Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

Miller was Bonden's cousin, and Herapath had Bonden's good word as 'a poor unfortunate bugger, that means no harm'. In any case, he was a good natured man: he turned his hideous face, deeply pocked with powder from an exploding cartridge-box, and his one brilliant eye upon Herapath with a look of kindly contempt, and said, "Well mate, I'll find someone to carry you up. You couldn't a chose a sweeter day, so still up there. I doubt even a new-born lamb could fall off of the truck. You want to take care of your hands, though: the premier don't like blood on the standing rigging.' Herapath's soft palms were in fact deeply scored from hauling on bristly ropes, and there was a danger of his leaving criminal stains. Miller looked about among the tie-for-tie pairs busy platting each other, and his eye fell upon a young fellow who followed the new fashion, his hair cut short. "Joe," he said, "just you carry Herapath aloft. Show him where to put his feet, like. Show him how to run out on a yard. Don't you come it any of your fucking bum-boy capers," he added mildly, "and I dare say you will see some of his evening grog.,

Up and up they went, beyond the top to the crosstrees and higher still, the horizon spreading enormously as they climbed, Joe moving easy, and, as he said with a chuckle,

I showing Herapath the ropes'. They paused for a while out on the yardarm to let a couple of skylarking youngsters hurtle past, and Joe showed him how to run out on the yard. "Now for the Jack," said Joe. "You want to look out here, mate; there ain't no ratlines."

The fore royal yard itself, six inches across at the slings and fine footing; an incredible expanse of sea on either hand, of sky above and of canvas below. "This is magnificent," cried Herapath. "I had no conception

"Watch me shin up to the truck," said Joe.

"I shall run out on the yard,"said Herapath. This he did, and Joe, reaching the truck, looked down in time to see him miss his hold. fie saw Herapath's face, diminishing with hideous speed, staring up at him in total horror: Herapath struck the starboard topgallant lift a glancing blow that bounced him well clear of the foretopsail, and he plunged into the sea with an enormous splash. Joe let out a shrill, broken voiced screech of 'Man overboard', and instantly the cry was taken up on deck. Seamen milled about the forecastle, their long hair flying loose: a Marine flung a swab and a bucket somewhere near the splash.

Jack was already mother-naked when he heard the cry and saw the splash. He slipped from the gunwale into the clear water, made out the vague form at a surprising depth, dived, fished it up, swam to the ship, now a hundred yards away, roared for a line, passed the inanimate Herapath up the side, and followed himself. "Mr Pullings," he cried, very angry. "Put an end to this infernal hallooing instantly. Always the same God-damned foolery, every time a man goes overboard. Damn you all for a mob of mad lunatics. Get along forward. Silence fore and aft.' Then, in an ordinary tone, "Pass the word for the Doctor."

Stephen had been standing with Mrs Wogan on the poop, and Jack, glancing round to see whether he were on his way, caught Mrs Wogan's astonished gaze full in the eye. He blushed like a boy, seized the fully clothed

Pullings as a shield, and darted down the main hatchway. The event caused a certain amount of ribaldry and a fair number of sentences depriving men of their grog for playing the God-damned fool, an offence that came under Article Thirty-six: 'All other crimes not capital, committed by any person or persons in the fleet, which are not mentioned in this act, or for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea', also known as the captain's cloak, or cover-all. Otherwise it was taken as a matter of course that Captain Aubrey should rescue a drowning man; it was perfectly well known in the service that he had already saved a score or so, most of them, as he freely admitted, quite worthless. Two were aboard the Leopard at this very moment, the one a monoglot Finn and the other a harsh, deeply stupid man called Bolton; the Finn said nothing, but Bolton conceived a mortal jealousy of Herapath, and spoke of his foolhardy presumption, infamous character, and contemptible physique in very shocking terms. "He'll live, mark my words," he said. "He'll live, until they hang him by the - neck: he would have been a gallows deal better off, left where he was, the toad."

"Of course he'll live," said his messmates. "Ain't the Doctor pumped him dry, and blown out his gaff with physic?" For it was just as much part of the natural order of things that Dr Maturin should preserve those who came under his hands: he was a physician, not one of your common surgeons - had cured Prince Billy of the marthambles, the larynx, the strong fives - had wormed Admiral Keith and had clapped a stopper over his gout - would not look at you under a guinea, five guineas, ten guineas, a head, by land.

The incident caused no great stir; it never appeared in the log; and Jack did not mention it when he continued his letter to Sophie.

"Leopard

in the harbour of Porto Praya

"Here we are, my dearest soul, not at Madeira, nor at the Grand Canary, but at St Jago in the Cape Verdes! That will make you stare, I believe. The wind stood so fair and steady from the moment we cleared the Bay, that I could not bear not to make the most of it, and indeed we picked up the north-east Trades far higher than I expected and so cut the tropic of Cancer in twenty six days, counting our tedious time in the Channel and our lying-to. The Leopat-d, apart from her new-fangled stern-post and pinties, which give us some little concern, pleases me extremely; she reaches almost as well as the Surptise, is brisk in stays, steers easy, and once we have ate up a few more tons of our provisions, she will veer as well as any ship in the fleet - at present she is by the stern, which makes her a trifle sluggish. In a word, she is more than I had hoped; and I had hoped for much. Most of the new hands are shaping well, and my old shipmates are what they have always been, thorough-going seamen, attentive to their duty, and only rather too inclined to get drunk whenever they can. There is a distillery on this island, alas; but I am doing all I can to keep them out of it.

"Tom Pullings keeps the ship in capital order. fie relieves me of almost all the work; I grow fat and idle, and Stephen and I have had many a fine concert together. Stephen seems more settled in his mind, and this heat suits him: it nearly killed me, when I put on full dress and made my call on the Governor, sweating up a vile path cut in the cliff with droves of lizards gasping in the sun, "What kind of lizards, Jack?" says he. "Lizardi percalidl," said 1, by which I meant, d-d hot lizards. I think I was mistaken, when I said our female convict was the dead spit of Diana. Stephen smoked the difference right away, no doubt; and now it is plain to me. Though on the other hand, she is very like the woman we saw with Lady

Conyngham's party at the races, whose clothes you remarked; and perhaps she is the same. Diana in the colouring, but not otherwise. She is not so tall, for one thing; and for another, she does not come down on you so uncommon sharp; and for another, she has such a laugh - it starts low, and goes on and on, so that I have seen the whole quarterdeck on the grin and have been obliged to stare out to windward to hide my own. Not that she has much cause for mirth, poor soul; yet when Stephen is up there on the poop with her, she laughs away so that even Stephen makes that odd creaking noise of his: I never heard Diana laugh, that I recall. At least, not wholeheartedly, like Mrs Wogan. So I take it he is not kept too much in mind of her. Just at present, however, he is tolerably fretful, being torn between his longing to walk about St Jago and the other islands, one of which rejoices in a peculiar sort of puffin, and his duty to these unhappy creatures we are obliged to transport. Some ofthem continue sick, and he cannot make out what it is that ails them.