Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

More orders from the poop. "He is going to commit all his forces now," said Moore. "Throw in his last reserves."

"Half a fathom, handsomely. Half a fathom more," said Jack, and the island moved to the right: the little bay opened wider. "Half a fathom - Christ!"

A long rending crack and the oar broke at the head. The loom and paddle went astern, held by a guy, the Leopard's head swung from the wind, the island moved to the left in a long, slow, even motion until it lay on the larboard quarter, dwindling astern, as inaccessible as the moon.

"In mizen topsail and topgallant," said Jack in the midst of the heavy silence.

* * *

It was within three days of this that the first cases of scurvy appeared in the sickbay. All four of them were prime seamen, broad -shouldered, long armed, powerfully-built, responsible men, cheerful in an emergency, valuable members of the crew. Now they were glum, listless, apathetic; and only a sense of what was right kept them from complaining or open despondency. Stephen pointed out the physical symptoms, the spongy gums, the offensive breath, the extravasated blood, and in two cases the old reopening wounds; but he insisted even more upon the gloom as the most significant part of the disease. "I must confess, Mr Herapath," he said, "that nothing grieves me more than this dependence of the mind upon the body's nutriment. It points to a base necessitarlanism that f rebel against with all the vehemence my spirit can engender. And here, in the particular instance, I am at a loss. These men have had their sovereign limejuice. Perhaps we must inspect 'the cask: most merchants are a sort of half-rogues, and quite capable of supplying a sophisticated Juice."

"With submission, sir," said Herapath, "it occurs to me that these men may not have had their juice."

"But it is mixed into their grog. With all the perverse wickedness of seamen with regard to their health, they cannot avoid taking it. We use the Devil for a righteous end: execrable in theology, but sound in medicine."

"Yes, sir. But Faster Doudle, the tall man, was in my mess, and he often exchanged his grog for tobacco: it may be the same with the others."

"The dogs. The wicked dogs. I shall deal with them. A spoon, ho: a spoon, there; and half a pint of Juice. I shall put an end to this: they will drink their grog or be flogged. And yet, you know," he said, pausing, "it will look strange in me, who have always set my face against their nasty rum - who circulated a petition throughout the fleet calling for

the abolition of the monstrous custom by which grog missed during sickness is made up to the patient on his discharge - if I ask the Captain to issue an order requiring each man to drink his tot. Still and all, in this case a citreous drench will answer, I believe."

The drench answered; the physical symptoms disappeared; but the gloom remained, and not only in the former patients but throughout the ship - a perfect atmosphere for the breeding of disease, as Stephen pointed out. Apart from a score of the poor flibbertygibberty creatures who had been left behind by the boats, the men were attentive to their duty, but the fine drive was gone. The leak gained on them as the oakum of the first successful fothering worked through the leak, and the passing of a new sail was a slow, exhausting business that had little evident result: the Leopard drove eastward and a little south under small sail in a rising wind, pumping day and night. At any time the weather, fairly kind for the forties these last weeks, might break: the Leopard might have to run before an enormous storm of wind, with the great seas building up; and the general view aboard was that she could not survive the half of it.

"Tell me, Mr Herapath," said Stephen. "In circumstances like these, were you supplied with a large quantity of opium, should you take a pipe?"

Herapath shied away from the renewal of their intimacy. He could not tell, he said - probably not there was perhaps something indecent in its use against mere apprehension - but then again perhaps he might.

Except when their work required his presence, he avoided Stephen whenever he could, either pumping beyond his time or shutting himself up in the cabin he had inherited from the purser - there were many vacant cabins, both fore and aft. Now he said, "You will excuse me, sir: I have promised to put in a spell at the pumps."

Stephen sighed. He had hoped to engage Herapath on the subject of the Chinese poetry that seemed to be the

young man's only consolation when he was deprived of his mistress's company. More than once, in earlier days, Herapath had spoken of his studies, of the language and its poets, and Stephen had listened greedily through halfthe night. But those days were past, and at present he would flee as he had fled now, leaving his papers on the sickbay table. Standing there alone, Stephen looked at the sheets covered with neat characters: 'It might be directions for making tea," he reflected, "or the wisdom of a thousand years.' But on one of the sheets he noticed a small interlined translation, the direct word-for-word method that Herapath had explained:

Before my bed, clear moonlight Frost on the floor? Raising head, I gaze at the moon Bowing head, think of my own country.

There was indeed a moon, three days from the full, riding through the sparse clouds beyond the scuttle. He sighed again. It was some time since he had eaten or sat tete-a-tete with Jack: he felt a delicacy about seeming to force his confidence at this juncture, the more so as Jack was more remote, more closed in since the failure off that far island, wholly taken up with the preservation of his ship, very often deep in the after-hold with the carpenter, trying to come at the leak. Yet Stephen missed those brief periods, and he was particularly pleased when, on his way back to his cabin, he met with the youngster Forshaw, the bearer of an invitation 'when the Doctor might have time to spare - there was nothing urgent'.

As he traversed the quarterdeck he noticed a relative kindness in the air - it was distinctly above freezing - and a peculiarly brilliant star quite near the moon.

"There you are, Stephen," cried Jack. "How good of you to come so soon. Do you feel in the mind for music? just half an hour? God knows what state my fiddle will be in,

but I thought we might scrape, if only for a glass."

"I might," said Stephen. "But listen, will you, till I say you a poem:

Before my bed, clear moonlight Frost on the floor? Raising head, I gaze at the moon Bowing head, I think of my own country."

"That is a damned good poem," said Jack, "although it don't rhyme.'And after a moment in which he too bent his head he said, "I have just been gazing at her too, with my sextant: a perfect lunar, with old Saturn there, as clear as any bell. I have my longitude to within a second. What do you say to the Mozart B minor?"

They played, not beautifully but deep, ignoring their often discordant strings and striking right into the heart of the music they knew best, the true notes acting as their milestones. On the poop above their heads, where the weary helmsmen tended the new steering-oar and Babbington stood at the con, the men listened intently; it was the first sound of human life that they had heard, apart from the brief Christmas merriment, for a time they could scarcely measure. And Bonden and Babbington, who had known Jack for many years, exchanged a glance of significance. The last movement worked up to its splendid end, to the magnificent, inevitable final chord, and Jack laid by his violin. "I am going to tell the officers presently," he said in a conversational tone, as though they had been talking about navigation all this time, "but I thought you might like to know first. There is land laid down in about 49'44'S and 69'E. A Frenchman by the name of Tremarec discovered it - Desolation Island. Cook could not find it, but I think Tremarec was out by ten degrees. I am confident the place exists; the whaler off the Cape spoke of it, and he fixed the position with a lunar. At all events, I am confident enough to prefer the risk of not finding it to