Book 17 - The Commodore Read online

  'I will not pretend to misunderstand you,' said Stephen, 'but I must tell you that I abhor an informer very much more than I abhor a sodomite: if indeed I can be said to abhor a sodomite qua sodomite at all: one has but to think of Achilles and hundreds more. It is true that in our society such connexions are out of place in a man-of-war . . . yet you adduce nothing but probabilities. Is a man's reputation to be blasted on a mere statement of probabilities, and they at secondhand?'

  'There is the good of the service,' said Gifford.

  'Very true . . .' said Stephen, breaking off to call out, 'Come In.'

  'Please sir,' said a ship's boy, 'Mr Killick says ain't you ever going to come and try your frilled shirt? Which he has been standing there with it in his hand this half glass and more.'

  'Mary and Joseph,' cried Stephen, clapping his hand to where his warning watch should have been had he not left it in the quarter-gallery. 'Mr Giffard, sir, I beg you will forgive me—may I wait upon you when I have considered?'

  The power of running up a cambric shirt to measure, adorning it with a frilled front and then ironing that frill to crisp perfection seemed improbable in so uncouth a creature as Killick; but he was a seaman, and handy with his needle even for a seaman; and neither he nor anyone else thought it out of the way.

  It was in this elegant shirt, therefore, that Stephen stood on the Bellona's quarterdeck to await the arrival of the guests, Thames, Aurora, Camilla, Laurel, as the captains were called, arrived in close order, to be piped aboard and welcomed; and they were all there when the Stately's barge appeared, steered by Duff's proud coxswain with a midshipman in a gold-laced hat beside him and pulled by ten young bargemen tricked out to the height of nautical elegance and splendour—tight white trousers with ribbons down the seams, embroidered shirts, crimson neckerchiefs, broad-brimmed sennit hats, gleaming pigtails. With Giffard's words in his mind, Stephen looked at them attentively: individually each sailor would have been very well, but since they were all uniformly decorated, he thought it overdone. He was not alone. Jack Aubrey glanced down into the barge after he had received Captain Duff, laughed very heartily and said, 'Upon my word, Mr Duff, you will have to take care of those young ladies' rig, or coarse-minded people will be getting very comical ideas into their heads. They will say "Sod 'em tomorrow" and quote Article XXIX, oh ha, ha, ha, ha!'

  The dinner itself went well, and even the Purple Emperor, conscious of his gaffe and devoted to his belly, laid himself out to be agreeable. Attentive trolling from the wardroom lights had provided a handsome young swordfish; the Commodore's livestock three pair of fowls and a sheep, his cellar a considerable quantity of claret, unavoidably rather warm but of a quality to stand it; and the small Jersey cow a syllabub; while there was still some tolerable cheese, with almond cakes to go with the full tide of port.

  Stephen enjoyed himself, sitting next to Howard, with whom he talked of Sappho and the delights of the diving-bell, on the one side, and on the other a Marine officer who knew a surprising number of people in the literary world of London and who, to his intense pleasure, told him about a novel by a Mr John Paulton that everyone was reading at present with great applause, a novel dedicated, curiously enough, to a gentleman of the same name as Dr Maturin, a relative, no doubt.

  Captain Duff sat immediately opposite him and they exchanged a few amiable words; but the table was too wide and the sound of talk too powerful for more. Yet from time to time, when his neighbours were engaged elsewhere, Stephen considered his face, demeanour, and conversation: Duff was an unusually good-looking, manly fellow of about thirty-five, rather larger than most, with no hint of those traits usually associated with unorthodox affections; he seemed to have been totally unmoved by the Commodore's ribaldry and at times Stephen wondered whether the Stately's officers were not mistaken. He was obviously a friendly man, as were so many sea-officers, willing to please and to be pleased: a good listener. And Stephen knew that he had fought one of his commands, a thirty-two-gun twelve-pounder frigate, with great distinction. Yet there were moments when a certain anxiety seemed to appear, a certain desire for approval.

  'If his officers are right,' reflected Stephen, when they had drunk the loyal toast, 'how I hope that Jack's wholly candid and innocent remark will serve as warning enough.'

  The whole gathering took coffee on the poop, standing about with little cups in their hands and delighting in the breeze. Before taking his leave of the Commodore, Duff came over and said he hoped he might see something of Dr Maturin ashore, when they reached Sierra Leone. 'I hope so too, I do indeed,' said Stephen, 'and I very much look forward to making acquaintance with the birds, beasts and flowers. We have a young officer aboard who knows the country well, and I have asked him to tell me about them.'

  But it was long, long before Mr Whewell could tell the Doctor what he knew about the West African mammals, since day after day he was closeted with the Commodore and his chief officers as the squadron sailed slowly south.

  Ordinarily this was the most agreeable part of a voyage in a well-found ship, this rolling down the Trades in warm but not yet oppressive sunshine, never touching sheet nor brace, the people making their hot-weather clothes on deck by day and dancing on the forecastle in the evening; but now everything was changed, utterly changed, changed beyond the memory of the oldest hand abroad. The Commodore, well seconded by most of his captains, started working up the squadron. 'There is not a moment to be lost,' he observed, having heaved out the Thames's signal to make more sail; and indeed there was not. Even his own ship, though far superior in gunnery with her strong contingent of old Surprises, was not nearly as brisk as the Thames in lowering, manning and arming all boats, and many a harsh word on this subject did Captain Pullings utter to his lieutenants, master's mates and midshipmen—words that were earnestly passed on, sometimes with an almost excessive warmth. This lowering down of boats at great speed, like the shifting of topgallantmasts in thirteen minutes fifty-five seconds or striking them in two minutes twenty-five seconds, was one of those harbour exercises that commanders on the West Indies station excelled in; and although the Thames's people did not seem to know what to do with their boats once they were in the water apart from pulling them, their speed vexed the rest of the squadron to the very heart.

  Day after day they toiled at the great-gun exercise, at small-arms practice, and at this full-blown boat-drill, which often included shipping carronades in their larger craft. And all these activities, which could be, and which were, accurately timed, were of course carried out in addition to all ordinary duties; and although they wore the people into something like a state of torpor in the early days, there was a striking drop in the number of defaulters throughout the squadron, even in the Thames, that unhappy ship: almost no drunkenness, no fighting, and no murmuring (a graver crime than either).

  Emulation came violently into play from the very beginning, and Stephen once saw his old mild fat and bald friend Joe Plaice fling his hat on the deck, stamping on it with a vile oath, when the blue cutter's midshipman, having worked out the agreed handicap, stated that the Laurel had beaten them by six seconds in crossing upper yards. Indeed, Jack Aubrey, who saw the stony looks with which his bargemen were received, sometimes wondered whether the rivalry might not be growing too high altogether; but he had no great time for abstract thought, since he spent the clear of his day with Whewell, John Woodbine (the Bellona's master and an excellent navigator), Mr Adams, and sometimes Tom Pullings, going over the charts, noting all Whewell's observations, collating them with his Admiralty papers, and trying in his inner mind to work out a brief, initially startling campaign against the slavers, a campaign that would impress public opinion. But brief, brief: it had to be brief. He was obsessed with the dread of missing his appointment with the French, the whole real meaning of the expedition, and he knew—who better?—that virtually the whole of the African coast with which he was concerned, particularly the dreaded Bights, was unreliable from the point of view of wind. If he were to cut t
hings at all fine and find the squadron, on its way north for the meeting, caught in the doldrums, sails flaccid, no steerage-way, while the French were racing north-east towards Ireland from some point near the Azores (for they were to make a feint in that direction, as though they were to attack the West Indies), he would hang himself from the maintop. On the other hand, he must do as much as possible of what he was sent to do, and be seen and heard in the act of doing it.

  With Gray's death there was a vacancy among the Bellona's lieutenants, and he filled it by giving Whewell an acting order. As he knew it would, this grieved some of his own young men most bitterly, since an acting-order given by a commodore was almost invariably converted into a full commission by the Admiralty; but he could not do without Whewell's quite exceptional knowledge and contacts, his understanding of affairs, tribal and mercantile, right down the coast, his languages. Furthermore, even before growing used to Whewell's hideous smile he had come to like the man, not only for his clear-minded, intelligent accuracy and his officer-like understanding of the sea, but for himself. These planning sessions often overflowed the set meal-times and Jack and his colleagues would carry on right through dinner or even on occasion skip the sacred meal itself.

  This threw Stephen back to his natural place in the ship's economy: the surgeon was a member of the wardroom mess. Yet although the Bellona's wardroom was a long, handsome apartment, with a noble stern-gallery of its own, it was somewhat crowded: as a pennant-ship she carried an extra lieutenant and an extra Marine officer, so that when Stephen appeared, usually rather late, he was the thirteenth guest, which made his messmates and all the servants most uneasy. Then again, he had so rarely eaten there before that they scarcely knew what to make of him: he was known to be the Captain's and the Commodore's particular friend, and he was said to be richer than either—a further cause for reserve, all the more so since he possessed little in the way of small-talk and was often absent in spirit.

  In short, he felt something of a restraint on the gathering, which curiously enough contained not a single one of his old shipmates; and since he also found the roaring mirth and interminable anecdotes of two of the Marine lieutenants and the purser's card-tricks somewhat oppressive, he took to coming in towards the end of the meal and either eating a scrap there or taking it away in a napkin to his official surgeon's cabin, far below, on the orlop.

  All this time, all this voyage from Corunna, Stephen's entire being had been deeply suffused with happiness, waking and sleeping; a subjacent happiness always ready to become fully conscious. Yet at present it was accompanied rather than tinged with a mild regret for the seafaring life he had known, the life of a village where one knew all the other inhabitants and by force of long acquaintance came to like virtually all of them: a village whose geography, though complex, followed a marine logic of its own and eventually grew as familiar as that of a house.

  A two-decker, however, was a town, and a very long commission would be needed to create anything like the same interdependence and fellowship among its six hundred people, counting supernumeraries, if ever it did so at all. He had known the Worcester, of course, and the horrible old Leopard; but the first was so short and variegated an experience, and the second, little bigger than a heavy frigate, had led to such a wealth of discoveries in natural philosophy among the creatures and the sparse vegetation of the Antarctic, that they scarcely formed the other half of the comparison.

  'It is not only the vast size that makes the essential difference,' he reflected, leaving his cabin to take some air before his rounds, 'but the intrusion of another dimension, this additional floor, or deck.'

  As the words formed in his mind and as his feet moved him up the ladder so his head rose above the floor, or deck, in question and once again in his sea-going life he was perfectly amazed and rapt in admiration. All the gun-ports were open wide; brilliant light from the declining sun reflected from the calm, rippling sea flooded the whole vast clean space—a prevailing tone of light brown, subtly varied by the masts—and on either side its exact rows of great thirty-two-pounder guns, while the far end was closed by the canvas screen of his sick-berth, the whole, in its perfect ordered simplicity making an enormous still-life, as satisfying as he had ever seen.

  'What kind of an exercise can have brought about this beautiful state of affairs?' he asked. Exercises, exercises of every kind, were always taking place throughout the squadron, as he knew very well from the casualties brought below—sprains, crushed toes, the usual hernia or so, and powder-burns—but what could have caused this splendid luminous vacancy, smelling of salt and tar and slow-match, he could not tell.

  The still-life changed as he contemplated it, changed quite surprisingly with the appearance of a small boy who dropped bodily through a hatchway right forward and came running aft. 'There you are, sir,' he cried, perfectly sure of his welcome. 'I have been looking for you everywhere. Commodore's compliments, if you please, and should be happy to see Dr Maturin on the poop at his leisure.'

  'Thank you, Mr Wetherby: pray tell the Commodore, with my respects, that as soon as I have looked into the sick-berth I shall do myself the honour of waiting on him upstairs.'

  'Why, Stephen, there you are,' cried Jack. 'I have not seen you this age. How do you do?'

  'Admirably well, I thank you. My sick-berth gives me great satisfaction. But,' he went on, turning Jack to the light and peering up into his face, 'I cannot congratulate you on your looks.'

  'You have never yet congratulated me on my looks at any time: it would make me uneasy if you were to begin now.'

  'No. But now the sickly pallor of thought, to which I am not accustomed, is superadded: of thought, study, and watching. Let me see your tongue. Very indifferent. Oh very indifferent; and an ill breath too—fetid. Have you omitted your morning swim, your forenoon climb to the various eminences, your three mile pacing before quarters?'

  'Yes, I have. The first because of the unreasonable number of sharks—Whewell says they always swarm in slaving waters—and the rest because I have scarcely stirred from the cabin. I have been working out a plan of campaign with great attention and urgency, because, do you see, although I mean to do all that can be reasonably expected in the slavery line, I want to do it quick, leaving all possible time for the rest—you understand me. A pretty set of Jack Puddings we should look, arriving after the fair.'

  'I do most earnestly hope that you are satisfied with your progress?'

  'Well, Stephen, it sounds boastful, but I must admit I am. With the help of that excellent young man Whewell, Tom and Mr Woodbine and I have worked out a series of movements that, given moderate luck, should be quite successful. The only thing I very much regret is that I see no possibility whatsoever of making a prodigious great thundering din on our first arrival, as their Lordships desire me to do.'

  Lowering his voice and steering the Doctor right aft so that they stood by one of the splendid great stern-lanterns, swaying to the even pitch and roll, he went on, 'It may seem wicked, even blasphemous, to say that my orders might have been written by a parcel of landsmen, accustomed to the regularity of travelling by stage-coach, or by navigation on an inland canal: yet on the other hand some of the lords are mere landborne politicians, and anyhow the orders pass down through the secretary, that ass Barrow, to a number of clerks who may never have been afloat at all—but all that to one side. I have received orders that make no account of wind or tide before this, and so have all other sea-officers. I do not complain. But what I really cannot understand is that the Ministry should expect me to take the slavers by surprise when our expedition has been advertised to the world in half a dozen daily sheets, including The Times. For do not tell me that those paragraphs appeared without Whitehall's knowledge. No: the only thing that I can think of doing is to have a full-blown great-gun exercise as soon as we are lying before the town. At least that will make an infernal uproar. But it is vexing, for Whewell tells me that as soon as the preventive squadron was withdrawn the trade started agai
n, even in the Gallinas river, and on Sherbro Island, right next to Freetown, and with a little discretion we might have seized on half a dozen, loading slaves in the estuary. However, I shall send the Ringle in tomorrow to have some powder waiting for us. It is only a day's sail for her, with this breeze.'

  'May you not be doing the Ministry an injustice, my dear? Conceivably they reflected that whereas the French intelligence people are among the most attentive readers of The Times and the Post, few slavers in the Bight of Benin subscribe to either; and that the French, convinced that you are busy south of the tropic line—a conviction reinforced by reports of the noise in question—will carry on with their knavish tricks, their plans, in spite of the sailing of this squadron.'

  'Oh,' cried Jack. 'Do you really think that could be so?'

  'I have known the stratagem succeed: but it has to be used with great delicacy, lest the overreacher find himself overreached.'

  'Well, I was certainly overreached, though I have a tolerable knowledge of the world, I believe. There are no doubt some uncommon deep old files in Whitehall, and I had better keep to navigation and the fiddle. Lord,'—laughing heartily—'there I was, setting up for a political cove.' They paced for a while, and then he said, 'I tell you what it is, Stephen: ever since you told me about that good-natured, honest fellow Hinksey, music has been fairly bubbling up in me. Shall we play this evening?'

  Dr Maturin had many of the virtues required in a medical man: he listened to what his patients had to say; he wished even the most repulsive of them well, once they had committed themselves to his care; he was indifferent to their fees; and with a great deal of reading and a great deal of experience, he was fully aware of the narrow limits of his powers—an awareness that on occasion he disguised, but only to keep their spirits up (he was a great believer in the healing powers of cheerfulness, if not of open mirth). Yet he had some faults, and one was a habit of dosing himself, generally from a spirit of inquiry, as in his period of inhaling large quantities of the nitrous oxide and of the vapour of hemp, to say nothing of tobacco, bhang in all its charming varieties in India, betel in Java and the neighbouring islands, qat in the Red Sea, and hallucinating cacti in South America, but sometimes for relief from distress, as when he became addicted to opium in one form or another; and now he was busily poisoning himself with coca-leaves, whose virtue he had learnt in Peru.