'Just so. That was also the case with his companion, the heavier one, whom you met once or twice; and the wound was equally recent. Perhaps they had been fighting. Will I send for him?'
Van Buren booked attentively into Stephen's face, and after a moment he said, 'Have you arranged this with the Vizier, Maturin?'
'I have, too. He said that the court was in no way concerned; that the protection had been publicly and specifically withdrawn and notified to Duplessis; and that we might do whatever we pleased. But he was sure that we would be discreet - that there would be no recognizable remains.'
'Then I am perfectly satisfied: oh what a blessed relief! Let us by all means send for the other, and in the meantime shall we start at the head?'
They worked steadily, with a cool, objective concentration: each had a clear understanding of the matter in hand - the relevant organs, those that might be useful for later comparison and those that might be discarded - and words were rarely necessary. Stephen had been present at many such dissections; he had carried out some hundreds himself, comparative anatomy being one of his chief concerns, but never had he seen such skill, such delicacy in removing the finer processes, such dexterity, boldness and economy of effort in removing superfluous material, such speed; and with this example he worked faster and more neatly than he had ever done before.
He had little sense of the passage of time; yet even so, when the long table was cleared at last and two fine fresh gleaming jars had been placed on van Buren's shelf of spleens preserved in spirits, when a certain number of organs - as impersonal as the wares in a butcher's shop - had been laid in brine for future use, and when the wholly unrecognizable remains had been shut away in zinc-lined wooden chests, he was surprised to find that it was still night.
They took off their long aprons, washed their instruments and their hands, and went to sit outside, in the bight of a gibbous moon.
'What a charming breeze,' said Stephen. 'It must have been really hot and close in there.'
'Hot and close, I make no doubt; but it was the most gratifying dissection I have ever performed,' said van Buren, letting himself down on the bench with a groan. 'My hands and back are quite stiff;, and tomorrow's patients may buy themselves dried salamanders in the bazaar - I shall not attend to them. But Heavens, how infinitely worth while! Do you know, I could scarcely overcome a feeling of extreme bitterness when I missed your Pondicherry clerk. On his mother's side he was a Hindu, and in common piety his co-religionists here - there are a score or so - felt themselves obliged to cremate him; and there, thought I, seeing the smoke ascend, was my very last chance of an at least partly European spleen. Lord, how little one knows!'
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the geckoes chuckling on the wall behind them, and then van Buren went on, 'Tell me again about your rhinoceroses. Had you not suspected their presence at all? No deep, webb- worn paths, no droppings, no tracks?'
'I had not. All these things were there, and they were apparent to me as I went back to the monastery having seen the animals; but from some imbecility of mind, some lasting state of astonishment at the possibility of accosting a wild boar and scratching its back and of walking hand in hand with an orang-utang, I had seen nothing. In the very first place I had not liked to mention rhinoceroses to the monks, because of the alleged aphrodisiac virtues of the horn: I did not wish to arouse the beast hint of suspicion. So they were not in my mind at all. In any case I have never thought of them as dwelling in mountains.'
'The Sultan attributes Hafsa's pregnancy solely to his use of the horn,' observed van Buren. 'But how very deeply concerned you must have been when they ran down the hill at you. I believe they weigh three tons.'
'I am sure they do. The earth trembled; I trembled with it. I had some fragmentary notion of leaping like a Cretan bull-vaulter, but before I could determine which foot, which hand would have been proper in Cnossus they were past me, thanks be to God. There was no malice in them, the creatures. Nor in any other living thing I saw at Kumai, except possibly for some tree-shrews which I heard quarrelling among themselves.'
They talked in a somewhat disconnected way about tree-shrews - the monks' imperfect Malay and how it increased Stephen's fluency and assurance - the anatomy of cheerfulness, what it is - plausibly said to have its seat in the spleen, perhaps in that curious set of minute granular bodies between the hibum and the gastric impression - only disordered spleens could have given the gland its indifferent reputation - spleens perhaps more frequently disordered in England than elsewhere, because of the climate - because of the diet - thoughts on the distribution of barn owls - and after a yawning pause van Buren said, 'We shall have to boil Cuvier's bones after all' in an artificially casual tone that would not have deceived a child.
Stephen knew that it was his duty to be amazed, and in spite of an almost insuperable weariness he cried, 'How? What are you saying?'
'I thought that would amaze you,' said van Buren. 'We shall have to boil them because there will be no time for the ants to finish the cleaning. Your treaty is being written out fair at this moment, in gold letters upon crimson paper, four full sheets of it. Mr Fox, warned shortly after sunrise, will attend for the signature in the early afternoon.'
'Is a man to have no sleep at all, no sleep whatsoever, in this vile misshapen hulk?' cried Dr Maturin, striking at the hand that jerked his cot and pulling the clothes over his head Ahmed had not dared persist, but Bonden was made of sterner stuff and the jerking continued, together with the words 'Captain's orders, if you please, sir. Now, your honour, rouse and bitt, Captain's orders, if you please, sir,' which had been mingling with his dream since the beginning of conscious time. At last he could bear it no longer; anger dispelled sleep and he sat up. Bonden handed him out of the cot with a most provoking mild solicitude, calling through the door 'Light it along, Killick.'
Ahmed appeared with a dressing-gown: between them they conveyed him to the dining-cabin, where Killick had laid out breakfast. A letter leant against the coffee-pot, and Bonden gave it to him: 'To be read directly minute, sir, if you please,' he said. 'Ahmed, pour away.'
Maturin was fairly wise in his generation when fully awake, but not so wise at present that he did not look earnestly at the back of the letter while he sipped his first reviving cup. 'It was brought by Mr Edwards, sir,' said Bonden. Killick, peering through the open door, said, 'Which he is down in the hold with the Captain and Chips this mortal minute, your honour,' and just overhead there broke out a shattering cry of 'Bargemen, d'ye hear there? Shave and clean shirt for six bells', followed by another set of orders and a sharp cutting pipe as the copper- bottomed launch, the honorary barge, was lowered down.
He broke the seal.
My dear Maturin
I give you joy. We have won! The Vizier has just sent me word that the treaty, in the exact terms we agreed
