O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 14 - The Nutmeg of Consolation

The Nutmeg of Consolation

by Patrick O'Brian

Chapter One

A hundred and fifty-seven castaways on a desert island in the South China Sea, the

survivors of the wreck of HMS Diane, which had struck upon an uncharted rock and had

there been shattered by a great typhoon some days later: a hundred and fifty-seven, but

as they sat there round the edge of a flat bare piece of ground between high-water mark

and the beginning of the forest they sounded like the full complement of a ship of the line,

for this was Sunday afternoon, and the starboard watch, headed by Captain Aubrey, was

engaged in a cricket-match against the Marines, under their commanding officer, Mr

Welby.

It was a keenly-contested match and one that aroused the strongest passions, so that

roaring, hooting, cheers and cat-calls followed almost every stroke; and to an impartial

observer it was yet another example of the seaman's power of living intensely in the

present, with little or no regard for futurity: a feckless attitude, but one combined with

uncommon fortitude, since the atmosphere was as wet as a living sponge and from behind

its clouds the sun was sending down a most oppressive heat. The only impartial observer

at hand was Stephen Maturin, the ship's surgeon, who thought cricket the most tedious

occupation known to man and who was now slowly climbing away from it through the

forest that covered the island, with the intention first of killing a boar, or in default of a boar

some of the much less popular ring-tailed apes, and then of reaching the north side where

the bird's-nest-soup swallows nested. On the rounded top of a knoll, where the boar-track

led inland, he paused and looked down on the southern shore. Well out to sea on his left

hand the reef on which the frigate had struck, now white with the broken water

of a neap at three-quarter ebb but then invisible beneath a spring-tide flood; far to his right

the point where a large piece of the wreck had come ashore; left again to the scoured-out

inlet to which the wreckage had been towed by the one remaining boat, carefully prised

apart and reassembled in the present elegant ribbed skeleton of the schooner that was to

carry them to Batavia as soon as it was planked, decked and rigged; well up the slope

from this inlet the camp under the lee of the forest in which they had sheltered from the

typhoon that destroyed the stranded frigate, drowned many of her people, almost all her

livestock and almost all her powder; and then immediately below him the broad expanse,

firm and level, where the white-clad figures flitted to and fro - white-clad not so much

because this was cricket as because it was Sunday, with mustering by divisions

(necessarily shaved and in a clean shirt) followed by church.

It might seem the very height of levity to be playing cricket with the schooner far from

finished, with stores very low and with the little island's resources in coconuts, boars and

ring-tailed apes nearly exhausted. Yet Stephen knew very well what was in Jack Aubrey's

mind. The people had behaved extremely well so far, working double tides; but they were

not a crew made up solely of man-of-war's men, bred to the service and serving together

for years at a time; at least a third had been pressed into the Navy; there were several

recent draughts; and there were some King's hard bargains, including two or three sea-

lawyers. Yet even if they had all been seamen, serving in the Navy since the beginning of

the war, some relaxation was essential, and they had been looking forward to this match

with the liveliest anticipation. The camphor-wood or palm-rib bats lacked some of the

elegance of willow, but the sailmaker had sewed a wholly professional ball, using leather

that could be spared from gaff-jaws, and the players had swayed away on all top-ropes to

do their service credit. Furthermore, cricket formed some small part of that penny glass of

ceremony which upheld the precious spirit, not indeed to be compared to the high rituals

aboard such as divisions and the solemn reading of the Articles of War, to say nothing of

burials and rigging

church, but by no means inconsiderable as a way of imposing order upon chaos.

What Stephen did not fully appreciate was the degree of pleasure that Jack took in this

particular ceremony. As a captain Aubrey was exceedingly worried by the shortage of food

and marine stores, particularly cordage, by the near absence of powder, and by the

coming total absence of arrack and tobacco; but as a cricketer he knew that close

concentration was necessary on any pitch, above all on one like this, which more nearly

resembled a stretch of white concrete than any Christian meadow, and when he came in

second wicket down, the yeoman of the sheets having been bowled by the sergeant of the

Marines for a creditable sixteen, he took centre and looked about him with an eager,

piercing, predatory eye, tapping the block-hole with his bat, wholly taken up with the

matter in hand.

'Play,' cried the sergeant: he took two little skips and bowled a twisting lob, pitched well

up. 'Never mind manoeuvres,' Nelson had said. 'Always go at them.' Jack obeyed his

hero, leapt out, caught the ball before it landed and drove it straight at the bowler's head.

The grim sergeant neither flinched nor ducked but seized it as it flew. 'Out,' cried Edwards,

the only civilian aboard and therefore a perfect umpire. 'Out, sir, I am afraid.'

Amid the roaring of the soldiers and the universal moan of disappointment from the

seamen - for the Captain was well-liked both as an officer and as a dashing bat once his

eye was in - Jack said 'Well held, sergeant,' and walked off to the three coconut-palms

(long since bare of fruit) that served them as a pavilion.

'Let it not be an omen,' said Stephen, slinging his rifle and turning away. It was an

exceptionally fine rifle, a breech-loading Joe Manton, and he had inherited it from Mr Fox,

the British envoy they had brought out in the Diane to counteract the French negotiations

with the Sultan of Pulo Prabang. Fox had succeeded; he had obtained a treaty of mutual

assistance; but in his eagerness to carry it home he had set off to sail the two hundred

miles to Batavia in the ship's stout

and well-manned pinnace while the Diane was lying quietly on her reef, neaped,

immovable until the next spring tide; and he had been destroyed by the typhoon that

destroyed the frigate.

A very fine rifle; Stephen was a deadly shot; and since there was so very little powder - far

too little for a general blazing away with muskets - he was the camp's chief hunter. This

was a relief for everybody. During the first fortnight he had worn himself raw, pulling on

ropes, helping to saw wood, beating home treenails and wedges, and he had suffered

much from the inherent malignity of things - no rope, pulled over the most innocent

surface, that did not succeed in twisting upon itself or catching in some minute

anfractuosity or protrusion; no saw that did not deviate from its line; no mallet that did not

strike his already bruised and purple-swollen hand - but his companions had suffered

even more from having to re-tie all his knots and rescue him from improbable dangers,

perpetually keeping one eye on the Doctor and one on their work. Even when put to dig

out the choked well, the softest job in hand, he contrived to send a pick through William

Gorges' foot.

Yet as a hunter for the pot he was of great value to the crew. Not only was he thoroughly

at home with the weapon, but he was an experienced field-naturalist, long accustomed to

following a track, to the silent, upwind approach, and to indefinite, motionless waiting.

These were necessary qualifications, because although he had two kinds of swine, the

bearded pig and the babirussa, they had both been hunted at some not very remote

period and from the beginning they had been wary. Now the survivors were not only

warier by far, but they were also very much thinner on the ground; and whereas in the first

week he had been able to provide all hands with twice the ship's ordinary allowance of

pork in an evening's stroll, now he had to sweat over the whole island, sometimes for quite

a small creature - sometimes indeed missing even that, his damaged powder fizzling in

the breech.

The trail he was following at present, however, was more promising than any he had seen

for some while. It was recent, so recent that when it reached the edge of a spiny rattan-

patch

he saw the outer rim of the deep hoof-print fall in: what is more, this animal was almost

certainly a babirussa of nine or ten score, the first he had seen since Thursday week. He

was glad of it, because the ship's company included several Jews and many

Mahometans, united only in their hatred of swine's flesh; but a willing mind could accept

the babirussa, with his extraordinary horn-like upper pair of tusks and his long legs, as the

kind of deer that might be expected on so remote an island.

'I shall go round and wait for him,' said Stephen, and he fetched a long cast round the

rattan-brake, walking slowly in the heat. The animal had almost certainly gone to sleep.

The boars of this country, like all the other boars he had ever known, were deeply

conservative, devoted to the beaten track; and by now he knew most of their paths. At the

other end of this one he climbed a tree that commanded the way out of the brake, and in

its broad mossy crutch he sat at his ease, embowered in orchids, of a species, a habit and

colour he had never seen before. The low sun appeared through a gap in the clouds,

sinking towards Sumatra? Biliton? The west in any case. And sloping under the canopy it

lit the orchid, the whole spray of fifty or sixty orchid flowers, with singular brilliance,

vermilion in the wet, shining green; he was still contemplating it and its attendant insects

when the boar began moving again in the rattan-brake. The sound came nearer; the boar

emerged, standing motionless, its square snout twitching from side to side; with a

detached, clinical look on his face Stephen dropped it dead and climbed down from the

tree.

He had an apron in his knapsack and he put it on to gralloch his pig, because although he

had no objection to a little blood on his clothes, Killick had; and Killick's high nasal

complaining righteous voice, going on and on, was so disagreeable that the

inconvenience of an apron on so heavy a day was nothing to it. He also had a light tackle

that allowed him to heave the beast about single-handed. This was the one piece of

something like seamanship that he had studied with profit: Bonden, the captain's

coxswain, had spent hours showing him how to make one end fast and how to reeve the

fall through the channels;

and as long as he held the top block uppermost he often succeeded at the first try. He

succeeded now, and stepping back he surveyed the boar with real satisfaction: nearer

eleven score than ten. And there were few dishes Jack Aubrey preferred to soused pig's

face, while for his own part he was fond of a pair of cold crubeens. He hung his apron on a

branch to guide those who would carry the babirussa down and wiped his hands on his

jacket - on his jacket, as he realized a moment too late, gazing at the stain on the fine

white linen.

'I shall try to get it off at the swallows' pool,' he said, but with no conviction. At one period

in his childhood he had been under the rule of a Dominican tertiary called Sor Luisa, one

of the older, more respectable branch of the Torquemadas of Valladolid (his cousin and

godfather was very particular about these things), a woman for whom cleanliness was

godliness; and his attempts at 'getting it off' had never deceived her for a moment. Now

she had been replaced by a lean ageless weatherbeaten pigtailed seaman with one gold

earring and a shrewish penetrating voice. It was not even that Killick was his servant, with

a servant's rights; he was Jack Aubrey's steward, Stephen's man being a gentle, witless

young Malay by the name of Ahmed; but Preserved Killick had known both the Captain

and the Doctor so long and had acquired such a moral ascendancy in certain fields that

Ahmed was no protection at all.

As Stephen had feared, the swallows' pool did nothing to remove the stain, but with a

cowardice unworthy of his age and education he concealed the blood and peritoneal fluid

with a superimposed film of dirt from the water's edge, adding some algae for good

measure. He called the pool the swallows' because it was near the birds' most spectacular

cliff, not because they used the soft grey mud for building: far from it, indeed. The wholly

sheltered nests were pearly white and translucent, with never a hint of moss or vegetable

fibre, far less of mud:

these were the nests deepest in the caves or rather clefts in the seaward precipice, and

Stephen could see the best only from one place, where his particular cave soared up from

a broad, deep stretch of shingle two hundred feet below to a narrow

fissure at the top. He had an indifferent head for heights and the upper yards of even a

frigate filled him with paralysing dread, scarcely to be overcome by the strongest effort of

will, but here he could lie flat, with his arms and legs spread out, his body firmly pressed

against the warm level rock and only his face hanging over the void, gazing at the birds

below - the cloud of little grey birds that flew in at the widest part of the cave, whirled

about at an extraordinary speed and then shot off from the general vortex, each to its own

nest. He leant farther into the cavity, his hands spread to shade his eyes, and almost at

once his wig fell off, turning and turning until it vanished among the bird-filled shadows far

below. 'Hell and death,' he said, for although it was only an old scratch-wig worn almost

bare, Killick had recently curled and whitened its sides (there was nothing to be done to

the top): and in any case he felt naked without it. The vexation lasted little longer than the

slow turning fall, however; his wild attempt at catching the wig had brought him into a

much better position:

certainly it meant that the sun shone right on to the back of his unprotected head, but it

allowed him to lie there in the utmost comfort, his face far deeper into the cleft. His body

was perfectly relaxed, and as his eyes grew even more used to the dimness of the cavern

he could make out the nests themselves, stretching away and away in rows, half-cups

touching one another, row upon row, covering the rock-wall from sixty feet above high-

water mark almost all the way up, the finest and whitest being not the top rows, which had

a certain amount of wind-drifted dirt upon them, but those about twenty down, in a narrow

chimney. These were the nests that were sold for their weight in silver among the

Chinese; and as he had expected, the nestlings, the scrupulously clean nestlings, two to

each brood, would be ready to fly any day now. Yet as he lay there, glass after glass,

oblivious of the roasting sun and watching the whirl of parent-birds bringing food and

carrying away faecal sacs, a frown came over his face. He concentrated all his attention

upon one particularly well-lit nest, and slowly his suspicions were confirmed: again and

again the incoming bird perched on its rim with all four toes pointing forward.

After another half hour he rose to his feet, shouldered his rifle, and looking back at the

birds with real displeasure he walked off.

'They are not swallows at all,' he said, feeling not only indignant but deadly sick. He

stepped aside into a bush: and then into a series of bushes, for the vomiting was

succeeded by an imperative looseness.

Stephen Maturin was not really an ill-natured man, but his was scarcely a jovial, sunny

temperament, and sometimes disturbances of this kind rendered him morose or even

worse. By the time he reached the camp he was perfectly ready to savage Killick. Killick

knew him very well, however, and after one glance at his filthy jacket, his indecently bare

head and the dangerous look in his pale eye silently fetched him a broad-brimmed sennit

hat and said, 'Captain is just woke up, sir.'

'My indignation against those birds was quite excessive,' said Stephen inwardly. 'It was no

doubt caused by a sudden flow of bile, my posture exerting pressure on the ductus

choledocus communis.'

He stepped into the dispensary, mixed himself a draught, lay flat on his back for a while

and then walked towards the tent, feeling somewhat better. He repeated 'Quite excessive';

yet even so, having received Jack's congratulations on the babirussa ('I am so glad: I was

getting sick of those damned apes, even made into pasties'), he said 'As for those bird's-

nest soup creatures, I am afraid I must tell you they are not true swallows at all, but only a

dwarvish branch of the oriental swifts.'

'Never be so put about, brother,' said Jack. 'What's in a name? So long as they make the

right well-tasting kind of nest, it would be all one if they were called ostriches.'

'Did you like them, at the Raffles's?'

'I thought they made a capital dish. It was a very pleasant evening altogether.'

'Then perhaps we might take some in a few days' time. This is the season: the young are

almost on the wing, and a little small thin midshipman like Reade or Harper could be

lowered

down the cleft on a rope, and collect half a dozen empty nests. And I must say I should

like to net one or two of the birds, to examine their toes. But come, I have not asked you

how the match went. Did we Win?'

'I am happy to say we all won. It was a draw. They made more runs than we did, but they

could not manage to get Fielding and the bosun out before stumps were drawn.

Fortunately we had Edwards as a neutral timekeeper, so there were no wry looks, no

murmurs about flogging the glass; and we all triumphed.'

'Certainly everyone looked very cheerful as I came through the camp; though the Dear

knows it must have been a wearing form of sport, in this breathless heat. Even pacing

slowly under the trees, I was all aswim, to say nothing of running about after a hard and

wicked ball in the sultry glare, God forbid.'

'Yet I am sure all hands will turn to the better for it tomorrow; I am sure I shall. And from

the look of the sky we shall have an east wind. I hope so, indeed. There is a great deal of

long-sawing to be done - exhausting work even with a breeze to take away the dust and

let the bottom-sawyer breathe

- but once we start planking her it will encourage the people amazingly, and we may le

able to put to sea before St Famine's Day. Come down to the slip and I will show you what

remains to be done.'

The camp, with its ditch and earthwork trim again after the typhoon, was laid out after the

fashion of a man-of-war, and to avoid disturbing the foremast hands who were sitting

about talking outside their tents at the farther end of the rectangle Jack stepped on to the

carriage of the brass nine-pounder dominating the seaward approach and jumped over,

giving Stephen a hand. It was a fine gun, one of the much-loved pair that had gone

overboard with the rest when they were lightening ship in an attempt at heaving her off the

reef, and the only one to be found, wedged between the rocks, at low tide, by a fishing

party: a very fine gun, but of less use than the two light carronades, even if there had been

quantities of powder, because the single round-shot that was still in place

when it was recovered was the only nine-pound ball they possessed.

'Sir, sir!' called Captain Aubrey's two remaining lieutenants, gasping up the hill towards

him. 'The midshipmen have caught a turtle, out by the point.'

'Is it a true turtle, Mr Fielding?'

'Well, sir, I trust it is, I am sure. But Richardson thinks it looks a little strange; and we

hoped the Doctor would tell us if it could be ate.'

They went sloping right-handed down the valley, skirting the mass of rock and earth which

had slid down the hillside at the height of the typhoon - a mass in which some trees and

bushes were still growing happily, others withering as they stood - across the dry bed of

the watercourse the torrent had scooped out, providing them with a commodious building-

slip, and out along the strand, almost to the place where the precious wreck had come

ashore. The whole midshipmen's berth was there, all standing silent in the roar of the surf:

two master's mates, the one midshipman proper (the other had been drowned), the two

youngsters, the Captain's clerk and the assistant surgeon. Like the other officers they had

changed out of their fine Sunday clothes; they were now in ragged trousers or breeches

undone at the knees: some had no shirts to their nut-brown backs: no shoes of course: a

poverty-stricken, hungry group, though cheerful.

'Should you like to see my turtle, sir?' cried Reade from a hundred yards or more. His

voice had not yet broken and it carried high above the sea's growl and thunder.

'Your turtle, Mr Reade?' asked Jack, coming nearer.

'Oh yes, sir. I saw him first.'

In the Captain's presence Seymour and Bennett, the tall young master's mates who had

turned the turtle, could do no more than exchange a look, but Reade, observing it, added,

'Of course, sir, the others helped a little.'

They gazed for a while at the pitiful flippers swimming powerfully in the air. 'What do you

think is wrong with the turtle, Mr Richardson?' asked Jack again.

'I can hardly put my finger on it, sir,' said Richardson, 'but

there is something about his mouth I do not quite like.'

'The Doctor will set us all right,' said Jack, raising his voice over a triple crash of breakers:

the ebb was well under way, and the rip-tide, combined with the current, was cutting the

steady swell off the point into a series of chaotic cross-seas.

'He is the green turtle, sure,' said Stephen equally loud in spite of his aching head but in

quite a different pitch, higher, disagreeably metallic. 'And a very fine green turtle: two

hundredweight, I should say. But he is a male, and of course his face is displeasing - he

would be rejected on the London market - he would never do for an alderman.'

'But is he edible, sir? Can he be ate? He ain't unwholesome? He is not like the soft purple

fish you made us throw away?'

'Oh, he may be a little coarse, but he will do you no harm. If you have any doubts, and

Heaven knows I am not infallible, you may desire Mr Reade to eat some first and then

watch him for a few hours. But in any event, I do beg you will take the animal's head off

directly. I hate seeing them strive and suffer. I remember one ship where they had scores

made fast on deck, and the creatures' eyes were red as cherries, unwatered by the sea. A

friend and I went round sponging them.'

Reade and Harper ran up to the camp for the carpenter's broad axe. Aubrey and Maturin

walked back along the hard-beaten sand to the building-slip. 'That is a very horrid tide-

race,' observed Jack, nodding out to sea: and then, 'Do you know, I very nearly said a

good thing just now, about your cock and hen turtles. It was on the lines of sauce - sauce

for the goose being sauce for the gander, you understand. But it would not quite take

shape.'

'Perhaps, my dear, it was just as well. A facetious lieutenant is good company, if he

happens to be endowed with wit; a facetious commander among his equals, perhaps; but

may not the post-captain who sets the quarterdeck in a roar conceivably lose some of his

Jovian authority? Did Nelson crack jokes, at all?'

'I never heard him, to be sure. He was nearly always cheerful, nearly always smiling - he

once said to me "May I trouble you for the salt, sir?" in such a kind way that it was far

better than

wit. But I do not remember him making downright jokes. Perhaps I shall save my good

things, when they happen, for you and Sophie.'

They walked along in silence, Stephen regretting his unkind words, his remorse much

increased by the mildness of the response: he saw an unmistakable Philippine pelican

overhead, but fearing that he might be even more of a bore with his birds than Jack with

his puns, clenches and set pieces he did not point it out: besides his head was about to

split.

'But tell me,' he said at last, 'what did you mean by St Famine's Day? Here we have a boar

of ten score and a two hundredweight turtle.'

'Yes, it is charming: a little over a pound a head for two days, and that would be high living

if there were ship's bread or even dried peas to go with it. But there ain't. I blame myself

very much for not rousing out more biscuit, flour, salt beef and pork while there was yet

time.'

'Dear Jack, you could not foretell the typhoon; and the boats never ceased going to and

fro.'

'Yes, but it was the envoy's things that went first, and his followers'. Killick, God forgive

him, privately shipped the silver in your skiff: it should have been dried peas. First things

first: for as you have said yourself, the hogs are hardly to be found now, nor even the

apes. We are six upon four already. There are almost no coconuts left, and fishing

O'Brian Patrick - Aub-Mat 14 - The Nutmeg of Consolation

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: