Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"He does not miss much by staying aboard, however, for these islands really are most uncommon black and desolate, having been volcanoes and having a strong inclination to be volcanoes again. As we stood in, we saw Fogo, which is a little to the south of west and some twenty leagues from here, sending up a fine cloud of smolce. I went ashore yesterday to stretch my legs and to see whether I could knock over a few quails for the table and perhaps some curious birds or monkeys for Stephen, and I took Grant with me, in the hope of getting on better terms. But I am afraid I did more harm than good. We fagged over miles and miles of pumice and lava with scarcely a blade of green, but never a thing did we bring home, except for two ill humours; we grew very hot and dusty and tired and thirsty - never a drop in the dried-up streams - and all the way he kept pointing out places where he had seen bustards and guinea-fowl last time he was here. He

perpetually proposed fresh paths, as though he owned the island, and in passing he observed that in my place would have anchored the ship nearer the wateringplace: yet in spite of all his local knowledge we lost ourselves in the end, and had to come down to the shore and creep along among the blazing boulders to find the village. fie dropped his gun and hurt the lock, and grew pretty sullen with the heat; but I did my best to bear with him. You would have applauded me, Sophie. fie is an older man than I by ten or fifteen years, a very fine navigator, and has been badly used. But from our first meeting aboard the flagship, I was sure it would never answer: you cannot have two captains in a ship, and his long independent command, his remarkable voyage in the Lady Nelson, and his knowledge of those waters, have set him above subordination. He might make a good commander, but he is too old and too high to be a second lieutenant. Oh, if only the Admiralty had attended to my plea for Richardson or Ned Summerhayes - but if only pigs had wings, we should have no need for tinkers' hands, as they say. Stephen is of much the same opinion with me, I believe, though of course I cannot discuss my officers with him, seeing that he is their messmate. Indeed, I cannot discuss them with anyone but you, my dear: and in your private ear, I will tell you that I shall be glad to see Turnbull leave the ship at the Cape, and to receive young Mowett again. But good Lord, what an ungrateful fellow I am: I may have a couple of lieutenants, a master, and a bosun I do not much care for, but on the other hand I have Pullings, and Babbington, two good master's mates, four or five decent midshipmen, a prime carpenter and gunner, and close on half of a crew of the kind of men I love. Not many captains can say as much, in a fresh commission. And then again, this is such a rest, after having been a commodore, with awkward captains to manage, each more like Beelzebub than the last - a positive sea-going picnic.

"Sweetheart, since I wrote those words, Phoebe has

come in, homeward bound from the Cape, and precious short of water. I shall give these letters to Frank Geary, who has her now (poor Deering and half his ship's company died of the yellow lack when she was on the Leeward Islands station) and you will have them, with my dear love, far earlier than I had hoped. Before I forget it, here is the power of attorney, so that you will get my pay; and here is a letter for Kimber - you will read it, if you please: he is to confine himself to the strict minimum, as we agreed and another for Collins, about the horses. Do not let him forget to buy Wilcox's hay, and let it be stacked, and very well thatched (Carey is the man to do it) in the angle between the new stables and the coach-house.

"God bless you, Sophie, and kiss the dear children for me. When I think that George will be breached before I see him again, it makes my heart quite low: but if we go on at the present rate, I shall be home early enough to set him on a pony for his first time out, perhaps to see Mr Stanhope's hounds.

"In haste, my dear, for my bosun is fuming at the cabin door. I dare say he has already sold our cables to some rogue on shore, and wants me to slip so that they may be delivered: he really carries corruption far too high, and I shall have to bring him up.

"So with my fondest love once more,

Yours ever faithfully and affectionately Jno Aubrey."

While Jack was writing this, Stephen was ashore with Mr Fisher. They visited the church, and there, meeting with the priest, they fell into conversation with him. Father Gomes was his name, a short, fat, elderly half-caste with a dark face - his white hair made his tonsure look almost black. lie was a man who radiated goodness, and he was obviously much loved and respected by his parishioners: at his desire one of them undertook to find Stephen three sacks of physic-nuts, which the island produced in rare

perfection, new-season nuts which had not yet reached the ,open market, while another offered to lead him to a cousin's house, where he had often seen the bird the Doctor described: the cousin sold young Branco puffins bv the barrel - salted nestlings, permissible in Lent - and had an adult bird nailed to his door by way of a sign.

Stephen left the chaplain and the priest in the cool of the porch: Fisher's English pronunciation of Latin made some part of what he said incomprehensible to a Portuguese, and Father Gomes's piety so far exceeded his learning that he was often at a loss for a word, but they certainly communicated, talking away at a great rate. It appeared to Stephen that they did so less by language than by sympathy and intuition.

The physic-nuts proved of excellent quality, the puffin the true Branco puffin and not, as Stephen had feared, a cormorant or gull. A splendid acquisition, though in so advanced a state of decomposition that it was obliged to be hurried back to the ship before it should fall apart. After a brief tour of his patients and a word with Martin, he took the bird into his cabin, wrote an exact description of its plumage and outward members in his Journal, and then, gasping from the stench, clapped it into spirits of wine for a later dissection.

He lit a cigar, considered for a while, and continued: 'Thanks to that dear priest, I can now renounce the Ilheu Branco without vexing my heart. It did me great good to see him, perhaps the third saintly man I have met. How it shines out, that rarest of qualities! Fisher was strongly aware of it. Poor man, he is in the sad way, I perceive; but where the trouble may lie, I cannot tell at all. I should be sorry if it were anything so commonplace as a hidden pox: though the Dear knows I have seen that often enough, and in all ranks and orders, old Adam being so strong and untimely. Quaere: would a man like Grant be moved by Fr Gomes? If time permit, I shall make the experiment. A profoundly embittered man, with long, painful service

unrewarded, hopes disappointed for perhaps five and twenty years on end. How he resents JA! He has seen no action, as I understand, whereas Jack's body is pierced and criss-crossed with the evidence of battle: Macpherson pointed this out when Jack was stripped for his swim, the young gentlemen gazing with awe, and Grant cried in a passion " 'twas all luck, all luck - no man was wounded from choice - a man might have all the courage and conduct in the world, and no wound to show for it." He puts his lack of promotion down to a general plot in Whitehall and elsewhere; to jealousy; and to the fact that his birth is obscure. "Had my father been a country gentleman, a general and a member of Parliament (a palpable fling at JA) I might have been a post captain fifteen years ago and more." Though the imbecility of this argument must be apparent to him, since he served under Admiral Troubridge, a baker's boy. Like most sailors, he is widely ignorant outside his own profession; he has indeed read a certain amount, more than most of his kind, but late reading, useless as a foundation; he is convinced that no one else has ever done so, and he is a fountain of gratuitous instruction. A want of modesty: a fine fund of self -complacence. He certainly made a most admirable voyage, but to hear him relate it, one might suppose that he had discovered both New Holland and Van Diemen's Land single-handed: which is not the case. Yet even JA, whose standard is very high, confesses that he Is a capital seaman. He is a most conscientious man too, and dutiful: keeps an ancient mother and two unmarried sisters on his lieutenant's pay, eight guineas a month. Talks no bawdy, and endeavours to repress loose talk among the Marine officers. A precise and formal man, destitute of the graces. lie is at his best with Fisher, who hears his remarks on the Pelagian heresy with a wonderful forbearance; and he appears to know his Bible as well as he knows the Articles of War. I am no theologian and I know little of the tenets of these recent sects, except that they reject what they are