Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

‘If you would let me have this information, I should be very much obliged,’ said Stephen.

‘Of course. You shall have it this very evening...’ Colvin hesitated and then went on, ‘Though now I come to reflect, I am by no means sure that I have the papers with me.’ Another pause, and he said, ‘I dare say you were surprised at finding me here rather than in Malta or Brindisi?’

‘Not at all,’ said Stephen.

‘There was a certain amount of unpleasantness over that indiscretion I mentioned and I am on my way either to Gibraltar or even perhaps London to clear it up; and knowing that Commodore Aubrey’s squadron must touch here I thought I should wait, in order to tell you about the general aspect of affairs in the Adriatic. Those particulars will of course be at your disposal as soon as you reach Malta.’

Stephen made the necessary acknowledgements and they talked for a while about colleagues in Whitehall before he took his leave, saying that he must rejoin the Commodore without delay - it was death to keep the Commodore waiting.

‘Well, sir,’ said Jack Aubrey, looking up from his notes and counting the slips that would enable the officers in charge of the base to revictual and refit the squadron with all the astonishing variety of objects it might need, from musket-flints to dead-eyes, hearts and euphroes. ‘I think that sets us up very handsomely: many, many thanks. And now, sir, if I may I will beg leave to retire. I have an appointment with my surgeon at the Crown, and it would never do to vex a man you next meet in the cockpit, with you flat on your back and he standing over you with a knife. He is not ordinarily an irascible creature, but I know that today he is with child to call upon your engineer.’

‘James Wright, that prodigy of learning? I would give a five-pound note to see them together.’

In fact the sight was not worth nearly so much, particularly at first. Dr Maturin, holding his visiting-card in his hand, was about to knock at the door of Mr Wright’s house when it flew open from within and an angry voice cried, ‘What do you want with me? Eh? What do you want with me?’

‘Mr Wright?’ asked Stephen, with a hint of smiling recognition. ‘My name is Maturin.’

‘It might just as well be Beelzebub,’ said Mr Wright. ‘Not a brass farthing will you fork out of me before the end of the month, as I told that pragmatical bastard, your chief.’

‘My dear sir,’ cried Stephen, ‘I have ventured to call upon you as a fellow member of a learned society, not, upon my soul and honour, as a dun: bad luck to them all.’

‘You belong to the Royal?’ asked Wright, bending from the uppermost step and peering into Stephen’s face with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

‘Certainly I belong to the Royal,’ said Stephen, now somewhat warm. ‘Furthermore, Mr Watt did me the honour of introducing me to you. I was sitting next to him, and old Mr Bolton was on the other side. It was the evening you read the paper on screwing.’

‘Oh,’ said Wright, taken aback. ‘Pray walk in - I beg pardon - I have lost my spectacles. And from what little I could make out your uniform looked like that of a bailiff’s man. I beg pardon. Pray walk in.’ He led Stephen into a large, well-lit room with exactly-drawn plans on the walls, on high tables and on a pair of rollers that could bring any corner of the port or dockyard before the viewer’s eye. He found his spectacles, one of the pairs that lay about on chairs and desks, and putting them on he gazed at Stephen. ‘Sir,’ he said, rather more civilly now, ‘may I ask what that uniform is? I do not believe I have seen it before.’

‘Sir,’ replied Stephen, ‘it is the uniform that was laid down for surgeons of the Royal Navy some time ago: it is rarely worn.’

Having considered this, cocking his head like an intelligent dog, Mr Wright asked how he might serve his visitor, whom he now remembered from their meeting at the Royal Philosophers’ Club, before the formal session.

‘I have presumed to wait upon you, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘because some of our more eminent colleagues, particularly those distinguished in the mechanical and mathematical sciences, have assured me that you know more than any man living about the physical properties of substances - their inherent strength and the means of increasing it - their resistance to the elements - and if I may I should like to ask whether in the course of your studies you have ever been brought to reflect upon the narwhal’s horn?’ During his last few words Stephen noticed a total absence of attention come over the aged face before him and he was not surprised to hear Mr Wright cry, ‘Dr Maturin, Dr Maturin of course: I grow more forgetful day by day, but now I recall our meeting even more perfectly. And what is of much greater consequence, I recall a letter from my young cousin Christine - Christine Heatherleigh as she was, but now the widow of Governor Wood of Sierra Leone. It was her usual birthday letter, and among other things she said she had prepared the articulated bones of some creature that interested you - she was always a great anatomist, even as a child - and would it be right to send the specimen to Somerset House?’

‘How very kind. I have the fondest recollections of dear Mrs Wood. It was no doubt my tailless potto, one of the most interesting of the primates: but alas short-lived.’

‘So I said Somerset House by all means: Robertshaw and his people take the greatest care of Fellows’ specimens. But I believe, sir, that you mentioned a narwhal. Pray what is a narwhal?’

‘A cetacean of the northern, the far northern seas, a moderate whale of about five yards long; and the male possesses a horn that may be half as long again. I say “horn” sir, because that is the term commonly used; but in fact the object is made of ivory.’

‘And only the males wear it?’

‘So I am told by whalers and by those few who have had the happiness of dissecting the creature.’

‘Then they share our fate: for with us too it is the males alone that wear the horns.’ After a moment Mr Wright began to laugh - a low, creaking sound that went on and on. ‘Forgive me,’ he said at last, taking off his spectacles and wiping them. ‘I am facetious at times. You were speaking of ivory?’

‘Yes, sir: a particularly hard and dense ivory. The infant narwhal has but two teeth, both in his upper jaw. That on the right usually remains in a rudimentary state: the other develops into a tapering column that may protrude for six or seven feet and weigh a stone or more.’

‘What is its function?’

‘That appears to be unknown. There are no reports of its use as a weapon - no boat has ever been attacked - and although sportive narwhals have been seen to cross their tusks above the surface, no fighting ensued, and it was thought to be done in play. As for its alleged use as a fishspear, an animal with no hands would be puzzled to transfer its transfixed prey from tusk to mouth: besides, the females are tuskiess: yet they do not starve. There are innumerable suppositions, all based upon very little knowledge indeed; but there is one undoubted, instantly observable phenomenon - the very curious shape of the horn. Not only does it bear a large number of parallel spirals ascending in half a dozen left-hand turns from the base almost to the bare, smooth tip, but it also has several much larger tori or undulating turns, rising in the same direction. All this puzzles me extremely, though I am something of a physiologist, devoted to comparative osteology; and I should very much like to ask whether these adaptations of the tusk are designed to strengthen it, without adding to its already considerable bulk, and whether the much larger tori help the animal, a very rapid swimmer, to diminish the turbulence it must encounter at every stroke. I am aware sir, that turbulence is one of the chief studies among gentlemen of your profession.’