Spanish almost as well as the Doctor and who managed all business affairs, said that when the Viceroy came back there would be a fine old rumpus, all Hell to pay, with people copping it right and left. Quite why he could not tell, there being so many different rumours; but it seemed that the soldiers had been misbehaving, and perhaps some civilians too.
He reached his boat - the Doctor's skiff, newly painted green - shoved off and made his way through some small-craft setting lobster-pots. He had noticed a good many a mile or so off-shore, fishing in their primitive way. Slab-sided objects, and some of them mere dug-out canoes. There was not a seaman among them, and at no time did he pay any attention to their more or less facetious cries of 'Spik English, yis, yis,' 'Marrano,' 'Heretico palido.'
One particularly obstinate bugger, a good way off, in a disgraceful battered old thing almost the size of a man-of-war's longboat but only pulling three lackadaisical oars, kept barking like a comic sea-lion, on and on, anything for a laugh. Pullings frowned and rowed a little faster, his head turned from the distant boat, a craft of no known form, with bits and pieces dangling over the gunwale. He was after all a commander, R.N., by courtesy called Captain; and he was not to be barked at by a parcel of seals.
As his pace increased so the sea-lions began to bawl out all together - a pitiful exhibition and much too hoarse to be amusing - but as the sudden clamour died away a single disgusted voice, not very loud, came clear across the quiet water: 'Oh the fucking sod.'
That was no native cry, no heathen mockery: that was a naval expression, familiar to him from childhood, and uttered in a naval voice. He turned, and with a mixture of horror and delight he saw the massive form of his Captain heaving up for a final hail, clinging to the stump of a mast; and he recognized the shattered hull of the Alastor's launch.
Having whipped the skiff round and come alongside he wasted no time in asking what had happened or telling them they looked terrible, but gave them his bottle of cold tea - they were almost speechless from thirst, lips black, faces inhuman - passed a line and began towing the launch towards the shore.
He rowed with prodigious force, rising on the stretcher and pulling so that the sculls creaked and bent under his hands. He had never seen the Captain look more destroyed, not even after the Master action: the bloody bandage over his eye had something to do with it, but quite apart from that his bearded face was thin and drawn, barely recognizable, and he moved with difficulty, like an old man, heaving slowly on his oar. From the skiff Pullings looked straight into the launch: the Captain, Darky Johnson and Bonden were doing what they could, labouring with uneven sweeps, roughly shaped from broken spars; Killick was bailing; Joe Plaice and young Ben were stretched out, motionless. The two boats scarcely seemed to move; there were nearly three miles to go, and at this rate they would not be able to go half-way before the ebb set in, carrying them far out to sea.
Yet the Surprise, lying there in the road, had three midshipmen aboard, and what they lacked in intelligence they made up for in physical activity. Reade, having but one arm, could no longer go skylarking, hurling himself about the upper rigging regardless of gravity, but his messmates Norton and Wedell would hoist him by an easy purchase to astonishing heights, and from these, having still one powerful hand and legs that could twist round any rope, he would plunge with infinite satisfaction. He was at the masthead, negligently holding the starboard main topgallant shrouds with the intention of sliding straight down the whole length of the topgallant backstay, well over a hundred feet, when his eye, wandering towards San Lorenzo, caught the odd spectacle of a very small boat trying to tow a much larger one. Even at this distance the very small boat looked surprisingly like the Doctor's pea-green skiff. Leaning down he called, 'Norton.' 'Ho,' replied his friend. 'Be a decent cove for once and send me up my glass.'
Norton, an invariably decent cove, did more than that: he swarmed aloft like an able-bodied baboon, begged Reade to shift over and make room on his tiny foothold, unslung the telescope and handed it over, all this with no more gasping than if he had walked up one pair of stairs. Reade using a telescope from the masthead was a sight to turn a landsman pale: he had to pull the tubes right out, twist his one arm through the shrouds, set the small end to his eye and bring all into focus by a steady pressure. Norton was used to it however and he only said, 'Let's have a go, mate, when you've done: don't be all bloody night.'
Reade's reply was a hail as loud as his breaking voice could make it. 'On deck, there. On deck. Mr Grainger, sir. Right on the beam. Captain Pullings is trying to tow the Alastor's launch. Launch all mangled: something cruel. They are bailing: in a bad way. Captain is pulling, and I can make out Bonden, but... '
The rest was drowned in the vehement cry of all hands and the launching of boats regardless of new paint not yet dry.
The Alastor's launch and the skiff came alongside under the larboard chains, Bonden mechanically hooked on; and as hands ran down with the man-ropes Pullings came scrambling aft to help his Captain go aboard. 'Where is the Doctor?' asked Jack, looking up at the rail.
'He's ashore, sir, and has been these five or six days: he sent to say he was a-naturalizing in the mountains.'
'Very good,' said Jack, strangely disappointed, aware of an emptiness. He managed to get up the side with a shove, but only just. Even in his present state he loved his ship and he was heartily glad to be alive and aboard her again, but he could not cope with the quarterdeck's awed congratulations nor with the open amazement of all hands before the mast. He went as steadily as he could down the companion ladder and to his cabin, and when he had drunk four pints of water - more, he thought vaguely, would amount to that excess so fatal to cows, horses and sheep - he looked at Plaice and Ben in their hammocks, washed the filth from his person, threw off his clothes, ate six eggs with soft-tack, followed by a whole water-melon, and stretched out on his cot, his eyes closing as his head went down.
A little after sunset he climbed up from a bottomless sleep, in a ship as silent as the grave, the light fading fast. He gathered himself into the present, collecting the immediate past, thanked God for his delivery, and then said, 'But what's amiss? Am I really here and alive?' He moved, feeling himself: the weakness was authentic, so was his gummed-up, itching eye and his unshaven face. So was his consuming thirst. 'Ahoy, there,' he called, but without much conviction.
'Sir?' cried Grimble, Killick's mate.
'Light along a jug of water, just tinged with wine.' And when he had drained it he asked, gasping, 'Why is the ship so quiet? No bells, Is anyone dead?'
'No, sir. But Captain Pullings said any sod as woke you should have a hundred lashes.'
Jack nodded and said, 'Let me have some warm water, and pass the word for Padeen and the Doctor's young man.'
They came, but a grim, bent Killick came hobbling in with them and for a moment Jack thought he would have to top it the Tartar, which he could hardly bear: he had underestimated their kindness, however, for without any wrangling they divided the task. Padeen, the acknowledged surgical dresser, very gently removed the soaking
