Mowett at once manned and provisioned the launch and told Honey to proceed to the island with all possible dispatch: for his part he was going to see whether the pahi had picked them up or whether its people could give any information - Hogg understood the language of the islands - and then to lie to until the launch should rejoin. He fixed a rendezvous in the Marquesas in case of dirty weather.
The launch was rigged as a schooner and she was a fine weatherly boat; but it had been clear from the start that beating up would never do, and they had taken to their oars, thus becoming practically invisible from the island in such a sea. After a few hours the people had grown quite tired and jaded, pulling against what was now a head-sea or close on; but then, standing up with his glass, Honey had seen Jack's shirt flying from the palm-tree and after that they had stretched out like heroes - both Davis and Padeen Colman, Stephen's servant, had broken their oars.
'Remind me to stop it out of their pay, Mr Honey,' said Jack; and when the mirth had died away (for this was perhaps his most deeply relished stroke of wit since Gibraltar), 'At least sore hands will have a rest once we are out of the lagoon. I saw the barky right to leeward, and with this breeze we should rejoin before sunset, never touching an oar. Bonden, cut along to the Doctor' - for Stephen had sent back a message by Calamy to the effect that he was not hungry - had some last investigations to make - would come presently - 'and tell him we are off and help him into the stern-sheets while the masts are stepping. It would be as well,' raising his voice - 'for nobody to wish him joy or ask him how he does. He has been taken a little poorly, what with soaking so long and drinking salt water.'
Jack need not have spoken, at least not to the seamen: in their delicacy they would never have taken the least notice of Stephen's misfortune, nor have made him feel the enormous amount of trouble he had caused; and in fact when he came sidling awkwardly down the strand they showed what might have been taken for a brutal indifference, relieved only by the singular gentleness with which he was lifted in and settled with a sailcloth apron over his knees and somebody's old blue jacket about his shoulders.
In the course of their flying voyage westwards with the launch impelled by following seas and an ever more powerful wind Stephen's spirits recovered a little, particularly when Jack gave an account of their time aboard the pahi. He could not have had a more attentive or more appreciative audience - how they laughed at his near- castration and the Doctor's terror when his pig misbehaved and the bosun's mates stood behind him - and after a while Stephen added a few details, feeling much more at his ease. Yet when the ship came in sight - when she came so close that people could be seen against the low sunset sky, running about the deck and waving their hats - he lapsed into silence again.
But the hearty unfeigned affectionate welcome and the underlying kindness so characteristic of the service, brutal though it was at times, would have dealt with a temperament far more morose than Stephen's. In any case his professional skill was called upon at once: the boarding-party sent to the pahi had been repelled with shocking ferocity. Martin and Hogg, leading the way with presents and kind words, had almost instantly been clubbed, and the seamen who dragged them back to the boat speared, beaten with heavy wooden blades, and stabbed with bamboo skewers, all in a terrible yelling screaming uproar. Five men were in the sickbay with wounds far beyond the loblolly-boy's competence, all inflicted within a few moments of the attempted boarding, while the hail of slingstones and darts delivered as the pahi sheered off accounted for another half dozen less serious casualties.
'They did not give a damn for gunfire,' said Mowett, in the cabin. 'I don't believe they knew what it was. Every time we sent a shot near or over their heads they jumped up and down and waved their spears. I could have knocked away a spar or two, of course, but in such a sea... and in any case we could see you was not aboard. And as for information, they would never have given us any, I am sure.'
'You did very well, Mowett,' said Jack. 'In your place I should have been terrified they might attack the ship.'
'I have the villain,' said Stephen in the sickbay, where he was operating by the last of the daylight and seventeen purser's dips. 'I have him in my crow's-bill. A shark's tooth, as I had supposed, detached from the club and driven into the gluteus maximus to a most surprising depth. The question is, what shark?'
'May I see it?' asked Martin in a reasonably firm voice. He had already had thirty-six stitches in his scalp, while a square foot of court plaster covered his lacerated shoulders, but he was a man of some fortitude and above all a natural philosopher. 'A shark without a doubt,' he said, holding the tooth down towards the deck, for he was lying on his belly - most of the Surprises had been wounded ingloriously from behind, running away as fast as ever they could - 'But what shark I cannot tell. However, I shall keep it in my snuff-box, and look at it whenever I think about matrimony. Whenever I think about women, indeed. Dear me, I shall never pull off my hat to one again without remembering today. Do you know, Maturin, as I set foot on that floating thing, that pahi, I saluted the woman confronting me, bowing and baring my head, and she instantly took advantage of it to strike me down.'
'This is the far side of the world,' said Stephen. 'Now your calf, if you please. I am afraid we shall have to cut it bodily out. I had hoped to push it through, but the tibia is in the way.'
'Perhaps we could wait until tomorrow,' said Martin, whose fortitude had its limits.
'A barbed spearhead cannot wait,' said Stephen. 'I wish to see no proud flesh, no black mortification, no gangrene spreading upwards. Pratt, I believe Mr Martin would like to be attached; otherwise he might give an involuntary start and there I should be in an artery.' With quick practised fingers he passed a leather-covered chain round Martin's ankle and another behind his knee; Pratt made them fast to ring-bolts effectually pinning the limb and its owner. These were motions Stephen had made again and again and they were as familiar to him as his patients' unwillingness to be operated upon and all their transparent shifts.
He was very much at home in this place, with his familiar instruments, the smell of tallow, bilgewater, tow, lint, the rum and tincture of laudanum with which he deadened those whom he would be obliged to cut deep; and when he had finished bandaging the leg - Martin was silent now, having drifted away on his drug at last - he felt quite part of the ship once more.
He stood up, threw his operating coat into its usual corner, washed his hands, and walked into the cabin. Jack was writing in a book: he glanced up, said, 'There you are, Stephen,' with a smile, and wrote on, his pen scratching busily.
Stephen sat down in his particular chair and looked about the beautiful room. Everything was in its place, Jack's telescopes in their rack, his sword hanging by the barometer, the 'cello and fiddle cases lying where they always lay, and the particularly magnificent gold-mounted dressing-case cum music-stand - Diana's present to her husband - standing where it always stood, and the unlucky brass box from the Dana?its seals intact, was hidden behind the foot-waling as he knew very well; but there was something amiss, and all at once he noticed that dead-lights had been fitted to the stern-windows: no one could possibly fall out of them.
'No, it is not that,' said Jack, catching his look. 'That would be locking the horse after the stable door is gone, a very foolish thing to do.'
'Still and all, there are some horses that are obliged to be controlled, I am afraid.'
