21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey Read Free

” - for Horatio Hanson was acting-master of the ship – “ I fear you have been waiting. I never heard you.”
    “ Not at all, sir: it was only that Dr Jacob feared you might have overlooked your appointment.” At this moment a tiny chime could be heard in the bosom of both, for each possessed wonderfully accurate repeating watches, the one a replacement of the minute timepiece that Stephen had given to Christine, the other Prince William’ s parting gift to his son. “ God love us all, and may I be forgiven,” cried Stephen, leaping up. “It is half three - I am late.”
    “Mind your step, sir,” said Hanson, steadying him. “ It is blowing up uncommon stiff from the west-north-west - has veered three points in half an hour, and Ringle is reefing hard.”
    They made their way forward to the fairly well-lit and now vacant space in the sick -berth which the surgeons reserved for anatomizing – for the past few days they had been busy on a singular, probably undescribed dolphin; and as they carefully pared away, separated and described the muscular part s so they gave them to the cook’ s mates, standing there with buckets. The bones they kept for themselves. But today they had been obliged to stop. The frigate’ s motion was too great, and in spite of their skill and care their cutting was by no means accurate with the deck so very much awash.
    “ We are making ready to lie to, sir,” said Hanson in his ear. “ And the Captain says he will pass the word when it is fit for you to come on deck. In the mean time he desires you and Dr Jacob will stand by to deal with casualties.”
    The first, to his own infinite shame, was H arding, the senior lieutenant – a straightforward fibula and tibia, which they very soon splinted and bound up: then came the usual series of bumps and bruises, diminishing as the furious gust blew itself out and ending with the Captain’ s compliments brought by Awkward Davies, and if now they chose to come on deck they would see ‘ a sight like a madhouse’ s washing-day – God love us — what rigging we have is fair stuffed, stuffed , with fucking poll-parrots and God knows what. Which I am to bring you up and cop three hundred lashes if you fall.’
    Stephen had of course heard of the South American parrots and he had often seen their little troops, but only from a distance, identifiable from their manner of flight and from their brilliant colour, so very unlike the general drabness of the Strait; and so eager was he to reach the first, entangled in the leeward shrouds, that he would certainly have go ne over the side but for Davies’ powerful restraining hand. And it was not only parakeets, though they of course were the most obvious and the most eagerly coveted by hands, who were perfectly accustomed to the African race: even more spectacular and even more wounding were the many kinds of minute birds, including Stephen’ s Tierra del Fuegian honey-sucker, that had been dashed against the rigging or the remaining sails with such force that in spite of their lightness they were quite shattered and as the blast died away, deck, lighter rigging and scuppers were jewelled all over with their pitiful but still brilliant fragments. Some of the more solid birds, particularly the parakeets and some red-crested woodpeckers, could be revived and patched to some degree, but upon the whole it was a most dispiriting task, the more so since there was very little hope of identification in most cases. Still Stephen, seconded by his mate, did what they could in the way of retrieval, mostly of skins (exceptionally difficult on that scale) and tiny bones: they took quantities of notes and they did a little something to increase their knowledge of this almost untouched avifauna.
    For two and even three days after that furious blast the waters of the Strait remained strikingly turbulent, particularly in the Narrows, and great beds of kelp, torn loose from their basis, floated on every hand,