'Oh I do beg your pardon, Jack,' cried Stephen, walking quickly in from the quarter-gallery. 'I had a sudden thought to be set down—but I trust I have not disturbed anything at all?'
'Not in the least,' said Jack. 'And Stephen, I believe I have solved your problem. I believe I have found you a loblolly-boy you will thoroughly approve of.'
Stephen, concerned though he was with his music—only two bars yet to write, but the magical sound already fading from his inner ear—and filled though he was with a conviction that Jack's mild 'not in the least' concealed an intense irritation, made no reply other than a questioning look. He owed his survival as an intelligence-agent to an acute ear for falsity, and Jack's last words were certainly quite untrue.
'Yes,' Jack went on, 'together with a draft of hands turned over to the squadron out of Leviathan, refitting, Maggie Cheal and Poll Skeeping have come aboard; and Poll was trained at Haslar. She is up to anything in the way of blood and horrors.'
'You are speaking of women, brother? You who have always abominated so much as the smell of a skirt aboard ship? The invariable cause of trouble, quarrelling, ill-luck. Wholly out of place in any ship, above all in a man-of-war. I have never seen a woman aboard a man-of-war.'
'Have you not, my poor Stephen? Did you never see them helping with the guns and passing shot in Bellona?'
'Never in life. Am I not always shut up in the cockpit during an action?'
'Very true. But if Jill Travers, for example, the sailmaker's wife who helped serve number eight, had been wounded, you would have seen her.'
'But seriously, Jack, are you obliged to take these women aboard? You who have always inveighed against the creatures.'
'These are not creatures, in the sense of whore-ladies or Portsmouth trollops: oh no. They are usually middle-aged or more, often the wife or widow of a petty or even of a warrant-officer. One or two may have run away like the girl in the ballad, wearing trousers, to be with her Jack when he sailed; but most have used the sea these ten or twenty years, and they look like seamen, only for the skirt and maybe shawl.'
'And yet I have never seen one, apart from the odd gunner's wife who looks after the very little fellows: and apart, of course, from that poor unhappy Mrs Horner on Juan Fernandez.'
'To be sure, they do keep out of the way. They don't belong to any watch, of course, and they don't appear at quarters, no, nor anywhere else, except when we rig church.' At any other time he would have added that for all his botanizing and stuffing curious birds, Stephen was a singularly unobservant cove: he had not even noticed the brilliant flint-locks that now, by grace of Lord Keith, adorned Surprise's guns, doing away with those potential misfires when the linstock wavered over the touch-hole or was doused by flying spray—misfires that might make those few seconds' difference between defeat and victory. Yet they blazed with all the splendour of guinea-gold, the pride of the crews, who surreptitiously breathed upon them, wiping off the mist with a silk handkerchief.
'A loblolly-girl, for all love? I wonder at it, Jack.'
'Come, come, Stephen: you say a loblolly-boy for an ancient of sixty or even more: it is only a figure of speech, a naval figure of speech. And speaking of figures, Poll's is very like a round-shot; she is a kind, cheerful, conscientious soul, but she is not likely to stir the amorous propensities of the sick-berth. Besides, she is perfectly used to seamen, and would instantly put them down. Will you at least have a word with her? I said I should mention her name. We were shipmates once, and I can answer for her being kind—no blackguarding, no bawling out orders, not topping it the ship's corporal; kind, honest, sober, and very tender with the wounded.'
'Of course I will see her, brother: a kind, honest and sober nurse is a rare and valuable creature, God knows.'
Jack rang the bell and to the answering Killick he said, 'Tell Poll Skeeping the Doctor will see her directly.'
Poll Skeeping had been at sea, off and on, for twenty years, sometimes under harsh and tyrannical officers; but for her 'directly' still allowed latitude enough for putting on a clean apron, changing her cap and finding her character: thus equipped she hurried to the cabin door, knocked and walked in, a little out of breath and obviously nervous. She bobbed to the officers, holding her character to her bosom.
'Sit down, Poll,' said Captain Aubrey, waving to a chair. 'This is Dr Maturin, who would like to speak to you.'
She thanked him and sat, bolt upright, the envelope of her character held like a shield.
'Mrs Skeeping,' said Stephen, 'I am without a sick-berth attendant, a loblolly-boy, and the Captain tells me that you might like the post.'
'That was very kind in his honour,' she said, bowing to Jack. 'Which I should be happy to be your sick-berth attendant, sir.'
'May I ask about your experience and professional qualifications? The Captain has already told me that you are kind, conscientious, and tender to the wounded; and indeed one can hardly ask more. But what of amputation, lithotomy, the use of the trephine?'
'Bless you, sir, my father, God rest his soul' (crossing herself) 'was a butcher and horse-knacker in the wholesale line, down Deptford way, and my brothers and me used to play at surgeons in the jointing house: then when I was at Haslar they put me almost straight away into the theatre. So, do you see, sir, I am hardly what could be called squeamish. But may I show you my character, sir? The surgeon of my last ship, a very learned gentleman, tells what I can do better than ever I could manage.' She passed the somewhat aged cover, and begging Jack's pardon Stephen broke the seal. The elegant Latin testimonial to Mrs Skeeping's worth, capabilities, and exceptional sobriety was written in a remarkably familiar hand but one to which he could not give a name until he turned the page and saw the signature of Kevin Teevan, an Ulster Catholic from Cavan, a friend of his student days and yet another Irishman who saw the Napoleonic tyranny as a far greater and more immediate evil than the English government of Ireland.
'Well,' he said, patting the letter affectionately, 'anyone so highly spoken of by Mr Teevan will certainly answer for me; and since I do not yet have an assistant surgeon—he will be coming aboard this afternoon—I will show you the sick-berth myself, if the Captain will excuse us.'
'There,' he went on at last, having displayed the neat arrangements of the Surprise, 'that deals with the ventilation system: no ship of the line can show a better. Now pray tell me how Mr Teevan was when last you saw him.'
'He was brimming full of joy, sir. A cousin with a practice in some grand part of London and with too many patients, offered him a partnership, and he left Mahon that very evening in Northumberland, going home to pay off and lay up. For that was when we thought it was all over, the pity and woe . . . that Boney.'
'The pity and woe indeed,' said Stephen. 'But with the blessing we shall soon settle his account.' And running his eye over the neat shelves of the forward medicine chest, he said, 'We are short of blue ointment. Do you understand the making of blue ointment, Mrs Skeeping?'
'Oh dear me yes, sir: many is the great jar I have ground in my time.'
'Then pray reach me down the little keg of hog's lard, the jar of mutton suet, and the quicksilver. There are two mortars with their pestles just below the colcothar of vitriol.'
When they had ground away companionably at their ointment for perhaps half a glass Stephen said, 'Mrs Skeeping, in my sea-time I have seen few, very few women at all, although I am told they are not in fact so very rare. Will you tell me how they come to be aboard and why they stay in a place so often damp and always so bare of comfort?'
'Why, sir, in the first place a good many warrant-officers—like the gunner, of course—take their wives to sea, and some captains allow the good petty-officers to do the same. Then there are wives that take a relation along—my particular friend Maggie Cheal is the bosun's wife's sister. And some just take passage, with the captain's or first lieutenant's leave. And there are a few in very hard times by land that dress as men and are not found out until very late, when no notice is taken: th
ey speak gruff, they are good seamen, and there is not much odds after forty. And as for staying aboard, it is not a comfortable life to be sure, except in a first or second rate that does not wear a flag; but there is company, and you are sure of food; and then men, upon the whole, are kinder than women—you get used to it all, and the order and regularity is a comfort in itself. For my part it was as simple as kiss your hand. At Haslar I was put to look after an officer, a post-captain that had lost a foot—there had been a secondary resection and the dressing was very delicate. His wife, Mrs Wilson, and the children came to see him every day, and when the wound was healed and he posted to a seventy-four in Jamaica she asked me to go with them, looking after the little ones. It was a long, slow voyage with no foul weather and everybody enjoyed it, most of all the children. But they had not been there a month before they were all dead of the Yellow Jack. Luckily for me, the officer who took over Captain Wilson's ship brought a great many youngsters aboard, more than the gunner's wife could deal with; so we having made friends on the way over, she asked me to give her a hand—and so it went, relations in ships—I had a sister married to the sailmaker's mate in Ajax—friends in ships, with a spell or two in naval hospitals—and here I am, loblolly-boy in Surprise, I hope, sir, if I give satisfaction.'
'Certainly you are, particularly as I learn from Mr Teevan that you do not play the physician, puzzle the patients with long words or criticize the doctor's orders.'
Mrs Skeeping thanked him very kindly; but having taken her leave she paused at the door, and blushing she said, 'Sir, might I beg you to call me just Poll, as the Captain does, and Killick and all the others I have been shipmates with? Otherwise they would think I was topping it the knob; and that they will not abide, no, not if it is ever so.'
'By all means, Poll, my dear,' said Stephen.
He read a couple of pages on leeches and their surprising variety in the Transactions, and then, judging his time, summoned their common steward and said, 'Preserved Killick, I am going to fetch Dr Jacob, my assistant surgeon, who as you know is to mess in the gun-room.'
'Which the Captain told me,' said Killick with a satisfied smile. 'So did Mr Harding.'
'And I should like you to find him a stout boy to be his servant and to bring his sea-chest down from Thompson's in their little two-wheeled cart. You will give the gun-room cook good warning, I am sure.'
The introduction went as well and easily as Stephen could have wished. Harding, Somers and Whewell were hospitable, civilized men, and the quiet, unpretentious Dr Jacob, willing to please and to be pleased, succeeded in both: he was somewhat older than the lieutenants, which ensured a certain respect; his friendship with their much esteemed Doctor gave rise to more; and when Woodbine, the master, hurried in he found the gun-room in a fine buzz of conversation. He excused his lateness to the president: 'That sudden gust took Elpenor the Greek over the side, and we have been fishing him out—a very strong and sudden gust indeed: north-east. How do you do, sir?'—this to Jacob—'You are very welcome, I am sure. A glass of wine with you, sir.'
With shore supplies at hand it was a pleasant meal, with a steady flow of talk, much of it about the sea and its wonders—the enormous rays of the West Indies, albatrosses nesting on Desolation Island (one of the many Desolation Islands) and their tameness, St Elmo's Fire, the Northern Lights. Woodbine belonged to an older generation than the lieutenants: he had travelled even more widely, and encouraged by the close attention of the medical man he spoke at considerable length about some pools or natural resurgences of pitch in Mexico. 'Not to be compared to the Pitch-Lake in Trinidad for size, but much more interesting: there is one where the tar comes bubbling up in the middle, so liquid you can take it with a ladle; and every now and then a white bone comes surging up in the great bubble. Such bones! People may prate about their Russian mammoths, but these creatures—or some of them—would make mammoths look like pug-dogs. The gentleman that took me there, a natural philosopher, collects the most curious, and he showed me great curved tusks, oh, three fathoms long and . . .' Another of those curious furious blasts came down from the face of the Rock, ruffling the whole bay and heeling the Surprise so that all hands automatically reached for their glasses and the mess-servants grasped the backs of the chairs. The master, an unusually truthful, scrupulous man, an elder of the congregation of Sethians in Shelmerston, checked himself and said, 'Well, perhaps ten foot, to be on the safe side. And I tell you what, gentlemen, I have known this gust or warning foretell a seven-day blow out of the north-east four or even five times when my ship has been lying here.'
'In that case, God help the poor fellows in Pomone's boats,' said Somers: he spoke facetiously, but the master shook his head, asking, 'Did you ever know a bad omen to be wrong, Mr Somers?'
There did indeed follow a series of strong, steady winds, scarcely varying a point in direction from north-east day after day, nor in force from full to close-reefed topsails: and during all this time Jack and David Adams, his clerk on and off these many years but now styled his secretary (and paid as such)—for although on this occasion it had been agreed that Jack, with a small squadron soon to be split up for various duties while he himself was to have such a particular mission, should not have a captain under him, he was certainly allowed a secretary during all this time they rearranged the forces at hand and the recent drafts, the Commodore exercising them at gunnery whenever it was at all possible and dining regularly with his captains. Two of them he liked very well: young Pomfret in acting command of Pomone and Harris of Briseis, both excellent seamen and both of his own mind entirely about the capital importance of rapid, accurate fire. Brawley and Cartwright of the corvettes Rainbow and Ganymede, though somewhat lacking in authority, were agreeable young men; but they were not fortunate in their officers and neither ship was in first-rate order, which was a pity, since both were Bermuda-built, dry, swift and weatherly. Ward of the Dover on the other hand was the kind of man Jack could not possibly like: heavy, graceless, dark-faced; rude, domineering and inefficient. He was said to be rich and he was certainly mean: a very rare combination in a sailor, though Jack had met it before a man generally disliked is hardly apt to lavish good food and wine on those who despise him; and Ward's dinners were execrable.
The wind, which at times was strong enough to send small pebbles flying through the air on the upper reaches of the Rock, did not interrupt Stephen's habit of visiting the hospital every morning: he generally went there with Jacob, and on two separate occasions he had the pleasure of carrying out his particular operation of suprapubic cystotomy in the presence of the Physician of the Fleet and of Poll, who comforted the patient and passed the sutures. She told Jacob in private 'that it was the neatest, quickest job she had ever seen—should never have believed it could have been done so quick, and with scarcely a groan. I shall light a candle for each of them, against the infection.'
Yet although the wind did not interfere with his work, which included a very minute dissection, with Jacob's help, of the anomalous hand, it did away with his outdoor pleasure almost entirely. The migrant birds, always averse to crossing wide expanses of sea and wholly incapable of making headway against gales of this nature, were pinned down in Morocco; and in the sheltered hollows behind Cape Spartel twenty booted eagles might be seen in a single bush. He turned therefore to an occupation that fell into neither category and, it having been turning in his mind for some time, particularly at night, he quickly finished the second part of his suite, a forlan, copied it fair that afternoon and showed it to Jack in the evening.
Sitting there with the score tilted towards the lamp and what little light there was, with the small rain sweeping in swathes across the sea, his mouth now formed for whistling (but silent), now for a very deep humming where the 'cello came in, Jack came to the end of the saraband, with its curiously reiterated melody. He gathered the sheets and reached for the forlan: 'It is terribly sad,' he observed, almost to himself—words he wished unsaid with all his heart.
'D
o you know any happy music?' asked Stephen. 'I do not.'
Embarrassment hung there in the great cabin for no more than a moment before it was dissipated first by a measured series of small explosions and then by Salmon, master's mate, bursting in as the ship, heeling before a fresh blast, shot him through the door. 'Beg pardon, sir,' he cried, 'beg pardon. Ringle's come in. That was her, sir, saluting the flag.'
Divided between fury that the schooner could have come in unseen and unhailed and delight at her presence, Jack gave Salmon a cold glance. He saw that the young man was dripping to a most uncommon degree and called for his boat-cloak. As soon as he was on deck he saw why no lookout had reported a sail: even with this short fetch, the unceasing wind had built up a wall of broken water against the towering mole, a wall made even more impenetrable at deck-height by the fog-like rain and the disappearance of the sun's faint, faint ghost behind the Rock. Furthermore, to shoot between the moles Ringle had shown no more than a scrap of storm-jib right in, which her people were now stowing in a seamanlike fashion.
Her one-armed captain was already half-way up the frigate's side, extraordinarily nimble with his hook. He carried a packet of letters in his bosom. 'Come on board, sir,' he said, saluting as he reached the quarterdeck.
'How in God's name did you get here so quick, William?' cried Jack, shaking his one hand. 'I had not looked for you this week and more. Come below—have a tot of brandy—you must be destroyed.'
'Why, sir, you would not believe our run—this splendid breeze right aft or on our quarter day after day. But sir, before I say anything more than all's well at home—much love from all hands'—here he put down his packet—'I must tell you we saw Pomone's boats being attacked by smallcraft under the lee of Spartel, where they were lying-to after a cruel long pull. We soon dealt with the Moors and offered the boats a tow. But Pomone's first lieutenant said no, we must carry straight on and tell the flag that there were half a dozen Sallee rovers in Laraish waiting for the East-Indiamen lying-to just down the coast. He said he could certainly look after the local Moors if they came back, with the small arms we had given them, and he bade us shove off instantly—there was not a moment to lose.'