are grave objections to the frequent exhibition of laudanum, I find.'
'Yes, yes, of course,' said Martin, clapping his hand to his forehead. 'I beg your pardon.'
There were indeed very grave objections. Padeen, Stephen's Irish servant and loblolly-boy, often in and about the sick-berth and the medical stores, had become deeply addicted to laudanum, the alcoholic tincture of opium. Stephen, late in discovering the fact, had done what he could, but what he could do was not enough; and at the time he was disabled. Padeen deserted the ship when she touched at Leith, and being unable to get his opium by fair means- he was illiterate, barely comprehensible in English, and he knew the substance only by the name of tincture - had taken it by force, breaking into an apothecary's house by night and tasting till he found it.
This had happened in Edinburgh, far from Stephen's knowledge until the very end; but all the talent of the Scottish bar could not disguise the fact that a capital offence had been committed or that the big wild Papist at the bar was guilty of it. Padeen was sentenced to death, and it had required all the force of Jack Aubrey's influence as member for Milford to have the hanging commuted to transportation. Padeen had been sent, with many hundred more, in the next convoy to Botany Bay; but at least he carried an earnest recommendation from Dr Martin to the surgeon of the ship and the medical officer in the colony and one from Sir Joseph Banks to the Governor of New South Wales.
'I beg your pardon,' said Martin again. 'How my mind came to...'
A hail on deck, the distant reverberation of running feet, the perceptible rotation of the deck and the dying away of the complex sound of a ship in motion relieved him from his embarrassment. 'It is stopping,' he said.
'We are lying up,' said Stephen. 'Let us go above, having first locked the chest and dowsed the light.'
They climbed quite nimbly up the dim, familiar ladders - seamen in this if in nothing else - and emerged blinking into the brilliant light of day; and there was the Eddystone a mile to the north-westward, with the mainland rather hazy beyond it and four ships of the line close hauled for the Sound.
'Are you not amazed, Doctor?' asked Davidge, the officer of the watch.
'Certainly,' said Stephen, looking at the lighthouse with the ring of surf at its foot and the halo of gulls over its head. 'As noble an erection as could well be conceived.'
'No, no,' said Davidge. 'The decks, the brasswork, the squared yards, all fit for an admiral's inspection.'
'Nothing could be neater, or more trim,' said Stephen; and still gazing at the lighthouse he saw a pilot-cutter, obviously bound for the frigate and obviously receiving signals from her and replying to them.
'Thank God I have my letters prepared,' he cried, and ran down to his cabin. By the time he had actually found the letters and brought them on deck, direct hailing had replaced the signals, and he heard the cutter being desired to come under the ship's lee and to pass up the parcels first.
'I told you I mean to carry out a chain of observations for Humboldt, did I not?' said Jack, breaking off his conversation with the pilot. 'A chain right round to the Pacific. There is an improved dipping-needle in one of those cases, together with a very delicate hygrometer of his own invention, a better azimuth-compass than anything I possess, and a Geneva cyanograph, as well as spare thermometers graduated by Ramsden. The pilot says they can go into a man's pocket, with a shove; but I shall not trust them to anything but a whip: in any case there is the post.'
The cutter came alongside, Mr Standish, the frigate's new purser, beaming up at his friends. 'Now just you sit there, sir,' said the pilot, guiding him to a coil of rope, 'and stay quiet while the valuables are got aboard.'
The mail-bag came first, and Jack, sorting its meagre contents, said, 'A bundle of letters for you, Doctor, and a parcel, as heavy as one of the girls' plum-puddings: post paid, I am happy to say.' This was followed by a number of little cases, Standish's violin, and an object that looked like a telescope but that was a rolled-up chart showing Humboldt's maximum and minimum sea-temperatures over a vast stretch of ocean, all placed successively in a net attached to a whip from the yard-arm which gently rose and gently fell to the traditional cry of Two - six, two - six, the nearest thing to a shanty (apart from the bowline-haul) countenanced by the strictly Royal Navy members of the crew.
The quartermaster unhooked the last and waved his arm; the pilot turned to Standish, said, 'Now, sir, if you please,' and guided him to the rail, helped him to mount upon it and balance there, grasping a shroud, and said 'Just spring across to them steps at the top of the rise; spring easy before she falls.' With a boat-hook he pulled the cutter as close to the ship as was right in this choppy sea and right under the steps.
The Surprise, stored for a very long voyage, was low in the water, yet even so some twelve feet of wet side rose from the sea-level; and the steps, though wide, were startlingly shallow. Stephen and Martin stood immediately above him, by a gangway stanchion, leaning down and giving advice: Standish was the only man belonging to the ship who knew less about the sea than they (he had never left the land before) and they did not dislike sharing their knowledge.
'You are to consider,' said Stephen, 'that the inward slope of the ship's flank, the tumblehome as we call it, makes the steps far less vertical than they seem. Furthermore, when the ship rolls from you, showing her copper, the angle is even more advantageous.'
'The great thing is not to hesitate,' said Martin. 'A determined spring at the right moment, and the impetus will carry you up directly. I am sure you have seen a cat fly up a much steeper wall, only touching once or twice. Impetus; it is all impetus.'
The two vessels wallowed companionably for a while.
'Leap, leap!' cried Martin at the third upward rise.
'Stay,' said Stephen, holding up his hand. 'The roll, or heave, is wrong.'
Standish relaxed again, breathing hard. 'Come on, sir,' said the pilot impatiently as the boat rose once more. Standish gauged the distance and gave a convulsive spring; he had much over-estimated the expanse of water and he struck the side with great force, missing the steps entirely and falling straight back into the sea. The pilot instantly shoved off, to prevent the next surge from crushing him between the cutter and the ship. Standish came to the surface, spouting water; the pilot lunged with his boat-hook, but missing his collar, tore his scalp. Standish sank again, and the cutter, no longer anchored to the Surprise, drove before the wind. 'I can't swim,' roared the pilot, and Jack, looking up from his precious hygrometer, cyanograph and the rest, grasped the situation at once.
Flinging off his coat, he plunged straight over the side, striking the purser as he rose again and driving him down breathless a good four fathoms, into quite dim water. This however gave time for entering ropes to be shipped and for a line with a man-harness hitch to be passed down, so that when Jack - a practised hand -
