year’s jacket; Joliffe and Church, fifteen-?year-?old midshipmen: all thinner, hungrier than their mothers could have wished. And they gazed covertly back at him, their habitual thoughtless merriment quenched, turned to a pasty solemnity.
‘The Captain’s compliments, sir,’ said Callow, ‘and he says with the greatest possible ease. A week, if you choose.’
‘Thank you, Mr Callow. You will oblige me by swallowing this bolus. Mr Joliffe, Mr Church. .
The Surprise lay hove-?to, the precious trade-?wind singing through her rigging, fleeting away unused. Broad on her starboard beam Cape St Roque advanced into the sea, a bold headland, so thickly covered with tropical forest that not a patch of bare earth, not a rock could be seen except at the edge of the sea, where the surf broke upon a shining beach, indented here and there with creeks that ran into the trees.
One of these inlets had a stream - its turbid waters could be seen mingling with the blue, spreading on either side of the little bar - and by following its course one could make out the roofs of a village some way inland. Just these roofs, nothing more: the whole of the rest of the New World was ancient luxuriating forest, a solid mass of different shades of green - not a wisp of smoke, not a hut, not a track. Jack’s telescope, poised on the hammock-? cloth, brought the forest so close that he could see half-?fallen trunks, held in a tangle of gigantic creepers, new trees pushing through, even the flashing scarlet of a bird, the very colour of a blaze of flowers a little to the right; but most of the time he kept it fixed upon the roofs, the stream, hoping hour after hour to surprise a movement there.
His idea had seemed brilliant in the morning light, with Brazil looming in the west: they would not go to Recife nor any other port, but coast along and send the launch ashore at the nearest fishing village; no trouble with any authorities, almost no loss of time. Stephen was convinced that any cultivated stretch of this shore would provide what he needed. ‘All we require is greenstuff,’ he said, looking at Cape St Roque. ‘And what, outside
the Vale of Limerick, could he greener than that?’ Then they saw these canoes running up the creek, and the roofs beyond. As Stephen was the only officer aboard who spoke Portuguese and who could be sure of the sick-? bay’s needs, it was sensible that he should go; but he had had to be persuaded, and on leaving, with a partially-? concealed wild secret grin on his face, he had sworn upon his honour that he was uninfluenced by vampires - that he should not bring a single vampire aboard.
Behind Jack the work of the ship was going on; they were taking advantage of this pause to new-?reeve most of the rigging on the mainmast and to re-?stow the booms; but it was going forward slowly, with the bosun and his mates driving the sparse, dispirited crew with more noise and less effect than usual. The sound of distant wrangling came from the carpenters in the forward cockpit; and Mr Hervey was in an unusual passion, too. ‘Where have you been, Mr Callow?’ he cried. ‘It is ten minutes since I told you to bring me the azimuth compass.’
‘Only at the head, sir,’ said Callow, glancing nervously at the Captain’s back.
‘The head, the head! Every single midshipman gives me that lame old excuse today. Joliffe is at the head, Meadows is at the head, Church is at the head. What is the matter with you all? Have you eaten something, or is it a wicked falsehood? I will not have this skulking. Do not trifle with your duty, sir, or you will find yourself at the masthead pretty soon, I can tell you.’
Six bells struck, and Jack turned to keep his appointment to drink tea with Mr Stanhope. He liked the envoy more the better he knew him, though Mr Stanhope was one of the most ineffectual men he had met; there was something touching about his anxiety to give no trouble, his gratitude for all they did for him in the way of accommodation, his hopelessly misdirected consideration for the hands, and his fortitude - never a word of complaint after the squall and all its wreckage. Once he had established that Jack and Hervey were connected with families he knew, he treated them as human beings; all the others as dogs - but as good, quite intelligent dogs in a dog-?loving community. He was ceremonious, naturally kind, and he had a great and oppressive sense of duty. He greeted Jack with renewed apologies for doing so in the Captain’s own cabin. ‘You must be sadly cramped, I am afraid,’ he said. ‘Quite miserably confined; a great trial,’ and poured him a cup of tea in a way that reminded Jack irresistibly of his great-?aunt Lettice: the same priestly gestures, the same droop of the wrist, the same grave concentration. They talked about His Excellency’s flute, a quarter-?tone too high in this extraordinary heat; about Rio and the refreshments to be expected there; about the naval custom of having thirteen months in the year; and Mr Stanhope said, ‘I have often meant to ask you, sir, why my naval friends and acquaintance so often refer to the Surprise as the Nemesis. Was her name changed - was she taken from the French?’
‘Why, sir, it is more a kind of nickname that we have in the service, much as we call Britannia Old Ironsides. You may remember the Hemione, sir, in ‘97?’
‘A ship of that name? No, I believe not.’
‘She was a thirty-?two-?gun frigate, on the West Indies station; and I am sorry to say her people mutinied, killed their officers, and carried her into La Guayra, on the Spanish Main.’
‘Oh, oh, how deeply shocking. I am distressed to hear it.’
‘It was an ugly business; and the Spaniards would not give her up, either. So, to put it in a word, Edward Hamilton, who had the Surprise then, went and cut her out. She was moored head and stern in Puerto Cabello, one of the closest harbours in the world, under their batteries, which had some two hundred guns in ‘em; and the Spaniards were rowing guard, too, since the Surprise had stood in with the land, and they were aware of her motions. Still, that night he went in with the boats, hoarded her and brought her away. He killed a hundred and nineteen of her crew, wounded ninety-?seven, with very little loss, though he was shockingly knocked about himself - oh, it was a most brilliant piece of service! I would have given my right hand to be there. So the Admiralty changed Hermione’s name to Retribution, and in the service people called the Surprise the Nemesis, seeing that . . . ‘ Through the open skylight he heard the masthead hail the deck: the launch had put off from the shore, followed by two canoes. Mr Stanhope went on for some time, gently prosing away about nemesis, retribution, just deserts, the inevitability of eventual punishment for all transgressions - crime bore within it the fatal seeds of the criminal’s undoing - and lamenting the depravity of the mutineers. ‘But no doubt they were led on, incited by some wretched Jacobin or Radical, and plied with spirits. To attack properly-?constituted authority in such a barbarous fashion -! I trust they were severely dealt with?’
‘We have a short way with mutineers, sir. We hanged all we could lay our hands on; ran ‘em up the yardarm directly, with the “Rogue’s March” playing. An ugly business, however,’ he added; he had known the infamous Captain Pigot, the cause of the mutiny, and he had known several of the decent men who had been goaded into it. An odious memory. ‘Now, sir, if you will forgive me, I believe I must go on deck, to see what Dr Maturin has brought us.’
‘Dr Maturin is returning? I rejoice to hear it. I will come with you, if I may. I have a great esteem for Dr Maturin: a most valuable, ingenious gentleman; I have no objection to a little originality - my friends often quiz me for it myself. May I beg you to give me your arm?’
Valuable and ingenious he might be, thought Jack, fixing him with his glass, but false he was too, and perjured. He had voluntarily sworn to have no truck with vampires, and there, attached to his bosom, spread over
