‘Never in life, soul,’ said Stephen, reaching for the coffee-?pot, ‘am I not telling you for ever that I am well? A slice of that ham, if you please. No, in all sobriety, if it had not been for poor unhappy Nicolls, I should have been glad to be marooned. It was uncomfortable - I was roasted, to be sure - but it has done extraordinary things to my sinews, more than the waters of Bath in a hundred years. No pain, no awkwardness! I could dance a jig, and an elegant jig. And quite apart from that, what else would have allowed me day after day of detailed observation? The arthropods alone . . . Before I went to bed last night, before I turned in, I threw down a mass of undigested notes, and merely for the arthropods there were seventeen pages! You shall see them. You shall have the maidenhead of my observations.’
‘I shall be very happy; thank you, Stephen.’
‘Then I sponged myself repeatedly, from head to foot, with fresh water, your blessed fresh water; and I slept -I slept! It was like falling slowly into a bottomless void, so deep that this morning I had difficulty in recalling the events of yesterday - a vague recollection of the sick-?bay that I had to piece together from fragments that came swimming up. I fear I shall have a sad report for you when I have made my rounds this morning.’
‘Certainly you look less like a burnt-?offering than you did yesterday,’ said Jack, peering affectionately into his face. ‘Your eyes are almost human. But,’ he said, feeling that this was not perfectly civil, ‘they will behold a charming sight on deck - we have picked up the south-?east trade at last! It is coming more southerly than I could wish, but I believe we shall weather Cape St Roque. At all events we shall cross the line before noon - we have been making seven and eight knots since the beginning of the middle watch. Another cup? Tell me, Stephen, what did you drink on that infernal rock?’
‘Boiled shit.’ Stephen was chaste in his speech, rarely an oath, never an obscene word, never any bawdy: his reply astonished Jack, who looked quickly at the tablecloth. Perhaps it was a learned term he had misunderstood. ‘Boiled shit,’ he said again. Jack smiled in a worldly fashion, but he felt the blush rising. ‘Yes. There was one single pool of rainwater left in a hollow. The birds defecated in it, copiously. Not with set intent - the whole rock is normally deep in their droppings - but enough to foul it to the pitch of nausea. The next day was hotter, if possible, and with the reverberation the liquid rose to an extraordinary temperature. I drank it, however, until it ceased to be a liquid at all; then I turned to blood. Poor unsuspecting boobies’ blood, tempered with a little sea-?water and the expressed juice of kelp. Blood. . . Jack, this Cape St Roque, of which you speak so anxiously, is in Brazil, is it not, the home of the vampire?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting you,’ said Hervey, appearing at the door, ‘but you desired me to let you know when the maintopgallant was ready to be swayed up.’
Left alone Stephen looked at his nail-?less hand, flexed it with great complacency - remarkable intension: precise, unwavering - carried out a delicate operation on the ham
with his pocket-?lancet, and walked forward to the sick-?bay, observing, ‘I could not have done that before I was broiled alive, desiccated, mummified: bless the sun in his power.’
They crossed the line that day, but with muted ceremonies. It was not only the loss of their shipmates and of Mr Nicolls - a loss emphasised by the sale of their clothes at the capstanhead - but there was not much spirit of fun in the ship. Badger-?Bag came aboard with his trident, shaved the boys and the younger hands in a perfunctory manner, mulcted Stephen, Mr Stanhope and his people of six and eightpence a head, splashed a fair amount of water about the forecastle and the waist of the ship, and withdrew.
‘That was our Saturnalia,’ said Jack. ‘I hope you did not dislike it?’
‘Not at all. I am wholly in favour of innocent mirth; but I wonder you suffered it, with so much work on hand - all these spars, ropes and sails lying about half destroyed, and time, as you tell me, so precious.’
‘Oh, you must not interfere with custom. They will work double-?tides tomorrow - they will be in much better heart. Custom -,
‘You are hag-?ridden by custom, in the Navy,’ said Stephen. ‘Bells; an esoteric language - I will not say jargon; unmeaning ceremonies. The selling of poor Nicolls’s clothes, for example, seemed to me gross impiety. And to Mr Stanhope, too. He is a far more interesting man than you might suppose; reads; plays a delicate flute. But I am not come here to be prating of the envoy. I have something far graver to tell you. The incessant labours of the last week have exhausted the men; many who showed no signs of scurvy at the last examination are now affected:
here is my list. Virtually all the Racoons, many Surprises, and four landsmen. What is worse, the squall, in wrecking my store-?room, has made the strangest magma of my drugs, to say nothing of the remaining and more than doubtful lime juice. I tell you officially, my dear, and will put it in writing if you choose, that I cannot be answerable
for the consequences unless green vegetables, fresh meat and above all citrus fruits are provided within a few days. If I understand you, you mean to skirt the extremity of eastern Brazil; and eastern Brazil,’ he cried, looking greedily through the open port westwards, ‘is notoriously supplied with all these commodities.’
‘So it is,’ said Jack. ‘And with vampires.’
‘Oh, do not imagine I have not examined my conscience,’ cried Stephen, laying his hand on Jack’s bosom. ‘Do not suppose I am unaware of my eagerness to set foot upon the New World at the earliest possible moment. But come and look at my suppurating five-?year-?old amputation, my re-?opening once-?healthy wounds, my purulent gums, imposthumes, low fevers, livid extravasations.’
‘I was hardly serious,’ said Jack. ‘But. the fact is, there are many things I have to take into account.’ There were indeed. This was a very long voyage, and already he had lost a great deal of time. With the Cape in the hands of the Dutch again he must get right down to the forties, to the great unfailing westerlies that would carry him into the Indian Ocean at two hundred miles a day, to catch the tail of the south-?west monsoon somewhere about the height of Madagascar. His orders required him to touch at Rio, which was not much above a thousand miles away, no great distance if the hardwon trades held true; whereas if he stood in with the land he might lose them. He would certainly be entangled with the Portuguese officials if he called at Recife, for example: interminable delay at the best, and at the worst some ugly incident, detention, even violence, they being so very jealous of a foreign man-?of-?war anywhere but Rio. Delay, perhaps a row, and even then no certainty of supplies. And although Stephen was speaking in good faith, the dear creature was so passionate a philosopher, with his bugs, vampires-
‘Let me consider of it, Stephen,’ he said. ‘I will come to the sickbay.’
‘Very well. And as we go, pray consider of this, too: my rats have vanished. The squall did not take them. Their cage was undamaged, but its door was open. I turn my back for five minutes to take the air on St Paul’s Rock, and my valuable rats disappear! If this is one of your naval customs, I could wish you all crucified at your own royal-?yards; and flayed alive before you are nailed up. This is not the first time I have suffered so. An asp off Fuengirola: three mice in the Gulf of Lyons. Rats I had brought up by hand, cosseted since Berry Head, crammed with best double-?refined madder in spite of their growing reluctance - and now all is lost, the entire experiment
