Treason's Harbour (16 page)

Yet some had taken time off to polish the Doctor's bell, and now the massive plates of lead that covered its lower sides gleamed as brightly as sand and brickdust could ever induce lead to gleam, while the brass top of course outfaced the sun. This they had done by way of expressing their sympathy, for Stephen, walking about with a bloody nightcap, was a pitiful sight; and as they were all perfectly convinced that he had been dead drunk when he received his wound, they had even more than their usual kindness for him.

But today no nightcap was to be seen: it had been represented to Dr Maturin on all sides that since the Surprise's captain and officers had invited the master of the Dromedary and his first mate to dinner, a wig must be worn, however great the agony: it might be pushed back after the cloth was drawn, they said, and it might even be taken off altogether if they should chance to sing towards the end of the meal; but in the early stages it was as necessary as a pair of breeches. In a wig, therefore, Stephen walked forward to his temporary sickbay, examined and confirmed two new cases of syphilis, abused them for presenting far too late as usual - would lose their teeth and noses and even lives if they did not follow his instructions to the letter - their wits they had lost already - stopped their grog, put them on number two low diet, started them on a course of salivation, and told them that the cost of their physic should be stopped out of their pay. He then looked at a Dromedary, distracted with toothache, decided that the tooth must come out, and sent for the drummer and two of the man's messmates to hold his head.

'Which we ain't got no drummer, sir,' said his loblolly boy. 'All the jollies was left at Malta.'

'Very true,' said Stephen. 'But a drum I must have.' He was not very good at drawing teeth and he liked his patient to be deafened, amazed, stupefied by a thundering in his ears. 'Has this ship never a drum for a fog?'

'No, sir,' said the Dromedary's messmates. 'We uses conchs and a musket.'

'Well,' said Stephen, 'that might answer too. Let it be so. My compliments to the gentleman in charge of the watch and may I have conchs and a musket. No. Stay. The galley must surely have cauldrons and kettles that could be beat.'

But few messages are ever perfectly understood, few are delivered unimproved upon, and the tooth came out -came out at bloody last, piece by piece - to the howling of conchs, the fire of two muskets, and the metallic thunder of several copper pots.

'I beg pardon for being late,' said Stephen, as he slipped into his seat, for Jack and his officers and their guests were already at table - 'I was delayed in the sickbay.'

'It sounded as though you were having a battle there,' said Jack.

'No. It was only a tooth, a troublesome tooth: sure I have delivered many a child with less pains to all concerned.' The remark was generally considered to be in very poor taste, and indeed Stephen would never have made it had he not been so hurried: at ordinary times he perfectly recollected the odd delicacy of sailors where gynaecological matters were concerned. Now he relapsed into silence, and having eaten enough soup to take off the keen edge of his appetite he looked about the table. Jack sat at its head, with the captain of the Dromedary on his right and Mr Smith, her first mate, on his left; then next to Mr Alien came Mowett, with Rowan opposite him, while Stephen, Mowett's neighbour, faced Martin. Mr Gill, the master of the Surprise, sat to the right of Stephen, with Hairabedian the dragoman over against him, while the two master's mates, Honey and Maitland, were on either side of Mr Adams, who, as vice-president of the mess, sat at the foot of the table.

In the presence of their captain these two young men were dead weights at the present utterly sober stage of the meal, and the melancholy Gill would be perfectly mute at all stages, having no conversation whatsoever. Martin and Hairabedian, unburdened by the weight of naval convention, were already talking away in the middle of the table, but at the head Jack would have had to go through the usual hard labour of flogging things along until the dinner got under way if it had not been for the fact that just before his arrival his two lieutenants had very nearly come to blows over the meaning of the word dromedary. They were both good seamen and amiable companions, but they were both given to writing verse, Mowett being devoted to the heroic couplet while Rowan preferred a Pindaric freedom, and each thought the other's not only incorrect but devoid of grammar, sense, meaning, and poetic inspiration. At two bells in the afternoon watch this rivalry had spilled over on to the name of the transport: why, it was difficult to make out, since dromedary could not conceivably be made to rhyme with anything - and both were still so heated that although Captain Aubrey was at this time quietly engaged with his Valletta mutton Rowan called across the table 'Come, Doctor, as a natural philosopher you will certainly confirm that the dromedary is the hairy animal with two bunches that moves slow.'

'Nonsense,' said Mowett. 'The Doctor knows perfectly well that the dromedary has one bunch and moves quick. Why else would it be called the ship of the desert?'

Stephen darted a look at Martin, whose face was studiously blank, and replied, 'I should not like to commit myself, but I believe the word is used somewhat loosely, according to the taste and fancy of the speaker, much as sailors say sloop for a vessel with one mast or two, or even three. And you are to consider, that as there are swift-sailing sloops and slow, so there may be brisk and sluggish dromedaries; yet I am inclined to suppose, if only from the example of this excellent ship of Captain Alien's, that the ideal dromedary is a creature that moves fast, giving one a smooth and agreeable ride, however many bunches it may have.'

'Some say drumedary,' observed the purser; and there Jack cut the topic short, as being perhaps distasteful to their guests. But the word had sunk into Mr Alien's mind, and after a while, peering round Mowett, he said to Stephen, 'Sir, I thank you kindly for your attention to poor Polwhele's tooth; but pray why did you need a drum to draw it?'

'Oh,' said Stephen, smiling, 'it is an old mountebank's trick to be sure; but it has a real value. The toothdrawer's man, his Jack-Pudding or Merry-Andrew, beats the drum at the fair not only to drown the sufferer's screams, which might deter other customers, but also to induce a partial, temporary insensibility, which gives his master time to work. It is empirical, but it is sound practice. Again and again I have noticed that when the ship is in action and men are brought below, they are often scarcely aware of their wounds. Indeed, I have taken off mangled limbs, hearing scarcely a groan; and many a sad gash have I probed, with the patient talking in a normal voice. This I attribute to the din of battle, the excitement, and the extreme activity.'

'I am sure you are in the right of it, Doctor,' cried Mr Allen. 'Only last year we had a set-to with a privateer in the chops of the Channel, a St. Malo lugger that brought up the breeze, sailing three miles to our two. She gave us a couple of broadsides and boarded us in the smoke; and not to spin a long yarn of it, we persuaded them to go back into their boat - the Victor of St Malo she was - as quick as ever they come out of her, and she sheered off. But what I mean is, when it was all over and I was sitting down to a cup of tea with Mr Smith here,' nodding at his mate, who nodded solemnly back, as though on oath, 'I felt something queer in my shoulder, and taking off my coat, there was a hole in the cloth, and a hole in me too, and a pistol-ball lodged so deep it had almost gone through. I had felt the blow, mark you, but thought it was only a falling block, and paid no attention.'

Yes, cried others, and much the same had happened to them or their friends; and after a decent pause in which Captain Aubrey gave an account of a ball that had entered his side when he was a master's mate, that had been indistinguishable from a pike-thrust received at almost the same moment, and that had wandered about his person until he was a commander, when the Doctor extracted it from high up between his shoulders, several more anecdotes came out at once, giving the dinner a pleasant convivial if somewhat ogreish sound.

From then on talk and laughter did not cease, and Stephen, who had lately been at some pains to play a social part, sank back into his more usual silence, musing on Mrs Fielding until the cloth was drawn. Then, while they were eating figs and green almonds he saw Rowan lean forward and call down the table to the dragoman, 'Did I hear you say you had met Lord Byron?'

Yes, said Mr Hairabedian, he had had the honour of dining in his company twice, together with several of the Armenian merchants of Constantinople; and once he had passed a towel as his lordship emerged 'shivering and somewhat blue, gentlemen' from the Hellespont. Stephen looked curiously at his little round merry face to see whether the words were true: many, many people had he met in Valletta who had known Byron, the women repelling his advances and the men taking him down a peg or two. Hairabedian was probably telling the truth, he decided. He had not had much contact with him, but the interpreter was clearly an intelligent man; he had told Martin a good deal about the monophysite Armenian and Coptic churches, showing a nice appreciation of the difference between homoiousian and homoousian, and he had gained the good opinion of the gunroom, not indeed by talking much, although his English was nearly perfect, but rather by reason of his jolly twinkling eye, his most infectious high-pitched laugh, his habit of listening attentively, and his admiration for the Royal Navy.

At this point Mowett was called away, much against his will, and while Rowan and Martin and even the purser and master's mates eagerly questioned Hairabedian, Mr. Allen leant over towards Stephen and said 'Who is this Byron they are always talking about?'

'He is a poet, sir,' said Stephen, 'one that writes excellent doggerel with flashes of brilliant poetry in it; but whether the poetry would flash quite so bright were it not for the contrast I cannot tell: I have not read much of him.'

'I like a good poem,' said Mr Alien.

Jack coughed; the talk died away; and filling his glass from one of the fresh decanters he said 'Mr Vice, the King.'

'Gentlemen,' said Mr Adams, 'the King.'

After this they drank to the Dromedary, to the Surprise, and to wives and sweethearts, and Jack said to Mr. Allen 'If you like a poem, sir, you have come to the right shop. Both my lieutenants are capital poets. Rowan, tip the captain your piece about Sir Michael Seymour's action, the first one. Start in the middle, so as not to be too long.'

'Well, sir,' said Rowan, beaming upon MrAllen, 'it was the one with the Thetis, you know.' And without the least change in his conversational tone he went on

'I do declare

Such a hard engagement has not been known for many a year.

At seven in the evening the battle it begun,

And lasted many hours before it was done.

Great numbers there was wounded, a many too was slain,

While the blood from off the decks did change the watery main.

Three hours and twenty minutes we held this dreadful fray,

We lashed her fast unto us, she could not get away;

Many times they tried to board us, but we drove them back so fast ?

Although they were so numerous, we made them yield at last.

Then down she hauled her colours, no longer could she fight;

Our British tars they gave three cheers all at this noble sight.

We took possession of her without any more delay,

And sent her into Plymouth Sound then, my boys, straightway.

Great store of artillery, ammunition too likewise,

One thousand barrels of flour to our tars become a prize.

She was bound out to Martinico, the truth I do declare,

But in the night we met her and stopped her career.'

Mowett came back during the last lines, and seeing his look of fairly well disguised disappointment Jack said to Mr. Allen, 'My first lieutenant's poems are equally appreciated, sir, but they are in the modern taste, which perhaps you may dislike.'

'No, sir, not at all, ha, ha, ha,' said Allen, now strikingly red in the face and very apt to laugh. 'I like it of all things.'

'Then perhaps you would give us the piece about the dying dolphin, Mr Mowett,' said Jack.

'Well, sir, if you insist," said Mowett eagerly; and having explained that this was part of a poem about people sailing in the Archipelago he began in a hollow boom

'The sailors now, to give the ship relief,

Reduce the topsails by a single reef;

Each lofty yard with slackened cordage reels,

Rattle the creaking blocks and ringing wheels,

Down the tall masts the topsails sink amain,

And soon reduced, assume their post again.

And now, approaching near the lofty stern

A shoal of sportive dolphins they discern.

From burnished scales they beamed refulgent rays,

Till all the glowing ocean seemed to blaze.

Soon to the sport of death the crew repair,

Dart the long lance, or spread the baited snare.

One in redoubling mazes wheels along,

And glides, unhappy! near the triple prong..."

Stephen's mind wandered back to Laura Fielding and his perhaps untimely, unnecessary, foolish, unprofitable, sanctimonious chastity; and he was brought back to the present only by the applause that greeted the end of Mowett's recitation. Above the general noise rose Mr. Allen's strong sea-going voice now free from the genteel restraint of some decanters back: he said that although the Dromedary could not return the compliment in kind, having no gentlemen of equal talent aboard, she could at least reply with a song, good will supplying what it might lack in harmony. 'Ladies of Spain, William,' he said to his mate, beat three times on the table, and together they sang

'Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies,

Farewell and adieu all you ladies of Spain,

For we've received orders to sail for old England

And perhaps we shall never more see you again.'

Almost all the hands knew the song well, and they joined in the chorus with splendid conviction: