Read Online Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O’Brian - Free Book Online Page B

who took pleasure in measuring things and pacing out distances and who, though nearly sixty, still had quite a good memory. He was still talking, though rather hoarse by now, and Stephen was still questioning him, when Martin came down for the evening doses and dressings.
       'How I long to see Easter Island,' said Stephen to him. 'Owen here has been telling me more about the place. Do you remember how far off it is?'
       'I believe the Captain said five thousand miles; but really, the bottle passed with such insistence after the ceremony that I am scarcely to be relied upon, ha, ha, ha.'
       Padeen of course was present, as loblolly-boy: he had been in a pitiful state of anxiety ever since the cutter was sighted, and now as they all walked into the dispensary he bent to whisper in Stephen's ear, 'For the Mother of God, your honour will never forget me, I beg and beseech.' 'I will not, Padeen, upon my soul: I have the Captain's word itself,' said Stephen, and partly by way of reassuring him he went on in an ordinary tone to Martin, 'How did the service go? Well, I hope?'
       'Oh yes, I thank you. Apart from the pitching, which nearly had us over twice, it might have been a private wedding in a drawing-room. The Captain gave away the bride very properly; the armourer had made a ring out of a guinea piece; all the officers were present and everything was entered in the log and signed. The bride startled me by appearing in a scarlet dress, but she thanked me very prettily when I offered my congratulations afterwards.'
       'Had you not seen her before?'
       'Certainly I had. I went forward earlier in the day to speak to her about the nature of the ceremony and to make sure she understood it—I had supposed she was quite a different kind of woman, barely literate . . . She was still wearing the clothes she had come aboard in, and I must say that although she looked very well as a bride, she looked far better as a boy. Her slight but not unattractive form gave me if not an understanding of paederasty then something not unlike it.'
       Stephen was surprised. He had never heard Martin make such an unreserved and almost licentious observation: perhaps he was now more a medical man than a parson. And perhaps, Stephen reflected as they rolled their pills and Padeen wound the bandages, this was one of the effects of bringing a woman into a celibate community. He was no chemist, but some of his friends were and he had seen a Swedish savant let a single catalysing drop fall into a clear untroubled liquid that instantly grew turbid, separated, and threw down fire-red crystals.
       'Come,' said Martin. 'We must not be too late. There are to be great doings on the forecastle. Jack's Alive and hornpipes, of course, and some of the old dances, like Cuckolds All Awry and An Old Man's a Bed Full of Bones . We used to dance them when I was at school.'
       'What could be more suitable?' said Stephen.

    The Surprise had always been a tuneful ship and much given to dancing, but never to such a degree as this evening, when the crowded forecastle saw the ranks of country-dancers advance, retreat and caper in perfect time despite the swell, while fiddles, horns, Jew's harps and fifes played with barely a pause on the bitts and even perched on the windward cathead. Hornpipes, with several dancing at once, each encouraged by his own division; jigs; the strange evolutions of the Orkney-men, and their rhythmic howls.
       'They are enjoying themselves, sir,' said Pullings.
       'Let them gather their peasecods while they may,' said Jack. 'Old Monday he's a-dying. They will have a ducking before we muster the watch.' They both glanced up through the cloud of sails at the thickening sky—barely a star showing through. 'But I am just as glad of it. That damned cutter will throw up another blue light in a minute, but we shall not be able to see this one either.'
       Indeed, as the current hornpipe was ending in feats of extraordinary