The Nutmeg of Consolation (24 page)

'A glass of wine all round,' said Jack. 'Bumpers now, gentlemen, and no heel-taps. To Duguay-Trouin, and may we never meet his like.'

After this, at Stephen's suggestion, they drank to Jean Bart too. Killick and his mates ran in and out; the heap of empty bottles rose high in the steerage; an array of far more creditable dishes covered the table and Jack said 'Pray, Mr Fielding, go on with your account. It was not Nelson's famous attempt at a bear's skin, I collect?'

'Oh no, sir: in fact it is not much of a story at all, except when my father tells it, but I will just give the bare bones to show there is another side to the creature.'

'Bare bones is very good,' said Welby, chuckling into his wineglass.

'The ships were coming back from about eighty-one north; they had very nearly been frozen in, and after prodigious exertions they were lying in Smeerenburg Bay in Spitzbergen. Most of the people were allowed ashore; some played leapfrog or football with a bladder, and some ran about the country in hope of game. Those who kept to the shore killed a walrus, an enormous creature as I am sure you know, sir: they stripped off the blubber, ate what a whaler in the company told them was the best part, cooking it over the blubber, which burns pretty well, once the fire has a hold. Then some time later, a day or so later I think my father said, three white bears were seen coming over the ice, a she-bear and her cubs. The blubber was still burning, but the she-bear plucked out some pieces that were not alight and that had some flesh on them; they ate voraciously, and some of the seamen threw lumps from the carcass they still had towards her. She fetched them one by one, carried them back to the cubs and divided them. As she was fetching away the last piece the men shot the cubs dead and wounded her severely as she ran. She crawled as far as the cubs, still carrying the piece, tore it apart and laid some before each; and when she saw they could not eat she laid her paws first upon one, then upon the other and tried to raise them up. When she found she could not stir them, she went off; and when she had got at some distance, looked back and moaned; and since that did not induce them to come away, she returned, and smelling round them, began to lick their wounds. She went off a second time as before, and having crawled a few paces, looked again behind her, and for some time stood there moaning. But her cubs still not rising to follow her, she returned to them again, and with signs of inexpressible fondness went round one, and round the other, pawing them, and moaning. Finding at last that they were cold and lifeless, she lifted her head towards the men and growled; and several firing together they killed her too.'

A decent silence; and Stephen said in a low voice, 'Lord Mulgrave was the most amiable of commanders. He it was that first described the ivory gull; and he took particular notice of the northern jellyfish, or blubbers.'

One bell in the first dog-watch; the conversation had grown more general again, a steady hum of talk at the upper end, and Welby, his face now matching his scarlet coat, had engaged the Corn�e's monoglot third lieutenant in a far more confident and comprehensible French than any of his shipmates had expected, when from the glum far end came Goffin's voice, loud, somewhat out of control: 'Well, seeing that many of us are out of favour in Whitehall, I'll give you a toast: here's to the Navy's black sheep, and may they all soon be whitewashed with the same brush.'

They took it remarkably well: both West and Davidge contrived a smile, and they all drank their wine and drew on every reserve of anecdote or remark about tide, weather, current - anything to prevent a silence, Welby coming out unusually strong with an account of the Pentland Firth, and Martin and Macmillan keeping up a fine flow on the subject of scurvy, its cure and prevention. But it was a relief when after pudding - a noble great spotted dog and the best dish of the meal - they heard Jack say 'Doctor, please would you explain to your neighbour that we are just about to drink His Majesty's health; that it will be perfectly in order for him not to join us; but if he should choose to do so, we are privileged to drink it seated.'

The Corn�e's third lieutenant did so choose; so did Jean-Pierre, who even added the words 'God bless him'; and shortly after this Jack suggested that they should take their coffee on the quarterdeck.

Coffee, no great amount of brandy, and then farewells, obscurely righteous and indignant on Gof fin's part, most affectionate upon that of the Nutmegs, who were to carry a whole sheaf of letters to Canton, and loving upon Jean-Pierre's.

'I am afraid that was a most unsuccessful dinner,' said Jack, as they stood watching the boats pull away, Horse-Flesh being sick over the side. 'They are delicate things: I have noticed again and again that in parties of this kind one man can wreck it all.'

'He is a gross fellow,' said Stephen. 'He cannot hold his wine.'

'He is losing it now, by God,' said Jack. 'Tell me, do our invalids really have to eat that-dreadful soup?'

'It was mixed four times too strong, and then was attempted to be disguised with some of the original broth, itself made of decayed swinesflesh in the first place and then burnt. But it is not the soup that is making him vomit so; it is the black choler.'

'Ah? I am sure you are right. Perhaps I should have made the invitation easier to refuse.

When I was in his case I dare say I wrecked many a party with my gloom, before I learnt to have previous engagements. It is hardly to be believed, how important a man's rank becomes to him - I mean his place in our world, our wooden world - after he has served twenty years or so, and its order, laws, customs and God help us even clothes have grown second nature. And poor Horse-Flesh -Lord how he pukes - must have served nearer thirty. He was second of the Bellerophon in ninety-three, when I took passage in her; and he stood five places above me on the post-captains' list.'

'Yet he broke one of its laws.'

'Oh yes - false muster. But I meant its important laws: instant obedience, high discipline, exact punctuality, cleanliness and so on. I always thought them of the first importance and now that I am back - I thank God for it every day - I have still more respect for them, and even for the lesser rules too. Discipline is all of a piece, said St Vincent, and I do not think I could bring myself to put anyone's name on the books; unless indeed your daughter should prove a son with a taste for the sea. Captain Pullings, I believe you have something to say.'

'Yes, sir, if I may be so bold. When we have won our anchor and parted company, the people would take it kindly, was you to go round the ship...'

'That is exactly what I have in mind, Tom. Quarters, though without a clear run fore and aft, as soon as we are under way; and then I go round.'

'Yes, sir. Just so, sir. But what I mean is, in square rig. They have not seen a gold-laced coat except for mine, and that only twice since Lisbon, which don't really signify, me being only a volunteer.'

Jack was much attached to the crew of the Surprise, a difficult but highly seamanlike body made up of man-of-war's men and privateers, with a sprinkling of merchant seamen; and they were much attached to him. Not only had he done them exceedingly proud in the article of prizes when the Surprise sailed as a letter of marque, but he had won them protection from impressment; and although in the course of the present voyage he had been snatched away at Lisbon to command another ship, he had also been very publicly restored to the Navy List; so now he returned in the gold-laced splendour of a post-captain, conferring a delightful respectability on the frigate and her people. Privateering ships had a shocking reputation upon the whole - in fact some were hardly to be distinguished from pirates - and the privateersmen aboard - rejoiced in their new status, their freedom from criticism; and they loved to see the massive symbol of it, with the Nile medal in his buttonhole and his number one scraper on his head. The general feeling aboard was that the Surprises now had the best of both worlds, the relative freedom and equality of a letter of marque on the one hand, and on the other the honour and glory of the King's service: a charming state of affairs, particularly when it was coupled with the possibility of very great rewards. But so far their Captain had scarcely made his official entrance.

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.