'You say that in just the same tone as dear Dr Redfern,' said Clarissa from under the folds of her blue cotton dress: and emerging, 'How I adored that man when he told me that I was neither pregnant nor... nor diseased. I might well have been both. I had been raped often enough.'
'I am so sorry; so very sorry,' said Stephen.
'For some girls it would have been dreadful: it meant little to me, so long as there were no consequences.'
Flogging was indeed rare in Jack Aubrey's commands, but this time the ship had been outraged and humiliated and he punished severely, flogging seven and stopping grog right and left. Of those who were seized up, none called out except for Weightman; but none came away unmarked. As each was cast loose, Padeen stepped forward, tears streaming down his face, and sponged his shipmate's back with vinegar, while Martin swabbed the wheals with lint and passed the man's shirt, a gesture much appreciated. All this was done with the customary man-of-war formality - charge, response, evidence of character, attenuating circumstances, Captain's decision, relevant Article, sentence, punishment - and although the later sentences never exceeded six strokes, the whole took up a great deal of time which Stephen and Clarissa, for their part, spent in talking quite placidly about men in general, everyday men in their ordinary life.
The last of those to be beaten presented an unusual case. He was James Mason, a bosun's mate; he was a good seaman, and the officer spoke in his favour. But his offence had been very gross - direct disobedience - and Jack had him brought to the grating. 'In view of what your officers say, it will only be half a dozen,' he said. 'Mr Bulkeley, do your duty.' It was of course the bosun's duty to flog his mates, but the occasion very rarely arose: Bulkeley had not been called upon to officiate for years; he had lost the habit; and taking the cat from Vowles he stood there for a moment, combing its bloody tails through his fingers in a sad state of indecision. He was fond of young James, they got along well together; but the ship's company was watching most attentively and he must not be seen to favour his mate. No, indeed: and his first blow jerked a great gasp out of Mason, rock of fortitude though he was. When he was cast loose he staggered for a moment, wiped his face, and cast a reproachful look at the bosun, the embarrassed, confused and uneasy bosun.
In Stephen's cabin the conversation had moved on by way of a discussion of pain to the extraordinary difficulty of defining emotions or assigning to them any quantity quality volume or force. 'Harking back to pain,' said Stephen, 'I recall that when Captain Cook was here he used to flog the islanders for stealing: it was no use, said he: one might just as well have flogged the mainmast. And I saw Aborigines in New South Wales who utterly disregarded burns, blows and cruel thorns that I could never have borne; while in the Navy a seaman will generally take his dozen without a murmur. Yet even when all things are considered, youthful resilience, fortitude, pride, habituation and so on, I wonder that your experience did not beat the softer, kinder emotions out of you entirely, leaving you sullen, morose and withdrawn.'
'Why, as for the softer emotions, perhaps I never was very well endowed; I disliked most cats, dogs and babies; I never cared for dolls or pet rabbits and sometimes I violently resented being crossed; but I never was sullen then and I am not sullen now. Nor am I morose and withdrawn: I think I am fairly kind, or mean to be fairly kind, to people who are kind to me or those who need kindness; and I know I like being liked - I love good company and cheerfulness.
Sic erimus cuncti postquam nos auferet
Orcus ergo vivamus dum licet esse, bene.
And I also know I am not a monster incapable of affection,' she said, laying a hand on Stephen's knee and flushing a little under her tan. 'Only I cannot connect it with that toying, striving, gasping - what can I call it without being gross? -with anything of a carnal nature. They seem to me poles apart.'
'I am sure they do. Sic erimus cuncti ... so that was where Mr Oakes had his couplet yesterday? I wondered.'
'Yes. It was a doggerel version I made when I was putting on my gown. But I was astonished he should remember it.'
Stephen's only patients that afternoon were the butcher and the bosun's mate, both of whom, but particularly Mason, needed dressing. Martin had applied the ordinary pads, but he had had little experience with this kind of wound, the Surprise's temper being ordinarily so mild, and a more practised hand was required to wind the cingulum that would enable them to move with something approaching ease.
Yet it was clear to the practised hand that he might have a well-populated berth quite soon. Not only was Jack tautening the ship in all points, but on excusing himself for missing dinner - 'he would take an extra bite this evening, and with the wind going down like this they might very well have some fresh fish with their music' - he had also thrown out a remark about a flying column. Quite what he meant by that Stephen had not gathered; but basing himself upon the axiom that what goes up must necessarily come down, he anticipated a fine crop of broken limbs, ribs, even skulls.
He reflected upon this as he dined in the gunroom, a rather silent gunroom, but one in which the malignance had been largely replaced by anxiety and even by a certain fellow-feeling. Martin ate wolfishly, twice desiring Pullings 'to cut him just a little more of this excellent roast pork, but when at last his empty plate was taken from him before pudding he told Stephen that he had seen a remarkable number of boobies towards the northern horizon, and that old Macaulay, who knows these seas, had confirmed him in his notion that this meant great shoals of fish. They might go a-fishing if the evening fell calm.
'You medicoes may go a-fishing,' said Pullings. 'But I very much doubt whether we do anything but exercise until next Christmas.'
Truer words he never spoke. The Surprise had by no means passed through the variables, and in the afternoon watch the breeze, which had been boxing the compass for some time, died away almost entirely; yet it did not do so until it had brought the ship within a mile or so of the zone where the boobies were fishing, and Stephen's skiff had long since been lowered down.
They rowed laboriously out, with rods, hand-nets, sieves for animalculae, pots and jars, baskets, all of which got in the way, impeding their artless progress and making them even slower, even hotter in the damp, unmoving air. Stephen, who had little sense of shame where nakedness was concerned and who had so often exposed his entire person that he feared no sunburn, took off his clothes; Martin, more shamefast by far, only unbuttoned his shirt, rolled up his trousers, and suffered.
But it was worth their toil. The fishing-ground was sharply defined, and as soon as they were over its border and among the boobies they found that it possessed at least two levels, a turmoil of squids pursuing pelagic crabs and the free-swimming larvae of various forms of marine life that neither could identify, though they were fairly confident of the pearl oyster, and two or three fathoms below these, clearly to be seen, particularly under the shade of the boat, swam schools of fishes, crossing and recrossing, all of the same mackerel-shaped kind, all flashing as they turned, and all feeding upon a host of fry so numerous that they made a globular haze in the clear
