Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

'They are much the same, sir,' said Fabien. 'I was apprenticed to a horse-leech in Charleston when I was a boy.'

'Very well. Now I understand you helped Mr Martin when he was aboard your ship.'

'Yes, sir. Since the surgeon and his mate were both killed I was all he could find.'

'But I am sure you were very useful to him, with your experience as an apothecary: indeed I seem to remember his mentioning you with commendation, before he grew so ill.'

'It did not amount to much, sir: most of my time in the shop I spent skinning or stuffing birds, or drawing them, or colouring plates. Yet I did learn to make up the usual prescriptions - blue and black draught - and I did help Monsieur Duvallier in his practice - just the simple things.'

'In New Orleans, is it customary for apothecaries to stuff birds?'

'No, sir. Some like to have rattlers in the window or a baby in spirits, but we were the only one with birds. Monsieur Duvallier had a school-friend who engraved them and he wanted to compete with him, so when he found me drawing a turkey-buzzard and then setting it up, he offered me a place.'

'The horse-leech's calling did not please you?'

'Well, sir, he had a daughter.'

'Ah.' Stephen made himself a ball of leaves and said, 'No doubt you were well acquainted with the birds of your country?'

'I read what I could find to read - Bartram, Pennant and Barton - but it did not amount to much; yet still and all,' -smiling - 'I reckon I had an egg and some feathers of every bird that nested within twenty miles of New Orleans or Charleston; and drawings of them.'

'That must have interested Mr Martin.'

Fabien's smile left him. 'They did at first, sir,' he said, 'but then he seemed not to care. The drawings were not very good, I guess. Monsieur Audubon took little notice of them - said they were not lively enough - and Monsieur Cuvier never answered when my master sent two or three he had touched up.'

'I should like to see some when we are at leisure; but at present I still have a few patients in the sick-berth. My engagements may take me away from the ship, and until I have made proper arrangements for them on shore I should like to leave a man aboard to whom I can send instructions. There are no longer any urgent cases: it is a matter of changing dressings and administering physic at stated intervals. I have an excellent loblolly-boy, but although he understands English quite well he speaks little, and all the less in that he has a severe stammer; and he can neither read nor write. On the other hand he has a great gift for nursing, and he is much loved by the people. I should add that he is enormously strong, and although mansuetude, although gentleness is written on his face, he is capable of terrible rage if he is provoked. To offend him, and thus to offend his friends, in a ship like this would be mortal folly. Come with me till I show you our sick-berth. There are only three amputations left, and they are in a very fair way, they will need dressing for a week or two more, and some physic and lotions written on a sheet with their times. You will meet Padeen there, and I am sure you will conciliate his good will.'

'I certainly shall, sir. Anything for a quiet life is my motto.'

'And yet you were in a privateer.'

'Yes, sir. I was running away from a young woman: the same as when I left the Charleston horse-leech.'

The road to Lima ran between great irrigated mud-walled fields of sugar-cane, cotton, alfalfa, Indian corn, and past carob-groves, with here and there bananas, oranges and lemons in all their variety; and where the sides of the valley rose, some distant vines. At times it followed the deep-cut bank of the Rimac, now a fine great roaring torrent from the snows that could be seen a great way off, and here were palms, strangely interspersed with fine great willows of a kind Stephen had not seen before. Few birds, apart from an elegant tern that patrolled the quieter side-pools of the river, and few flowers: this was the dry season of the year, and except where the innumerable irrigation-channels flowed nothing but a grey wiry grass was to be seen.

There was a good deal of traffic: casks and bales travelling up from the port or down to it in ox- or mule-drawn wagons that brought the Spain of his youth vividly to mind - the same high-crested yokes, the same crimson, brass-studded harness, the same ponderous creaking wheels. Some few horsemen, some people sitting on asses, more going by foot: short, strong Indians with grave or expressionless copper faces, sometimes bowed under enormous burdens; some rare Spaniards; many black Africans; and every possible combination of the three, together with additions from visiting ships. All these people called out a greeting as they passed, or told him that 'it was dry, dry, intolerably dry'; all except the Indians, who went by mute, unsmiling.

It was Stephen's custom, particularly when he was walking in a flat country, to turn his face to the zenith every furlong or so, in order not to miss birds soaring above the ordinary range of vision. When he had been walking for an hour he did this again after a longer pause than usual and to his infinite delight he saw no less than twelve condors wheeling and wheeling high in the pale sky between him and Lima. He walked a few paces more, sat on a mile-stone and fixed them with his pocket-glass. No possibility of error: enormous birds: not perhaps as wide as the wandering albatross but more massive by far- a different kind of flight, a different use of the air entirely. Perfect flight, perfect curves: never a movement of those great wings. Round and round, rising and falling, rising and rising still until at the top of their spiral they glided away in a long straight line towards the north-east.

He walked on with a smile of pure happiness on his face; and presently, just after he had passed a posada where carts and wagons stood under the shade of carob-trees while their drivers drank and rested, he felt his smile return of its own accord: there on the road ahead was a tall black horse carrying a taller, blacker rider at a fine easy trot towards Callao. At the same moment the trot changed to a brisk canter, and a yard from Stephen Sam leapt from the saddle, his own smile still broader.

They embraced and walked slowly along, each asking the other how he did, the horse gazing into their faces with some curiosity.

'But tell me, sir, how is the Captain?'

'His main being is well, thanks be to God - '

'Thanks be to God.'

' - but he had the wad of a pistol in his eye. The bullet itself rebounded from his skull - a certain concussion - a certain passing forgetfulness - no more. But the wad set up an inflammation that had not yet quite yielded to treatment by the time I left him - by the time he ordered me to leave him. And he had a pike-thrust in the upper part of his thigh that is probably healed by now, though I wish I could be assured of it... But before I forget, he sends his love, says he hopes to bring the Franklin, his present ship, into Callao quite soon, and trusts that you will dine with him.'

'Oh how I hope we shall see him well,' cried Sam. And after a moment, 'But my dear sir, will you not mount? I will hold the stirrup for you; he is a quiet, gentle horse with an easy walk on him.'

'I will not,' said Stephen, 'though he is the dear kind creature, I am sure,' - stroking the horse's nose. 'Listen: there is a little small shebeen two minutes back along the road. If you are not desperate for time, let you put him up in the shelter there and return to Callao with me. There is nothing to touch walking for conversation. Reflect upon it, my dear: me perched up on this high horse, and he is seventeen hands if he is an inch, calling down to you, and yourself looking up all the while like Toby listening to the Archangel Raphael - edifying, sure, but it would never do.'