Blue at the Mizzen (24 page)

'What a noble ambition,' cried Stephen, clasping his hands. 'What fortitude, too: for however comfortable the packet - and those I have known have all been neat, padded and as it were well-sprung - these men have already traversed some waters that call for a certain resolution, continually renewed between Cancer and Capricorn. And even in a very well-found packet there is sure to be a certain monotony of diet... no, no, it is a noble way of enjoying an inheritance. I honour him.'

Jack said, 'I am sorry you were not there: you would certainly have known most of them - you go to the Royal much more often than I do, and to the dinners. My friends there, the people whose papers I read with most attention, are the astronomers and mathematicians. These men here, of course, were primarily naturalists of one kind or another, and when the two craft put into San Patricio together for stores they asked the whalers all sorts of things about whales - the various kinds, depth of blubber, pregnancy in whales, where found, numbers in schools - accompanying young? Ambergris, where located?'

They both laughed: Stephen had once been cast ashore on a coral island, where his only companion, apart from a few crabs, was a piece of ambergris.

'Why do we laugh? There was nothing droll about your situation or our anxiety,' said Jack.

'Perhaps because you found me, so it all ended happily. But to be sure, laughter is sometimes wonderfully obscure: whenever my mind moves to that piece of ambergris I feel the birth of a smile: I do hope we meet these men. Theirs is a very respectable curiosity and I for one long to know the answer to some of their questions.'

Jack was called away at this point - something whirling about among the sails, in all probability - and Stephen sank into a by no means agreeable fit of musing. He might not possess the millions attributed to Dobson - and indeed, very large sums were required for that kind of exercise - but he was what most people would call rich or at least quite rich; and yet he had done no more than consider a journey into the Atacama desert to examine the effects of extreme aridity, and another to study the life of the Caucasian snow-cock: and these mere considerations had led to nothing concrete. He had contributed nothing to the sum of knowledge. Some part of his mind at once offered a flood of denials, excuses, attenuating circumstances, assertions of his distinguished merit, his unbroken record of observing Lent as strictly as any man not even in minor orders; but he remained low-spirited, and he was glad to see Jack reappear with the news that 'the damned fore... had carried away, but all was fast and a-tanto now.' The words that followed fore sounded very like a piece of obscenity far, far grosser than anything that Jack was ever likely to say and Stephen was still trying to recapture the sound and interpret it when he became aware that he was now being told about Daniel's and Hanson's zeal in plotting their course for the whaler's refuge of Pillon behind its protecting island. They had Joseph Carling's bearings, his outline of the island from south-west and due west, his directions for the entrance to the little bay, and an at least approximate table of the tides.

'With this sweet breeze we should be off the coast a little before high tide at nine,' said Jack. 'We shall lie under the island's lee and send Ringle in with the two pursers: she can lie alongside much easier than Surprise and there is an awkward turn in the channel where we might just touch and she would not. All the whalers know it and take care if they are deep-laden. I could wish the sky looked a little more promising: but a quick turn-round and we are in hundred-fathom water, heading north with a full hold.'

All the whalers knew the awkward turn in the Pillon passage, but they did not know that the frightful shore-tearing storm had combined with a minor local earthquake (usual in those unhappy regions) to block it with a massive landslide; and the Ringles, advancing cheerfully towards the bend, just waiting to put the helm hard over, ran straight on to the sharp-edged new-fallen rocks.

It was a pale and shaken Reade who pulled round in the gig to report this to Captain Aubrey. 'Never mind, William,' he said. 'Just lead us in, sounding all the way, and we shall see if all anchors out astern and the capstan can heave her off. The tide is still making.'

They did heave her off, with a shuddering groan, at the very height of flood, all hands and all the men of the little village sweating at the bars: and she lurched backwards into deep water. But their triumph was silenced by the rise of broken woodwork from below, from her stem itself and from the larboard cutwater, some of it copper-plated.

They beached her moderately well on a smooth sea-lions' nursery, and at low water they found that the wounds, though horrible, were not deadly. Both carpenters and the few skilled men in the settlement (who felt it extremely, and who admitted that there had been a slight earthquake) worked with the utmost concentration, and at the next high tide she floated.

Clearly a well-equipped yard was necessary, the complex assembly of her bows, though nowhere wholly pierced, had been cruelly wrenched: she could not bear anything even near half-pressure on her foremast, and although she could make some modest way if she met no really savage head-seas, she would need a dry-dock and highly-skilled hands to bring her back to fighting trim.

'My dear,' wrote Stephen yet again, but now sitting in reasonable comfort at his desk, 'I have no doubt that you remember that exceptionally amiable young man with one hand replaced by a steel hook: his name is William Reade, and I have been attached to him these many years: but he alas was in command of the poor schooner when she ran full tilt into what amounted to a bar of rock and very nearly destroyed herself. Now that sheltered piece of water was perfectly calm; the awful crash of rock loosened and cast down by an earthquake had long since died away; and an estimable whaler who knew the small harbour intimately had laid down the bearings of the passage or channel with meticulous accuracy: the poor young man is in no way to blame. Nobody, least of all Jack Aubrey, who brought him up from childhood and who loves him and esteems him, does blame him. Yet he walks about bent, weighed down with imaginary guilt. I have prescribed (for she carries no surgeon, poor thing) a modest cathartic, and tonight he will sleep, will sleep indeed, with a seasonable amount of help from me and the blessed poppy, together with a few minims of hellebore, God love him.

'But otherwise I must say that although the southern parts of this prodigious continent are forbidding and bear such well-deserved names as Port Famine, Cape Froward and Desolation Island, if one does but survive and persevere, one comes to regions, to whole stretches of coast where the southerly current is both constant and wholly favourable, and where the breezes often favour a gentle northward movement, which is all that we can reasonably desire or pray for until we reach San Patricio with our poor crippled Ringle and, I trust, a cure for poor dear William's melancholy, which moves his people so that I have seen them shake their heads and clasp their hands as he goes by.

'At present this most curious sea, this piece of the enormous ocean, is filled, filled with utterly innumerable small fishes so very like anchovies that I doubt if I could distinguish between the species (or genera) unless I had the true Mediterranean creature in my hand for comparison. A little trawl, negligently drooped over the side, provides us with a dish of whitebait (rather large whitebait it is true, but eminently palatable) in a trice. But our pleasure is as nothing compared with that of the seabirds of this region, above all - or at least most obviously - the vast bulky pelicans: they circle about us with rapturous cries, plunge, gorge, rise into the air mute while they are cramming down their prey, dive, rise again, and so it continues. There are rocks and headlands all along this coast, where these birds, too heavy at last for flight or merely sated, spend the later part of the day and the night until dawn, when they begin again, their voices as fresh and piercing as ever: and these rocks are white with their droppings. Indeed, these deposits, this guano, is said to have a depth of ten feet and even more.

'At present we coast very gently along - I think we have no more than double-reefed topsails abroad - and the distant, somewhat veiled shore, with here and there a remote white gleam from the still more distant Andes, scarcely seems to move; yet our devoted navigators take careful observations every watch, and every watch the pins on the chart advance perceptibly north towards San Patricio, where we are confident of at least three capital yards. Indeed, so near are we now that Captain Aubrey is having the barge carefully overhauled and beautified, to run in with me so that the chosen yard shall be ready to start as soon as Ringle comes. He takes me, not as you may well suppose, for my advice in sailing the boat, but merely for my ability to speak Spanish.

'Horatio has just come to tell me that the headland marking the southern end of the estuary on whose shores San Patricio has its present being, is now in sight, and that the Captain will soon have the barge afloat. I must fetch some respectable clothes: but first I must tell you that San Patricio, like many another settlement on this uneasy shore, has already had other sites, destroyed by earthquake or fire or its opposite, a vast engulfing wave that seems connected with the earthquake and that not only destroys the ruins even more thoroughly but that will carry a ship, an eight hundred ton ship up and through the town, sometimes setting it down, as by a giant's hand, upright on the debris: though it is possible that I may confuse San Patricio with other towns - so many on this unstable shore have suffered from all these calamities, as well as from pest, plague and piratical rapine too.'

Leaving the frigate at anchor on good holding ground well off the coast, Surprise's barge pulled smoothly up the confluence of two rivers towards San Patricio: and as she was coming into the fairly well-inhabited part of the town - the docks and wharves to starboard with a good many craft and a few ships alongside - plain astonishment burst through the ordinarily mute coxswain's reserve and he cried, 'By God, sir, there's the old Lisbon packet, painted blue. Painted blue, by God. I beg pardon, sir.'

'So she is,' said Jack, following his gaze, and the gaze of all the bargemen. 'So she is: but what a difference the colour makes. I am not sure I should have recognised her.'

'God love you, sir: I was a boy aboard her, and being she was a packet, they liked her to be kept Navy-fashion, and there ain't a brass handle, knob or bolt I don't know. Watch your stroke there, bow-oar.'

Jack turned to Stephen, who was watching a flight of pelicans, and said, 'Four craft along, to starboard, there are your friends, I do believe. Our colleagues of the Royal.'

'Oh,' cried Stephen, 'but they have painted her blue. Could the boat row over, do you think, so that we may hail her?'

Jack gave the necessary orders and they moved gently across the stream. 'Take care of the paint, you moon-struck bastards,' called an angry voice in Chilean Spanish.

'Watch out for the paint - do not touch it for your life: by God, it's Maturin! And Aubrey! How very pleasant to see you here, dear colleagues. Pray thread your way through to the wharf, to our other side, which is quite dry, and come aboard. We have some really excellent lemonade.'

How they talked, how they quaffed the excellent lemonade! The bargemen were dismissed to an eating-house on the open quay a little way along, and the Fellows told of the horrors and delights and discoveries of their respective voyages, several of them talking at once now and then and all as hoarse as toads by the time Jack stood up, begged leave to go and look at the various yards for his wounded tender, and engaged them all to dine aboard Surprise tomorrow. 'And if I may, gentlemen, I will pluck Maturin from your bosoms: he speaks the Spanish, you know, which I do not.'

'One hears very high opinions of Lopez,' said Dobson. 'And he was certainly most obliging with our paint and a small leak.'

'It is the second yard on the right as you go up the stream,' said an eminent botanist. 'The first is occupied by the Chilean navy.'

They got along but slowly, partly because there were several small yards on either side, whereas they had heard of only three, and partly because parties of water-fowl passed overhead, sometimes in great number, and Stephen would come to a stand, cursing the absence of his telescope and trying to make out the birds' nature despite the absence.

They were approaching yet another quay and Stephen threatened to come to yet another halt as a very lofty flight of long-legged, long-necked crane-like birds came across the sky, when they heard a voice from the other side of the road. 'Aubrey! How glad I am to see you here. Are you looking for Asp?'

'Lindsay! What a pleasant meeting: it must be years and years since I last saw you.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Lindsay, walking over: he was wearing a uniform very like that of the Royal Navy, but with rather more lace. 'I dare say you are looking for Asp?'

'At the moment I am looking for Lopez' yard.'

'It is just beyond the theatre - but perhaps you do not know the town?'

'Lord, no. This is the first time I have ever been here, and apart from drinking lemonade with some Fellows of the Royal Society we have done nothing but walk along this quay.'

'Fellows of the Royal Society? Those men in the former Lisbon packet? I dare say you were very much at sea in that learned company?'

Their slight acquaintance did not at all warrant this familiar tone and Jack left a distinct pause before he said, 'May I introduce my political adviser, who is also a Fellow? Dr. Maturin, Sir David Lindsay.'

'Your servant, sir,' said Lindsay, somewhat confused. And to Jack, 'Should you like to look at Asp? She is just across the way, in the naval basin.' They crossed, and with increasing confidence Lindsay pointed out the various changes he had made, particularly the lengthening of the deck for more guns a side. Jack had reservations, but he did not utter them, contenting himself with the observation that the Asp must have made a remarkable passage.