The Reverse of the Medal (5 page)

'I am sorry to burst in upon you, but your signal is flying aboard the Admiral. Mowett is deeply disturbed at the possibility of lateness. The gig is alongside and my 'cello is already in it. I say my 'cello is already in the gig.'

Jack checked a blasphemous cry, caught up his violin and said 'Come along with us, Sam. The gig will pull you ashore and take you off again tomorrow, if you choose to see the ship and dine with me and Dr Maturin.'

CHAPTER TWO

The caravel Nossa Senhora das Necessidades, a very old-fashioned square-sterned vessel, was taking advantage of the inshore breeze to approach Needham's Point; but unhappily she was doing so on the starboard tack and the moment she crossed the line of white water separating the local breeze from the trade-wind she was brought by the lee - the north-easter laid her right over and the Caribbean sea gushed in through her scuppers.

'Let all go with a run, you infernal lubbers," cried Jack.

'There is Sam pulling on a rope,' said Stephen, who had the telescope.

'It is the wrong one,' said Jack, wringing his powerful hands.

But right or wrong the caravel somehow recovered, somehow heaved herself up, all her sails flapping wildly, and the mariners could be seen running about embracing and congratulating one another and the good Fathers before they cautiously paid off, brought the steady trade a little abaft the larboard beam, and vanished behind the headland.

'Thank God,' said Jack. 'Now they will not have to rise sheet or tack until they reach Para: they may even arrive without the loss of a soul. Lord, Stephen, , I have never seen such a piece of seamanship nor such an example of divine intervention. That horrible old tub should never have reached Bridgetown in the first place; and she would certainly have foundered with all hands just now but for the grace of God. Only an uninterrupted series of miracles can have kept her afloat these last sixty or seventy years. Yet even so I could wish he had sailed in something that did not call for guardian angels working double tides, watch and watch.'

'He is a fine young man,' observed Stephen.

'Ain't he?' said Jack. 'How I hope young George will be such another. It did my heart good to hear you and him prattling away in Latin, fourteen to the dozen: though I noticed that Parson Martin did not seem to follow him quite so well.'

'That was because poor Martin uses the English pronunciation.'

'What is wrong with the English pronunciation?' asked Jack, displeased.

'Nothing at all, I am sure, except that no other nation understands it.'

'I should think not,' said Jack. And then, 'Do you know, he can reach lower F without straining or losing volume? A voice like an organ.'

'Of course I do. I was there: it was I who asked him to give us the Salve Regina an octave below. It made the table tremble again.'

'So it did, ha, ha, ha! Still, I could wish he were not black.'

'There is nothing wrong with being black, brother. The Queen of Sheba was black, and a fine shining black too, I am sure. Caspar, one of the Three Kings, was black. Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, was an African: and he too had a son born out of wedlock, as no doubt you will recall. Furthermore, once you are accustomed to black skins, yellowish-white bodies seem unformed and indeed repulsive, as I remember very well in the Great South Sea.'

'And I do wish - forgive me, Stephen - that he were not a Roman. I do not mean this as a fling at you; I do not mean it from the religious point of view -oh no, it is not at all impossible that he should be saved. No. I mean because of the feeling against them in England. You remember the Gordon riots, and all the tales about the Jesuits being behind the King's madness and many other things. By the way, Stephen, those Fathers were not Jesuits, I suppose? I did not like to ask straight out.'

'Of course not, Jack. They were suppressed long ago. Clement XIV put them down in the seventies, and a very good day's work he did. Sure, they have been trying to creep back on one legalistic pretext or another and I dare say they will soon make a sad nuisance of themselves again, turning out atheists from their schools by the score; but these gentlemen had nothing to do with them, near or far.'

'Well, I am glad of it. But what I really mean is, if he had been white and a Protestant, he might have been an admiral - he might have hoisted his flag! A fellow with his parts, quick, cheerful, lively, resourceful, modest, and good company, was all cut out to be a sailor; given the least hint of a chance he would have distinguished himself, and in a bloody war and a sickly season he could not have missed of promotion - he might have ended wearing the union flag at the maintopgallant, an Admiral of the Fleet!'

'But being black and a Catholic he may become an African bishop, like St Augustine, and wear a mitre and carry a crook: indeed, he may even become the Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign Pontiff, and don the triple tiara. Then again, Jack, you are to consider that in being a papisher he is only following the example of all his English ancestors from the time Irish missionaries taught them their letters and the difference between right and wrong until the days of Henry VIII of glorious memory, only a few generations ago.'

Jack did not seem altogether satisfied. After a moment he said 'I must be going aboard the flag. This damned court-martial begins sitting at ten.'

'So must I,' said Stephen. 'I have a patient to attend.' As they walked to the landing-place Jack said, 'But I am glad to hear what you tell about your saint, however.'

'He is your saint too, you know. St Augustine is acknowledged by even the most recent sects: he is, after all, one of the Fathers of the Church.'

'So much the better. If a saint and a Father of the Church can - can have an irregular connexion, why, that is a comfort to a man.'

'So it is too; though I believe he was not a practising saint at the time.'

Jack walked on in silence and then said, 'There was one thing I had wanted to ask Sam, but somehow I could not get it out. Somehow I could not say "Sam, did you mention your reason for wishing to see me at Ashgrove Cottage?"

'He did not,' said Stephen. 'I am as certain as though I had been there. He is a dear, open, candid young man, but he is no fool. No fool at all; and he would never sow trouble.'

'Yet even so, I am afraid Sophie must have smoked it, looking at his face, black though it is, bless him. You did so right away, or you would never have told me not to be dismayed.'

'There is a very striking resemblance, it must be confessed.'

'Do you think, Stephen,' asked Jack in a somewhat hesitant voice, 'do you think it would answer, was one to mention St Augustine to Sophie? She is a great one for church. And she is much opposed to irregularities of that kind, you know. She could hardly be brought to love .'

Here guardian angels stepped in again, one with a gag- for the name Diana had actually formed in his gullet: Diana, Sophie's cousin and Stephen's wife, who had been very irregular indeed on occasion - and the other with an inspiration, so that almost without a pause he went on'. . could hardly be brought to love Heneage Dundas, because of his tribe of little bastards, until I told her he had saved me from a watery grave when we were boys.'

'Sure, it could do no harm,' said Stephen. More he could not say, because they were at the hard where the men-of-wars' boats landed and here was Bonden with the frigate's fine new barge, for the Admiral had kept his word and the Surprise was being handsomely supplied. She had already completed her water, bread, beef, and most of her firewood, and that afternoon the powder-boy was to come out to fill her magazines: Mowett, her first lieutenant, and Adams, her purser, and all her people had been kept exceedingly busy, yet even so they had found time to beautify the barge, and the bargemen had spent their watches below beautifying themselves, or at least their clothes. Many captains liked their bargemen to wear uniform clothes, sometimes corresponding to the name of the ship - those of the Emerald, for example, wore bright green shirts; those of the Niger were all black; those of the Argo carried a swab dyed yellow - sometimes to the captain's private fancy: but Jack would have nothing to do with such capers and he issued no orders on the subject. His bargemen however took it upon themselves to dress all alike; it was their obvious duty to do the ship outstanding credit - by no means easy in the West Indies, the home of spit and polish, outward show and brilliantly white sepulchres - and they felt that in the present circumstances this was best done by wearing a very broad-brimmed sennit hat tilted far back, a three-foot ribbon embroidered HMS Surprise floating free from round its crown, a snowy shirt, equally brilliant trousers, very tight round the middle, very loose below and piped at the seams with blue and red, a newly-plaited pigtail down to the waist (eked out with tow if Nature had been near with the hair), a black Barcelona handkerchief knotted loosely round their necks and very small pumps with genteel bows on their huge feet, splayed by so much running about on deck without shoes. In this rig they could decently ferry their Captain across to the Irresistible for the court-martial, a full-dress affair, but they could not jump out on to the filthy hard without endangering the effect; they had therefore hired four little Barbadian boys to run out the gang-board and shove the boat off. It was only a short gang-board, but the bargemen had all sailed with Dr Maturin for a number of years and they all knew what he was capable of in the way of plunging off ladders, out of stern-windows, and over the edges of quays, and they all craned round to watch his cautious unsteady advance over the mud. It was not that they feared for his life on this occasion, the sea being so shallow, but at low tide the water was horribly unclean, and floundering about in it he might splash their clothes. Besides, on being rescued he would certainly drip on them. in any case, he was not a fit companion for their skipper that particular morning: Captain Aubrey was resplendent in blue and gold; a Lloyd's presentation sword hung at his side and the Nile medal from the fourth buttonhole of his coat, while the chelengk, a Turkish decoration in the form of a diamond aigrette, sparkled in his best gold-laced hat, worn nobly athwartships like Nelson's; he had washed and shaved (a daily custom with him, even in very heavy weather), and his hair, having been rigorously brushed, clubbed, and fastened with a broad black band behind, was now exactly powdered. Dr Maturin, on the other hand, had certainly not shaved and had probably not felt the need to wash; he was wearing his breeches unbuckled at the knee, odd stockings, and a wicked old coat that his servant had twice endeavoured to throw away; and he had put altogether too much reliance on his scrub-wig to give him a civilized appearance.

'Perhaps, sir,' said Bonden, 'the Doctor might like to go back to the ship in a Moses. There is one putting off for the barky with vegetables this minute.' He nodded towards the basket-like flat-bottomed craft on the edge of the man-of-war's hard, a much steadier, more suitable Conveyance.

'Nonsense,' said Stephen, stepping on to the gang board. 'I am going to the Irresistible. They receive me in this - this shaloop, this embarkation, like a dog in a game of skittles,' he muttered in a discontented tone, creeping on.

A slight tremor from a distant wave traversed the plank; he staggered, uttering a faint shriek, but Jack pinned his elbows from behind, ran him up, over the gunwale and into the boat, where powerful hands passed him aft like a parcel to the stern-sheets.

The same powerful hands propelled him up the flagship's accommodation-ladder, adjuring him to watch his step, to mind out, and to clap on with both hands. Jack, duly piped aboard, had already been received with full ceremony and carried aft; and by the time Stephen reached the quarterdeck he was no longer to be seen. Mr Butcher, lately the surgeon of the Norfolk and now a prisoner of war, was there however and to him Stephen said 'Good day to you now, Mr Butcher; how very kind of you to come. I am much indebted to you.' Butcher was a man of unusually wide experience and although he was not particularly learned nor, outside his profession, particularly wise, he also possessed a gift for diagnosis and prognosis that Stephen had rarely seen equalled.

'Not at all,' he said, 'I am only too happy to repay some small part of your kindness to poor Captain Palmer.' He took snuff, and observed, 'Mr Martin is already gone below.'

'Perhaps we should join him,' said Stephen.

'I guess we should,' said Butcher. 'But before we go, allow me to ask you why you operated here, rather than sending the patient to hospital? In Jamaica, with its miasmas and yellow jack, I should understand it, but in so healthy an island as Barbados . .

'The truth of the matter is that he is a little difficult, and he has fallen out with almost all his medical colleagues, including those belonging to the hospital.'

'Oh, in that case I understand his reluctance. Besides, although a hospital is far more convenient for operating, surviving is quite another matter: for my part I had rather he at sea. I have known a whole ward of amputations die in a week, whereas several of the men who had to be kept aboard for want of room lived on. Some arc living yet.'

The patient did not seem particularly difficult. He thanked Mr Butcher for his visit, congratulated him on his coming release - the Swedish ship that was to convey the American officers home on parole had dropped anchor that morning - and sent messages to friends in Boston. But he felt that the question of his survival had been raised and he was acutely aware of Butcher's impartial judging eye upon him; he felt that the eye condemned him and he talked faster and faster to prove that the eye was mistaken, that he was quite well, that this issue from his wound and the slight recurrence of fever was of no importance. 'Laudable pus,' he said, searching their faces. 'Nothing but laudable pus. I have seen it a thousand times.'

'Well, sir?' asked Stephen, when they were on the quarterdeck again.

'Well, sir,' said Butcher, 'there is sepsis, as you know very well; but as for the turn it will take...' He imitated the motion of an uncertain balance with his hands, and added 'If there were some triumph, or if he had sudden good news it might turn the scale; but as things stand perhaps it would be wise to prepare for an unfavourable termination. I do not suppose you mean to attempt any heroic remedies?'