spiritual resolution to grope for it under his clothes. He accepted gratefully, fumbling across the llama's neck for the proffered quid.
It had not been in his cheek five minutes before the extremity, the almost mortal extremity of fatigue died away. In ten minutes he was perfectly capable of reaching his own supply of leaves and ash, and of rearranging himself with what small degree of physical comfort the space allowed. He also felt a certain grateful warmth from the llama's head; but quite apart from that, mental comfort and a sense of divorce from time and immediate contingencies were already settling in his mind.
They talked a little, or rather shouted, about the desirability of a thick drift of snow across the entrance. Yet the steadily increasing cold made the effort of shouting too great and each relapsed into a meditative silence, carefully spreading what clothes they had over the whole of their persons, particularly ears, noses, fingers. What passed for time or at least a kind of duration no doubt went on. Sleep in these circumstances seemed wholly out of the question, even if it had not been for the effect of coca-leaves, stronger by far than any coffee known to man, above all in the present heavy and steadily repeated doses.
Yet at some remote given point Stephen's waking mind distinctly perceived the minute voice of the watch deep in his bosom striking five and then the half. 'Can this be?' he asked, and feeling deep within his bosom he pressed the repeating knob. Five said the watch again, and then the shriller half: at the same moment he realized that the wind had stopped; that the llama's head and neck were cold, the creature already stiff; that Eduardo was breathing deep; that his own leg, no longer covered by the poncho these many hours, had no sensibility whatsoever; and that the mouth of the cleft, now almost entirely closed by a great deal of fresh snow, had a line of light at the top.
'Eduardo,' he called, when he had digested all these things and arranged them in order, 'Eduardo, God and Mary be with you: it is dawn, and the cold is less.'
Eduardo woke at once and with a clearer mind by far. He blessed God, gathered himself, writhed round the dead llama, pushed the loose-packed snow away and called back, 'The pass is now swept quite clear, and there is Tupec coming down, with two other men.' He pulled the poor beast away. Light came flooding in and Stephen looked at his morbid leg.
'Eduardo, my dear,' he said hesitantly, after a careful examination, 'I grieve to tell you that my leg is deeply frostbitten. If I am fortunate I may lose no more than some toes; but even in that case I cannot do more than creep. Pray pass me a handful of snow.'
As he chafed the pallid leg and the ominously blueing foot with snow Eduardo agreed. 'But,' he said, 'pray do not take it to heart. Many of us have lost toes on the puna without great harm; and as for your reaching Arica, why, never concern yourself at all. You shall have a Peruvian chair. I shall send down to the village and you will travel like Pachacutic Inca himself, cross the bridge, the hills and the valleys in a Peruvian chair.'
Chapter Ten
At seven bells in the forenoon watch the Surprise, under topsails alone, heaved to: the officers began to assemble on the quarterdeck, the midshipmen on the gangway, all carrying their quadrants or sextants, for the sun was approaching the meridian, and they were to take his altitude at the moment he crossed it, thereby finding just how far south of the equator they were at noon. To the landsman, to the mere superficial observer, this might have seemed a work of supererogation, since clear on her larboard bow rose the headland of Punta Angeles, the western extremity of Valparaiso bay, whose position had been laid down with the utmost accuracy time out of mind, while in the brilliantly clear air miles of the great Cordillera could be seen, the peak of Aconcagua a perfect compass-bearing to the north-east; but as far as Jack Aubrey was concerned this was neither here nor there. He liked to run a man-of-war as men-of-war had always been run, with the ship's day beginning at noon; and this was a particularly important day, the last of the month and the first on which he could hope to find Stephen Maturin in Valparaiso. He therefore wished nothing to be done that might break the established pattern or bring ill-luck. It was true that a few years ago some wild enthusiast, a Whiggish civilian no doubt, had decreed that day should start at midnight; but Jack, though a scientific, forward-looking officer, agreed with many of his fellow- captains in giving this foolish innovation no countenance whatsoever: besides, it had taken him years to persuade Stephen that nautical days really did start at noon, and he did not want his imperfect conviction to be shaken in any way at all. Then again, once this last day of the month had in fact begun, he meant to carry out some physical measurements for his friend the polymath Alexander Humboldt, in whose penguin-filled cold northern current the ship was now swimming.
Silence fore and aft: anxious peering through many an eyepiece. Jack brought his own sun down three times to the fine firm horizon, and on the third it was a trifle below the second, which had been the true altitude. He noted the angle, and turning he found Tom Pullings, who in this anomalous ship played many parts as well as that of first lieutenant, standing there bare-headed beside him. 'Noon and thirty-three degrees south, sir, if you please,' said Tom.
'Very good, Captain Pullings,' replied Jack. 'Make it twelve.'
Pullings turned to Norton, the mate of the watch, and said, 'Make it twelve,' in a strong, hieratic voice. Norton, with equal gravity, hailed the quartermaster, not three feet away, 'Strike eight bells and turn the glass.' The four double strokes rang out, and with the last still in the air, Pullings, directing his words to the bosun, roared, 'Pipe to dinner.'
The lions at the Tower of London made a prodigious and indeed a shocking din on being fed, but theirs was a kittenish mewling compared with that of the Surprise; besides, the lions were rarely provided with mess-kids upon which the seamen beat with such zeal, this being Thursday, a salt-pork day, and one upon which an extraordinary plum-duff was to be served out in honour of the birthday of Lord Melville, the brother of Captain Aubrey's particular friend Heneage Dundas and First Lord of the Admiralty at the time of Jack's reinstatement.
The roaring was so usual that Jack barely noticed it, but the ensuing quietness did strike his mind. The Surprise was not one of those discontented spit-and-polish ships in which men were not allowed to speak on duty, for not only would this have been abhorrent to Jack Aubrey's feelings and dead contrary to his idea of command ('a happy ship is your only right hard-fighting ship') but with such a ship's company it would not have answered for a moment, and except at times of strong activity there was always a steady low hum of talk on deck. At present the temporary silence made the almost deserted deck seem still more empty; and Jack, addressing Adams, his clerk and factotum in the intellectual line, lowered his voice. 'Mr Adams,' he said, 'when we have taken the temperatures and the salinity, we might try a sounding. With the two headlands we have a capital triangle, and I should like to know what the bottom is like at this point, if our line can reach it. Once that is done we will take the ship a little farther in and you can carry on in the cutter, just as though you were calling for mail or the like. I will give you the addresses where the Doctor may be found, and if he is at either you will bring him off directly. But with the utmost discretion, Mr Adams. The utmost discretion, too, in asking the way. The utmost discretion is called for in this case: that is why I do not take her in and lie in the road or the port itself. Things may come to that or to some system of signalling; but how charming it would be if we could pluck him off the shore right away.' - lowering his voice still farther - 'You will not repeat it, but there appears to be some question of a high-placed very furious husband - legal proceedings - every kind of unpleasantness, you understand me.'
The quietness lasted throughout the scientific observations and during the time the hands ate their dinner and
