Clarissa Oakes Read Free Page B

never noticed.'
       Six bells.
       'Will I tell you something more cheerful?' asked Stephen.
       'Please do,' said Jack, looking up from his queue with that singularly sweet smile Stephen had known from their earliest acquaintance.
       'Two of our patients have been to the two islands you mean to pass. That is to say Philips has been to Norfolk Island and Owen has been to Easter Island. Philips knew the place before it was abandoned as a penal station, and he knew it extremely well, having spent—I believe Martin said a year, for it was to him that Philips spoke about the place—in any event a great while after the ship to which he belonged was wrecked. I forget her name: a frigate.'
       'That must have been the Sirius , Captain Hunt, heaved on to a coral reef by the swell in the year ninety, much as we were so very nearly heaved on to the rocks of Inaccessible on the way out. Lord, I have never been so terrified in my life. Was you not terrified, Stephen?'
       'I was not. I do not suppose there is my equal for courage in the service: but then, you recall, I was downstairs, playing chess with poor Fox, and knew nothing of it until we were delivered. But as I was saying, Martin was delighted to hear that the mutton-birds would be there by now. He loves a petrel even more than I do; and the mutton-bird, my dear, belongs to that interesting group. He very much hopes that we may go ashore.'
       'Certainly. I should be happy to oblige him, if landing is possible: sometimes the surf runs very high, by all accounts. I shall have a word with Philips; and I shall ask Owen to tell me all he knows about Easter Island. If this breeze holds, we should raise Mount Pitt on Norfolk tomorrow morning.'
       'I hope we shall be able to go ashore. Apart from anything else there is the famous Norfolk Island pine.'
       'Alas, I am afraid it was exploded years ago. The enormous great spars would not stand even a moderate strain.'
       'To be sure: I remember Mr Seppings reading us an excellent paper at Somerset House. But what I really meant was that so prodigious and curious a vegetable as the Norfolk pine may well harbour equally prodigious and curious beetles, as little known to the world in general as their host.'
       'Speaking of Martin,' said Jack, who did not give a pinch of snuff for beetles, however singular, 'I thought of him twice yesterday. Once because while I was going through the mass of estate-papers with Adams, trying to get them in some kind of order—they came from seven different lawyers after I had paid off my father's mortgages, and the children had tumbled them about to get at the stamps—he pointed out that I had three advowsons and part of a fourth, with the right of presenting every third turn. I wondered whether they would interest Martin.'
       'Are they of any value?'
       'I have no idea. When I was a boy, Parson Russell of Woolcombe kept his carriage; but then he had private means and he had married a wife with a handsome dowry. I have no notion of the others, except that the vicarage at Compton was a sad shabby little place. I went to sea when I was no bigger than Reade, you know, and hardly ever went back. I had hoped that Withers' general statement of the position would reach me in Sydney: that would give all the details, I am sure.'
       'What was the second circumstance that brought Martin to your mind?'
       'I was restringing my fiddle when it occurred to me that love of music and the ability to play well had nothing to do with character: neither here nor there, if you follow me. Martin's two Oxford friends, Standish and Paulton, were perfect examples. Standish played better than any amateur I had ever heard, but he was not really quite the thing, you know. I do not say that because he was perpetually seasick or because he ratted on us; nor do I mean he was wicked; but he was not quite the thing. Whereas John Paulton, who played even better, was the kind of man you could sail round