Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

A vast number indeed: a vaster number of objects than Dr Maturin had supposed to exist in any ship afloat. Long, long ago, at the beginning of Stephen's naval career, Pullings, then a long, thin midshipman, had shown him over His Majesty's ship Sophie, a brig, Jack Aubrey's first, dwarfish command: he had done so kindly, conscientiously, but as a subordinate displaying her main features to a landsman. Now it was a captain showing his new ship to a man with many years of sea-experience, and Stephen was spared nothing at all: a fancy-line rigged on new principles, these cross-catharpins of course, drawings of an improved dumb-chalder to be shipped when she docked at Callao. Yet although his guide was now burlier by far, and almost unrecognizable from his frightful wound, there was the same ingenuous open friendliness, an unchanged pleasure in life, in sea-going life, and Stephen followed him about, admiring, and exclaiming, 'Dear me, how very fine' until the sun set, and the twilight, sweeping over the sky with tropical rapidity, soon left even Pullings without anything to point at.

'Thank you for showing me your ship,' said Stephen, going over the side. 'For her size, she is the beauty of the world.'

'Not at all,' said Tom, simpering. 'But I am afraid I was too long-winded.'

'Never in life, my dear. God bless now. Padeen, shove away. Give off.'

'Good night, sir," said the seven Sethians, their smiles gleaming in the massive beards, as they thrust the skiff clear with a boom.

'Good night, Doctor,' called Pullings. 'I forgot the plan of the new fairleads, but I promise to show it you tomorrow: the Captain has invited me to dinner.'

'I am glad of that,' thought Stephen, waving his hat. 'It will make the party less awkward.'

He did not see Martin again that evening, but he thought of him from time to time; and when he had turned in, when he was lying in his cot, very gently rocking on the quiet sea, he reflected not so much upon the outburst of that afternoon as upon the notion of changing identity. He had known it often enough. A delightful child, even a delightful early adolescent, interested in everything, alive, affectionate, would turn into a thick, heavy, stupid brute and never recover: ageing men would become wholly self-centred, indifferent to those who had been their friends, avaricious. Yet apart from the very strong, very ugly passions arising from inheritance or political disagreement he had not known it in men neither young nor old. He swung, and thought, his mind wandering free, sometimes to the allied but quite distinct subject of inconstancy in love; and presently he found that this too was to be a sleepless night.

The moon was high when he came on deck, and there was a heavy dew. 'Why, then,' he asked, feeling the rail wet under his hand, 'with so heavy a dew is the moon not veiled? Nor yet the stars?'

'Have you come on deck, sir?' asked Vidal, who had the middle watch.

'I have, too,' said Maturin, 'and should be obliged if you would tell me about the dew. One says it falls: but does it fall in fact? And if it fall, where does it fall from? And why in falling does it not obscure the moon?'

'Little do I know of the dew, sir,' said Vidal. 'All I can say is that it loves a clear night and air as near still as can be: and every sailor knows it tightens all cordage right wicked, so you must slacken all over if you do not want your masts wrung. It is a very heavy dew tonight, to be sure,' he went on, having reflected, 'and we have clapped garlands on the masts to collect it as it trickles down: if you listen you can hear it running into the butts. It don't amount to much, and it don't taste very good, the masts having been paid with slush; but I have known many a voyage when it was uncommon welcome. And in any case it is fresh, and will wash a shirt clear of salt; or even better' -lowering his voice - 'a pair of drawers. The salt is devilish severe on the parts. Which reminds me, sir: I must beg some more of your ointment.'

'By all means. Look in at the sick-berth when I make my morning rounds, and Padeen will whip you up a gallipot directly.'

Silence: a vast moonlit space, but no horizon. Stephen gazed up at the dew-soaked sails, dark in the moon-shadow, the topgallants and topsails rounding just enough to send the ship whispering along, the courses hanging slack.

'As for the dew,' said Vidal after a while, 'you might ask Mr Dutourd. There's a learned gentleman for you! Not in physic, of course, but more in the philosophical and moral line: though as I understand it he has many friends in Paris who make experiments with the electric fluid, gas-balloons, the weight of air - that kind of thing - and perhaps dew might have come into it. But what a pleasure it is to hear him talk about moral politics! The rights of man, brotherhood, you know, and equality! He has edified us many an hour with his observations, you might almost say his oratory, on the just republic. And the colony he planned -no privileges, no oppression; no money, no greed; everything held in common, like in a mess with good shipmates - no statutes, no lawyers - the voice of the people the only law, the only court of justice - everybody to worship the Supreme Being just as he sees fit - no interference, no compulsion, complete freedom.'

'It sounds like the earthly Paradise.'

'That is what many of our people say. And some declare they would not have been so eager to stop Mr Dutourd if they had known what he was about - might even have joined him.'

'Do they not reflect that he was preying on our whalers and merchantmen, and helping Kalahua in his war with Puolani?'

'Oh, as for the privateering side, that was entirely his Yankee sailing-master, and they would certainly never have joined in that - not against their own countrymen, though natural enough, in war-time, on the part of a foreigner. No: it was the colony that pleased them so, with its peace and equality and a decent life without working yourself to the bone and an old age that don't bear thinking on.'

'Peace and equality, with all my heart,' said Stephen.

'But you shake your head, sir, and I dare say you are thinking about that war. It was sadly misrepresented, but Mr Dutourd has made everything quite clear. The sides had been spoiling for a fight time out of mind, and once Kalahua had hired those riffraff Frenchmen from the Sandwich Islands with muskets there was no holding him. They had nothing to do with Mr Dutourd's settlers. No. What Mr D meant to do was to sail in with a show of force and set himself between them, then establish his own colony and win both sides over by example and persuasion. And as for persuasion...! If you had heard him you would have been convinced directly: he has a wonderful gift, you might say an unction, even in a foreign language. Our people think the world of him.'

'He certainly speaks English remarkably well.'

'And not only that, sir. He is remarkably good to what were his own men. You know how he sat up with them night after night in the sick-berth until they were either cured or put over the side. And although the master of the Franklin and his mates were right hard-horse drivers, the men who are with us now say Mr D was always stepping in to protect them - would not have them flogged.'

At this point, just before eight bells, a sleepy, yawning Grainger came on deck to relieve his shipmate; and the starboard watch, most of whom had been sleeping in the waist, began to stir: the ship came to a muted sort of life. 'Three knots, sir, if you please,' reported young Wedell, now an acting midshipman. And in the usual piping, calling, hurrying sounds of the change - all fairly discreet at four o'clock in the morning - Stephen slipped away to his cabin. There was something curiously pleasing about the Knipperdollings' credulity, he reflected as he lay there with his hands behind his head: an amiable simplicity: and he was still smiling when he went to sleep.