you come by him?’
‘I wandered a little way inland, looking for specimens -that box is filled with ‘em: such wealth! Enough for half a dozen monographs - and there he was in an open space, eating Ficus religiosa. I plucked some high shoots he was straining for, and he followed me down here, eating them. He is the most confiding creature, wholly without distrust. God help him and his kind when other men find out this island. See his gleaming eye! He would like another leaf. It does me good to see him. This tortoise has quite recovered me,’ he cried, putting his arm round the enormous carapace.
The tortoise turned the scale, as M’Alister said, his wit heated by the tropical sun; its presence had a more tonic effect than all the bark, steel and bezoar in the frigate’s
medicine-?chest. Stephen sat with Testudo aubreii by the hen-?coops day after day as the Surprise ran down her southing; he increased in weight; his temper grew mild,
equable, benevolent.
On her outward voyage the Surprise had done well enough, when she was neither crippled nor headed by foul winds; and it might have been thought that zeal had done all it could. But now she was homeward-?bound. The words were magic to her people, many of whom had wives or sweethearts; even more so to her captain, who was (he hoped) to be married, and who was heading not only for a bride but also for the real theatre of war, for the possibility of distinction, of a Gazette to himself, and indeed of prizes, too. Then again the Company had done her proud - no royal dockyard’s niggling over a halfpennyworth of tar - and her sumptuous refit, her new sails, new copper, beautiful Manilla cordage, had brought back much of her youth: it had not dealt with certain deep-? seated structural defects, the result of age and the Marengo’s handling of her, but for the moment all was well, and she raced southwards as though she had a galleon in chase.
The ship’s company was in the highest training now: their action had had its great cementing effect, but long before that the hands had settled down to a solid understanding, and an order was hardly given before it was carried out. The wind stood fair until they were far below Capricorn; day after day she logged her two hundred miles; pure, urgent sailing, all hands getting the last ounce out of her - the beautiful way of naval life that half-?pay officers in their dim lodgings remember as their natural existence.
Outward-?bound they had not seen a sail from the height of the Cape to the Laccadives; this time they sighted five and spoke three, an English bark-?rigged privateer, an American bound for the China seas, and a storeship for Ceylon; each gave them news of the Lushington, whose lead, according to the storeship, was now little more than seven hundred miles.
The warm sea grew cooler, almost cold; waistcoats appeared in the night-?watches, and the northern constellations were no longer to be seen. Then, in fifty fathom water not far from the Otter shoal, they were startled by the barking of penguins in the mist, and the next day they reached the perpetual westerlies and the true change of climate.
Now it was pea-?jackets and fur caps as the Surprise beat up, tack upon tack, boring into the wind under storm-?canvas, or flanked away southwards in search of a kinder gale, or lay a-?try, fighting for every mile of westing against the barrier of violent air. The petrels and the albatrosses joined company: the midshipmen’s berth, then the gunroom, and then the cabin itself was down to salt beef and ship’s bread again - the lower deck had never left it - and still the wind held in the west, with such thick weather that there was no observation for days on end.
The tortoise had been struck down into the hold long since; he slept on a padded sack through the long, long rounding of the Cape; his master did much the same, eating, gaining strength, and sorting his respectable Bombay collections, and his scraps - alas, too hurried - from other lands. He had little to do: the inevitable sailors’ diseases the men had brought with them from Calcutta had been dealt with by M’Allister before he was recovered, and since then the ship, awash with the pure juice of limes, had been remarkably healthy: hope, eagerness and merriment had their usual effect - and the Surprise was not only a happy ship but a merry one. He had dealt with the coleoptera and he was deep in the vascular cryptogams before the frigate turned her head north at last.
Five days of variable winds and light airs, warmer by far, in which the Surprise sent up her topgallant masts for the first time in weeks, and then on a temperate, moonlit night, when Stephen was sitting by the taffrail with Mr White, watching him draw the fascinating pattern of the rigging - black shadows on the ghostly deck, pools of darkness - a waft heeled the ship, upsetting the Indian ink, and the phosphorescent water streamed along her larboard side. The heel increased: the hissing bubbles rose to a continual song.
‘If this is not the blessed trade,’ said Pullings, ‘I am a Dutchman.’
No Dutchman he. It was the true south-?east trade, gentle but sure, hardly varying a point. The Surprise set a noble spread of canvas and glided on for the tropic line: the days grew warmer and warmer; the hands recovered from their battle with the Cape, and now there was singing on the forecastle, and the sound of the hornpipe called The Surprise’s Delight. But there was no heaving to for any thought of a swim this bout, even when they were so far beyond Capricorn once more that jack said, ‘We shall raise St Helena in the morning.’
‘Shall we touch?’ asked Stephen.
‘Oh no,’ said he.
‘Not even for a dozen bullocks? Are not you tired of junk?’
‘Not I. And if you think there is any device, any ruse, that can take you ashore to collect bugs, pray think again.’
And there in the brilliant dawn a black point broke the horizon, a black point with a cloud floating over it. Presently it showed clearer still, and Pullings pointed out the principal charms of the island: Holdfast Tom, Stone Top, and Old Joan Point - he had landed several times, and he did wish he could show the Doctor the bird that haunted Diana’s Peak, a cross between an owl and a poll-?parrot, with a curious bill.
The frigate made her number to the tall signal-?station and asked, ‘Are there orders for Surprise? Is there any mail?’
‘No orders for Surprise,’ said the signal-?station, and paused for a quarter of an hour. ‘No mail,’ it said at last. ‘Repeat: no orders, no letters for Surprise.’
‘Pray ask if the Lushington has passed by,’ said Stephen.
‘Lushington called: left for Madeira seventh instant: all well aboard,’ said the station.
‘Bear up,’ said Jack, and the frigate filled and stood on.
‘Muffit must have been lucky round the Cape. He will beat us to the Lizard, and make his voyage in under six
