The Fortune of War (18 page)

A shade of embarrassment crossed Mr Evans's face; he coughed once or twice and said, 'Are you not perhaps reckoning without your host, Dr Maturin? Exchange is sometimes eternal slow with us; and your officials in Halifax do not always seem to be much brighter than officials in other parts of the world, nor more active at their work. Surely it would be wise to lay in flannel shirts and woollen drawers, at least? They will always serve.'

Stephen promised to bear what he said in mind, and indeed it was impossible for him not to do so. When the Constitution was north of the Chesapeake, a screeching north-wester laden with snow and ice-crystals stripped her to close-reefed topsails; and under these topsails alone she stood on, close-hauled, for Nantucket Island.

Blue noses and red hands were the order of the, day; so was an uncommon alacrity and good humour, super-added to the cheerfulness of victory, for these were home waters for half of the hands. Many of them hailed from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Salem, or New Bedford, and as they jumped to round in braces or to hale upon the bowlines they laughed and called out to one another, in spite of the piercing cold and in spite of the fact that this was the most dangerous part of the voyage, since the Royal Navy was blockading Boston.

All hands were in tearing spirits; they knew that they would have a heroes' welcome as well as all the delights of home, prize-money, and the diversions of Boston; and officers and men did all that superb seamanship could do to drive the ship onwards through the wicked gale. All hands, except of course for the prisoners of war, particularly Captain Aubrey. Although he knew very well that this wind must blow the British cruisers off the coast he was perpetually on deck, chilled through and through apart from his burning arm, whose pain stabbed so hard from time to time that he was obliged to cling to the rail not to cry out or fall down. He was sick, grey, and weak; he repelled any attempt at help or kindness, any supporting arm, with a curtness that soon did away with any sympathy there might have been, and he stared through the squalls and the thick weather for the relief that never came. Not that there was much sympathy for him to lose, at least among the foremost hands: he was known to have commanded the Leopard, and the Leopard, that unhappy ship which had made the Chesapeake bring to in peace-time to take British seamen, alleged deserters, out of her, and which had fired into her, killing and wounding a score of Americans, stood for all they hated in the Royal Navy.

The north-wester blew on and on, and the Constitution lay to under Cape Cod, waiting for it to blow out, so that she could slip round into Massachusetts Bay and so home before the blockading squadron returned. Ice formed thick on the yards and rigging; snow drove aboard by day and night. He stood there still, though he could hardly hold his telescope, nor see when he had it firm, a tall and wretched figure. Once an empty beef-cask came alongside, instantly recognizable from its marks: it must have been thrown overboard from a British man-of-war within the last few days.

The doctors ordered him below, but he repeatedly escaped their vigilance, and the day before the wind veered far enough into the north for the Constitution to round the point, her bowlines as taut as harp-strings, the hands learnt, with general indifference, that the Captain of the Leopard had been laid low with pneumonia.

'We must get him across at once,' said Stephen, raising his voice. The Constitution, home at last, was rapidly filling with friends and relations, and the increasing roar of New England voices, familiar and at the same time exotic, made it hard to hear. 'Perhaps that ship could be induced to come alongside, and then we could pass him across on a stretcher, without the inevitable agitation and disturbance of a boat.' The ship in question was a cartel filled with English prisoners to be exchanged; she was bound for Halifax, in Nova Scotia, there to pick up an equivalent number of Americans, and she would drop down the Charles river with the tide.

'I am afraid we cannot bundle him across just like that,' said Evans. 'I must have a word with the first lieutenant.'

It was not the first lieutenant who appeared, however, but the Commodore himself. He came limping in and said, 'Dr Maturin, this matter of exchange is not in my hands. Captain Aubrey must be taken ashore, and he must stay there until the proper authorities have made their decision.' He spoke in a strong, authoritative voice, as though he had an unpleasant duty to perform, and as though the doing of it called for a harsher tone than was natural to him. During the voyage he had always been considerate and polite in his intercourse with Jack, though somewhat remote and reserved, perhaps because of the pain in his wounded leg, and this new tone filled Stephen with uneasiness. 'You must excuse me,' said the Commodore, 'there are a thousand things that must be done. Mr Evans, a word with you.'

Mr Evans came back. 'It is much as I feared,' he said, sitting down by Stephen in the sickbay. 'Although I know nothing officially, I collect that there is likely to be a long delay over the exchange of our patient.' He leaned forward and raised Jack's eyelid: no comprehension in that blank, unseeing gaze. 'If, indeed, he is to be exchanged at all.'

'Have you any notion of why this should be so?'

'I believe it may have something to do with the Leopard,' said Evans hesitantly.

'But Captain Aubrey had nothing to do with that disgraceful affair, that firing into the Chesapeake; the ship was under the command of another man. At that time Aubrey was five thousand miles away.'

'It was not that affair I meant. No. But it seems that when he was in command of that wretched vessel... but you will forgive me. I must say no more. Indeed, I have no more to say. I have only heard rumours to the effect that someone, somewhere, seems to have taken exception to his conduct - a misunderstanding, no doubt - but he is likely to be detained until it is cleared up.'

Jack's noisy, laboured breathing stopped; he raised himself, called out 'Luff and touch her', and fell back. Stephen and Evans heaved him up on his pillows, and each took a pulse. They exchanged a look and a confident nod; the patient's heart was bearing up to admiration.

'What is the best course to follow?' asked Stephen.

'Well, now,' said Evans, considering, 'most of your officers put up at O'Reilly's hotel on parole; the men are kept in the barracks, of course. But that would not do in the present case; and I cannot conscientiously recommend the new hospital. The plaster is scarcely dry on its walls, and I would not see even a simple pneumonia, affecting no more than the apex of the right lung, subjected to those unwholesome damps. On the other hand, my brother-in-law, Otis P. Choate, who is also a medical man, has a small private establishment that he calls the Asciepia, in a dry, healthy location near Beacon Hill.'

'What could be more eligible? Would you - would you know the nature of his terms, at all?'

'They are very moderate: they are obliged to be very moderate, for I must tell you frankly, sir, that my brother-in-law is a man with strong notions of his own, and his Asciepia is not a paying proposition. Otis P. Choate is a good sound physician, but he riles his fellow-citizens: for one thing, he is opposed to alcohol, slavery, tobacco, and war - all wars, including Indian wars. And I must warn you, sir, that most of the attendants he employs are Irishwomen, Papists I regret to say; and although for my part I have not noticed the drunkenness and profligacy associated with that unhappy pack of barefoot savages, and although the majority of them speak English of a sort, and at least seem clean, the circumstance has of course made the Asciepia unpopular in Boston. So it is filled, as far as it is filled at all, with lunatics whose friends do not choose to keep them at home, rather than with the medical and surgical cases for whom it was designed. It is commonly called Choate's mad-house, and people affect to say that with such nurses and such a physician, no one can tell the odds between the patients and their attendants. I put this fairly before you, Dr Maturin, because I am aware that some people might object to such an establishment.'

'I honour your candour, sir,' said Stephen, 'but -,

'Never mind Maturin,' said Jack, suddenly speaking in a deep hoarse voice out of some partially lucid interval. 'He is an Irish Papist himself, ha, ha, ha! Drunk as a lord every morning by nine o'clock, and never a shoe to his name.'

'Is that so, sir?' whispered Mr Evans, looking more wretched and distressed than Stephen would have thought possible: for in general the Constitution's surgeon, a man of somewhat formal, even ceremonious manners, presented a calm and impassive face to the world, an expression of grave, benign dignity. 'I had no idea - I was not aware - your sobriety, your - but apologies can only make the blunder worse. I beg you will forgive me, sir, and believe that no personal reflection was intended.'

Stephen shook him by the hand and said that he was sure of it; but Mr Evans found it difficult to recover his composure, and eventually Stephen said, 'Dr Choate's Asclepia sounds almost ideal.'

'Yes,' said Mr Evans. 'Yes, yes. I will go and speak to the Commodore at once, and ask for his permission for the removal; he, of course, is responsible for your custody, for the production of your bodies on demand. I have no authority in the matter.'

A short pause, in which Stephen took a blanket from an empty cot and wrapped it round his shoulders against the damp and penetrating cold, and Evans returned. 'All is well,' he said, 'I found the Commodore very busy, surrounded with officials and people from the Yard, as well as half Boston's leading citizens; he merely called out "Do as you think fit", caught up this,' - showing a small packet

- 'and desired me to deliver it to you.'

Stephen read the hastily-written note wrapped about the banknotes: 'Commodore Bainbridge presents his compliments to Captain Aubrey, begs he will accept the enclosed to bear his charges ashore for the time being, hopes to have the pleasure of seeing him fully recovered very soon, and asks his pardon for not waiting on him at present: he flatters himself that Captain Aubrey, from long experience, will understand the many preoccupations that attend the docking of the ship.' 'This is exceedingly handsome in the Commodore,' he said. 'A most gentlemanlike, elegant gesture: I accept it for my friend, with the utmost pleasure.'

'We are all subject to the fortune of war,' said Mr Evans, visibly embarrassed as he produced a smaller packet. 'You will not, I am sure, condemn me to being behindhand with my shipmates. Come, sir, I do not need to tell you, that there is a generosity in acceptation: and it is, alas, no more than twenty pounds.'

Stephen acknowledged Evans's kindness, accepted his loan, and said all that was proper with real gratitude, for not only did the action please him extremely, but he did not in fact possess a single coin of any kind, great or small, and he had been wondering how the terms of Choate's mad-house could be met, however moderate they might prove to be.

'You said twenty pounds, Mr Evans,' he remarked, after they had been talking for some time about the apex of Jack's right lung, enemata, and the care of the mentally deranged. 'Is it usual, in your country, to use the old names for money?'

'We often speak of pennies and shillings,' said Evans. 'Sometimes of pounds, but far more rarely. I caught the habit from my father when I was a boy. He was a Tory, a Loyalist, and even when he came back from Canada and learnt to live with the Republic, he never would give up his pounds and guineas.'

'Were there many Loyalists in Boston?'

'No, not a great many; nothing to compare with New York, for example. But still we had our sheep, black or white according to your point of view: perhaps a thousand out of some fifteen thousand, which is what I reckon the town held at that time.'

'A desperate state of affairs it must be, when a man finds himself torn between conflicting loyalties... Tell me, did you ever hear of a Mr Herapath?'

'George Herapath? Oh yes indeed. He was a friend of my father's, a fellow-Tory; they were in exile together, in Canada. He is quite a prominent citizen. He always was, being a considerable ship-owner and trading with China more successfully than most; and now that the Federalists and the old Tories have come together he is more important still.'

'I am a child in American politics, Mr Evans,' said Stephen, 'and cannot readily see how the Federalists and Tories can have come together, since, as you so kindly explained to me, the Federalists maintain the sovereignty of the Union, of the State as opposed to the states.'

'What brings them together is a common dislike for Mr Madison's war. I am betraying no secrets when I say that this war in unpopular in New England: everybody knows it. And although there are no doubt higher motives, money speaks in Boston, whether you call it dollars and cents or pounds, shillings and pence; and the merchants are being ruined - their foreign trade is strangled, sir, strangled. But the Republicans -'

What the Republicans were about Stephen never learnt, for the Constitution's starboard timbers uttered a long, concerted groan as she eased up against the wharf.

'We are alongside, gentlemen,' said the first lieutenant, looking into the sickbay. 'I have laid on a sleigh for Captain Aubrey: we aim to shift him in half an hour. And Dr Choate sends to say that all will be ready, sir.'

'Strangled, sir,' said Mr Evans, when they were alone again. 'George Herapath, for example, has three fine barques tied up here, and two more at Salem: his China trade is at a stand.'

'Mr Herapath has a son.'

'Young Michael? Yes. A sad disappointment to him, I am afraid, and to all his friends. He was bright enough as a boy - he was at our Latin school with my nephew Quincy

- and he studied hard. Then he learnt Chinese, and it was thought he would be a great help to his father in business; but no, he went off to Europe and became a rake. And what some people think much worse, a spendthrift. I am told he is come back from his travels, bringing a drabbletail with him, a wench from Baltimore, a Romanist - not,' he cried, 'that I mean the least connection, my dear sir. I only mean to emphasize Mr Herapath's misfortune, he being a staunch Episcopalian.'