Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

Catholic, replied, "Well, so much the better.' First lieutenant: 'Hoot awa, my lord, how can you say that of a British clergyman?" Lord Cloncarty: 'Why, because I believe I am the first captain of a man-of-war that could boast of a chaplain who had any religion at all.' But reflecting that Stephen was himself a Papist, and might be hurt, and that in any case the anecdote had something of the air of letting down his own side, he remained silent, inwardly observing, "You was precious near being brought by the lee again, Jack."

"Sure," said Stephen, "this is a question that has troubled many a candid mind: far be it from me to propose any solution. I believe I shall step forward and look at these new patients. They will have been carried up to the forecastle, I suppose, the creatures? And then there is your Mrs Wogan: when is she to be indulged in air? For I must tell you, that I will not answer for their health if they are not aired at least an hour a day, at twice, in fine weather."

"Lord, Stephen, I had quite forgot. Mr Needham," he cried in a strong voice, addressing his clerk in the forecabin, "pass the word for the first lieutenant.' And a moment later, when Pullings hurried in with a sheaf of papers, "No, Tom, it is not the watch-bills, for the moment. Pray have a lantern sent into the little cabin abaft the tiers - the female prisoner that berths alone.' Pullings was also to find out what arrangements the late superintendent had made for victualling the convicts, their rations, the stores available, and the practice, in common transports, for prisoners' exercise.

"Aye aye, sir," said Pullings, in his competent, cheerful way. "And there is this stowaway, sir. What am I to do with him?"

"The stowaway? Oh, yes, that half-starved fellow this morning. Well, now, since he is so very eager to go to sea, and since, after all, he i's at sea, I think you may enter him as a supernumerary landsman. God knows what romantic

notions he has in his head . . . the lower deck will soon knock them out again."

"lie is probably running from a wench, sir. Twenty young fellows in the starboard watch are in the same case."

"It is often those slim young men who procreate so freely," said Stephen, "whereas your village champion, for all his parading like the parish bull, in fact remains comparatively chaste. For lack of opportunity? Who can tell? Is the flame more ardent in a lighter form? Does a more insinuating manner count for all? But you will not set him at work until he is restored. Such emaciation! Lie must be fed pap from a spoon, and a small spoon too, once every watch, or you will have still another corpse upon your hands - you may readily kill him with kindness and a piece of pork."

He considered for a while, and when Pullings had gone about his innumerable duties, he said, "Jack, have you ever known any gentlemen on the lower deck?"

"Yes: a few."

"And how did you like it yourself, when you were a midshipman and your captain turned you before the mast for incompetence?"

"It was not for incompetence."

"I distinctly remember that he termed you a lubber."

"Yes, but a lecherous lubber: I kept a girl in the cable-tiers. It was a reflection upon my morals, not my seamanship."

"You astonish me: but tell, how did you like it?"

"It was no bed of roses. But I was bred to the sea, and the midshipmen's berth is no bed or roses neither. For a landsman, brought up to be nice about his food and so on, it would come very hard. I knew one, a parson's son who got into trouble at college, that could not bear it, and died. On the whole I should say that if your educated man is young and healthy, if he is in a happy ship, and can stand up for himself, and can survive the first month or so, he has a fair chance. Not otherwise."

Stephen walked forward along the weather gangway, and in spite of the unhappiness settled deep into his heart and of the craving that filled his whole being, he felt his spirits lift. The day had grown more brilliant still; the diminishing wind had backed a point and more abaft the beam, and the Leopard was running under courses, topsails and lower studdingsalls; and being a new suit they made a splendid expanse of white against the sky. Great smooth taut curves of a whiteness so intense that their surface was rather to be apprehended than distinctly seen, and all set among the sharp, definite, clear-cut pattern of the rigging. But above all it was the warm yet vivifying, tonic air sweeping in over the side and searching deep into his lungs that made his sad face lighten and his dull eyes come to life. He was pleased to find that his assistant-and the loblolly-boy had been on the forecastle for some while, and that Martin could give him an account of those convicts who were still prostrated. Most, however, had recovered by this time, at least enough to sit up or even stand and take some interest in life. The two older women were of this class (the half-wit girl was presumably with Mrs Wogan) and they stood leaning on the breastwork, looking down into the head, to the infinite annoyance of the hands; for the head, or that part of it on either side of the stem, was the seamen's privy, their only place of ease; and many of them were now hard-pressed. One was a middle-aged Gipsy, spare, dark, fierce, and aquiline; the other a quite remarkably vicious-looking woman, with such evident wickedness on her face and eye that it was a wonder she had ever been able to make a living in any occupation that brought her into contact with her fellow men. Yet from her bulk she must have done quite well: although diminished by imprisonment and continual seasickness so that her filthy crimson gown hung loose, she was still a flabby, swagging fifteen stone. Sparse carotty hair, the outer half dyed yellow: tiny glaucous eyes set close and deep in a vast amorphous face, an incongruous

bar of eyebrow right across the two. Some few of the convict men might have been her cousins; other had more of a mere petty-larceny look; still others would have seemed quite ordinary if they had been wearing smock frocks; and two were idiots. They all had the deathly gaol-pallor, and all, except for the idiots, wore a hopeless, downcast expression. In their revolting clothes and their inhuman irons they were a squalid, even an abject group, herded there like cattle; they were in the way; the seamen glanced at them with disapprobation, contempt, and in some cases enmity.

The big man who was suspected of having killed the superintendent was one of the worst cases: his powerful body still heaved convulsively from time to time, but otherwise he might have been a corpse. "Here," said Stephen to his assistant, speaking Latin, "heroic measures are meet to be used. A funnel having been introduced into his pharynx, fifty, nay threescore drops of sulphureous ether are to be administered.' He then prescribed a decoction of orange-peel and Peruvian bark for some of the others, and said, "These you will be pleased to take from our chest. For my part, I shall overhaul their late surgeon's stores, and see what they contain."

They contained an extraordinary amount of Hollands gin, a very few books and instruments - cheap, dirty instruments, with rust and old blood still coating the whole length of the large saw - and the Home Office collection of drugs, by no means the same as those supplied to men-of-war by the Sick and Hurt Board. The Home Office pinned its faith more upon rhubarb, grey powder, and hartshorn than did the Sick and Hurt, upon Lucatellus's balsam, polypody of the oak, and, to Stephen's surprise, the alcoholic tincture of laudanum. Three Winchester quarts of it. "Vade retro," he cried, seizing the nearest and opening the scuttle: but after the first had gone he paused, and in reasonable, false, considering voice he observed that what was left should be

preserved for the use of his patients; there were many contingencies in which the tincture might be of essential consequence to them.