razor-backed, long-legged, dark and hairy swine, inexpressibly welcome to the little girls. They were the same as the hogs of their native Sweeting's Island in appearance, voice and above all smell: they brought back times past with such force that both girls wept, spoke to them in the Melanesian they had almost entirely forgotten, and comforted them in their distress - they were penned on the forecastle until there should be time to enlarge the quarters below where yesterday's hogs were kept, and the animals were both anxious and frightened. Yet those below were in a still more wretched state, and when they heard and smelt others of their kind overhead they set up a hideous din: this too was perfectly familiar to Emily and Sarah. They ran to Jemmy Ducks and told him the creatures were starved; they were calling out for food. For a great while Jemmy, who was much taken up with his chickens, put them off, saying that hogs was butcher's business; but at last they pestered him so that in a lull he went up to Weightman, one of the very few thoroughly disagreeable men aboard, and suggested that the hogs below sounded hungry. He received the abuse he expected - who did he think he was, telling the barky's butcher about hogs? Did Weightman tell Jemmy Ducks how to look after his fucking hens? Or turtles? Turtles, kiss my arse. In any case, the hogs below had been fed; had been offered every goddam thing the ship contained, from bread to tobacco, passing by a prime bucket of swill. And would they touch it? No, squire, they would not. And Weightman would be buggered if he offered them anything again: they should be salted and put up while there was still any flesh on their bones; and if Jemmy Ducks did not like it, why, he could do the other thing.
About this time repeated cries of 'By your leave, sir,' 'If you please, your honour' had driven Stephen off the gangway, then farther and farther aft along the quarterdeck to the taffrail itself, where, behind a great mound of netting full of yams, he found Mrs Oakes, gazing at the land, lost, enraptured; and her delight made her look more nearly beautiful than Stephen had ever seen her, and physically better in spite of the remainder of her black eye. 'Is not this capital, Doctor?' she cried. 'I always longed to travel and to make distant voyages, but I never did - except of course for ...' She waved New South Wales aside and went on, 'And this is what I always hoped Abroad and the islands of the Great South Sea would be like. Dear me, such brilliance! How I wish I may always retain it in my mind's eye; and how passionately I yearn to go ashore! Do you think the Captain will give Oakes leave?'
'Forgive me, ma'am,' said Pullings. 'I am afraid we must clear the davits.'
Stephen and Clarissa were separated by a gang of seamen earnestly paying out an eight-inch hawser: she took refuge half-way down the companion-ladder, her head on a level with the deck, so that she might not miss anything that might be seen through the passing seamen's legs; and he was contemplating the ascent to the mizen-top when Padeen thrust his powerful form through the press. 'Gentleman dear,' he cried, his emotion drowning what little English he possessed, 'that black thief the butcher, Judas' own son, is tormenting the pigs, so he is, his soul to the Devil.'
'Pigs, is it?' said Stephen, but even before Padeen had finished speaking - it took him some time even in Irish, with his terrible stammer - pigs he knew it was. An eddy in the gentle breeze brought him a smell that he knew as well as even the little girls did or Padeen, and that was almost as much part of his childhood as it was of theirs, for he had been fostered with peasants in the ancient Irish way, and in their house particular swine walked in and out like Christians, as familiar as the dogs and upon the whole cleaner, more intelligent ; while in one of his Catalan homes he and his godfather had reared up a wild boar from a striped, bounding piglet to a great dark beast of nineteen score with huge tusks that would come out of his beech-grove at a rocking-horse gallop to greet them, frightening all but the boldest of horses. For him too, although the pigs were eventually eaten and eaten with rejoicing, they had a particular sanctity, at least in part because they were individuals rather than members of a herd. He and Padeen walked forward along the waist, dodging between the baskets of turtles coming aboard on the one hand, the casks swinging in front from the other, and sacks of yams, sacks of yams. At the break of the forecastle Sarah, the braver and more vehement of the two girls, came running to meet them. 'Oh sir,' she cried to Stephen, 'listen to the hogs below. We keep asking Jemmy to tell the butcher they must be given taro, but he will not attend.'
Padeen began to speak, pointing down the fore hatchway: his stammer allowed him no more than 'Muc - muc - muc' but his pointing finger and the increasing noise from below were eloquent enough. Stephen climbed to the forecastle, where Martin was staring at the starboard pen. 'Good morning, sir,' he cried. 'Here's a pretty kettle of fish.'
'Good morning to you, colleague,' replied Stephen, 'and an elegant kettle it is.'
Over by the larboard pen, where he and some forecastle hands were reinforcing the barriers, Weightman was saying that he had fed the hell-damned swine - details of what they had been offered - swill that would have graced the cabin table - Lord Mayor's banquet - and they would not touch a morsel, drink a drop - and (lowering his voice) he would be buggered if he would try it again or listen to any prating poultryman -he was the barky's butcher, and he was not going to be taught his trade by any... His voice died away altogether.
'You don't want to starve pigs,' said Joe Plaice. 'They want feeding regular, or they go out of condition directly.'
'I call it a cruel shame,' observed Slade.
'Why don't you feed them poor unfortunate buggers below?' asked Davies.
Weightman answered these remarks and others, laying out his case with such increasing emphasis that his voice grew to resemble that of the swine at their shrillest and most passionate.
At this moment the frigate's executive officers were all either on shore or below. 'This is a matter for the Captain,' said Stephen privately. 'He has already put off.'
They walked back along the gangway, and sitting on the brace bitts, the most secluded place they could find, they watched the Captain's boat pull out through the many inshore canoes.
'Sarah and Emily tell me that just a little taro would do,' said Martin. 'They ran off, took a piece from that pile there, and the forecastle pigs flung themselves upon it. I pointed this out to Weightman, but he would have none of it. He is a disagreeable surly fellow at the best of times, and now he is beyond the reach of reason. Pig-headed, one might almost say.'
'Perhaps one might. How I long to be ashore.'
'Oh, so do I, Lord above! The moment we have finished our rounds, we may surely ask for leave with clear consciences. My nets, cases, paraphernalia, are all ready. What shall we find? The Polynesian owl, ha, ha, ha? But before I say anything else I must tell you two pieces of news that it was not fit to bring out on the forecastle. The one will rejoice your heart; the other I fear will sadden it. First, among the presents sent by the chief this morning were two rails of a kind unknown to the learned world, two different rails, and a great purple coot.'
'Never a gallinule, for all love?'
'No. Far larger and of a far richer purple. Without mentioning it to anyone, there being such abundance, I appropriated them, as objects more fit for philosophic examination than the gunroom table.'
'Very right and proper. What a treat in store! But you spoke of bad news.'
