While the boat was lowering down Stephen, from the gangway, said 'Captain Aubrey, sir, I appeal to you: is not that bird on the edge of the whaler's front platform - top - foretop - an ancient murrelet?'
'Why,' said Jack, considering it, 'I am no expert, as you are aware. But perhaps it does look a little elderly. Can it be ate?'
'Certainly it is an ancient murrelet, Doctor,' said Wainwright. 'It is our surgeon's ancient murrelet Agnes. He brought her up from the egg. If you would like to come across with us, I am sure he would be happy to show her to you.'
'I will not importune you at the moment, sir,' said Stephen, 'but I have a little small skiff of my own, and with your permission I shall wait upon the gentleman somewhat later in the day.'
'And so, sir - a trifle of crackling?'
'If you please,' said Jack, holding out his plate. 'How I love roast pork.'
'And so, sir, having left the Franklin astern, I ran as fast as I could to catch up with Heartsease: but that was not very fast, because the privateer's unlucky broadside had caught us on the heel, well below the waterline, and with the larboard tack aboard the water came spurting in like three conduits under anything more than close- reefed topsails. In any case, the weather turned thick and dirty that night. We never saw the Heartsease again though we kept pegging away with all the sails she could bear, pumping all day and most of the night. We managed to fother the worst of the leaks for a while and stuff some of the rest inboard, but heavy seas undid all our work after some ten days or so, and the hands were dropping with fatigue, so I was obliged to haul up for Annamooka. But how I hope the Heartsease reached Sydney Cove!'
'She did,' said Jack, 'and in consequence of her report I have been sent to deal with the situation. I am now proceeding to Moahu with all possible dispatch.'
'Oh,' said Wainwright, laying down his knife and fork and gazing at Captain Aubrey. 'Are you, by God? I am prodigious glad of it for those poor men we had to leave behind, and for my owners too of course. The Truelove is a fine new vessel, Whitby-built, with a valuable cargo, apart from what we took out. May I come with you? The Daisy may not carry very heavy metal, but I know those waters, I know the people, I speak the language, and we have nineteen prime seamen as well as the officers.'
'That is a most obliging offer,' said Jack, 'but in this case speed is everything. A few degrees north we should find the trades blowing hard and steady, and the Surprise is happiest on a bowline. In those latitudes she has logged well over two hundred miles between noon and noon day after day, and I fear the Daisy could not keep up, even if she were in a fit state to sail.'
'She has made seven knots, with the wind on her quarter,' said Wainwright. 'But I must admit there is no comparison.'
'I hope to catch him at anchor,' said Jack. 'No great seaman, I believe you said?'
'That was my impression, sir. I am told he has not cruised before; and is a somewhat philosophical, theoretical gent.'
'Then the sooner his capers are cut short the better. Let us have no benevolent revolutions, no humanitarians, no Goddamned systems, no panaceas. Look at that wicked fellow Cromwell, and those vile Whigs in poor King James's time, a fine seaman as he was, too. But tell me, what does your damage amount to?'
'Oh, sir,' replied Wainwright, brightening, 'I doubt there is much more than a day's work for a skilled carpenter and his crew, if we could but have the worst looked to, and just one boat patched so that it might swim.'
'Then if you will pass the word for my coxswain I will send him to bring Mr Bentley, a capital hand with a shot-plug or a fractured knee.'
** *
In Dr Falconer, the Daisy's surgeon, Stephen and Martin found a man after their own hearts. He had abandoned a lucrative practice in Oxford as soon as a modest competence was put by, and he took to the sea in his cousin's various ships for the sake of natural philosophy. Volcanoes and birds were his chief delight, but nothing came amiss and he had dissected the narwhal and the white bear of the north and the sea-elephant of the far south. Yet his interest in medicine, theoretical and practical, was undiminished; and as the two vessels were warping across the harbour to lie side by side for the benefit of the carpenters, they abandoned ornithology for the moment and turned to hydrophobia: hydrophobia philosophically considered, some of the cases they had known, and the variety of treatments.
'I remember a strong boy of fourteen who was admitted to the Infirmary having been bit that day month by a mad foxhound,' said Dr Falconer. 'There is a yellow-billed tropic-bird. The day after he was bit he went to the sea, where he was dipped with all the severity usually practised under so disagreeable an operation. A common adhesive plaster was applied to the part after the sea-bathing; and in the course of a month the wound was healed, except a small portion somewhat more than an inch in length, and in breadth about one tenth - it was in quite a cicatrizing state. Five days before he was admitted he began to complain of a tightness over his temples, and a pain in his head: in two days the hydrophobia began to appear. The disease was pretty strong when he came to the Infirmary. He was given a bolus of a scruple of musk with two grains of opium; then a composition of fifteen grains of musk, one of turpeth mineral, and five grains of opium, every third hour; an ounce of the stronger mercurial ointment was rubbed on the cervical vertebrae, and an embrocation of two ounces of laudanum and half an ounce of acetum saturninum was directed to be applied to the throat. But by this last he was thrown into convulsions; and the same effect followed though his eyes were covered with a napkin. The embrocation was therefore changed for a plaster of powdered camphor, half an ounce of opium, and six drachms of confectio Damocritis.'
'What was the outcome?' asked Stephen.
'The disease seemed somewhat suspended; but the symptoms returned with violence in the evening. His medicine was repeated at seven, and at eight five grains of opium were exhibited without musk or turpeth. At nine another ounce of mercurial ointment was rubbed upon the shoulders, and half an ounce of laudanum with six ounces of mutton broth was injected into the intestines, but to no purpose. A larger dose of opium was then given, but with as little effect as the former; and he died the same night.'
'My experience has been much the same, alas,' said Stephen, 'except in one case at Oughterard in larconnacht, where two bottles of whiskey, drunk at stated intervals during the course of one day, appeared to effect a radical cure.'
'I am not to speak of physic in the presence of two doctors of medicine,' said Martin, 'but I was once present when an embrocation of half an ounce of sal ammoniac, ten drachms of olive oil, six drachms of oil of amber and ten drachms of laudanum was applied.' The two ships came together with a gentle elastic thump. Martin raised his
