far south as the entrance of the dreadful Strait itself - flying, to the utter confusion of all accepted notions, over tight-packed bands of penguins lining that grim shore - the austral humming-bird, an eagle-owl exactly like the one they had seen in the Sinai desert, and the flightless duck of Tierra del Fuego, whose nest he alone of all Western ornithologists had discovered under a tangle of snow-covered wintergreen not far from Port Famine.
His matter was less, but his delivery was far better, he being used to public speaking; and as he was a tall, deep-chested man his voice carried much farther than meagre Stephen's. When he was speaking of these wonderful eggs it carried right through the open skylight of the great cabin, in which Jack Aubrey was writing home.
'As I said, we had intended to pass between the Solomons and the Queen Charlotte Islands, but we may have to put in at one group or the other in the hope of buying some hogs, our progress has been so slow.' He paused, and having chewed the end of his pen for a while (a quill from one of the smaller albatrosses) he went on, 'I know you do not like it when I speak ill of any man, but I shall just say that there are moments when I wish Mr Martin at the Devil. It is not that he is not the most obliging gentlemanly fellow, as you know very well, but he does take up so much of Stephen's time that I scarcely see anything of him. I should have liked to run through the score of this evening's piece with him, but they are gnattering away in the mizentop twenty to the dozen and I do not like to break in. To be sure, it is the usual fate of the captain of a man-of-war to live in solitary splendour, relieved only by some more or less obligatory and formal entertainment on one side or the other; but I have grown so used to the luxury of having a particular friend aboard these many commissions past that I feel quite bereft when it is taken from me.'
The ship's progress was slow, and although her bottom had been cleaned in Callao, in these warm seas it was growing dirty again in spite of her copper, so dirty that it cut half a knot from her speed in light airs. The little girls' progress in learning English, on the other hand, was extraordinarily rapid, and would have been even more so if some of the hands had not talked to them in the jargon used on the west coast of Africa.
They were called Sarah and Emily, Stephen having set his face against Thursday and Behemoth; and since he had discovered them and brought them down to the shore he was unquestionably their owner, with a right to name them. He usually spent some time with them every day. When they first came aboard they were amazed and bewildered, and they clung to one another almost in silence in their dim and sheltered quarters; but presently, dressed in the simplest of poldavy shifts, they were to be seen running about on the forecastle, particularly during the afternoon watch, sometimes chanting in an odd guttural way as they hopped from plank to plank, never touching the seams, sometimes imitating the songs the seamen sang. They were good little girls, upon the whole, though rather stupid; and Emily could sometimes be both stubborn and passionate. They remained skinny however much they ate; and they had no claims to beauty. Jemmy Ducks had little difficulty in teaching them cleanliness. They were naturally given to washing when they were in health and their lousiness arose from the nature of their hair, which was coarse and crinkled and stood straight out for six inches from their heads until the ship's barber clipped them bald, and from the fact that in those parts the comb had not yet been invented. And he had not much more in teaching them punctuality, for they quite soon grasped the meaning of the ship's bells. They had obviously acquired a sense of the holy long before they came aboard, and when Jemmy Ducks led them aft, clean and brushed, they looked grave and fell silent as soon as they set foot on the quarterdeck, while at divisions they stood at his side like images for the whole length of the ceremony.
Once communication was established they seemed uneasy if they were asked about their former existence; it was as though the whole of it had been a dream, and that they had now awoken from the dream to natural life, which consisted of sailing for ever, always south-west by south, to the unchanging rhythm of bells, wearing poldavy shifts washed twice a week, speaking a sort of English, drinking the thin milkless porridge called skillygallee for breakfast (cocoa was considered too rich for little girls), eating lobscouse or sea-pie and ship's biscuit (in which they delighted) for dinner, and more biscuit and broth for supper. So much was this the case, so much was this their life, that they were exceedingly distressed when at length a canoe full of Solomon islanders came alongside. 'Black boogers,' they cried in horror and ran below, although they never showed any signs of disliking the Surprise's Negroes, indeed rather the reverse. And when they were brought on deck, Stephen holding Emily by the hand and Jemmy Ducks Sarah, to see whether they could understand the chief of a village that visibly possessed hogs, they protested that they could not make out a word, would not, and sobbed so bitterly that they were obliged to be led away.
'You may say they are stupid,' said Martin, at dinner in the cabin, 'but have you observed that already they speak with a broad West-Country burr on the forecastle and in quite another English on the quarterdeck?'
'Certainly there is an uncommon linguistic ability,' said Stephen. 'And I have the strong impression that in their own island they used one language or at least vocabulary to their family, another to adults outside the family, and a third for sacred places or beings: perhaps only variations of the same speech, but very strongly marked variations for sure.'
'It seems to me that they are forgetting their own language,' said Jack. 'You never hear them hallooing to one another in foreign as they used.'
'Could you ever forget your own language?' asked Pullings. 'Languages you have learnt, like Latin and Greek, yes; but your own? Though I speak under correction, sir. A post-captain knows more than a commander, in the nature of things.'
Stephen drank wine. At one time he had very nearly forgotten his native Irish, the first language he ever spoke, he being fostered in the County Clare; and although it had surged up from the depths these last years when he spoke it with Padeen, his almost monoglot servant, there were still words, and quite commonplace ones too, whose sounds were perfectly familiar hut whose meaning escaped him entirely.
Padeen Colman, wholly illiterate, incapable of innocently giving away any information he might have picked up, for not only did he know very little English but that little was barely comprehensible even to friends because of a defect in his speech, was a perfect servant for one so deeply engaged in political and naval intelligence as Stephen: yet he was much more than that, a kind, gentle, deeply affectionate man to whom Stephen was much attached and whom he intended to find in New South Wales, in the penal settlement to which he had been transported, and to do whatever could be done.
He became aware of a silence round the table, and looking up he saw that they were all smiling at him. 'I ask your pardon,' he cried. 'My mind was far away, a-gathering wool, merino wool: forgive me, I beg. Did anyone ask me a question?'
'Not at all,' said Jack, filling his glass. 'I was just telling Tom that now the time was come to reduce sail; and when the deck is less like the side of a house, you and Mr Martin might like to take off your fine coats and carry your glasses up. These reefs, rocks and islands often have birds for fifty miles around them. Norfolk Island had some prodigious curious birds that made burrows, flying home at night.'
It was not until a little before the Surprise crossed the tropic of Capricorn that the trade wind had really started to blow, but since then, close-hauled or with the wind one point free, she had been showing what she could really do, with topgallants over reefed topsails and a glorious series of jibs and staysails, white and sometimes green water sweeping over her weather-bow, the little girls, soaked through and through and shrieking with delight, her lively deck at an angle that made it impossible to fix a bird in one's glass unless one were lashed to a solid support, when one might well have one's valuable achromatic telescope of more than extra power
