the harbour without the least precaution - had no more than half a cargo each, many of the negroes had been aboard since Old Calabar, and some were in a bad way. Now, however, the two Dutchmen and the Dane had been sent off with prize-crews to Freetown, and the two-deckers, together with the slow, heavy-sailing Thames and the Aumra, had weighed by night, standing out to sea, well out beyond even the highest tree's horizon, to head eastward, to the Bight of Benin, thus setting the Commodore's plan in motion. In the morning those on the Bellona's quarterdeck could make out the Laurel's humble topsails on the larboard beam, and the Laurel was in touch with the inshore brigs; all was in train; the ship settled back into ordinary daily life, and Stephen was able to arrange his specimens in some sort of order, skin his birds, and label everything before sheer quantity (it had been a rich expedition) overwhelmed fallible memory. In all this he had John Square's informed and valuable help; but when, after dinner, he sat down to the task of writing an exact account he was alone. Usually, once he had sunk into the proper mood and had marshalled all his facts he wrote quite fast; but now, although the picture of that blessed river, the clear strand between the water and the forest, and a fishing vulture overhead was exactly present in his mind, names, time of day and the sequence of events were less clear by far; and they would not easily yield to what mental effort he could bring to bear. Languor: muscular pain: incipient headache: stupidity.
He had drunk a couple of glasses of wine at dinner and a cup of coffee after, and on the supposition that this one cup had not been enough to counteract the meal he went into the great cabin, where Jack Aubrey was busy at his desk, a pot beside him.
Two more cups did produce a laboured paragraph or two, but this was nothing like the happy spontaneous flow that had been running through his head the day before. A modest ball of coca-leaves (he was husbanding his store) scarcely helped his prose but after a while it did prompt him to go to his looking-glass and put out his tongue. Alas, it was scarlet, as he had half suspected; and his eyes, though bright, had a ferrety look round the edges, while his lips might have been rouged. He felt his pulse: quick and full. He took his bodily temperature with Fahrenheit's thermometer: a little above a hundred, scarcely more than the surrounding air. He reflected for a while and then went below, where he found Mr Smith rolling pills in the dispensary. 'Mr Smith,' he said, 'in Bridgetown I make no doubt you saw many cases of the yellow fever.'
'Oh yes, sir,' said Smith. 'It was our chief killer. The young officers looked to it for promotion. They called it the black vomit, or sometimes yellow jack.'
'Would you say that there was a facies febris markedly typical of the disease?'
'Yes indeed, sir: more so than in almost any other.'
'Then be so good as to come with me when you have finished that board of pills, till I bring you to a good light.'
No light could have been better than the open gun-port by which they stood, nor could any young medical man have been more convincing than Mr Smith. After he had looked at Stephen with the closest, most objective attention he quite naturally assumed the physician's liberty, raising his eyelids, desiring him to open his mouth, taking his carotid pulse, and asking the relevant personal questions. At length, looking very grave, he said 'With all the reserves due to my fallibility and relative inexperience, sir, I should say that with one exception you have all the characteristics of a patient in the first stadium of the yellow fever; but I pray I may be mistaken.'
'Thank you for your candour, Mr Smith: what is the exception?'
'The visible anxiety and the strongly-felt oppression about the praecordia, which has never been absent in any of the cases I have seen, and which, in Barbados, is held to be most significant.'
'Perhaps you have never examined a patient fortified by coca, that stoical plant,' said Stephen inwardly, and aloud 'In spite of that absence, Mr Smith, we will treat the indisposition as a case of nascent yellow fever, and I shall dose myself accordingly. Have we any calumba root left?'
'I doubt it, sir.'
'Then the radix serpentariae Virginianae will answer very well. I shall also take a large quantity of bark. And should the disease declare itself, Mr Smith, I formally direct that there should be no bleeding in this case, and no purging whatsoever: there is no plethora. As much warm water just tinged with coffee may be exhibited - as much as possible without gross discomfort. And sponging, mere sponging - no foolish affusion - would be beneficial at the height of the feverish stadium. Do you undertake to follow my direction, William Smith?'
'Yes, sir.' He was about to add something, but thought better of it.
'Otherwise, a dim light with what quiet a man-of-war at sea can provide, and my pouch of coca-leaves beside me is all I wish. In spite of the estimable Dr Lind and several others I do not believe the yellow fever to be infectious. But rather than distress my shipmates I shall live in my cabin on the orlop for the time being. The little booth is in moderately good order, but I should be obliged if you would have it swept to some extent - not swabbed and flogged more or less dry, but swept: for the great shining brown West African cockroach, though interesting as an individual, grows tiresome in large numbers; and I fear they are already breeding with us.'
'Very well, sir. I shall come back as soon as the cabin is ready and aired.'
Left to himself Stephen made his slow way to the empty wardroom and sat there beside the rudder-head, gazing astern; for though this deck was denied a stern-gallery it did possess a noble breadth of windows directly overhanging the white turmoil of the Bellona's wake - nothing more hypnotic, and for a while his mind sank into a familiar dreamy vagueness before returning to distinct sequential thought.
The yellow jack was indeed a killer: it was difficult to fix upon any satisfactory figure, though he had heard wellauthenticated accounts of a mortality amounting to eighty in a hundred. As for material affairs, he had made what Mr Lawrence described as a cast-iron will' before leaving England, with some very solid gentlemen as trustees to look after Diana, Brigid, Clarissa and the others: while as for the less tangible side, his experience as a physician had shown him that all other things being equal patients who gave in, either from terror or pain or a want of spirit, want of appetite for life, did not survive, whereas those with an urgent desire to live without the loss of so much as an hour - those with an enchanting daughter, an ample fortune, a collection of almost certainly unknown phanerogams... 'What is it?' he cried.
'Commodore's compliments, sir,' said a red-haired youngster, so young that he was still shedding teeth, 'and would be happy to see the Doctor at his leisure.'
'My duty to the Commodore,' replied Stephen mechanically, 'and shall wait upon him directly.' He sat on for a few minutes and then stood up, dusted himself, straightened his wig and neckcloth and slowly climbed the ladder to the quarterdeck and so aft, his knees feeling strangely weak.
'There you are, Stephen,' cried Jack, while Tom Pullings leapt to his feet and set him a chair, 'how good of you to come so soon. Tom and I wanted you to look over this statement of our proceedings since arriving on the station. Perhaps you could throw in some elegant turns of phrase. Mr Adams writes a capital hand, but he is no better than we are, at your elegant turn of phrase.'
