The Nutmeg of Consolation (25 page)

'Very well, sir,' said Slade. 'Which we thank you for your kindness. Only Auden here' - both his neighbours pointed at him - 'lost two toes in Tierra del Fuego; and John Brampton sinned with a woman in Tahiti, and is in the sick-berth yet.'

'I grieve to hear it. I shall visit John by and by. But prosperous otherwise, I hope?'

'Oh dear me yes, sir,' said Slade. 'Not quite up to your Nebuchadnezzar pitch, but Seth has been very good to us.' He and all his mates jerked their thumbs at what in their sect was both a holy and a lucky name.

'Ha, ha,' said Jack, his mind running back to the glorious prizes they had taken in their first cruise together, 'I am glad the barky has done well.'They all looked affectionately over the side to where the Nutmeg, the Triton and the two merchantmen stuffed with wealth were standing away to the north-west with the wind two points free, now more than half hull down. 'But you must not expect the Nebuchadnezzar touch again, not in these waters.'

'Oh no, sir,' said Slade, and all his friends went tut, tut, tut. 'All we hope for to do now is to go quietly home with what we have, and if we get there' - the same simultaneous movement of six thumbs - 'we mean to build a tabernacle of shittim-wood for our chapel - you know our chapel, sir?'

'Oh yes, indeed I do.' So did anyone else coming in to Shelmerston from the sea; for although the chapel was not large it was built of white marble ornamented with gilt brass esses, and it made a striking contrast with the rest of the town, mostly thatched, homely, vague in outline.

'And in this here tabernacle we mean to deposit our beards, as what we call a thank-offering.'

'Very right and proper,' said Jack, and having shaken hands he moved on to Belcher, whose captain had almost certainly been both a pirate and a cannibal and whose hand was without any doubt the roughest and most vice-like in the ship. 'Well, Johnson, Penderecki, John Smith and Peter Smith...' said Jack, and so along the starboard side, where only the second captains and a boarder stood by each gun, and down into the entrails of the ship. This tour resembled an inspection at divisions, but Jack was not accompanied by his first lieutenant nor any of the divisional officers; it was a wholly personal affair, and although his dinner had not been a success, and although the soup was still with him, his face was set in pleasure as he walked through the hot and smelly gloom towards the sick-berth. The ship was in high man-of-war order; she had lost only five hands - three Lascars of pneumonia in the cold, wet, tedious passage of the Strait, one washed out of the head by night in the heavy weather that met them as they emerged into the Pacific, and one killed when they boarded the first merchantmen - and there was no doubt that under Tom Pullings she was a happy ship. Yet surely the stench was a little much, even for the orlop?

Light showed under the sill of the sick-berth door and there were voices within; as he opened it he heard with satisfaction that the two medical men were talking in Latin. The only other inhabitants were Wilkins, who had a broken arm that would not knit and who could not therefore shake hands, though grateful for the visit, and the simpler Brampton brother, the Tahiti pox, who was too ashamed to move or speak.

'Mr Martin,' said Jack, after he had seen the invalids, 'this is in no way a personal refiexion on you or Captain Pullings, but is not the atmosphere down here uncommon thick, not to say unwholesome? Dr Maturin, do you not find the atmosphere uncommon thick?'

'I do too. But I am of opinion that this is no more than the ordinary atmosphere, the ordinary fetor of an aged man-of-war; for you are to consider, that in foul weather, hands in the grip of peristalsis or micturition will seek some secluded corner within the ship rather than be washed off the seat of ease out there in the open prow. So after some generations we live above a floating cess-pit, the offence being aggravated by many other factors, such as the tons and tons and advisedly do I say tons of the vile slime that comes aboard on the cables when we have lain in a port like Batavia or Mahon, a slime made up of the filth of slaughter-houses and human habitations, to say nothing of putrid debris brought down by streams - mud and slime that drips from the cables in their tiers into the space below, which is never, never cleaned. The Nutmeg, dear colleague' - turning towards Martin, who looked somewhat out of countenance - 'was as sweet as her name implies, with never a cockroach, never a mouse, still less a rat, she having lain on the sea-bed for months together. All her wooden members had swollen tight together, like those of a wine-barrel when at last you get it tight, so that once she was pumped dry and aired within, dry she remained, with no foul bilges swilling to and fro; and this we have been used to long enough for our noses to grow delicate.'

'Hayes is to be hung in an airy space upstairs tomorrow,' said Martin 'And Brampton must finish his salivation in peace and quiet.'

'I shall see that another windsail is shipped,' said Jack; and before he went he leaned over Brampton's cot and said, rather loud, 'Cheer up, Brampton; many a man has been far worse than you, and you are in very good hands.'

'The woman tempted me,' said Brampton; and after a short silence, 'I shall go to Hell.' He turned his head away, his body heaving with sobs.

With the Captain gone they reverted to their Latin and Martin said 'Do you think I can decently offer him comfort?'

'I cannot tell,' said Stephen. 'For the moment I should exhibit a slime-draught with two scruples of asafoetida.' He turned to the medicine-chest. 'I see you have changed nothing,' he said.

'Oh no, indeed,' said Martin; and then 'I am afraid the Captain was not quite pleased.'

'It was only that I thoughtlessly said the ship was old,' said Stephen. He cannot bear it.' Having smelt the mixture he added a little more asafoetida and said 'What induced you to say that the patient must finish his salivation in the sick-berth?'

'Because anywhere else he would be exposed to his shipmates' playfulness, their facetious enquiries after his membrum virile and often-repeated witticisms: the Sethians are an austere set of men and this lapse has amused the ordinary dissolute mariners. They mean no harm, but they will play off their humours, and until he has his health their mirth may kill him. The mind is not very strong, and I am afraid his friends are ill-advised to dwell so much on sin and its wages.'

By the time they had dosed Brampton and summoned the loblolly-boy to sit with the patients - no visitors to be allowed until further notice - a somewhat fresher air was wafting down the new windsail into the depths, and as they reached the quarterdeck Jack said to Pullings 'If it is kept carefully trimmed to the wind it will do a great deal, but' - raising his voice -'remarks have been passed about the charnel-house, cess-pit stink between decks, so perhaps we had better open the sweetening-cock.'

'I am very sorry about the stench, sir: I had not noticed any. But then it is a little close and hot, with the wind so far abaft the beam.'

'Mr Oakes, Mr Reade,' called Jack.

'Sir?' they said, pulling off their hats.

'Do you know where the sweetening-cock is?'

They looked a little blank, and Oakes said hesitantly 'In the hold, sir.'

'Then go to the carpenter and tell him from me that you are to be shown how to turn it on; and it is to be left on until there is eighteen inches of water in the well.' When they had gone he turned back to Pullings and said in the same carrying tone 'Of course we shall have to pump ship an hour or so longer, which is very hard in this heat; but at least it will clean the bilges. Clean the bilges like a milkmaid's pail.'

This was heard by all on the quarterdeck except the medical men, who were very slowly climbing the shrouds of the mizen mast, concentrating too hard on their anxious task for any satirical fling to reach them. Privacy was the rarest of all the ship's amenities: each had a cabin, but it was for solitary reading, writing, contemplation or sleep, being as small (all proportions guarded) as a fattening-coop for a single bird; and although Stephen had the run of the great cabin, the dining-cabin and the sleeping-cabin (which was but fair, he being the owner of the ship), none of these places was suitable for the long, detailed and even passionate discussion of birds, beasts and flowers, the rooms belonging equally to the Captain; nor was the gunroom, with its many other inhabitants. Both would do for the occasional display of skins, bones, feathers, botanical specimens; and indeed their long tables might have been made for the purpose; but in earlier voyages they had found that the only place for long, comfortable, uninterrupted conversation was the mizen-top, a reasonably spacious platform embracing the head of the lower mast and the foot of the one above it, poised some forty feet above the deck, walled on either side by the topmast shrouds and their deadeyes, and aft by a little wall of canvas extended by a rail, while the front was open, giving them a good view of all the ocean that the maincourse and maintopsail did not shut out, when the mizen topsail was not set. The maintop would have been higher; the foretop would have given a better view (unbeatable with the foretopsail furled); but in either case getting there was more public: kind hands from below would place their feet on the ratlines, strong and sometimes facetious voices would call out advice; for although they made light of the peril and would even take a hand from the shroud and wave it to show how little they regarded the height, there was something about their attitude and their rate of progress which persuaded watchers that even after all these thousands of sea-miles they were not seamen, nor anything even remotely resembling seamen. But the quarterdeck (from which the mizentop was reached) was out of bounds for three quarters of the ship's company; furthermore, whereas the main and fore tops were often filled with busy hands, the mizentop was much more rarely used, particularly with the wind so far abaft the beam.

Less used, but even so the relevant studdingsails were kept there, folded into long soft parcels; and upon these they reclined, gasping, with their backs against the firm canvas, as they had so often sat before. 'Well, there you are again,' said Martin, looking at him with affectionate satisfaction. 'I cannot tell you with what regret I saw you leave the ship half the world away. Apart from all other considerations, there I was with no mentor and a sick-berth potentially full of diseases that I could not even name, far less treat.'

'Come, you have done pretty well. No more than three men in a hundred degrees of latitude: that is pretty well. And when all is said and done, there is little we can do in the physical line apart from bleeding, purging, sweating and administering blue pill and even bluer ointment. Surgery is another matter. You have made the neatest job of poor West's nose.'

'It was simplicity itself. A snip - I used scissors - a few painless stitches, and as it recovered its feeling so it healed.'

'Without even laudable pus?'

'Without anything at all. It was frostbite, you know, not syphilis.'

'So he told me: he told Captain Aubrey and me at once. I am afraid people are tactful: avert their eyes without any questions and look no more.'

'I am afraid they do. But tell me, tell me, what have you been doing all this time, and what have you seen, apart from the orang-utang?'

Stephen smiled at him, and as he smiled so the events of these past months presented themselves scarcely as a sequence but more nearly as a whole. From them he picked what was proper to tell, together with the inward reflexion 'What are the three things that cannot be concealed? Love, sorrow, and wealth are the three things that cannot be concealed: and intelligence-work comes a very close fourth' and the realization that these mental processes had occupied no more than two rolls of the ship, magnified in space up here but clearly not in time. 'You must know,' said he, 'that Captain Aubrey was called back to England to be fully reinstated and to take command of the Diane. She was to carry an envoy to the Sultan of Pulo Prabang, who was contemplating an alliance with the French; and since this island - oh such orchids and coleoptera, Martin, apart from my celestial ape and the unimaginably huge rhinoceros! - lies in the South China Sea, almost across the path of our Indiamen coming from Canton, and where should we be without our rhubarb and tea, God preserve us, the envoy's mission was to induce the Sultan to change his mind. It was thought useful that I should go too, speaking French and having some knowledge of Malay as well as medicine. And so we went, sailing as fast as ever we could, making only one stop, at Tristan da Cunha; but that was very nearly our last, the ship being heaved nearer and nearer and nearer a sheer wall of rock by rollers topmast high and never a breath of wind to give us motion. I assure you however we survived it, and I even set foot on Tristan, flattering myself I should see wonders while they were watering and taking in greenstuff. It will not surprise you to learn that I was snatched away within hours, within hours, on the plea that they must not lose some favourable conjuncture of wind, tide or the like. Then the far southern ocean, and there at last I had albatrosses, giant petrels, stink-pots, pintadoes: but at such a cost! Monstrous billows, an incessant shrieking wind that allowed human thought and speech only when we were in the vast deep hollow of the wave; and then ice; ice on the deck, ice on the ropes, ice-mountains in the sea of most prodigious size and I must confess prodigious beauty that threatened to do us in as the seamen say; so Captain Aubrey directed our course to more Christian seas and I was in great hopes of seeing Amsterdam Island, a remote and uninhabited speck untouched by any naturalist, its flora, fauna and geology wholly undescribed. I saw it indeed, but only far to windward, and the ship carried on under a press of sail for Java Head.'

The sun had set in its usual abrupt tropical manner soon after they had made themselves comfortable: night had swept over the sky, showing the eastern stars after the few minutes of twilight, and now on the larboard beam a glowing planet heaved up on the horizon, lying there for a moment like the stern-lantern of some important ship. Martin was a man of peace; Maturin, with certain qualifications, was in principle opposed to violence; yet both had absorbed so much of the man-of-war's and even more the letter of marque's predatory values that they fell silent, staring like tigers at the planet until it rose clear of the sea and betrayed its merely celestial character.