Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"Do not mistake me, Jack, I beg,"said Stephen, drawing his chair close and speaking into his car. "These are not carnal words. I will say no more than this: her arrest was in fact connected with intelligence. That is the meaning ofthe words you found on the superintendent's instruction "all facilities will be afforded to Dr Maturin, without question". I did not explain them at the time, because the least said in these matters the better. But you will now permit me to observe that the Marine would be better marching up and down the passage, not listening at the door: he would also find it less dull. And in time he might be withdrawn entirely."

"The least said the better," said Jack. "Just so. It shall be as you direct.' He paced to and fro, his hands behind his back. He had boundless confidence in Stephen, but deep in his mind there was a sense of having been - not tricked, not quite manoeuvred: perhaps managed was the word. He did not care for it at all. It wounded him. He took up his fiddle, and standing there facing the open stern window and looking out on to the wake, he stroked a deep note from the G string and so played on, an improvisation that expressed what he felt as no words could have done. But when Stephen behind him, speaking over the sound, said, "Forgive me, Jack: sometimes I am compelled to be devious. I do not do it from choice," the music changed, ended in an abrupt, cheerful pizzicato, and he sat down again. As they finished their bottle, they talked about tropic-birds, the flying-fish they had eaten for breakfast, the very curious phenomenon of a high haze moving in the same direction as the much lower cumulus - something that Jack had never seen in the Trades, where the upper and the lower winds were always contrary - and about the unusual aspect of the sea itself.

"You know I am to dine with you tomorrow,"said Jack,

after a pause. "I have been wondering, after today's wretched business, whether not to cry off."

"It would disappoint Pullings," said Stephen. "And Macpherson, who sees to the catering: he has laid on a haggis and some uncommon claret. It would also disappoint Fisher, and no doubt the midshipman Holles, who is also to be our guest."

"Holles will eat standing, if I have anything to do with it," said Jack. "But perhaps I should come: it might look shabby else, and resentful. Though I doubt it will be such a jovial feast as Tom Pullings might wish in his heart."

The wardroom's dinner to the Captain was indeed heavy going at the start, although the Leopard had just run one of her finest distances in this or any other of her voyages, tearing along, top-gallants just holding in the splendid breeze on her quarter, the log racing astern glass after glass, reeling off ten and eleven knots at every cast, and filling all hands with pleasurable excitement. Perhaps haggis was not quite the dish for the occasion: perhaps it was not possible to make a total divorce between service and social matters. Howard was still too shocked to attempt much in that line, but Babbington and Moore did their utmost, drinking with Jack in the most sociable manner, and the purser's droll stories were a very great resource, while the chaplain told them of an unusually well authenticated ghost; the Captain himself produced a creditable flow of small but convivial talk; and when the flaccid remains of the haggis had given way to Jack's favourite dish, soused hog's face, the proper sound of naval gaiety was beginning to build up to its full volume. But now Grant struck in with a singularly misplaced disquisition on the right place to cross the equator. He maintained that twelve degrees west was the only proper longitude; anything more would bring you on to St Roque, anything less into the adverse currents, the swell, and the

treacherous winds of Africa. Since Jack had clearly stated his intention of crossing in twenty-one or twenty-two degrees, it was clear to all that these words were untimely; but when Macpherson attempted to start a fresh hare, Grant held up his hand and said, "Hush, I am speaking," and his harsh didactic voice went on and on haranguing his restless audience until at last Pullings said, "How often have you crossed the line, Mr Grant"

"Why, twice, as I told you," said Grant, put out of his stride.

"I believe Captain Aubrey must have crossed a score of times. Ain't that so, sir?"

"Why, no," said Jack. "Not exactly. Not above eighteen, for I don't count cruising off the mouth of the Amazon. Mr Holles, a glass of wine with you."

"Nevertheless," said Larkin the master, who had drunk a good deal in the forenoon watch and whose fuddled mind was still at the beginning of Grant's observations, "there is a great deal to be said for even less than twelve degrees."

"Oh, clap a stopper over it," whispered his neighbour, and a dead silence fell, a silence broken by a messenger - 'Mr Martin begged the Doctor's pardon, but could wish to see him as soon as might be convenient."

"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Stephen, folding his napkin. "I hope to join you again before the cheese, the St Jago goat's milk cheese. Now, sir?"he said to Martin, in the convicts' sickbay. Martin made no reply, but pointed. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," whispered Stephen. All three patients had broken out in a mulberry-coloured rash, extraordinarily widespread and most ominously dark: there was no possible doubt - this was gaol-fever, and gaol fever of the most virulent kind. He was certain the moment he saw it, but for conscience's sake he checked the other signs - petechiae, a palpable spleen, brown dry tongue, sordes, raging heat: not one was absent.

"Now we know what we are about," he said, straightening up. "Mr Martin, you have kept the most scrupulous

notes, I am sure: when we combine our observations I have no doubt that we shall add materially to the literature on this disease. A most interesting set of anomalies hitherto, and now so convincingly resolved. Some cantharldes if you please: let Soames prepare three turpentine enemata; and pray pass the shears.' And to the patients, who were feeling rather better now, he said in English, "Now we are about to attack the root of the malady: be of good heart."

They smiled: the strongest of the three said they would see England again, and that he would like to take another hare on Mr Wilson's land. They looked at him gratefully.

He and Martin plied all the remedies they possessed, all the forms of alleviation they knew - sponging, cold affusions, shaving of the head - but the progress of the disease, from having been extraordinarily slow, now became extraordinarily rapid. As the day wore on to quarters Stephen sent a note aft, asking that the guns might not be fired, although by this time two of the men were in the coma vigil, their eyes were staring wide, but their beings so very far below the surface that no guns would ever rouse them. When hammocks were piped down, the third man entered into a muttering delirium; and at lights out he too passed into coma.

The lights burned on in the sickbay, and in his patients' gleaming eyes Stephen read ultimate disappointment, loss of trust, and deep reproach. Between two and four in the morning they all died. He and Martin closed their eyes, told the loblolly boy to send for the sailmaker as soon as it was day, and went to bed. As he walked aft to his cabin Stephen noticed that the way had come off the ship: the innumerable sounds that spoke of her movement had fallen silent, and the voice of the water, usually slipping by just above his head, had died away.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Leopard had lost the north-east trades in 12'30'N., far earlier than Jack had expected: he resisted the notion of total loss as long as he could, but presently he was forced to admit that it was so, that this year the doldrums had moved farther north than usual, and that his ship was in them, well in, having carried the declining breath of the true breeze right down to its last expiring waft. Day after day she lay there with her head all round the compass, inanimate, her sails hanging limp, sometimes rolling so that most hands were sick all.over again, rolling so heavy that he struck her topgallantmasts before she should send them overboard, sometimes motionless; and all day long the heat beat down from a veiled sun. The air was thick, with no refreshment even in the morning watch; lightning flickered all round the night horizon; and sometimes by night but more often by day, warm rain came down so hard and thick that the men on deck could hardly breathe and the scuppers on either side spurted water as though from a powerful hose.