‘I knew it was you, Jack,’ said Sophia, clasping his hand. ‘I knew directly. Oh, I am so glad to see you, my dear!’
‘I will give you half an hour,’ said Stephen. ‘Not a moment more: this young woman must be back in her warm bed before cock-?crow.’
He walked back to the other chaise, where Killick, with infinite satisfaction, was telling Bonden of their departure from London - a hearse as far as Putney, with Mr Pullings in a mourning-?coach behind, bums by the score on either side of the road, pulling their hats off and bowing respectful. ‘I wouldn’t a missed it, I wouldn’t a missed it, no, not for a bosun’s warrant.’
Stephen paced up and down; he sat in the chaise; he paced up and down - conversed with Pullings on the young man’s Indian voyages, listened greedily to his account of the prostrating heat of the Hooghly anchorages, the stifling country behind, the unforgivable sun, the heat beating even from the moon by night. ‘If I do not reach a warm climate soon,’ he observed, ‘you may bury me, and say, “He, of mere misery, perished away.” He pressed the button of his repeater, and in a lull of the wind the little silvery bell struck four and then three for the quarters. Not a sound from the chaise ahead; but as he stood, irresolute, the door opened, Jack handed Sophia out and cried, ‘Bonden, back to the Paragon in t’other coach with Miss Williams. Come down by the mail. Sophie, my dear, jump in. God bless you.’
‘God bless and keep you, Jack. Make Stephen wrap himself in the cloak. And remember, for ever and ever
- whatever they say, for ever and ever and ever.’
The sun beat down from its noon-?day height upon Bombay, imposing a silence upon that teeming city, so that even in the deepest bazaars the steady beat of the surf could be heard - the panting of the Indian Ocean, dull ochre under a sky too hot to be blue, a sky waiting for the south-?west monsoon; and at the same moment far, far to the westward, far over Africa and beyond, it heaved up to the horizon and sent a fiery dart to strike the limp royals and topgallants of the Surprise as she lay becalmed on the oily swell a little north of the line and some thirty degrees west of Greenwich.
The blaze of light moved down to the topsails, to the courses, shone upon the snowy deck, and it was day. Suddenly the whole of the east was day: the sun lit the sky to the zenith and for a moment the night could be seen over the starboard bow, fleeting away towards America. Mars, setting a handsbreadth above the western rim, went out abruptly; the entire bowl of the sky grew brilliant and the dark sea returned to its daily blue, deep blue.
‘By your leave, sir,’ cried the captain of the afterguard, bending over Dr Maturin and shouting into the bag that covered his head. ‘If you please, now.’
‘What is it?’ asked Stephen at last, with a bestial snarl.
‘Nigh on four bells, sir.’
‘Well, what of it? Sunday morning, surely to God, and you would be at your holystoning?’ The bag, worn against the moon-?pall, stifled his words but not the whining tone of a man jerked from total relaxation and an erotic dream. The frigate was stifling between-?decks; she was more than ordinarily overcrowded with Mr Stanhope and his suite; and he had slept on deck, walked upon by each changing watch.
‘These old pitch-?spots,’ said the captain of the after-?guard in a wheedling, reasoning voice. ‘What would the quarterdeck look like with all these old pitch-?spots when we come to rig church?’ Then, as Dr Maturin showed signs of going to sleep again, he returned to ‘By your leave, sir. By your leave, if you please.’
In the heat the tar on the rigging melted and fell on the deck; the pitch used in caulking the seams melted too; and Stephen, plucking off his bag, saw that they had scrubbed, sanded and holystoned all round him - that he was in a spotted island, surrounded by impatient seamen, eager to be done with their work so that they could shave and put on their Sunday clothes. Sleep was hopelessly gone: he stood up, took his head right out of the bag, muttering. ‘No peace in this infernal hulk, or tub - persecution -Judaic superstitious ritual cleanliness - archaic fools,’ and walked stiffly to the side. But as he stood the sun shot a grateful living warmth right into his bones: a cock in the nearby coop crowed, standing on tiptoe, and instantly a hen cried that she had laid an egg, an egg! He stretched, gazed about him, met the stony, disapproving faces of the afterguard and realised that the gumminess of his feet was caused by tar, pitch and resin on his shoes: a trail of dirty footsteps led across the clean deck from the place where he had slept to the rail where he now stood. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Franklin,’ he cried, ‘I have dirtied the floor, I find. Come, give me a scraper - sand - a broom.’
The harsh looks vanished. ‘No, no,’ they cried - it was only a little pitch, not dirt - they would have it off in a moment. But Stephen had caught up a small holystone and he was earnestly spreading the pitch far, deep and wide, surrounded by a ring of anxious, flustered seamen when four bells struck, and to the infinite distress of the afterguard a huge shadow fell across the deck - the captain, stark naked and carrying a towel.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ he said. ‘What are you about?’
‘Good morning, my dear,’ said Stephen. ‘It is this damned spot. But I shall have him out. I shall extirpate this spot.’
‘What do you say to a swim?’
‘With all my heart. In less than a moment. I have a theory - a trifle of sand, there, if you please. A small knife. No. No, my hypothesis was unsound. Perhaps aqua-?regia, spirits of salt . . .
‘Franklin, show the Doctor how we do it in the Navy. My dear fellow, if I might suggest taking off your shoes? Then they might not have to scrub right through the deck and leave His Excellency without a roof to his head.’
‘An excellent suggestion,’ said Stephen. He tiptoed barefoot to a carronade and sat looking at his upturned soles. ‘Martial tells us that in his day the ladies of the town had sequi me engraved upon their sandals; from which it is reasonable to conclude, that Rome was uncommon muddy, for sand would scarcely hold the print. I shall swim the whole length of the ship today.’
Jack stepped on to the western rail and looked down into the water. It was so clear that he could see the light passing under the frigate’s keel: her hull projected a purple underwater shadow westwards, sharp head and stern but vague beneath because of her trailing skirts of weeds - a heavy growth in spite of her new copper, for they had been a great while south of the tropic. No ominous lurking shape, however; only a school of shining little fishes and a few swimming crabs. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, diving in.
The sea was warmer than the air, but there was refreshment in the rush of bubbles along his skin, the water tearing through his hair, the clean salt taste in his mouth. Looking up he saw the silvery undersurface, the
