Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

Four turns later he heard Reade's shrill cry of 'Oh no, sir, no. You cannot talk to the Captain,' and he saw Dutourd headed off, admonished, led firmly back to the group to leeward.

'But what did I do?' he cried, addressing Stephen, who had just come up the companion-ladder. 'I only wished to congratulate him on his playing.'

'My dear sir, you must not address the Captain,' said Stephen.

'You cannot possibly go over to the windward side, without you are invited,' said Wilkins.

'Even I may not speak to him, except on duty,' said Reade.

'Well,' said Dutourd, recovering from his surprise and concealing a certain vexation moderately well, 'you are a markedly formal, hierarchical society, I see. But I hope, sir' - to Maturin - 'that I may without sin tell you how very much I enjoyed your music? I thought the Boccherini adagio masterly, masterly..."

They walked off, still speaking of the Boccherini, with real knowledge and appreciation on Dutourd's part. Stephen, who in any case was not of an expansive nature, tended to avoid the Frenchman on general principles; but now he would voluntarily have remained in his company had not six bells struck. The sixth was followed by pandemonium fore and aft as the launch, towing astern, was hauled alongside to receive Mr Reade, her crew, barrels of water for the parched Franklin, and two carronades. The precious water, mercifully, could be pumped from the hold into barrels in the boat, but in the nature of things carronades could not: they were lowered down from the reinforced main yardarm, lowered with an infinity of precautions as though each were made of spun glass rather than of metal, and they were received with even more. They were ugly, squat little objects yet they had their advantages, being only a third the weight of the Surprise's regular twelve-pounder cannon but firing a ball twice as heavy; furthermore they could be fought by a much smaller crew - two zealous hands at a pinch, as opposed to the seven or eight gathered round a long twelve. On the other hand they could not fire their heavy ball very far nor very accurately, so Jack, who loved the fine-work of gunnery, disabling an opponent from a distance before bearing down and boarding him, carried them chiefly as ballast, bringing them up only when he contemplated a cutting-out expedition, dashing into a harbour and blazing away at nearby batteries and the like while the boats set about their prey. Or on an occasion such as this, when the disarmed Franklin could be equipped with a two-hundred-and-forty-pound broadside.

'If this weather continues,' said Jack '- and the glass is perfectly steady - the Franklin should soon be a very useful consort: and we are, after all, getting somewhat nearer the path of merchantmen, to say nothing of roving whalers.'

'I wish it may go on,' said Stephen. 'The temperature in Paradise must have been very like this.'

It did go on, day after golden day: and during the afternoons Martin and Dutourd could often be heard playing, sometimes evidently practising, since they would take a passage over and over again.

Yet in spite of his music, and in spite of the fact that he played better with the Frenchman far forward than he did in the cabin, Martin was not happy. Stephen was rarely in the gunroom - apart from anything else Dutourd, a frequent guest, was an inquisitive man, apt to ask questions, by no means always discreet; and evading enquiries was often potentially worse than answering them - and apart from the general taking of air on the quarterdeck Stephen and his assistant met for the most part either in the sick-berth or in Stephen's cabin, where their registers were kept. Both were much concerned with the effects of their treatment: they had kept accurate records over a long period, and at present it was the study and comparison of these case-histories that made up the great part of their professional duty.

At one of these meetings Stephen said, 'Once again we have not exceeded five knots at any time in the day, in spite of all this whistling and scratching of backstays. And it makes a great while since fresh water has been allowed for washing anything but the invalids' clothes, in spite of our prayers for rain. Yet providing we do not die of thirst, I comfort myself with the thought that even this languid pace brings us nearly a hundred miles closer to my coca-leaves - a hundred miles closer to wallowing in some clear tepid stream, washing the ingrained salt from my person and chewing coca-leaves as I do so, joy.'

Martin tapped a sheaf of papers together and after a moment he said, 'I have no notion of these palliatives, which so soon become habitual. Look what happened to poor Padeen, and the way we are obliged to keep the laudanum under lock and key. Look at the spirit-room in this ship, the only holy of holies, necessarily guarded day and night. In one of my parishes there are no less than seven ale-houses and some of them sell uncustomed spirits. I hope to put all or at least some of them down. Dram-drinking is the curse of the nation. Sometimes I turn a sermon in my mind, urging my hearers to bear their trials, to rely on their own fortitude, on fortitude from within, rather than their muddy ale, tobacco, or dram-drinking.'

'If a man has put his hand into boiling water, is he not to pull it out?'

'Certainly he is to pull it out - a momentary action. What I deprecate is the persistent indulgence.'

Stephen looked at Martin curiously. This was the first time his assistant had spoken to him in a disobliging if not downright uncivil manner and some brisk repartees came into his mind. He said nothing, however, but sat wondering what frustrations, jealousies, discontents had been at work on Nathaniel Martin to produce this change not only of tone but even of voice itself and conceivably of identity: the words and the manner of uttering them were completely out of character.

When the silence had lasted some heavy moments Martin said, 'I hope you do not think there is anything personal about my remarks. It was only that your mention of coca-leaves set my mind running in another direction..."

The shattering din of the Franklin as she fired first her starboard and then her larboard broadside and as her captain desired his men to 'look alive, look alive and bear a hand', interrupted him. There were only these two, to test the slides and tackle, but they were rippling broadsides and they lasted long enough to drown Martin's last words and the first of those spoken by the newly-arrived Norton, although he roared them: he was therefore obliged to repeat, still as though he were hailing the masthead, 'Captain's compliments to Mr Martin and would be glad of his company at dinner tomorrow.'

'My duty and best compliments to the Captain, and shall be happy to wait on him,' said Martin.

'And Franklin has hailed to say that Captain Pullings has put his jaw out again,' - this to Dr Maturin.

'I shall be over in a moment,' said Stephen. 'Pray, Mr Norton, get them to lower down my little skiff. Padeen,' he called in Irish to his huge loblolly boy, 'leap into the little boat, will you now, and row me over.'

'Shall I bring bandages and perhaps the Batavia salve?' asked Martin.

'Never in life. Do not stir: I have known this wound since it was made.'

That was many years since, in the Ionian Sea, when a Turk gave Pullings a terrible slash on the side of his face with a scimitar, so damaging his cheekbone and the articulation of the joint that it often slipped, particularly when Captain Pullings was calling out with more than usual force. Stephen had put it more or less right at the time, and now he did so again; but it was a delicate little operation, and one that required a hand with a knowledge of the wound.

This was the first time Stephen had been aboard the Franklin for any length of time since the earlier critical days, when his horizon was almost entirely bounded by the walls of his operating and dressing stations - blood and bones, splints, lint, tow and bandages, saws, retractors, artery-hooks - and he had had little time to see her as a ship, to see her from within. Nor of course had Tom Pullings been able to show the Doctor his new command, already very near to his heart. 'I am so glad you was not obliged to come across before we had our whole armament aboard,' he said. 'Now you will see how trim and neat they sit in their ports, and how well they can traverse, particularly those amidships; and I will show you our new cross-catharpins, rigged this very afternoon. They bring in the foremast and aftermast shrouds, as I dare say you noticed when Padeen was pulling you over. And there are a vast number of other things that will astonish you.'