Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

'Perhaps it is inhabited by sirens,' said Martin.

'My dear Martin,' said Stephen, who could be as obtuse as ten upon occasion, 'a moment's reflexion will tell you that all the sirenia require shallow water and great beds of seaweed; and that the only members of that inoffensive tribe found in the Pacific are Steller's sea-cow in the far north and the dugong in the more favoured parts of New Holland and the South China Sea. I have no hopes of anything but greenstuff and fresh fruit: which reminds me - will you sup with us tonight? We are to eat a mango preserve.'

Again Martin excused himself; and late that evening, when the mango preserve was finished and they were sitting down to their music Stephen said 'Jack, I ask this perhaps impertinent question only to save myself from uttering unwelcome invitations: is there disharmony between you and Martin?'

'Heavens, no! What makes you imagine such a thing?'

'I have sometimes asked him to sup with us, and he has always declined. He will soon be out of plausible excuses.'

'Oh,' said Jack, laying down his bow and considering, 'It is true I cannot forget he is a parson, so I have to take care what I say; and then again I hardly know what to say in any case. I have a great respect for Martin, of course, and so have the people, but I find him hard to talk to and I may seem a little reserved. I cannot rattle away to a learned man as I can to you and Tom Pullings - that is to say, I do not mean you are not as learned as Job, far from it upon my word and honour, but we have known one another so long. No. Martin and I have never had a cross word. Which is just as well, because it is very unpleasant to be shut up for an indefinite period with someone you dislike - much worse in the gunroom of course where you have to see his goddam face every single day, but quite bad enough in the cabin too; though some captains do not seem to mind. Perhaps he feels I have neglected him. I shall ask him to dinner tomorrow.'

Tomorrow, and the Surprise stood in for Sweeting's Island with the breeze two points abaft the beam. She had lain to all through the middle and much of the morning watch, for although Jack Aubrey had his cousin's chart and soundings clear in his mind, conditions might have changed since 1768 and he wanted clear light for the passage into the lagoon. He had it now as he sat there, comfortably filled with breakfast, conning the ship from the foretopsail yard. The sun had climbed forty-five degrees into the perfect eastern sky and it was sending its light well down into the clear water, so clear that he saw the flash of a turning fish far below, perhaps fifty fathoms. There was nothing else to see, no hint of bottom; and according to Admiral Carteret's chart there would be none until they were within musket-shot of the reef, the shore being so very steep-to.

The ship was standing in for a typical passage through the reef with a typical lagoon beyond; this was slack-water, the breeze was steady, the ship had plenty of steerage-way under foretopsail alone, she was pointing just so, with an allowance for her trifling leeway, and he had plenty of time to survey reef (broad and thickly set with coconut-palms), lagoon and island. Not one of those slightly domed islands made of coral sand that he had seen often enough in the eastern South Sea but a more rocky affair altogether, with a mass of trees and undergrowth, a variegated and often vivid green, rising in a steep semi-circle immediately behind the village on its crescent above high-water mark, and both sending back the brilliant morning light. A fairly typical village, with canoes ranged on the sand; but most of the space was taken up by one very long house built on stilts, of a kind that he had not seen before.

He also had time to survey the frigate's decks. They were even more beautifully clean than usual and had been since sunset; and everything was in the most exact order, with all falls flemished and what brass she possessed outshining gold, for it was possible that the king of this island might be asked aboard. Yet even so a good many foremast jacks, and not only young ones either, had found leisure to put on their shore-going rig: broad-brimmed sennit hats with Surprise on the flowing band, embroidered shirts, snowy duck trousers with ribbons sewn along their outer seams, and small shining pumps with bows; for the Surprise, manned solely by volunteers, was extraordinarily generous with liberty. Most of them had already arranged little bags full of nails, bottles and pieces of looking-glass, since everyone knew how presents of this kind had pleased the young women of Tahiti; and this too was a South Sea island. They had been in the Great South Sea, as sailors reckoned it, ever since they crossed the hundred and sixtieth degree of eastern longitude, and whatever the Doctor might say all hands (apart from a few miserable old buggers like Flood, the cook, whose brother had been eaten in the Solomons) confidently expected sirens. And there on the forecastle stood the two medicos, Stephen looking as eagerly at the island as Martin, although he had cried down its potentialities.

Yet there was something not quite right about the village.

No movement at all, apart from the gentle waving of the palms. The canoes were all beached: none on the lagoon, none to be seen offshore.

The sound of the breakers, the moderate breakers, on the reef grew louder: Jack called down to the men in the chains, 'Hooper, carry on: Crook, carry on.'

'Aye aye, sir,' came the two voices, starboard very hoarse and deep, larboard shrill. A pause, then the splashes well out and ahead, and the alternating voices: 'No bottom with this line. No bottom with this line. No bottom...'

The entrance was clear ahead and the water turned more green than blue. 'Come up the sheet a fathom,' called Jack. 'Port half a spoke. Steady, steady thus.'

'Steady it is, sir.'

'By the mark, eighteen,' came from the starboard chains.

'By the deep, nineteen,' from larboard.

'Port a spoke,' said Jack, seeing a pallor ahead.

'Port a spoke it is, sir.'

Now they were well into the passage with the reef and its palm-trees high on either hand; the breeze was now on the beam and abruptly the sound of the sea breaking on the outer side and the answering sigh of its long withdrawal was cut off.

The ship moved on in silence, the leads going on either side, the occasional slight changes of course: apart from these calls and the cry of a tern, nothing; a silence on deck until she was well into the lagoon, when she came up into the wind and dropped anchor. No sound from the shore.

'Are you coming, Doctor?' asked Jack: both medicos had run along the gangway the moment the boat was lowered, and they were standing there hung about with collecting-cases, boxes, nets.

'If you please, sir,' said Dr Maturin. 'It is our clear duty to look for antiscorbutics at once.'

Jack nodded, and while muskets, presents and the usual trade-goods were handing down the side he said in a low voice 'Does not this island seem strangely quiet to you?'

'It does: and almost uninhabited. Yet three sharp-eyed men have separately assured us that they have seen people moving on the fringe of greenery, young women in grass skirts.'

'Perhaps they are assembled in the grove for some religious ceremony,' said Martin. 'Nothing more numinous than a grove, as the ancient Hebrews knew.'

'Bonden, cover those muskets with the stern-sheets apron,' called Jack, and turning aft, 'Mr West, carry out a kedge and keep her broadside-on: two guns to be drawn and fired blank if there are signs of trouble. Ball wide of us if I hold up my hand. Grape if they pursue the boat in their canoes. Carry on, Mr Reade.'

By this time Reade had become wonderfully adept at getting about with only one arm, but there was a nest of anxious hands stretched out below to catch him if he fell; a nest that remained, almost as kind and far more reasonable, when the medical men made their descent, followed by the Captain.