The Nutmeg of Consolation Read Free Page A

down the hillside at the height of the typhoon - a mass in which some trees and bushes were still growing happily, others withering as they stood - across the dry bed of the watercourse the torrent had scooped out, providing them with a commodious building-slip, and out along the strand, almost to the place where the precious wreck had come ashore. The whole midshipmen's berth was there, all standing silent in the roar of the surf: two master's mates, the one midshipman proper (the other had been drowned), the two youngsters, the Captain's clerk and the assistant surgeon. Like the other officers they had changed out of their fine Sunday clothes; they were now in ragged trousers or breeches undone at the knees: some had no shirts to their nut-brown backs: no shoes of course: a poverty-stricken, hungry group, though cheerful.
    'Should you like to see my turtle, sir?' cried Reade from a hundred yards or more. His voice had not yet broken and it carried high above the sea's growl and thunder.
    'Your turtle, Mr Reade?' asked Jack, coming nearer.
    'Oh yes, sir. I saw him first.'
    In the Captain's presence Seymour and Bennett, the tall young master's mates who had turned the turtle, could do no more than exchange a look, but Reade, observing it, added, 'Of course, sir, the others helped a little.'
    They gazed for a while at the pitiful flippers swimming powerfully in the air. 'What do you think is wrong with the turtle, Mr Richardson?' asked Jack again.
    'I can hardly put my finger on it, sir,' said Richardson, 'but there is something about his mouth I do not quite like.'
    'The Doctor will set us all right,' said Jack, raising his voice over a triple crash of breakers: the ebb was well under way, and the rip-tide, combined with the current, was cutting the steady swell off the point into a series of chaotic cross-seas.
    'He is the green turtle, sure,' said Stephen equally loud in spite of his aching head but in quite a different pitch, higher, disagreeably metallic. 'And a very fine green turtle: two hundredweight, I should say. But he is a male, and of course his face is displeasing - he would be rejected on the London market - he would never do for an alderman.'
    'But is he edible, sir? Can he be ate? He ain't unwholesome? He is not like the soft purple fish you made us throw away?'
    'Oh, he may be a little coarse, but he will do you no harm. If you have any doubts, and Heaven knows I am not infallible, you may desire Mr Reade to eat some first and then watch him for a few hours. But in any event, I do beg you will take the animal's head off directly. I hate seeing them strive and suffer. I remember one ship where they had scores made fast on deck, and the creatures' eyes were red as cherries, unwatered by the sea. A friend and I went round sponging them.'
    Reade and Harper ran up to the camp for the carpenter's broad axe. Aubrey and Maturin walked back along the hard-beaten sand to the building-slip. 'That is a very horrid tide-race,' observed Jack, nodding out to sea: and then, 'Do you know, I very nearly said a good thing just now, about your cock and hen turtles. It was on the lines of sauce - sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander, you understand. But it would not quite take shape.'
    'Perhaps, my dear, it was just as well. A facetious lieutenant is good company, if he happens to be endowed with wit; a facetious commander among his equals, perhaps; but may not the post-captain who sets the quarterdeck in a roar conceivably lose some of his Jovian authority? Did Nelson crack jokes, at all?'
    'I never heard him, to be sure. He was nearly always cheerful, nearly always smiling - he once said to me "May I trouble you for the salt, sir?" in such a kind way that it was far better than wit. But I do not remember him making downright jokes. Perhaps I shall save my good things, when they happen, for you and Sophie.'
    They walked along in silence, Stephen regretting his unkind words, his remorse much increased by the mildness of