21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey (3 page)

“
I am so sorry to impose these odious duties upon you, Stephen –
pray take a sup of port –
but you know, of course you know only too well, that when you and all your people have been without long enough you will descend to the basest means to relieve your wants.”

“
I am not sure that the response is altogether civil: but be that as it may, I will tell you, Jack, that if they are bad in Port Desire and worse in Bahia, they are likely to be downright outrageous in the River Plate, where we are to meet the South African ships. Yet if I am not mistaken we are likely to be there well before Lord Leyton –
well before even your little squadron ….”

“
What the Devil do you mean by my little squadron?
It is a perfectly normal squadron, rather large than otherwise. Two ships of the line apart from
Suffolk
: a fifty-gun ship, two considerable sloops of war...”

“
Hush, hush, Jack. Never fly into a passion, soul,”
cried Stephen, seeing that his friend was seriously annoyed. “
Sure you must know after all this time that we use little as an endearment –
a meliorative term, as one says my little Puss to a handsome Amazon that weighs fifteen stone in her shift. So we arrive, do you follow me now, well before his lordship, whom God preserve, and our natural allies, all because of our commendable zeal. Now let me beg you, for all love, to moor your ship close in against the southern shore for so much as an egg, an egg: for in a considerable city fanaticism can swell to a most surprising and horrible extent.”

At the end of
the particularly grave adagio Jack put down his bow and said, “
Should you dislike it very much if we were to leave Bahia out of our plans? Our water and the cabbages have held out uncommon well and I had as soon push on quietly, if you understand me, to the River Plate, where there is a great resort of merchantmen and all sort of people that supply their needs, chandlers, smiths and the like: you are not dependent on the local werewolf. Not that I have anything to say against werewolves: the gentlewoman was perfectly civil, and her cabbages have stood up admirably.”

“
I should not dislike it at all. Bahia has by all accounts some tolerable strands, but nothing in the way of lakes or marshland within striking distance: Jacob and I have an immense amount of sorting, reconstituting, classifying and preserving to do, and I had as soon sail on northwards –
quietly, as you put it so well, quietly putting our collections in order.”

Quietly indeed they sailed along, with gentle breezes that wafted them generally northwards at something in the nature of five miles in the hour, northwards to even warmer seas. Little activity was called for, apart from the nice adjustment of the sails, and although the exact routine of the ship was never relaxed nor her very strict rules of cleanliness, these long sunny days with a soldier’
s wind seemed to many the ideal of a seaman's life –
regular, steady, traditional meals with the exact allowance of grog; hornpipes in the last dogwatch, the deep melody of the Doctor’s ‘
cello from the cabin and th e cheerful sound of the gunroom’
s dinner; the future lost in a haze somewhere north of the equator.

So the golden days went by, and Step
hen’
s mound of tiny skins mounted up, very carefully dried and treated against mites, against the voracious cockroaches that no amount of sulphurous fumigation could eliminate from the ultimate depths of the hold, their survivors breeding with extraordinary rapidity.

By the time they were in flying-fish water again, the Surprise and her people had settled down to this very agreeable form of life –
some few cases of sunburn and alleged moon-pall by night, to occupy Poll Skeeping and Maggie, and a series of quite deep, painful wounds or rather hook-billed bites from those parakeets that did not choose to be tamed; but for once, for once, no steady dosing for the pox. With a perfectly competent, conscientious, but by no means tyrannical first lieutenant, Jack Aubrey and his clerk could devote their hours to gathering all the scattered surveying material from the various notebooks and journals and cast it into the regular form most valued by the Hydrographical Department. They were quite near the end of their work on the immense south Pacific crescent, at the northern tip of the Chonos

Archipelago, which Jack had surveyed in freezing drizzle with a team of zealous and remarkably amiable young Chilean officer-cadets when the expected news came below. With the Master’
s duty, Mr Wells begged to tell Captain Aubrey that the leading-marks for the River Plate were clear from the masthead, almost due north-northwest.

They were clearer still by the last dogwatch, when the declining sun lit them from behind; and in the morning the
Surprise
was well into the whole vast bay. All day long, with a gently favouring breeze they sailed up it until both shores could clearly be seen, and a fair amount of shipping: but never a sign of a man-of-war.

Farther, farther, with no more than her foretopsail now: a pause for dinner; and drinking his coffee on deck afterwards Jack said to Stephen, “
May I ask you and Dr Jacob to run up to the island with Wantage and make sure that our salute will be returned? This reception is so very curious that I should like to make quite certain.
Mr Harding, please be so good as to have the blue cutter put over the side.”

The island was the chief of the many administrative centres: it was from the battery high on the seaward cliff that salutes were answered; and usually the place was like a fairly busy hive, with customs, quarantine and harbour-dues officials swarming all over it, together with soldiers, sailors, marines and those grave gentlemen in long black coats, black-scabbarded swords, black neckcloths and black wigs who were said to be very high in the administration. At present the place was singularly quiet, almost motionless, and since a salute was rarely returned without a good deal of bustle, the silence made all hands uneasy. It was known throughout the service that an unreturned salute was practically a casus belli. In any event it was the gravest insult and one that put an end to all communication with the shore. And to fire a salute without assurance that it would be returned was strictly forbidden. The question did not often arise, but in this case the atmosphere was so uncommon that Jack did not intend to run the risk.

Yet while the
coxswain was summoning his boat’
s crew Harding said to Jack, “
Forgive me, sir, but I believe I see a craft clearing from the lee-side. Yes, sir,” lowering his glass, “
I think it is one of their medicos and a couple of dirty mates.”
He peered again.
“
'Yes: a dirty, ill-looking crew in a dirty, ill-looking craft.”

They did not improve on closer acquaintance: at fifty yar ds from the frigate’
s side a man stood up and bawled “Quarantine.”

Harding had
a ladder put over and the party’
s leader, wearing a black coat and a yellow wig, followed by a youth with an ink-h orn, came aboard quite nimbly. “
Dr Quental,”
said the man in a very loud voice. “Health. Speak Portuguese?”
Wantage, who was fluent in the language, made as though to answer, but Stephen checked him. “
I am the surgeon of this ship, sir,” he said in Latin. “
Dr Maturin, at your service.
I do not have the pleasure of speaking Portuguese, but I should be happy to answer any questions you choose to ask in Latin. And so will my colleague, Dr Jacob.”

Dr Quental put as good a face on it as he could, and with more ease than the company expected he repeated a list of disorders by class: “Exanthematici? Critic?
Phlogistici? Dolorosi?
Quietales? Motorii?
Suppressorii ? Evacuator ii? Defomes? Vitia?

Stephen considered all these, one by one, shaking his head after due reflection and t h en inviting their guest to come and view what invalids the ship possessed.

P
o
ll Skeeping and Maggie had had plenty of time: their few patients (all with mill strains or broken bones apart from one with raging toothache, to be dealt with tomorrow, when his particular friend the armourer had finished a powerful pair of forceps to his own satisfaction) were correctly rigid in their cots, washed pink, brushed and incapable of movement, almost of drawing breath, so tight-strained were the sheets.
Dr Quental was much impressed, much gratified by a draught of rum, happy to accept the compliment of a neatly-cased French amputating saw, and perfectly willing to give Surprise a clean bill of health. He also stated that in his considered opinion the fort would not hesitate to answer the ship’s s alute with exactly the same number of guns; having sorted his Latin with some care while he finished his glass, he told Stephen that he was an anti-cle rical, that he had nothing to do with the public burning of heretics, and that he dared say there were very good men everywhere: among Jews, for example, or blacks, or even worse.

“Sir,” said Wantage in Stephen’
s ea r as the Rio boat pulled away, “
his mates that did not go below with the Doctor, told me there was a rare old rumpus in the town last night, when some of people from a barque out of Boston, the Boston in the colonies, stood up at a vigil and said it was great nonsense to say you were allowed only one wife: one wife at a time. ‘Look at King Solomon,’
they said; and it was taken very much amiss. Then one of them called out that he did not give a fig for the Pope of Rome, and fighting broke out. They said five Protestant houses were set on fire, and it might be much worse tomorrow, with the arrival of the Legate.”

“What’s a legate?”
asked Jack, when Stephen told him of this.

“
In England th ey were usually called nuncios,”
said Stephen: but in answer to a very severe look he added; “
An ambassador, as you might say - often plenipoten tiary.”

“
Well, I hope the si lly villains have got it wrong,”
said Jack with a look of strong dissatisfaction.
“
This is the very last moment to become religious and start looking for stakes, gunpowder and -what do you call those things?”

“Sanbenitos.”

“
Just so: S
anbenitos. All we want to do is to fill up our water, buy a few fresh provisions and no doubt some wholesome fruit — we do not want to be racked, scourged and burnt: we get plenty of that at sea, free, gratis and for nothing - and pay our compliment to the Governor. Oh, that Suffolk would come in, followed by the rest of the blue squadron, then by Lord Leyton with his ships and hey for Cape Town with never a papist in sight for the next ten thousand miles .
. . I beg pardon, dear Stephen,”
he added, looking earnestly into Stephen's face. “
I really did not mean to be unkind or personal.”

“I am sure you did not, my dear,” said Stephen. “
Pray when do you mean to start the salute?”

“
Just as soon as the gunner tells the officer of the watch that all is right and ready, oh; and the officer of the watch tells Harding to his astonishment that we are all ready. Then, when I have begged Harding to proceed we shall, with luck, hear that fine measured boom, boom, boom. Twelve guns is usual for Rio, and I know that Harding is having the irons heated; for, do you see, with a red-hot iron in your touchhole you cannot miss fire and have one of those embarrassing pauses in the solemn round. He is as eager as I am to have the barky as trim as the Royal yacht on occasions like this.
”

The day itself was by no means as trim as it woul d have been, but for the Legate’
s visitation; yet even so, at tea-time Killick, came in, followed by Grimble, a procession of two, bearing the tea-tray (a great Spanish salver captured long ago) and a reasonable amount of anchovy toast, tea-cakes and a noble muffin.
Jack took tea seriously, as well he might, being so much exposed to the elements; indeed, he finished the two-men’
s muffin single handed; and then, wiping his buttery fingers, he directed an intelligent, almost a political look at Stephen, paused for a while, and then said, in substance, exactly what Stephen had expected him to say.

“
There are, as you know better than I — far better, indeed, a good many of our people are.
...”
Here he hesitated trying to find which was least offensive: Papists? Romans?
Mumbo-Jumbo certainly would not do.
People of the old faith sounded obsequious.
“
Most of them are Irish, of course; though quite a few come from the English north country. And then there are the mere foreigners . . .
that is to say, the foreigners.”

“
There is something to be said for the word Catholics. It is in general use in Ireland .”

“
Just so: thank you, Stephen. Well, in strange towns you quite often lead your band to a place where they hear what they expect to hear - a place where they are quite at h ome.”

“
Just so. And, if you recall, I nearly always bri ng them back to the ship sober.”

“
Indeed you do: thoughtful, contemplative and, as you say dead sober. Now it just happened to cross my mind that was you to take them all to the cathedral, where I have no doubt the Legate will be pontificating, as is but right and proper, and if they were to be perfect ly neat, fit to pass an Admiral’
s inspection, most uncommon solemn and pious, if you understand me, and was they to sing out good and hearty in the right places, it might tend to create a good impression, and persuade his Holiness that we were not all a band of gin-sodden ra parees, given over entirely to whoredom and things I do not like even to mention. I hope you do not find my suggestion offensive, Stephen ? For it is only a suggestion, d o you see, not in any sense an order.”