Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

and pervaded the whole poop.

furthermore," the awful voice went on, "one of your subalterns has endeavoured to bribe the armourer to make him a key to her cabin."

"Oh!" cried Mrs Wogan.

if this criminal state of affairs is the result of one month's sailing with that infernal woman, what will it be like by the end of a voyage of half a year or more? What have you to say, Captain Moore?"

Very diffidently, very tentatively, Captain Moore mentioned the sudden warmth of the tropics - they would soon get used to it - and the very large quantities of fresh meat, and lobsters, at St Jago.

"I am weighing in my mind," said Captain Aubrey, dismissing the heat, the beef, and the lobsters with a wave of his hand, "whether it may not be my duty to return to St Jago, to set these unreliable people ashore, and continue the voyage with those who can exercise some mastery over their passions."

"Such as your Turk, for example," murmured Stephen, aside.

"There is no shadow of a doubt that any court-martial, upon the view of my order-book, signed by all the officers in question, would break them instantly: there is no possible defence - a plain order has been given, and it has been disobeyed. Still, I am unwilling to break men for what may have been a lunatic whim. But I tell you, Captain Moore," said Jack with a shocking cold ferocity, "that I will not have my ship run like a bawdy-house: I will have a taut ship. I will have my orders obeyed. And if there is the least hint of recurrence, by God I shall break them without mercy. Now, sir, if there are any of your men who understand what orders mean, after this disgraceful exhibition on the part of their officers, be so good as to have a sentry posted at the lady's door. And pray tell Mr Howard that I wish to see him at once."

Howard did not last long. Having got wind of this affair

long before the sleeping Captain Moore, he had been preparing for the interview for an hour at least: he was double-shaved, his uniform was speckless, his stock as tight as a stock can be; and he had swallowed four glasses of brandy and water. What he had to say did not reach the poop, but its nature could be surmised from Jack's explosive 'Contemptible, sir, contemptible! The most disgraceful mean shuffling ungentlemanly defence I have ever heard in my life. The most infernal sneaking scrub ever whelped in a gutter would be ashamed . . . Killick, Killick there," pealing on his bell, "Call the sentry and carry Mr Howard away. He is took ill. And pass the word for Mr Babbington."

Babbington received the expected summons, cast a pitiful look at Pullings, licked his lips, looking absurdly like his anxious, apprehensive dog, and stepped aft, quite bowed.

But Babbington was executed in the stern-gallery, where the overhang muted the sound; and the Leopard being close-hauled to weather Fogo, even those muted notes were borne away by the wind.

"The smoke over there," said Stephen, "is Fogo, the volcano."

"Dear me," said Mrs Wogan, "how very shocking.' She paused, and said, "So now I have seen a volcano, as well as having heard one.' This reference was contrary to their tacitly agreed rules of intercourse, but Mrs Wogan was clearly upset, and she showed this a moment later by the ineptitude of her return to Herapath. "So your patient can read and write? Surely that is unusual in a common sailor?"

Stephen considered for a while. Although she had uttered this with a creditable air of detached curiosity, its timing was wretchedly ill-judged, and he was inclined to make her pay for her want of professional skill. Yet he wasfeeling benign, and she had just been called that infernal woman, together with several other disobliging names, so he replied, "tie is not a common sailor. He appears to be a

young man of good family and of a certain education who has run away to sea because of some misfortune or distress, presumably of an erotical nature. Perhaps he has run from an unkind mistress."

"What a romantic thought. But if he is shot of the lady, why should he perish away? People do not die of love, you know."

"Do they not, ma'am? I have known them brought pretty low, however, and to take to mighty strange courses, ruin their happiness, career, prospects, reputation, honour, estate, and wits, break with their families and their friends, run mad. But in this case, I fear he may perish away not so much from a wounded heart, as from an empty belly. You cannot conceive the promiscuity of the seaman's life, nor its total lack of privacy. The seamen, upon the whole, are a very decent set of men; but to one bred up in a different way of life, their company can be strangely burdensome. What they eat, for example, and their way of eating it - the noise, the open-mouthed champing, the primitive gestures, the borborygms, the belching, the roaring jocularity, the - I will spare you many aspects, but I assure you that to an educated man, who has no very robust vital principle, who knows nothing of the sea except perhaps the Dover packet, who has lived retired, and who has been much reduced by unhappiness, all these things together can bring about a morbid state, an anorexy; and he may literally starve in the midst of plenty. Poor Herapath - for Herapath is his name - is already skin and bone. I feed him up with my portable soup, and the Captain sent him a chicken from his table; but I look to see him buried, bone alone, before he can come to relish . . . The bell! The bell! Come, there is not a moment to be lost."

The Marine sentry was already on the door, and it was therefore in a very low voice that Mrs Wogan said, "Having been present at the young man's rescue, I feel a certain interest in him. I have vast quantities of stores. May I beg

you to be so humane as to allow me to send him this canister of Naples biscuits, and a tongue?"

Stephen returned to the cabin, and this time he was admitted. He found Jack looking old and tired. "I have had a damned unpleasant afternoon, Stephen,"he said. "How it does take it out of you, being angry. Those lecherous sodomites have been sending Mrs Wogan billets doux, bribing people right, left and centre cannot keep their breeches on, the hounds. And this evening I shall beat the oldsters, the whole after-cockpit. No dry flogging, neither. Seized to that gun, and a hearty score or so on the bare breech. God rot them all. Would you believe it, Stephen? They bored holes in the bulkhead of her cabin, and stood there in rows, to see her in her shift. Oh, the odious wench. How I wish I were rid of her. I have always loathed women, from clew to earing; hook, line and sinker; root and branch. I always said this would happen, you remember; I was against it from the start. Damn her for a flibbertigibbet, the hussy. Without her we would be sailing along as sweet as for the moment nothing typically sweet occurred to his mind, so he added 'swans' in an angry growl. "God-damned swans."

"Here is a note for you from Herapath."

"Eh? Oh, Herapath: yes. Thankee. Forgive me.' He read it, smiled and said, "Very prettily put. Could not have put it prettier myself. The civilest line I ever had from anyone I pulled out: wrote pretty, too; an elegant hand. Well, I take that very kindly. He shall have another fowl. Killick! God damn that stone deaf Beelzebub. Killick, there's a cold fowl left, ain't there? Send it along to Herapath, in the sickbay. Can he take a little wine, Stephen? No wine, Killick: but rouse out a bottle of sherry for us."

"Listen now, will you," said Stephen, when the bottle was half out. "In the matter of this lady, you are excessive; you are unjust. She shares in the sin of Eve, sure; but otherwise she is blameless. Not a leer, not a wink, not a

handkerchief dropped. And I am to tell you, joy, that I require a free hand with Mrs Wogan."

"You too, Stephen?"cried Jack, colouring. "By God, I -