The Surgeon’s Mate. Patrick O’Brian
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threat. And as he predicted there was fog on the Middle Bank. When Stephen came on deck he saw it a great way off as a smooth low curve on the northern horizon, like distant land: he also saw that there were at least four ships scattered about the sea, some no great way from the packet and moving slowly on the same northward course. For an instant it seemed to him that Mr Johnson had mobilized the greater part of the United States Navy and that the packet was surrounded; but then he noticed the haphazard appearance of the ships in question, the absence of gunports, the presence of a lateen on the mizzenmast, and although he was no great seaman he was convinced that these were not men-of-war. In any case no one seemed at all concerned – the Diligence was even exchanging civilities with the nearest – while Jack and Mr Dalgleish and the bosun were high in the rigging, like a group of apes, intent upon some immediate purpose of their own. ‘What is Captain Aubrey doing up there?’ he asked the second mate.
‘They are changing the beckets for grommets,’ said the second mate. ‘We should be man-of-war fashion from stem to stern, if Captain Aubrey had his way.’
‘He must take care of his arm. Shirtsleeves is madness in this biting cold: I have a mind to call out. However … Those – vessels over there, sir: a curious rig, is it not?’
‘They are bankers, sir, bankers out of Portugal: terranovas, as we call them. You will see plenty more of them on the bank. If you can see anything at all: it looks mighty thick over there, as the Owner said.’
‘Terranovas. I have heard of them. And that, I suppose, is the Newfoundland itself ?’
‘Not exactly, sir. That is the bank; or rather the fog over the bank. But being there is nearly always a fog over the bank, we sometimes call the fog the bank, if you understand me.’ The second mate had a low opinion of Dr Maturin’s understanding – a man capable of confusing bonnets and drabblers could hardly be expected to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, chalk from cheese – but he was a good-hearted youth and he answered Stephen’s questions kindly: why the fog? why did it not blow away in this wind? why did the Portuguese congregate in it? In the simplest words he could find he explained that the Portuguese went where the cod were, and this year there were even more cod on the Middle Bank than on the Saint Pierre or even the Grand Bank itself: the Doctor knew what a cod was? A gurt fish with a barbel under its chin, that loved almost any bait you could name, but squid and caplin most. The Papists were obliged to eat it, dried and salted, on Fridays and all through Lent; they went to Hell else. That was why the Spanish and the Portuguese, and the French too in time of peace, came to the Banks every year: they being Papists, upon the whole. But there were Blue-Noses and Newfoundlanders too. They came where the cod were, and the cod were on the Banks, where the bottom of the sea rose up quite sudden, sometimes to fifteen fathom, no more – the second mate had seen ice-mountains grounded on them many a time – but usually say forty or fifty fathom. And the Portuguee would anchor and send away his little dories with a couple of men in them to fish with the cod-line. As a boy the second mate had been out with his uncle, a Blue-Nose from Halifax, and he had caught four hundred and seventy-nine codfish in eleven hours, some of them fifty pounds in weight. As to the fog, it was caused by the cold Labrador current setting south, then rising over the banks and meeting the warm air of the Gulf Stream – the Doctor had heard tell of the Gulf Stream? – and so brewing up a fog almost continual. Some days you would say the whole sea was steaming like a pot, it brewed so fast: and that was why the wind did not blow it away – it was brewed afresh continual. To be sure, there were some times in the year when the current set more easterly, and there was no fog; it might be clear as clear for days or even weeks; but for all that you always knew where the Banks were, even without taking soundings, because of the birds. There were always birds, particular birds, on the Banks, thick or clear.
‘What kind of birds?’ asked Stephen.
‘Murres, dovekies, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, sheerwaters, fulmars, skuas, all sorts of gulls, puffins, penguins –’
‘Penguins, my dear sir?’ cried Stephen.
‘That’s right, Doctor. A very old-fashioned bird, that can’t fly but only swim. Some call them garefowl, but we call them penguins. It stands to reason, if a bird can’t fly, it is a penguin: ask any whaler that has been far south.’
‘Does it stand about a yard high – black and white like a prodigious razorbill?’
‘That’s the very bird, sir; but it has a white patch between its bill and its eye.’
Without the shadow of a doubt this was the Alca impennis of Linnaeus, the Great Auk of some vulgar authors, a bird Stephen had longed to see all his life, a bird grown so rare that none of his correspondents but Corvisart had ever seen a specimen; and Corvisart was somewhat given to lying. ‘And have you indeed seen your penguin, sir?’ he asked.
‘God love you, many and many a time,’ said the young man, laughing. ‘There is an island up that away,’ – nodding towards Newfoundland – ‘where they breed by wholesale, and my uncle the Blue-Nose used to go there when he was fishing the Grand Bank. I went with him once, and we knocked them on the head by the score. It would have made you laugh, to see them standing there like ninepins, to be bowled over. We cut them up for bait, and ate the eggs.’
‘Blue-nosed hell-hound,’ said Stephen inwardly, ‘Goth, Vandal, Hun.’ Aloud, and with as much amenity as he could summon, he asked, ‘Is there any likelihood of seeing one on this bank?’
‘I dare say there is, Doctor, if you keep a sharp lookout. Do they interest you? I will lend you my glass.’
Stephen kept a sharp lookout, in spite of the cold that misted his telescope and deadened his blue extremities; and by the time the packet glided into the mist on the southern edge of the bank, far, far ahead of the schooners, he had seen not only murres and dovekies, but two great auks. The mist thickened; the Diligence was completely hidden from her pursuers; Mr Dalgleish took in his kites, royals, topgallants, courses, everything but the foretopsail lowered on the cap and a jib, just enough to steer by in that swirling obscurity; evening came on, and still Stephen stood there, shivering, in the hope of a third.
The Diligence ghosted along, her bell tolling continually, with double lookouts fore and aft, her best bower cleared away and poised a-cockbill from her starboard cathead, for as Mr Dalgleish said, he had no notion of carrying on by night with all these craft about and the danger of summer ice coming down. From far and near came the answering drums or whistles, and on every hand the howl of conchs from unseen dories. From white the fog grew grey and greyer still: the riding-lights and stern-lantern of a ship showed hazy gold two hundred yards away – a ship with a peculiarly thin and piercing whistle, worked by a crank.
‘Leviathan ahoy,’ hailed Mr Dalgleish.
‘What ship is that?’ asked Leviathan out of the fog.
‘Diligence, of course. William, what’s your ground?’
‘Thirty fathom.’
Mr Dalgleish put his helm a-lee. The packet made a smooth sweep, brought her head to the wind, took on a little sternway, and dropped her anchor. ‘Mr Henry is on the rampage again,’ he remarked in a strong but conversational voice.
‘Bugger him,’ said Leviathan, now on the packet’s starboard beam.
‘How does the cod come in, William?’
‘Tolerable, tolerable, Jamie,’ said Leviathan with a fruity chuckle. ‘No caplin, but they are taking squid. Send a boat over, and you shall have a bit of fish to your supper.’
The boat shoved off with the second mate and came back, laughing as it pulled across the steaming water, with two cod as long as a man and the second mate clasping a very large, very damp, dead, black and white bird to his bosom as he came up the side. ‘There, Doctor,’ he said, ‘they were going to use it for bait, but they have plenty of squid, and I thought it might please you.’ Mr Dalgleish’s predictions had been right up until this point; but over their supper of the best codfish in the world, gently poached in a bucket of sea-water, he foretold that Liberty and her consort