Amphion; the Badger sloop of war; several Portuguese; an American; innumerable tenders, fishermen and small craft; and at the far end, three Indiamen with their super yards on deck. The Lushington was not among them.
‘Carry on, Mr Hales,’ said Jack; the guns saluted the castle, and the castle thundered back, the smoke rolling wide over the bay.
‘For’ard there. Let go.’ The anchor splashed into the sea and the cable raced after it; but before the anchor could bite and swing the ship, there was the boom of guns again. Jack looked for a newcomer, staring seawards, before he realised that the Indiamen were saluting the Surprise. The Lushington must have told them of the brush with Linois, and they were pleased.
‘Give them seven, Mr Hales,’ he said. ‘Lower down the barge.’
Stephen was to go down the side first. He hesitated in the gangway, and Bonden, taking it for a physical uncertainty, whispered, ‘Easy does it, sir. Give me your foot.’
Jack followed him to the sound of bosun’s pipes, and they rowed ashore, sitting side by side in their best uniforms, facing the bargemen, all shaved, all in white frocks, wearing broad white hats with long ribbons bearing the name Surprise. The only words Jack spoke were ‘Stretch out.’
They went straight to their agent’s correspondent, a Madeira Englishman. ‘Welcome, sir,’ cried he. ‘As soon as I heard the Indiamen I know it must be you. Mr Muffit was in last week, and he told us about your noble action. Allow mc to wish you joy, sir, and to shake you by the hand.’
‘Thank you, Mr Henderson. Tell me, is there any young lady in the island for me, brought either by a King’s ship or an Indiaman?’
‘Young lady, sir? No, not that I know of. Certainly not in any King’s ship. But the Indiamen only got in on Monday, cruelly mauled in the Bay, she might still be in one of them. Here are their passenger-?lists.’
Jack’s eyes raced down the names, and instantly they fixed on Mrs Villiers. ‘Two lines farther down Mr John-? stone. ‘But this is the Lushington’s,’ he cried.
‘So it is,’ said the agent. ‘The others are overleaf -Mornington, Bombay Castle and Clive.’
Twice Jack ran through them, and a third time slowly: there was no Miss Williams.
‘Is there any mail?’ he asked in a flat voice.
‘Oh no, sir. Nobody would have looked for Surprise at the Island these many months yet. They would not even know you had sailed, at home. I dare say your mail is aboard Bellerophon, with the last convoy down. But now I come to think on it, there was a message left in the office for a Dr Maturin, belonging to the Surprise; left by a lady from the Lushington. Here it is.’
‘My name is Maturin,’ said Stephen. He recognised the hand, of course, and through the envelope he felt the ring. He said, ‘Jack, I shall take a turn. Good day to you, sir.’
He walked steadily uphill wherever the path mounted, and in time he climbed through the small fields of sugar-?cane, through the orchards, through the terraced vineyards, and to the chestnut forest. Up through the trees until they died away to scrub and the scrub to a parched meagre vegetation; and so, beyond all paths now, to the naked volcanic scree lying in falls beneath the central ridge of the island. There was a little sleety snow lying in the shadows up here, and he scooped handfuls of it to eat; he had wept and sweated all the water out of his body; his mouth and throat were as dry and cracked as the barren rock he sat on.
He had walked himself into a dull apathy of mind, and although his cheeks were still wet - the wind blew cold upon them - he was beyond the immediate pain. Below there stretched a tormented landscape, sterile for a great way, then wooded; minute fields beyond, a few villages, and then the whole south sea-?line of the island, with Funchal under his right hand; the shipping like white flecks; and beyond, the ocean rising to meet the sky. He looked at it all with a certain residual interest. Behind the great headland westwards lay the Camara de Lobos: seals were said to breed there.
The sun was no more than a handsbreadth above the horizon, and in the innumerable ravines the shadow reached from rim to rim, almost as dark as night. ‘To get down -that will be a problem,’ he said aloud. ‘Any man can go up - oh, almost indefinitely - but to go down and down surefooted, that is another thing entirely.’ It was his duty to read the letter, of course, and in the last gleam of day he took it from his pocket: the tearing of the paper - a cruel sound. He read it with a hard, cruel severity; yet he could not prevent a kind of desperate tenderness creeping over his face at the end. But it would not do - weakness would never do - and with the same appearance of indifference he looked about for a hollow in the rocks where he could lie.
Toward the setting of the moon his twitching exhausted body relaxed and sank into the darkness at last: some hours of dead sleep - a total absence. The circling sun, having lit Calcutta and then Bombay, came up on the other side of the world and blazed full on his upturned face, bringing him back into himself by force. He was still dazed with sleep when he sat up and although he was conscious of an extreme pain he could not immediately name it. The dislocated elements of memory fell back into place: he nodded, buried the ancient small iron ring that he had still clasped in his hand - the letter had blown away -and found a last patch of snow to rub his face.
He was at the foot of the mountain by the afternoon, and as he was walking through Funchal he met Jack in the cathedral square.
‘I hope I have not kept you?’ he said.
‘No. Not at all,’ said Jack, taking him by the elbow. ‘We are watering. Come and drink a glass of wine.’
They sat down, too heavy and stupid to be embarrassed. Stephen said, ‘I must tell you this: Diana has gone to America with a Mr Johnstone, of Virginia: they are to be married. She was under no engagement to me - it was only her kindness to mc in Calcutta that let my mind run too far: my wits were astray. I am in no way aggrieved; I drink to her.’
They finished their bottle, and another; but it had no effect of any kind, and they rowed back to the ship as silently as they had come.
tier water completed and fresh provision brought a-?board, the Surprise weighed and stood out to sea, going east about the island and heading into a dirty night. The gaiety forward contrasted strangely with the silence farther aft: as Bonden remarked, the ship ’seemed by the stern’. The men knew that something was amiss with the skipper, they had not sailed so long with him without being able to interpret the look on his face, the captain of a man-?of-?war being an absolute monarch at sea, dispensing sunshine or rain. And they were concerned for the Doctor, too, who looked but palely; yet the general opinion was that they had both eaten some foreign mess ashore - that they would be better in a day or two, with a thundering dose of rhubarb - and seeing that no rough
