The Nutmeg of Consolation (16 page)

It was a good supper, consisting, through Mrs Raffles' kindness, of spaghetti, mutton chops, and toasted cheese followed, again through Mrs Raffles' kindness, by plum cake. During the meal they drank their usual toasts, and with the last of the wine Jack said, 'To the dear Surprise, and may we meet her soon.'

'With all my heart,' said Stephen, and drained his glass.

They sat reflecting in silence while the current sang past the hull and after some minutes Jack said 'I wonder whether you would not be well advised to sleep below for this bout. I am going to take the middle watch and I shall be in and out at all hours. I mean to let her run all night and to start disguising her tomorrow; and at first light we shall gut the cabin and trundle the chasers aft.'

In most of Jack Aubrey's commands Stephen, as the ship's surgeon, had an alternative cabin opening off the gunroom: he lay there now, gently swaying with the Nutmeg's pitch and roll as she ran through the darkness. He lay there on his back, with his hands behind his head, perfectly at his ease. He did not sleep. The coffee and even more the coca leaves quite outweighed the port, but he did not care. His mind ran along as smooth and easy as the Nutmeg, one ear hearing the general deep voice of a taut-rigged ship with a fine spread of canvas abroad, the unchanging naval sounds, the faint, faint bells in due succession, the cry of 'All's well' right round the ship, the muffled trampling of bare feet at the changing of the watch. It ran with no particular guidance, drifting agreeably from one set of ideas to another connected by some tenuous association until they came to the possibility however remote of finding the Surprise at the far end of the Salibabu Passage. As he evoked her name so he had a clear-cut mental image of her; he smiled in the darkness; and then quite suddenly the loss of his fortune came back to him, his present relative poverty. The Surprise might belong to him, but there would be none of those splendid cruises he had promised himself when peace came back again - cruises in which no imperious voice should ever say 'There is not a moment to be lost' and in which he and Martin could wander at large on unknown shores and on remote islands never seen by any man, still less any naturalist, where birds could be taken up by hand, examined, and put back on their nests.

Relative poverty. He would not be able to cruise; he would not be able to endow his chairs of comparative osteology; they would have to sell the house in Half Moon Street. But although he had committed himself to a certain number of annuities his calculations (such as they were) seemed to show that a modest competence might remain if he continued in the service; and perhaps they might be able to keep Diana's new place in Hampshire, for her Arabian horses.

In any event he was perfectly certain that she would take it well, even if they had to retire to his half-ruined castle in the mountains of Catalonia. His only fear was that on hearing the news she would sell her famous great diamond, the Blue Peter, the joy of her life: for not only would doing so take away that joy but it would also give her an immense moral advantage, and Stephen was convinced that moral advantage was a great enemy to marriage. Few happy marriages did he know among his friends and acquaintance, and in those few the balance seemed to him equal. Then again he found it more blessed to give than to receive; he had a strong disinclination to being obliged; and sometimes, when he was low-spirited, he put this down to an odious incapacity for gratitude.

Moral advantage. After his parents' death he had spent much of his childhood and youth in Spain, housed by various members of his mother's family before finding a true home with his godfather and cousin Don Ram�two of these relations, Cosi Francesc and Cosi Eul�a, he knew well at three distinct periods of his life, as a small child, as an adolescent and as a grown man. At the time of his first visit they were a newly-married pair and they seemed quite fond of one another, though they were already tolerably strict and severe - early-morning Mass every day in the icy cathedral of Teruel. During his next stay the fondness was by no means apparent in anything but forms of unselfishness and deference to the other's will; and at his third it was quite clear to him that what fondness there may have been had been eaten away by a struggle for moral superiority. Their life had become a competitive martyrdom: competitive fasting, competitive holiness, competitive fortitude and self-denial, a dreadful uncomplaining cheerfulness in that ancient cold damp stony house, an intensely watchful competition that could only be won by the cousin that died first; though Cosi Eul�a told him as a secret never to be divulged that she had spent all Don Ram� presents and all her dress allowance for the last three years in prayers and Masses for her husband's spiritual welfare.

It was not that he thought Diana would profit from her advantage in any way or even be aware that she had one -that was not her style at all. It was rather that he, with his fundamentally rather inferior character, should be oppressed by her generosity.

Six bells, quite distinctly. What watch were they in now, for the love of God? And surely the ship was moving faster still: the fundamental note had risen half a tone. What more tiresome life than a sailor's, perpetually obliged to leap out of bed and run about in the noxious damps? His mind turned to his probable, almost certain daughter, now little more than a larva with virtually no conversation, but with such potentialities! A Mozart string quartet began singing in his head.

'If you please, sir,' said a voice that had been going on for some time and that he connected with the irregular motion of his cot. 'If you please, sir.'

'Were you jerking the strings or lifts of my cot, Mr Conway?' asked Stephen, giving him a malevolent look.

'Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir,' said Conway. 'Captain's compliments, and it is all over now: hopes you have not been too much disturbed and that you will join him at breakfast.'

'My compliments to the Captain, if you please, and I shall be happy to wait on him.'

'There you are, Stephen,' cried Captain Aubrey. 'Good morning to you. I thought you would be amazed.'

Amazed he was, and for once it showed in his face; for although the forward bulkhead had been replaced, so that he walked into the dining-cabin through the usual door, past the Marine sentry, the rest of the space aft was bare - no wall dividing the dining-cabin from the great cabin - a great bare space with nothing in it but the two chairs, the breakfast-table and far away the nine-pounder chase-guns hard up against the ordinarily imperceptible stern portlids. The checkered canvas deck-covering was gone; the room was strangely vast and empty - not a chest, not a book-case, not an elbow-chair, nothing but these guns on the bald planking, with their shot-garlands, wads, rammers, worms and the rest. There was almost nothing familiar in the cabin but the table, the far-off stern-windows, the carronades on either side, and the delightful smell of coffee and frying bacon brought aft by who knows what complex eddies and counter-currents.

Jack rang the bell, observing, 'I have not invited any officers or mids. They are all too filthy; and in any case it is far too late in the day. You will be even more amazed when you go on deck. We started ruining the poor Nutmeg's looks when we ordinarily clean the decks, and I do assure you the forecastle is already a hissing and an abomination.'

Breakfast came in, breakfast on the heroic scale, calculated for a large, heavy, powerful man who had been up before first light and who had so far eaten no more than a piece of biscuit. The clash of knives and forks, of china upon china, the sound of pouring coffee, a conversation reduced to such words as 'Will I pass you another egg, so?'

'That cannot have been four bells,' said Stephen, looking up from his plate with an attentive ear.

'I believe it was, though,' said Jack, who had now reached marmalade and his second pot of coffee.

'It was benevolent in you to wait, brother,' said Stephen. 'I take it kindly.'

'I hope you got some sleep, at all events,' said Jack.

'Sleep? And why should I not sleep, at all?'

'As soon as the idlers were called we made enough din to raise the dead, getting the chasers aft and opening the portlids. I doubt they had been opened when she was weighed from the bottom of the sea, they were so cruelly tight. Painted in too, of course, right across the upper counter for pretty, so they could not be seen. I thought it would have broken Fielding's heart as we beat and thumped them into some sense of their duty; but he looked a little less wretched when we had the guns in place. The breeching and the tackles hide some of the scars. And so you slept through it all: well, well.'

Stephen frowned and said 'I cannot conceive what you hope to gain by placing them there, and ruining our parlour, our music-room, our one solace on the ocean's bosom. But then I am no great sailor.'

'Oh, I should never say that: oh not at all, not really,' said Jack. 'But if you like I will explain them by telling you about my plan of attack, if anything that depends upon one probable surmise but countless unknowns can be called a plan.'

'I should be very happy to hear it.'

'As you know, we hope to catch the Corn�e watering at Nil Desperandum, in the cove on the southern side: a not unreasonable hope, since watering there is a very slow business and she needs a great deal for the next leg of her voyage. In the best of cases I should run in, looking like a Dutch merchantman in need of water too and of course wearing Dutch colours: I should run in under shabby topsails, and with luck I should come close alongside, whip up the ensign, give her a broadside and board her in the smoke. It should not be a very difficult boarding: if she had even a small party ashore our numbers would be about equal, and then there is the immense advantage of surprise. But that is the best of cases, and I must provide for others. Suppose for example she lies awkwardly or suppose I miss the channel - in short, suppose I cannot run close alongside, then I must turn about, since I cannot engage her broadside to broadside at any distance, not with carronades against her long eighteen-pounders. Turn and entice her out, for I have no fear of her not chasing: I know she is short of stores - in fact she is probably very, very short. Her being out of water so soon makes it seem likely that she left Pulo Prabang in a great hurry.'

'Nothing could be more probable than a quarrel in those circumstances. The Frenchmen had lost all credit.'

'So, do you see, I am sure of her chasing us: and I am sure of being able to outsail her both by and large. The Dutchman assured me she could not come within seven points close-hauled; and she is wretchedly equipped for a breeze abaft the beam. She was so short of sailcloth that they took mere rags from the Alkmaar as better than what they had. My plan is to make her think we are trying to escape - the usual lame-duck tactics - and so lead her through the Salibabu Passage by night, disappear behind the second island at the far end, sending a well-lit boat ahead, and come out as she passes by. Once. she is past we have the weather-gage, and it would be strange if we did not lay her alongside in a matter of a glass or two.'

'Would she indeed chase all night in these dangerous parts?'

'Oh, I think so. Salibabu is a deep-water passage, much better known than the South China Sea; and in any case her captain is a bold enterprising man - he heaved his ship down at Pulo Prabang, which I should scarcely have dared to do -and as I say, he is desperately short of stores. He has an enormous tract of ocean to sail across: and would risk anything to seize a well-found ship, man-of-war or not. Furthermore his course lies through the Passage: it does not take him an inch out of his way. I am so sure of his attempting us that I have shifted the chasers aft, as you see. He will certainly pepper us as we run and I should like to be able to reply. You will say that a nine-pounder' - looking affectionately at Beelzebub, his own brass chaser - 'will not carry away a frigate's foreyard or even foretopsailyard at the distance I intend to keep, which is profoundly true; but there is always the lucky shot that severs a lift or a backstay, causing sad confusion. I remember when I was a boy in the West Indies a six-pounder fired from the forecastle that cut the chase's peak-halliards, a valuable schooner that was going from us like smoke and oakum - down came her mainmast, and of course we snapped her up. To be sure, that works both ways; and the French are sometimes devilish clever at pointing their guns.'

'On the perhaps rather wild supposition that the Corn�e is limited to the four barrels she took from the Alkmaar, how long would the peppering last?'

He regretted his question as soon as he had asked it; and indeed Jack answered rather coldly. 'Four barrels would allow shots from a nine-pound chaser, or four eighteen-pounder broadsides if the bow gun were left out, which it often is.' But at this point a somewhat haggard Fielding came in to report progress.

'How are the hands taking it?' asked Jack.

'There was a certain amount of reluctance here and there, as you noticed yourself, sir,' said Fielding, 'but now they all seem won over to the idea, and some of the younger topmen have to be restrained rather than encouraged. A proper rag-fair she looks forward: Irish pennants, slush over the side, the heads enough to make a mad-house blush.'

'I will come as soon as the Doctor has finished his cup,' said Jack. 'I promised him he should be amazed.'

'I am with you now,' said Stephen, starting up. 'Pray lead on.'

'There,' said Jack as they all three stood at the quarterdeck barricade, facing forward. There were several other officers on the leeward side and they too watched Stephen's face attentively.

'Where am I to look?' he asked.

'Why, everywhere,' cried both Jack and Fielding.

'It seems much the same to me,' said Stephen.

'Oh for shame,' cried Jack amidst a general sound of disapproval. 'Do not you see the loathesome deck?'

'The rope-yarns hanging about in the rigging?' asked Fielding.

'The loose reef-points?' asked the master, moved beyond discretion.

'The fag-ends of rope everywhere?'