aumra, whose Marine officer had organized a band among his men, did it in a higher style), the drum again for quarters and the retreat, and on most evenings fiddles, bagpipes or a little shrill fife playing for the hands as they danced on the forecastle: bells all night long, too, though somewhat muted. These formal measures and divisions had of course been there during the wearisome creep along the shores of the Gulf the Bellona often lying to, doing nothing; but it was only now that they regained their full significance, and in a suprisingly short time this part of the voyage seemed to have been going on for ever.
For Jack and Stephen too the evening resumed their old familiar pattern of supper and music - occasionally chess or cards if the seas were heavy enough to shake Stephen's control of his 'cello - or rambling talk of common friends, former voyages: rarely about the future, an anxious prospect for both and one they tended to shy away from.
'Jack,' said Stephen, when the ship's pitching had obliged him to lay down his bow: he spoke rather diffidently, knowing how Jack disliked any topic that might reflect discredit on the service, 'would it grieve you to tell me a little more about sodomy in the Navy? One often hears about it; and the perpetual reiteration of the Articles of War with their "unnatural and detestable sin of buggery" makes it seem part of the nautical landscape. Yet apart from your very first command, the brig Sophie...'
'She was a sloop,' said Jack, quite sharply.
'But she had two masts. I remember them perfectly: one in the front, and the other, if you follow me, behind: whereas a sloop, as you never cease pointing out, has but one, more or less in the middle.'
'If she has no masts at all, or fifty, she would still have been a sloop from the moment my commission had been read aboard her: for I was a commander, a master and commander; and anything a commander commands instantly becomes a sloop.'
'Well, in that vessel there was a sailor who could not command his passion - for a goat, as I remember. But apart from that I scarcely remember any instance, and by now I am a very old and experienced salt dog.'
'I do not suppose you do. But when you consider what the lower deck is like - three or four hundred men packed tight- the cloud of witnesses when hammocks are piped down - and the very public nature of the heads - it is difficult to imagine a more unsuitable place for such capers. Yet it does occasionally happen in what few holes and corners a man-of- war possesses, and in cabins. I remember a horrid case of Corsica in '96. Blanche, Captain Sawyer, and Meleager, Captain Cockburn - George Cockburn - both twelve-pounder thirty-two-gun frigates, had been there in company the year before and something ugly of that kind, involving Sawyer, had taken place. You remember George Cockburn, Stephen?'
'Certainly: a very fine man indeed, the best kind of a sailor.'
'Summoned those men of both ships who knew about it and made them swear to keep the whole damn thing quiet. Yes. But the next year Sawyer began again, calling foremast jacks to his cabin and putting out the light. And of course he favoured these fellows and would not allow his officers to compel them to do their duty - and of course discipline began to go to the dogs. After a good deal of this his first lieutenant called for a court-martial, which was granted, and Sawyer fought back by bringing charges against almost the whole gunroom. Poor George Cockburn was in a horrible position. He had certain evidence of the man's guilt in private letters he had written to him - that Sawyer had written to Cockburn. But they were private - as confidential as letters could be. Yet on the other hand, if Sawyer were acquitted, all his officers were ruined, and a man who should not be in command would remain in command. So for the good of the service he showed them, looking like death as he did so and for long after. The judges twisted the evidence round and round, like a kekkle on a cable, and found Sawyer not guilty of the act itself but only of gross indecency, so he was not hanged, but dismissed the service. D'Arcy Preston, a countryman of yours, I believe . .
'Of the Gormanston family. I must tell you about their manner of death one day. Pray go on.'
'D'Arcy Preston succeeded him for a short while, and then Nelson, commodore at the time, appointed Henry Hotham, a right taut disciplinarian, for the Blanche was still in wretched bad order. Indeed, the people were so far gone in disobedience and loving their ease that they would not receive him. They said he was a damned Tartar and would neither receive him nor hear his commission read: they pointed the forecastle guns aft and turned him out of the ship. Eventually Nelson himself came over, bringing Hotham with him: he told the Blanche's people that they had the best name of any frigate's crew in the Navy - they had taken two heavier frigates in fair fight - and were they now going to rebel? If Captain Hotham used them ill, they were to write him a letter and he would support them. On this they gave three cheers and returned to their duty, while he went back to his ship, leaving Hotham in command. But it did not last: as a crew they were beyond recall, the rot had gone so deep; and as soon as they reached Portsmouth they petitioned to be given another captain or another ship.'
'Were they indulged in either?'
'Of course not. They would have been scattered among any number of short-handed ships. As for our case, or what looks something like our case, I shall advise with James Wood when we reach Freetown, and see what can be done by a thorough
shake-up and perhaps some more transfers. But for now let us have another glass of wine - the port stands up wonderfully well in this heat, don't you find? - and go back to our Boccherini.'
They did so; but Jack played indifferently - his heart was no longer in the music, and Stephen wondered how he could have been so heavy, knowing his friend's devotion to the service, as to raise the subject in spite of his own misgivings. He consoled himself with the reflexion that salt water washes all away, that another hundred miles of this perfect sailing would raise Jack's spirits, and that Freetown would see his difficulties resolved.
Freetown on a fine clear afternoon, the immense harbour dotted with ships belonging to the Royal Navy and some Guineamen, who began saluting Commodore Aubrey's pennant with seamanlike promptitude. The Ringle had been sent ahead of the squadron, carrying word to the Governor? and as soon as the Bellona was comfortably anchored and the whole squadron trim, with yards squared by lifts and braces, Jack, followed by his subordinate commanders, went ashore in style to wait upon his Excellency number one uniform, presentation sword, gold-laced hat, Nile medal for as soon as the ship had made his number Government House had thrown out the signal inviting him and his captains to dinner. The Bellona's barge was a fine spectacle, new painted, pulled by as neat a set of bargemen as any in the fleet, most of them Jack's followers from ship to ship, and steered by Bonden, grave, conscious of the occasion, in exactly the same rig as Tom Allen, Nelson's coxswain, whom he resembled, with Mr Wetherby beside him, an infant from the gunroom, who had to be shown how to deal with such ceremonies.
The Bellona's barge (it was in fact her launch, but being rowed by bargemen and acting as a barge, it assumed the somewhat grander name) pulled fourteen oars, and when these fourteen men were not wholly taken up with the exact regularity of their stroke they looked aft with a certain disapproval: their surgeon and his man had come for the ride, and they let the side down - shabby, unbrushed, and carrying an old green umbrella, badly furled. 'Why that idle sod Killick ever let him out looking like George-a-Green, I cannot tell,' whispered bow oar.
'Never mind,' replied his mate out of the side of his mouth.
'He ain't going to the palace.'
He and Square were in fact going to the market-place to seek out Houmouzios at the earliest possible opportunity and then to hurry over the swamp, there to sit under his umbrella, contemplating the long-legged wading birds - even perhaps the fishing vulture - with his perspective-glass; and he was strangely dashed when, on coming to the money-changer's stall, they found only Socrates, who said that Mr Houmouzios was gone on a journey into the interior, but would be back on Friday.
Stephen was strangely dashed, strangely put about; but having considered for a while he told Square to go and rejoice with his family and walked slowly off in the direction of the fetid swamp, much reduced in this dry season, but still fetid, still a swamp, and with the birds concentrated in a smaller area. And what might he not hope for? Adanson had worked extremely hard, but he had been farther to the north, on the banks of the Senegal; and even Adanson had not turned every egg.
'Doctor, Doctor!' they cried, hallooing far behind.
'They are calling for a doctor, the creatures,' he reflected. 'Don't they wish they may find one? Does the chanting goshawk come so far south, I wonder?'
'Doctor, doctor!' they called, hoarse with running, and at last he stopped.
'The Commodore says pray come directly,' gasped a midshipman. 'His Excellency invites you to dinner.'
'My compliments and thanks to his Excellency,' said Stephen, 'but regret I am unable to accept.' He moved on towards the fetid swamp.
'Come, sir, that won't do,' said a tall sergeant. 'You will be getting us into cruel trouble. Which we have orders to escort you back, and we shall be brought to the triangle and flogged, else. Come sir, if you please.'
Stephen looked at the three breathless but determined master's mates, the powerful Marine, and gave in.
'My dear sir,' cried the Governor, 'I beg you will overlook the short notice, the unceremonious invitation, but the last time you were here I did not have the pleasure, the honour, of meeting you; and when my wife heard that Dr Maturin, Dr Stephen Maturin, had been in Sierra Leone without dining here she was infinitely distressed, desolated, quite put out.
Allow me to introduce you.' He led Stephen up to a very good-looking young woman, tall, fair, agreeably plump, smil ing at him with the utmost benevolence.
'I ask your pardon, ma'am, for appearing before you in this squalid...'
'Not in the very least,' she cried, taking both his hands. 'You are covered, covered with laurels. I am Edward Heatherleigh's sister, and I have read all your lovely books and papers, includ ing your address to the Institut, which Monsieur Cuvier sent over to Edward.'
Edward Heatherleigh, a very shy young man, a naturalist and a member (though rarely seen) of the Royal Society, with a moderate estate in the north of England, where he lived as quietly as possible with this sister, both of them collecting, botanizing, drawing, dissecting, and above all comparing. They had articulated skeletons of all the British mammals, and Edward had told Stephen, one of his few intimates, that she knew bones far better than he did - she was unbeatable on bats. This passed through or rather appeared in his mind so rapidly that there was no measurable pause before his reply of 'Miss Christine! I am delighted to see you, ma'am; and now I do not mind my squalor in the least.'
Captain James Wood, the Governor, possessed a maiden sister who had looked after much of his official entertaining before his marriage, which was just as well; for although Mrs Governor kept remembering her duty, and doing it, few sailors could engage her real attention when a famous natural philosopher was by.
'You must certainly come tomorrow,' she said as they parted, 'and I will show you my garden and my creatures - I have a chanting goshawk and a brush-tailed porcupine! And perhaps you might like to see my bones.'
'Nothing could possibly give me greater pleasure,' said Stephen, pressing her hand. 'And perhaps we might walk by the swamp.'
'Well, Stephen, you were in luck, upon my word,' said Jack, as they walked down to the boat. 'The only pretty woman of the party, and you completely monopolized her. And in the drawing-room she came and sat at your knee and talked to no one else for hours on end.'
'We had a great deal to talk about. She knows more on the subject of bones and their variations from species to species than any woman I am acquainted with; much more, indeed, than most men, and they professed anatomists. She is sister to Edward Heatherleigh, whom you may have seen at the Royal. A fine young woman.'
'What a pleasure. I love talking to women like that. Caroline Herschel and I used to prattle away about Pomeranian sludge and the last stages of a telescope's mirror half way through the night. But knowing and beautiful too - what bliss. Yet how she ever came to marry James Wood I cannot tell. A fair practical seaman and an excellent fellow, but never an idea in his head; and he is at least twice her age.'
