When they were aboard and in the cabin, Stephen went on, 'And I was so pleased with what Dr. Evans told me about young Herapath's medical studies - highly gifted -and the success of his book.'
'Young Herapath? Yes, decent creature indeed: but no mechanical power known to science could ever make a seaman out of him - Lord above,' he cried over an enormous peal of thunder, the cabin lit through and through by lightning just overhead, and the literal crash of rain on the deck, 'those poor souls are in for a ducking.'
The prodigious downpour was so monstrously thick that one could hardly breathe in the open; and after ten minutes naked figures could be seen flitting through the deluge, opening the inlets that would replenish the butts far below with a water as clean and pure as the heavens could provide. All this, however, angered and terrified the cats more than anything that had gone before: the more austere of the two, the long-legged animal with an apricot-coloured belly, flung herself into Stephen's unwilling lap, and could not be comforted.
It was inconceivable that the deluge should last till dawn - the sky could not hold so much - but it did, leaving them stunned, deafened, amazed at the light of day to eastward and the familiar sails of Ringle making three or even four knots towards them, the tiny breeze right aft. Incomprehensibly the deck had become littered, even covered in places, with strange forms of deep-sea life, presumably sucked up by some remote series of waterspouts and liberated here.
But Jack Aubrey was having absolutely none of them: Surprise's only care, and Ringle's too, was to get out of this odious part of the sea without a moment's pause - no breakfast, even, until they were well under way with clear decks, rigging free of seaweed, flying squids and various monsters - Stephen had to content himself with pocketing the less gelatinous creatures and hurrying them below before his stony-faced captain had him forcibly removed.
Still, breakfast there was, in time - at least for those not labouring at the pumps, shooting out thick jets of water on either side - when humanity returned to Captain Aubrey's face and Stephen asked him timidly 'did he think they were out of the doldrums yet?'
'I hope so, I'm sure,' said Jack. 'When the belt - the convergence - is very narrow and concentrated as I think this one was, it sometimes ends in a furious tantrum like this, as who should say...' Meeting the cats' steady, attentive gaze, he changed his mind and finished ''Fare you well, ye Spanish ladies'. Killick, Killick there.'
'Sir?'
'Pass the word for Poll Skeeping. Forgive me, Stephen, I trespass upon your ground.'
'Sir?' said Poll Skeeping, tying on a new apron.
'Be so good as to remove those cats. They know perfectly well that they are not allowed in the cabin.'
They did, indeed, and suffered themselves to be carried away, one in each hand, limp, meek, with lowered eyes.
'How glad I was to see Ringle,' said Stephen after a while.
'So was I, by God: she is only a little thing; and at times the weather was close on as heavy as weather comes.'
'Would it be improper, unlucky, to ask where we are? I mean, just a very vague approximation.'
'After taking the sun's height at noon, which I think we shall achieve, I hope to be able to tell you in rather finer limits than that: but even now I shall hazard the guess that by tomorrow morning we shall be in the steady south-east trades, not much above a week's sailing from Rio, according to how strong they prove.'
'Good, good: very good. You ease my mind: but tell me, Jack - for I see that in spite of a sleepless night you are eager to be up and about, inspecting booms, gunwales, lifts... Pray tell me when you are inclined to sit down quietly and talk about the less physical aspects of our affair.'
Jack looked at him thoughtfully, revolving the less physical aspects: then smiling he said, 'Although I have a very good first lieutenant, there are many things aloft that I should not rest easy without seeing. And below too, of course. Let us say after dinner, over a private pot of coffee.'
Jack Aubrey pushed back his chair, loosened his waistcoat, and said, 'I had no idea I was so hungry: I am afraid I must have eaten like an ogre.'
Killick could be seen to smile: Jack's appetite always pleased him - his one deviation into amiability.
'Oh come,' said Maturin. 'Six mutton chops is not at all excessive in a man of your weight: an abstemious ogre would call it moderation. Those dear Americans said that the animal came from some favoured state: indeed it was both succulent and tender.'
They toyed with an elderly Essex cheese, much helped by burgundy; and Jack, recalled to a sense of his duty, asked whether Stephen's inspection had been as satisfactory as his own.
'It was pretty well, I thank you: not quite as good, since three recent fractures will have to be reset. But upon the whole I cannot complain. They were tumbled about, to be sure; yet most - not that there are many in the sick-berth at present - withstood the tumbling and the uneasy motion of the ship very well. I have often noticed that a prolonged and violent blow tends to dispel the megrims; and it may well be that the visible approach of death, the immediate horror of the last, may restore a virtuous equilibrium.'
'Killick,' called Jack. 'Light along the coffee, there.'
It took a little longer than usual and Killick - the door held by his mate Grimble - entered crabwise - the great pot and its cups flanked by a decanter. 'With Delaware's compliments, sir: Dutch schnapps.'
'They have won again,' said Jack, shaking his head. 'How I hope that we gave them something, at least.'
'I did have half a carboy of tincture of hogweed conveyed into their boat,' said Stephen in a doubtful voice. 'It was the best hogweed,' he added, with even less certainty.
'Well, may it prosper them,' said Jack. 'Though they are little better than republicans and democrats, may it prosper them.'
'Amen,' said Stephen, and they fell to drinking alternate sips.
'You are in the moon, brother,' said Jack after a while. 'What are you thinking about?'
