The Nutmeg of Consolation

  From far over the water came the sound of bosun's calls as the prizes and their guardians prepared to ship capstan bars.

  'Very well, Tom,' said Jack. 'But this coat is killing me. I shall go below, take it off, and see whether I can grow a little cooler. When you and the other officers have shifted into nankeens, let us get under way; then I will ask the people how they do. Doctor, will you come with me? Do not you feel the heat?'

  'I do not,' said Stephen. 'Sobriety and moderation preserve me from plethory; they preserve me from discomfort in what is after all but a modest warmth.'

  'Sobriety and moderation are capital virtues and I have practised them from my earliest youth,' said Jack, 'but they are sadly out of place in a host, who must encourage his guests to eat and drink by example; so there is a Roland for your . . .'

  In his shirt-sleeves and stretched out on the locker by the open stern-windows, Jack loosened his waist-band and reflected for a while. The name Oliver floated up out of a score of others and he called 'Killick. Killick, there.'

  'What now?' cried Killick, also in his shirt-sleeves; he had worked exceedingly hard to clear the table and he was not pleased at being torn from his enormous washing-up, far too delicate to be trusted to seamen who would use brick-dust on plate the minute they were left unwatched.

  'Roland and Oliver: have you ever heard of them?'

  'There is a Roland, sir, gunsmith off of the Haymarket; and there are Oliver's Warranted Leadenhall Sausages. Many an Oliver's Warranted Leadenhall Sausage have I ate at the Grapes when we was ashore.'

  'Well,' said Jack, unconvinced. 'I may drop off. If I do, give me a call when we are under way.'

  He heard the pipe All hands unmoor ship followed by its invariable sequence: the muffled thunder of running feet, orders, pipes, the steady click of pawls, the stamp and go of those manning the bars and the shrill fife on the capstan-head; and his mind tried to recapture the exact state of the ship's company, her complete-book, as it stood when he left her in Portugal, but so much had happened since then, and he had eaten and drunk so heartily at dinner, that his mind refused its duty, and at the distant cry of thick and dry for weighing he went to sleep. During the extraordinarily active period that had followed dropping anchor in this road, with the repairing of the Nutmeg, the disposal of the French prisoners, the inspection of the prizes, the transfer of his and Stephen's possessions to the Surprise, and his farewell to his former shipmates, who cheered him in the kindest way when he went down the side for the last time—in these hours of continual running about he had of course seen the Surprises, but only in a fleeting way, exchanging very few words except with his bargemen, who pulled him from ship to ship in the warm calm sea. He slept; but his sleep was pervaded by an anxiety: few things wounded a foremast jack more than having his name forgotten and it was an officer's duty to remember it.

  In fact it was not Killick who woke him but Reade: 'Mr West's duty, sir, and Nutmeg has hoisted permission to part company.'

  'Reply with affirmative and add Merry Christmas: you will have to telegraph that. Where are we?'

  'We have just catted the best bower, sir, and we were just about to fish it when a man called Davis fell overboard. Mr West passed him a line, and they hauled him aboard not a minute ago, much scraped.'

  Jack was on the point of saying 'Then they can heave him back again,' but Reade was much caressed by everyone aboard—in the Nutmeg grim old forecastle hands would run the length of the gangway to hand him up a ladder, and it promised to be much the same in the Surprise—and he had a certain tendency to be above himself: this was not to be encouraged and the remark changed to a dismissive 'Thank you, Mr Reade.' But the feeling behind it remained. Davis was a very large dark hairy man, dangerously savage, clumsy—his shipboard name of Awkward Davis arose from both these qualities—and so devoid of nautical skill that he was always quartered in the waist, where his enormous strength was of some use in hoisting. Jack had once saved him from drowning, as he had saved many a man, being a capital hand at swimming; and the grateful Davis had persecuted him ever since, following him from ship to ship, impossible to shake off, though he had been offered every opportunity of deserting in ports where merchantmen were offering wages far above the Navy's £1 5s 6d a month.

  A disaster of a man, violent and quite capable of maiming or even killing a valuable hand out of jealousy or an imagined slight; but half a glass later Jack found himself shaking Davis's hand with real pleasure—a terrible grip followed by others almost equally powerful, for though the Surprises were pleased to see their Captain in his full naval glory once more, his white silk stockings, his hundred guinea presentation sword and the Turkish chelengk in his hat intimidated them a little; and although his progress was remarkably talkative for a King's ship, it was restrained for a privateer, so the seamen put nearly all their welcome into their handshake. Fortunately Jack too had enormous hands, quite as strong if not quite as horny; and fortunately the Surprise, having left England ostensibly as a private ship of war, was much less heavily manned than a King's ship—apart from anything else she carried no Marines—and there were not many more than a hundred hands to shake. As for the names, which had so worried him, they came without the slightest difficulty. Of course it was easy enough with very old shipmates like Joe Plaice, who had sailed with him in many a commission—'Well, Joe, how are you coming along, and how is the headpiece?' 'Prime, sir, I thank you kindly,' said Joe, tapping the silver dome that Dr Maturin had screwed on to his damaged skull in 49 degrees south a great while ago, 'And I give you all the joy in the world of them two swabs'—winking at the crowned epaulettes that Jack had never worn until his reinstatement appeared in the London Gazette. But it was much the same with the other hands he had taken on at Shelmerston, privateers or smugglers to a man: 'Harvey, Wall, Curtis, Fisher, Waites, Halkett,' he said to the next gun-crew, standing about their charge, old Wilful Murder, in easy, informal attitudes, 'how do you do?' and shook hands all round. And so it went until he reached Sudden Death, and there he was very nearly brought up all standing by six profoundly bearded faces, each showing a broad, pleased, expectant smile beneath the mat. 'Slade, Auden, Hinckley, Mould, Vaggers, Brampton, I trust I see you well.' The position of the gun, its name and something about their stance had brought the names of the ship's Sethians darting into his mind.

  '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.'

  'Wilkins 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 mizzen 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 gun-room, 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 mizzentop, 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 dead-eyes, 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 mizzen 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 mizzentop 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 mizzentop 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.'