Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

It seemed an endless battle, yet by the calendar only twenty-three days passed before an even more violent deluge than usual brought a northerly breeze in the morning watch that wafted the Leopard down, just to the very outside limit of the region where the south-east trade-wind blew.

From the sickbay he noticed the deafening downpour, water knee-deep on the decks and cascading into the head, and he heard all hands piped to make sail in the ensuing quietness; but this had happened so often that he paid little attention. Even when he felt her heavy, deeply weeded bulk surge on and heard the growing hiss of her cutwater shearing through the swell, he was too utterly

weary to be pleased, just as he had taken no real satisfaction in the diminishing mortality of these last few days and the absence of fresh cases.

He slept where he sat, occasionally waking for some call for water or to help a half-seen assistant lash a delirious man into his cot. Yet when he woke in the morning he knew that the ship was in a different world, that she was herself a different world. True, clean, breathable air was gushing down the windsail; his whole being was recharged with life.

These confused waking motions were confirmed on deck. The Leopard had sent up her topgallantmasts it had taken the reduced crew three-quarters of an hour instead of the usual seventeen minutes and forty seconds - and she was running west-south-west at five or six knots under a cloud of sail. A new and brilliant day, a new and healthy sea, transparent tonic air, the ship alive. Killick had been on the watch, and now he ran forward with coffee-pot and biscuit, laid them carefully in a coil of rope at the appointed place, the limit of the forbidden ground, retreated, and called out, "Good morning, sir. This is what we have been praying for.' Stephen nodded, took a draught, and asked how the Captain did. "Which he's Just turned in," said Killick, "a-laughing like a boy. Says we've cleared the doldrums: the true blessed trade, he says, and never will he touch a stitch till we're at the Cape."

Stephen drank his coffee and soaked his biscuit standing by the rail. An extraordinary change had come over the ship: men ran, talked in low cheerful voices, looked like different beings; and there was laughter out on the bowsprit. All this time the routine of the ship had been carried on, but as though the hands were already at least half-dead; orders had been obeyed, but by slow and listless automata. Now the Leopard might have been sailing fresh from Porto Praya, apart from the fact that her decks were so thinly peopled.

The change in the sickbay was more surprising still.

Men who had been on the point of death the evening before were now straining their heads up from their cots, talking eagerly in their weak thin voices. One very feeble convalescent had actually reached the ladder, and was attempting to creep up. The eyes, the expressions, the words that he encountered as he made his rounds possessed a vitality that he had not seen for weeks, and one whose existence had almost passed from his mind.

"I doubt whether we have many fresh cases today," he said to Herapath. He was not mistaken: no more new admissions and only three more deaths, all cases where the coma had been abnormally prolonged.

Nevertheless, it was a full week before he opened his plague-house, allowed his stronger convalescents to come up to the forecastle or return to the lower-deck, and moved aft again.

"Jack," said he, "I am come to sit with you a while; and then, if I may, I will beg the use of one of your little cabins. I long for a day and a night of uninterrupted sleep in luxury, swinging in an ample cot under an open skylight. You need not be afraid: I have been pumped in fresh rain-water and soaped from head to foot, and I believe the epidemic is over. Should anything untoward occur, Herapath will wake me. Herapath knows all the symptoms now, as very few men know them. Herapath will not be deceived. Now, sir!" he cried, frowning sternly at a stranger whose face was reflected in a small lookingglass. "Jesus, "tis myself, behind that beard.' A three weeks' beard: with his sunken, emaciated face, it gave him the look of an El Greco, without the length. "Beard," he said, pulling it. "Maybe I shall retain this beard - the torment of the razor a mere memory, no more. The Roman emperors retained their beards, in war."

At any other time Jack would have pointed out the chasm separating a Roman emperor from a surgeon in the Royal Navy, but now he only said, "Herapath behaved very well, I collect?"

"Very well indeed: a good, quiet, intelligent young man, that can be relied upon. And since I am now alone, I desire you will make him my mate. True, he has not studied physic, nor surgery; but he can read the Latin and French in which most of my books arc wrote, and he will have nothing to unlearn, which is not the case with most of the pitiable quackeens who come aboard with nothing more valuable than a piece of paper from Surgeons' Hall, a set of old wives' tales, and a secondhand saw."

"I cannot possibly make a man an assistant-surgeon. What are you thinking of, Stephen? The Sick and Hurt would never countenance it for a moment. But I will tell you what I can do: I can rate him midshipman, since I have three vacancies, alas, and then he can be your acting mate.'He went on to explain the metaphysics of acting and substantive rank, but finding that Stephen had fallen fast asleep, his chin on his chest, his mouth open among the beard, and no more than a thin crescent of yellowish white showing under his eyelids, he tiptoed away.

The dawn broke clear and sudden, a brilliant sun rising at exactly six o'clock, the south-eastern wind blowing fresh; and at the beginning of the forenoon watch the Leopard crossed the line: crossed without the least ceremony however, nothing to mark the event apart from pork on what would have been a dried peas banyan day, and plum duff.

At six bells Herapath brought the sickbay papers, and reported uninterrupted progress forward. Before settling to their grim accounts, Jack said, "Herapath, Dr Maturin speaks in high terms of your conduct, and he wishes you to continue as his assistant. The rules of the service do not allow me to enter you on the ship's books as assistant surgeon without the proper certificates, so I propose rating you midshipman. This will enable you to act as his assistant, to live with the oldsters in the after-cockpit, and to walk the quarterdeck. Is that agreeable to you?"

"I am very much beholden to Dr Maturin for his good

opinion," said Herapath, "and to you, sir, for your most obliging offer. But perhaps I should observe that I am an American citizen, in case that should be a bar."

"Are you, though?" said Jack. He looked at the muster, which he had opened to change Herapath's rating. "So you are. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Well, I am afraid that is a bar to your ever becoming a commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. I am very sorry to have to tell you, that advancement beyond master's mate is closed to you."

"Sir," said Herapath, "I must endeavour to bear it."

Jack looked at him sharply. No one but Stephen could make game of Captain Aubrey with impunity: but was Herapath in fact guilty of impertinence? The young man's face was calm and grave. There was no hint of a smile on Stephen's face, either. "You have no dislike to fighting the French, I take it?" he went on. "Nor any of the other nations England is at war with?"

"None in the least, sir. In 'ninety-eight, when I was quite a boy, I was in arms against the French, under General Washington. And I am happy to do what I can against any of your other enemies; unless, of course, England should go to war with the States, which God forbid."

"Amen," said Jack. "Well, I shall be glad -to welcome you to my quarterdeck. Mr Grant will introduce you to the young gentlemen: here is a note for him. And since poor Stokes was just about your size, you may wish to buy hisuniforms when they are sold at the mainmast.,