Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"Very true, sir; it was an uncomfortable time, as my

grandad remarked; but he loved to look back, and contemplate on it. Ile was a contemplative man, although he had no schooling beyond the hornbook and the rule of three; and he liked to contemplate on wrecks. Seven he went through, in his time, and he used to say you never knew a man, till you had seen him in a wreck. It still amazed him, he said, to see some hold fast, but the most part run all to pieces discipline goes by the board, even in a right good crew, steady old forecastle hands and even warrant officers break into the spirit-room and get beastly drunk, refuse orders, pillage cabins, dress like Jack in the Green, fight, blackguard their officers, jump into boats and swamp 'ern like a parcel of frightened landsmen . . . There's an old belief on the lower deck that once the ship's aground, or once she can't steer, then the captain's authority is gone: that's the law, they say, and nothing will get it out of their stupid heads."

Four bells struck. Stephen tossed his cigar into the Leopard's wake, and took leave of Pullings, observing that he must make his report.

"Jack," he said, when he was in the great cabin, "I spoke intemperately to you before dinner. I ask your pardon.' Jack flushed, said that he had not noticed it, and Stephen continued. "I am abandoning a course of physic, an injudicious course, perhaps; the effect is not unlike that produced in your confirmed tobacco smoker when his pipe is taken from him, and sometimes, alas, I yield to fits of petulance."

"You have enough to make you petulant, with these convicts on your hands," said Jack. "By the way, I believe you were right about Mrs Wogan: by all means let her take the air upon the poop."

"Very well. Now as to the rest of them. Two I find to be idiots, sensu stn'cto; three, including the big fellow that is thought to have killed his keeper, are hard men. In another I recognised a resurrector, and when there is a brisk demand for corpses, the resurrection-men sometimes

have an expeditious way of satisfying it; so perhaps he should be included among my men of blood. Five are little silly creatures, weak and flabby, taken up for repeated stealing from shops and stalls; and all the rest are countrymen who were too fond of taking a pheasant or a hare. No great wickedness there, I believe; and you could well exchange them for some of the objects that came from the receiving-ship. Two of them, brothers called Adam, won me entirely: they know everything that moves in the woods, and it called for five keepers and three constables to take them at the last. I lere is my list. I recommend no irons at all, since in our floating prison there is no escape; but the men marked with a cross might be exercised separately for a while, merely to avoid a bout of folly."

"But the murderer, he must be kept in irons until I hand him over."

"Sure, it was a Joint venture. The superintendent abused them to the height of his power, and from what I hear he had already extorted most of their money and their small provision for the voyage: I believe they fell on him spontaneously, in a confused heap in the dark, he having dropped his lantern: no one man, shackled, could have inflicted such injuries. Of course, for half a guinea and their neck preserved, many of them are willing and eager to inform; but what does it amount to? Let the civilians settle their own dirty business in New Holland, and in the meantime take the irons away: they can only serve as weapons.

"Well. And what about the women?"

"The Mrs Hoath, the procuress and abortionist, seems to me to have thrown off what little humanity she may have been born with, and by long perseverance to have reached a depth of iniquity that I have rarely seen equalled, never surpassed. She will not trouble us long, however: her liver alone, to say nothing of the ascites and a whole complication of morbid states, will look to that before we pass the tropic line: nevertheless, I shall see

what quicksilver, digitalis, and a stout, sharp-pointed trocar will do. Salubrity Boswell, the Gipsy woman, on the other hand, is a female worthy of a nobler age. Her husband having been bitchadey pawdle, as she puts it, or sent across the water, she contrived to be bitchadey pawdle herself, in order to Join him. She made his brother get her with child - a practice reminiscent of the ancient Jews - so that she might plead her belly and so avoid the gallows, and then she savaged the judge in broad daylight, the judge that sentenced him. We are to expect the child in five months' time, presumably between the Cape and Botany Bay."

"Oh, oh," said Jack, in a low tone, "here's a pretty kettle of fish. In a King's ship, too. I have always set my face against women aboard, and now look what they are at."

"One swallow does not make a summer, Jack, as you frequently observe. She also told me my fortune: should you like to hear iff

"If you please."

"I am to have a prosperous voyage, and not too long, and all my heart's desire."

"A prosperous voyage, eh?" said Jack, brightening. "Well, I am heartily glad of it, and I give you joy. There is always something in what these women say, however you may wag your head, Stephen. There was a Gipsy on Epsom Downs that told me I should have trouble with women, early and late; and you can't say fairer than that. Come, Stephen, sup with me - Killick shall toast you the Parmesan cheese and we will have some music at last. I have not touched my fiddle since the evening we weighed."

Stephen and Martin made their afternoon rounds: some broken ribs and collarbones, ugly contusions and crushed fingers in the Leopard's sickbay - inevitable after a violent blow, with so many landsmen aboard - together with the usual array of poxes. These, though the most familiar of

disorders to the naval surgeon, were somewhat outside Martin's pra ' ctical experience, and Stephen urged him to 'ply his mercurals, even to the extremity of salivation; to eradicate the noxious principle at the earliest possible moment; to dose, drench, and spare not, though it made vast inroads on their stock of vencreals, for once the ship was well clear of the land, there would be no call for them, no reinfection to be feared.' But Mr Martin was to take care to note down each dose against the patient's name, since the foolish libidinous creatures must pay for their folly not only in suffering but also in coin, the value of their physic being stopped out of their pay. They moved on to the convicts' quarters, where two men exhibited symptoms of a curious nature that puzzled both Stephen and Martin; symptoms that had nothing to do with seasickness. Martin put on first one pair of spectacles and then another to look at them as he auscultated, turned, and palpated; and once again Stephen wondered whether he had made such a very wise choice in his assistant. The man had a capital brain, no doubt, but he seemed entirely devoid of bowels. He handled his patients as though they were anatomical specimens, not fellow beings at all: an inhuman, mechanical medicine. "In this case, colleague Martin," he said, "our diagnosis must attend the event: in the meantime, blue pill and black draught, if you please."

Then, taking the late Mr Simpson's bundle of keys, he walked aft to Mrs Wogan's cabin, jangling as he went: there were fewer rats in the cable-tier, he noticed, and as a ship's rat was a good weather prophet, it looked as thoughthe Gipsy's tale might come true, at least for the coming days; yet among those few, two rats, male rats this time, were obviously indisposed.

He knocked, unlocked, and found Mrs Wogan in tears. "Come, come," he said, ignoring them, "lose not a moment, I beg. I am come to exercise you, ma'am; to air you for the good of your health. But there is not a moment to be lost. As soon as they tingle on that bell, it will be quarters, and