Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

Herapath withdrew: they arranged their papers, and checking with the log book, Jack wrote DD, discharged dead, against the names of one hundred and sixteen men, ranging from William Macpherson, lieutenant, Royal Marines, and James Stokes, master's mate, down to Jacob Hawley, boy, third class. It was a painful task, for again and again the name was that of some former shipmate who had sailed with them in the Mediterranean, the Channel, the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean - sometimes in all - and

whose qualities they knew intimately well. "One of the saddest things about this tally," said Jack, "is that it hits our volunteers so much harder than the rest. Once I knew a good third of the men aboard. Now it is nothing like. Yet a surprising number of the quota men have come through: how do you account for that, Stephen?"

"I hazard a guess, no more. A slight attack of smallpox gives immunity; so these men, many of whom have been in prison, may have been infected with an attenuated form of gaol-fever, thus acquiring a resistance the others lacked. Yet I must confess that my reasoning is very loose, because of our convicts no more than three men have survived, and one of them will never make old bones. The women I reckon apart, for not only do they possess the singular toughness of their sex, but one at least is pregnant, a state that seems to confer immunity from so many ills."

Jack shook his head, looked through the remaining papers, and said, "These are your convalescents, I take it? How soon do you expect them to be fit for duty?"

"Alas, I cannot hold out any hope of a prompt return except in the case of the few boys. The sequelae are very troublesome in this disease, I am afraid, troublesome and lingering. Of the sixty-five in my list, perhaps in other circumstances you might have a score tolerably brisk in a Mont h; another score might take far longer; while the remaining twenty-five, who only just came through, should not be on a ship at all, whatever the circumstances, but in a well-appointed hospital."

Jack wrote his sums, and whistled at the result. "So at the best," he paid, "I have about two hundred men. I can watch perhaps a hundred and twenty or so. Sixty hands to a watch: God help us! Sixty hands to a watch, in a fifty-gun ship!"

"Yet we hear of merchantmen taking their goods to the ends of the earth, with no more to sail their vessel."

"To sail her, yes. But to fight her, that is quite another

thing. We reckon the gun-crews can handle five hundredweight a man. Now our long twenty-fours weigh just over fifty hundredweight, and our twelves thirty-four. So to fight the ship one side we need a hundred and ten men on the lower deck and seventy-seven on the upper, to say nothing of the other side or the carronades and the long nines; and as you know very well, Stephen, a great many people are needed to work her, while she is being fought. This is a damned unpleasant kettle of fish."

"It Is worse than you suppose, Jack. Things are always worse than you suppose. For you are speaking as though my convalescents, my sixty-five convalescents, were presently to be restored: you did not notice that I spoke of other, of favourable circumstances. Now the present circumstances are not favourable: for I must tell you that my medicine-chest is bare. I have no bark, no electuaries, no antimony, no - in short, I have nothing but my venereals and a little alba mistura, or eye-wash - a very little alba mistura - and therefore cannot answer for my three-score convalescents, at all. Unless they have physic and a diet that the ship cannot possibly provide in mid-ocean, a whole series of ailments may carry them away. This applies with the greatest force to my first list, the list on your right, headed by the name of Thomas Pullings, the list of those that require immediate relief."

"Cannot they hold out until the Cape?"

"No, sir. Even in this clement weather, we already have the typical swollen leg by the dozen, the very dangerous debility, the severe nervous symptoms. In the cold winds and the boisterous weather south of Capricorn, without a drop of physic, my convalescents, or the greater part of them, would be condemned. And even if my chest were full, those on the first list would stand very little chance of seeing Africa."

Jack did not reply at once: his mind was dealing with the advantages and disadvantages of touching at a Brazilian port - the loss of the trade-wind inshore, the way the

south-caster would often hang in the east for weeks on end just under the tropic, so that a ship might have to beat into it, tack upon tack, for very little gain, or else run far south for the westerlies: a whole mass of considerations. His face was already sad; now it grew stern and cold; and when he did speak it was not to tell Stephen what he intended to do but to ask whether Pullings and the people in the sickbay might be allowed wine yet. He was going to see how they did, and would like to take a couple of dozen with him.

Just when he reached his decision did not appear, but it must have been before the first dog-watch. Stephen brought Mrs Wogan on to the poop, where he was obliged to repel a dangerous attack from Pollux, Babbington's Newfoundland; Pollux did not recognize him in his beard, and being attached to Mrs Wogan, defended her as a matter of duty. Even when she seized its ear, pulled it away, and told it not to be a damned fool - the gentleman was a friend - the animal distrusted him, and kept just behind his hams, uttering an organ-like growl, both with the inspiration and the outward breath. Babbington was below, so when she had reproached the dog and even thumped its loving head in vain, she tied a signal-halliard round its neck and attached it to the fife-rail: they moved aft to stare at the wake, and standing there they heard the aged carpenter, busy at the larboard stern lantern, say to one of his mates, "What's the buzz, Bob?"

Mr Gray was somewhat deaf, and his mate was obliged to whisper 'We're bearing up for Recife' in a louder tone than he could have wished.

"Eh?" said the carpenter. "Don't mumble, God pound you alive. Ar-ticulate, Bob, ar-ticulate."

"Recife. But only touch and go. No watering; no cattle. Greenstuff, belike."

"I hope there will be time to get Mrs Gray a poll-parrot," said the carpenter. "She grieved after her last poll-parrot something cruel. Look at this here thorough-piece, Bob. Would you ever of believed that even the Dockyard could

pass such a rotten bit of wood? And the whole bleeding stern-post is the same. Punk. Incest is nothing to them, nor Sunday travel, so they get us to sea In an ancient sieve, the fucking bastards."

Bob coughed significantly, gave Mr Gray a great jerk with his elbow, and said, "Company, company, Alfred."

The rumour about the Leopard's destination, like most ship's rumours, was quite accurate: her head pointed farther west, away from Africa; she brought the wind well abaft the beam, and began to set her upper and lower studdingsalls. But just as she moved much more heavily through the water, now that she had a vast beard of doldrum-weed to drag along, so the diminished watch spent a far longer time in sheeting home; indeed, they had scarcely coiled all down before the drum beat for quarters; and after that ceremony her thin, hesitant gunfire was very different from the full throated roar of a month ago.

In the evening Jack told Stephen that he had decided to put into the nearest Brazilian port, and asked him to prepare his list of drugs. "We are well found in stores and water," he said, "and I mean only to lie in the outer road, just long enough to get your physic, and, if you tell me that it is of the first necessity, to put those invalids you name on shore. If this wind holds, we should raise St Roque tomorrow, and if it don't come foul inshore, Recife very shortly afterwards. The moment I have finished working out the new watch-lists with Grant, I shall start writing home. Have you any messages?"