Patrick O'Brian - The Thirteen Gun Salute

'Now,' he said, resting on his oars, 'do you remember Ganymede, the Sultan's cupbearer Abdul?'

'The odious little sod I longed to kick off my quarterdeck?'

'The same. He was the Sultan's minion, not to use a coarser term; but he was unfaithful and he lay with Ledward. They were taken in sodomy. Abdul was put to death, but Ledward and Wray, who had been promised protection, were not. They are only banished from the court and the council and forbidden to take part in any discussions whatsoever. This has reduced Duplessis to helplessness; he cannot speak Malay, and the council, very strict about rank and precedence, will not listen, will not admit a plebeian interpreter. The French mission has very probably failed, but this cannot be known directly, since one or two days must still pass before Fox can wait on the Sultan. Ledward is of course ruined, and Wray with him, but Fox's hatred is by no more lessened: far from it. He was bitterly disappointed that Ledward was not put to the same hideous death as Abdub. There is a most inveterate, implacable enmity between them... What is more, it appears to me that Ledward's mind has become deranged. At one time assassination could have been seen as a perfectly reasonable move in negotiations of this kind and in this part of the world, and at a given point it was Ledward's only possible chance of success. But now, in the present posture of affairs, it can effect nothing. Yet Ledward has made two attempts.'

'A dirty business, Stephen.'

'Very dirty, brother; as dirty as can well be. But unless Duplessis can produce some fresh negotiator and some fresh inducement or obtain yet another postponement - and these are real possibilities, particularly the postponement - the negotiations may not drag on very much longer, and you may be able to keep your rendezvous with the Surprise.' He began to paddle back to the Diane in his awkward left-handed way, and after a while he said, out of a deep train of reflection, 'But, however, I am glad to hear what you tell me, about the French frigate's present state.'

'She will not move this many a day,' said Jack. 'It would not surprise me to see orchids growing in the mat on the mainmast, where the spar-shores meet it. Oh, Stephen, that reminds me: could it have been an osprey I saw, carrying a fish, slung fore and aft? An eagle-sized bird and quite a large fish?'

'I believe it might have been. I understand the dear birds to be almost universal. Some others are. I was amazed to find a barn owl at Kumai. A true barn owl. A robin would not have surprised me more.'

They were almost at the frigate's side. 'I hope you will sleep aboard tonight and tell me about Kumai,' said Jack. 'And then we might have some music. It is an age since we played so much as a note.'

'Tonight? I believe not: I shall almost certainly be engaged. But tomorrow, with the blessing...'

'Good night, dear colleague,' he said, opening the door, 'I hope I do not interrupt your work?'

'Not at all,' said van Buren. 'These are only notes for a paper on my usual subject for the Petersburg Academy.'

'I have brought you a cadaver. Wu Han's porters have it in a little cart in the lane. May I tell them to bring it in? And there is another, larger, if you would like a second specimen.'

'Oh, by all means - how very kind - how truly thoughtful, my dear Maturin - I will clear the long table.'

Wu Han's porters, though powerful, were adroit, exact in their movements; they put down their white-covered burden without disarranging so much as a fold. 'Pray wait by the cart a few moments,' said Stephen.

They padded out of the room, eyes cast down, their hands clasped before them, and van Buren drew back the cloth. 'This is a European,' he said.

'Yes,' said Stephen, trying the edge of a scalpel, 'an English renegado. I was acquainted with him in London, a Mr Wray.'

'An English spleen at last! An English spleen, the most famous of them all! And as fresh a cadaver as ever I have had the pleasure of opening. I am infinitely obliged to you, colleague. Death was caused by this bullet-wound, I see: a rifle-bullet. How curious.'

'Just so. That was also the case with his companion, the heavier one, whom you met once or twice; and the wound was equally recent. Perhaps they had been fighting. Will I send for him?'

Van Buren booked attentively into Stephen's face, and after a moment he said, 'Have you arranged this with the Vizier, Maturin?'

'I have, too. He said that the court was in no way concerned; that the protection had been publicly and specifically withdrawn and notified to Duplessis; and that we might do whatever we pleased. But he was sure that we would be discreet - that there would be no recognizable remains.'

'Then I am perfectly satisfied: oh what a blessed relief! Let us by all means send for the other, and in the meantime shall we start at the head?'

They worked steadily, with a cool, objective concentration: each had a clear understanding of the matter in hand - the relevant organs, those that might be useful for later comparison and those that might be discarded - and words were rarely necessary. Stephen had been present at many such dissections; he had carried out some hundreds himself, comparative anatomy being one of his chief concerns, but never had he seen such skill, such delicacy in removing the finer processes, such dexterity, boldness and economy of effort in removing superfluous material, such speed; and with this example he worked faster and more neatly than he had ever done before.

He had little sense of the passage of time; yet even so, when the long table was cleared at last and two fine fresh gleaming jars had been placed on van Buren's shelf of spleens preserved in spirits, when a certain number of organs - as impersonal as the wares in a butcher's shop - had been laid in brine for future use, and when the wholly unrecognizable remains had been shut away in zinc-lined wooden chests, he was surprised to find that it was still night.

They took off their long aprons, washed their instruments and their hands, and went to sit outside, in the bight of a gibbous moon.

'What a charming breeze,' said Stephen. 'It must have been really hot and close in there.'

'Hot and close, I make no doubt; but it was the most gratifying dissection I have ever performed,' said van Buren, letting himself down on the bench with a groan. 'My hands and back are quite stiff;, and tomorrow's patients may buy themselves dried salamanders in the bazaar - I shall not attend to them. But Heavens, how infinitely worth while! Do you know, I could scarcely overcome a feeling of extreme bitterness when I missed your Pondicherry clerk. On his mother's side he was a Hindu, and in common piety his co-religionists here - there are a score or so - felt themselves obliged to cremate him; and there, thought I, seeing the smoke ascend, was my very last chance of an at least partly European spleen. Lord, how little one knows!'

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the geckoes chuckling on the wall behind them, and then van Buren went on, 'Tell me again about your rhinoceroses. Had you not suspected their presence at all? No deep, webb-worn paths, no droppings, no tracks?'

'I had not. All these things were there, and they were apparent to me as I went back to the monastery having seen the animals; but from some imbecility of mind, some lasting state of astonishment at the possibility of accosting a wild boar and scratching its back and of walking hand in hand with an orang-utang, I had seen nothing. In the very first place I had not liked to mention rhinoceroses to the monks, because of the alleged aphrodisiac virtues of the horn: I did not wish to arouse the beast hint of suspicion. So they were not in my mind at all. In any case I have never thought of them as dwelling in mountains.'

'The Sultan attributes Hafsa's pregnancy solely to his use of the horn,' observed van Buren. 'But how very deeply concerned you must have been when they ran down the hill at you. I believe they weigh three tons.'