Patrick O'Brian - The far side of the world

'There ain't no women,' said Plaice to a young maintopman after a long and searching stare. 'Nor no men neither. It is a desert island, apart from those Boston beans walking up and down. But that there, sheltering the biggest tent by the stream, that's a breadfruit-tree, I dare say.'

'You can - your breadfruit-tree,' said the young top-man bitterly.

'That's no way to talk to a man old enough to be your dad, Ned Harris,' said the captain of the forecastle.

'Saucy young bugger,' said two others.

'I only meant it by way of a joke,' said Harris, reddening. 'I was talking lighthearted.'

'You want your arse tanned,' observed the yeoman of the signals.

'There's a precious lot of sharks about,' said Harris, by way of changing the subject. 'Uncommon long thin grey ones.'

Never you mind if they are grey or pink with orange stripes,' said the captain of the forecastle. 'You just keep a civil tongue in your head, Ned Harris, that's all.'

They're putting off with the American captain, sir,' said Killick, in the cabin.

'Undo this damned hook for me, will you, Killick?' said Jack, who was getting into his uniform. 'I must be growing fat.'

He looked into his dining-cabin, where a cold collation had been spread to welcome the captain of the Norfolk, ate one of the little salt biscuits and then buckled on his sword. He did not wish to appear too eager, strutting about on his quarterdeck throughout his prisoner's approach - it was a damned unpleasant thing having to surrender in any case, as he knew from experience, without having people crow over you - but on the other hand he did not wish to appear casual, as though the surrender of a post-captain were of no great importance.

He waited until it seemed to him that the moment was as nearly right as possible, put on his cocked hat, and went on deck. A quick look showed him that Honey had everything in hand: midshipmen quite respectable, sideboys washed and holding their white gloves ready - rather hairy, bigboned sideboys now - Marines at hand, and the ship, which had been toing and froing, now standing gently in, just stemming the tide, to receive the barge.

He began his usual pacing; but at the third turn a glance at the short figure sitting there between Calamy and Mowett in the stern-sheets made him look again, look much harder. It was too late to start staring with a spyglass, but from his time as a prisoner of war in Boston he was very well acquainted with American naval uniforms, and there was something amiss.

When the barge was a little nearer he said to the Marine sentry, 'Trollope, hail that boat.'

The Marine was on the point of saying, 'But it's our own barge, sir,' when a glazed, disciplined look came over his eyes: he shut his mouth, drew a deep breath and called, 'The boat ahoy.'

'No, no,' came Bonden's answer, very loud and clear, meaning that no commissioned officer was coming to the Surprise.

'Carry on, Mr Honey,' said Jack, withdrawing to the taffrail: the sideboys stuffed their gloves into their pockets, the midshipmen abandoned their reverential looks, and Howard dismissed his men. The barge hooked on and Mowett bounded up the side. His face was quite aghast as he came hurrying aft to Jack. 'I am very sorry, sir,' he cried, 'but the war is over.'

He was immediately followed by a cheerful short thick round-headed man in a plain uniform coat who brushed past Honey and approached Jack with a beaming smile, his hand held out. 'My dear Captain Aubrey, give you joy of the peace,' he said. 'I am delighted to see you again, and how is your arm? Very well, I see, and much the same length as the other, according to my prediction. You do not remember me, sir, though without boasting I may say you owe me your right arm. Mr Evans was actually filing the teeth of his saw, but I said No, let us give it another day - Butcher, formerly assistant surgeon in Constitution and now surgeon of Norfolk.'

'Of course I remember you, Mr Butcher,' said Jack, his mind filled with the recollection of that painful voyage to Boston as a wounded prisoner after the American Constitution had taken the British Java. 'But where is Captain Palmer? Did he survive the wreck of the Norfolk?'

'Oh yes, yes. He was battered, but not drowned. We did not lose a very great many people compared with what it might have been. All our clothes went, however, and I am the only man with a respectable coat. That is why I was sent- Captain Palmer could not bear the idea of going aboard a British man-of-war in a torn shirt and no hat - he desires his best compliments, of course - had the pleasure of meeting you in Boston with Captain Lawrence - and hope you and your officers will dine with him on what the island affords tomorrow at three o'clock.'

'You spoke of a peace, Mr Butcher?'

'Oh yes, and he will tell you about that in more detail than I can. We first had the news from a British whaler - how blank we looked when we had to let her go, a splendid prize - and then from a ship out of Nantucket. But tell me, sir, what is this I hear about Dr Maturin, that you wish to open his head?'

'He had an ugly fall, and our chaplain, who understands physic, thinks it might save him.'

'If it is a question of trepanning, I am your man. It is an operation I have performed scores, nay hundreds of times without losing a patient. That is to say except in a very few cases of vicious cachexy, where it was only done to please the relations. I trepanned Mrs Butcher for a persistent migraine, and she has never complained since. I have the greatest faith in the operation; it has brought many men back from the edge of the grave, and not only for depressed fractures, either. May I see the patient?'

'A very fine instrument indeed,' said Butcher to Martin, turning Stephen's trephine over and over in his hands. 'With many improvements unknown to me. French, I believe? I remember our friend' - nodding towards Maturin - 'saying he had studied in France. A trifle of snuff, sir?'

'Thank you, but I do not take it.'

'It is my only indulgence,' said Butcher. 'A very fine instrument; but I do not wonder you hesitated to use it. I should hesitate myself, even in a swell as moderate as this, let alone the sea you describe. Let us get him ashore at once: this pressure must not be allowed to continue another night, or I will not answer for the consequences.'

'Can he safely be moved?'

'Of course he can. Wrapped in blankets, made fast to a padded six by two plank with cingulum bandages - a crosspiece for his feet, of course - and raised and lowered vertically by tackles, he will come to no harm, no harm at all. And if Captain Aubrey could send his carpenter to knock up a hut a little more solid than our canvas, why, the patient will be as well off as in any naval hospital.'

'Mr Mowett,' said Jack, 'I am going ashore with the Doctor. It will be too dark by the height of flood for you to try the channel, so you will anchor the ship, gackling your cables a good twenty fathom. In all probability I shall rejoin when things are well in hand, but if I do not, you will come in tomorrow evening. Do not forget to gackle your cables, Mowett.'

Stephen, more corpse-like still with his face shrouded from the sun, was lowered into the boat - the launch this time, as being more roomy than the barge - and it pushed off, loaded deep with the carpenter, his crew, a working-party, a good deal of material, and some stores that Jack thought might be welcome to castaways.

Captain Palmer had hobbled down to greet him at the landing-place, a little hard on the left-hand side of the stream, away from the tents. He had done what he could to improve his appearance, but he was an unusually hairy man by nature, and a grizzled beard, together with his ragged clothes and bare feet, gave him the look of a vagrant: he had also been miserably bruised and scraped at the time of the wreck and he was covered with makeshift plasters and bandages where the coral rock had rasped him to the bone. The hair and the plasters made the expression on his face difficult to interpret, but his words were both polite and obliging. 'I hope, sir,' he said, 'that you will come and drink what we have to offer while everything is being fixed; for I conclude the gentleman on the plank under the awning is your surgeon, come ashore to be opened by Mr Butcher.'