and go - Potosi, Cuzco, for example - and that possibly you might find time to travel with them as far as Quito, reliable men who know the road and who could show you prodigious prospects of snow, rock and ice, volcanoes, bears, guanacoes, vicunas, eagles...'
'You tempt me strangely: I wish it could be so. I dearly love a mountain,' said Stephen. 'But I could not square it with my conscience. No. I am afraid it will have to wait until our design is carried out. But I shall certainly burden your people with my letters, if I may: many, many thanks to you, my dear sir.'
For days the wind had kept in the east, and by now there was a considerable sea running across the northward current, causing the Franklin to roll and pitch rather more than was comfortable, rather more than was usual for mustering the ship's company by divisions; but this was Sunday, the first Sunday that Jack had felt reasonably sure that his wounded leg would bear the exercise, and he decided to carry on. At breakfast the word had been passed 'clean to muster' and now the bosun was bawling down the hatchways, 'D'ye hear, there, fore and aft? Clear for muster at five bells. Duck frocks and white trousers,' while his only remaining mate roared, 'D'ye hear, there? Clean shirts and shave for muster at five bells.' Many of the seamen were of course old Surprises: for them all this was part of immemorial custom, as much part of natural life as dried peas on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and they had already washed their best shirts in readiness while on Saturday evening or early on Sunday they had combed out their pigtails and replaited them, each man for his tie-mate, before or after cornering the ship's barber for their shave. Now, apart from fitting the poor bewildered blacks into their purser's slops, brushing and tidying them as well as they could and comforting them by calling out, 'It's all right, mate: never fret,' and patting them on the back or shoulders, they were quite ready.
So was their Captain. He was about to pull on his ceremonial breeches when, through the open door, Killick cried, 'No you don't. Oh no you don't, sir. Not until I have looked at those there wounds and that there eye. It was the Doctor's orders, sir, which you cannot deny it. And orders is orders.'
He had an overwhelming moral advantage, and Jack sat down, showing his thigh, a damned great slit that had been very painful at first but that had healed to a fair extent, just as his scalp had done, though walking was still awkward. Unwillingly Killick admitted that they needed no more than the ointment; but when he unrolled the bandage covering the Captain's eye he cried, 'Now we shall have to have the drops as well as the salve -a horrid sight: like a poached egg, only bloody - and I tell you what, sir, I shall put a little Gregory into the drops.'
'How do you mean, Gregory!'
'Why, everybody knows Gregory's Patent Liquid, sir: it rectifies the humours. And don't these humours want rectifying? Oh no, not at all. I never seen anything so ugly. God love us!'
'Did the Doctor mention Gregory's Patent Liquid?'
'Which I put some on Barret Bonden's wound, a horrible great gash: like a butcher's shop. And look at it now. As clean as a whistle. Come on, sir. Never mind the smart; it is all for your own good.'
'A very little, then,' said Jack, who had in fact known of Gregory's Liquid together with Harris's Guaranteed Unguent, Carey's Warranted Arrowroot, brimstone and treacle on Friday and other staples of domestic medicine, all as much a part of daily life on land as hard-tack and mustering by divisions on Sunday at sea.
With his hat very carefully arranged over his new bandage -for in spite of his innumerable faults Killick did not lack a kind of sparse tenderness - Jack made his way up the companion-ladder at half a glass before five bells in the forenoon watch, hauling himself up step by step. It was an exceptionally beautiful day, brilliant, cloudless, with the immense sky a deeper, more uniform blue than usual and the sea, where it was not chopped white, an even deeper shade, the true imperial blue. The wind was still due east, singing quite loud in the rigging; but although the Franklin could have spread topgallant-sails she was in fact lying to, bowing the uneven seas with her main topsail aback and a balancing mizen. Under her lee lay her most recent prize, a fur-trader down from the north, a fat, comfortable vessel, but naturally so unweatherly and now so foul-bottomed as well that she was utterly incapable of working to windward at all, and Captain Aubrey was waiting for the return of the south-east or south-south-east trade to see her in. She carried no extraordinary cargo - she had meant to fill up her hold with seals' skin down at Mas Afuera - but those Surprises, and there were several of them, who had been on the Nootka run and who had conversed with their prisoners, knew that in sea-otter skins and beaver alone the able seaman's share of the prize would be in the nature of ninety-three pieces of eight; and it was a cheerful ship that her Captain was now about to inspect.
The starboard watch had already brought up their clothes bags, arranging them in a low pyramid on the booms, and the larbowlines were laying theirs in a neat square far aft on the quarterdeck when Jack appeared. As he had done a thousand times on such occasions he cast an eye at the sea, the sky, and the ship's trim: literally an eye, for even if the other had not been hidden by a bandage it could not bear this brilliant light, whilst in the dimness of his sleeping-cabin its sight was troubled, uncertain. He also absorbed the mood of the ship's company, and in spite of the severe indwelling pain and anxiety some of their cheerfulness came into his mood.
Five bells, and he nodded to Vidal, the acting first lieutenant, who cried, 'Beat to divisions.' So many people were away in various ships that the order did not run down the usual series of repetitions but came into instant effect with the thunder of the roaring drum. The recently-promoted stopgap officers, most of them Shelmerstonian master-mariners in their own right, reported that their divisions were 'present, properly dressed and clean'.
Vidal crossed the deck, took off his hat, and said, 'All the officers have reported, sir.'
'We will go round the ship, then, if you please,' replied Jack.
And round they went in the traditional manner, except that Bonden, as Captain's coxswain, accompanied them in case of a false step on the blind side: for though Bonden's ribs and breastbone had been exposed to public view in the taking of the Alastor, his wound had healed fast and his friends had taken seamanlike steps to ensure that it should not open again: first a girth of linen rubbed with hog's lard, then two of number eight sailcloth, then the same of number four, and over all a span-broad white-marline plait ending in stout knittels that could be and were hauled taut with a heaver, so taut that he could breathe only with his belly.
The afterguard and waisters under Slade formed the first division, and here were most of the Alastor's black slaves, naturally enough, since they were the merest landsmen, useful only for holystoning the deck in smooth weather, swabbing and sweeping it, or hauling on a rope under strict supervision: abruptly Jack found that he did not know their names - could not tell one from another - and was unable to exchange the usual word. They were beautifully clean, shining clean, and perfectly dressed in their new duck frocks and trousers, and they had been taught to stand up and pull off their hats, but they looked nervous, far from happy: their eyes rolled with apprehension. The next group had two more as well as some remaining Franklins, and although Jack knew the white men tolerably well he was surprised to see them in this division. But the people under his command had necessarily been given such different duties and moved to and fro between such different ships that even a captain who had not been knocked on the head and obliged to keep his cabin for some time might have been confused. It was better when he came to the gunners and the forecastlemen, the oldest hands aboard, ludicrously under Reade, whose voice had not yet finished breaking; but Jack was still worried when he went below with his escort to inspect the galley, the berthdeck and all the rest. He had always felt that it was an officer's absolute duty to know all his men, their watch, rating, abilities, and of course their name and division: he, Vidal and Bonden at length returned to the daylight, filed past the remaining seamen prisoners and so to the leeward side of the
