Clarissa Oakes Read Online Free PDF Page A

out. We used to kill twelve or fourteen hundred a night.'
       'You and your mutton-birds,' began Owen: then he stopped, his ear cocked.
       Jack opened the door: Stephen, Martin and Padeen stood up: the invalids assumed a rigid posture.
       'Well, Doctor,' said the Captain, 'I hope you find our pumping has answered?' Ever since Stephen had spoken of the Surprise's stench below as compared with the Nutmeg's purity, sea-water had been let into her hold every night and pumped out in the morning, to purify her bilges.
       'Tolerably sweet, sir,' said Dr Maturin. 'But it must be confessed that this is not the Nutmeg ; and sometimes, when I recall that the ship was originally French, and that the French bury their dead in the ballast, I wonder whether there may not still be something of a charnel-house down there.'
       'Quite impossible. The ballast has been changed again and again: scores of times.'
       'So much the better. Yet even so I should be grateful for another ventilating pump. In this heavy breathless air the patients have a tendency to grow fractious, even to quarrel.'
       'Make it so, Captain Pullings,' said Jack. 'And if any hand should presume to quarrel, let his name be entered in the defaulters' list.'
       'Here, sir,' said Stephen, 'are the men I was speaking about: Philips, who knows Norfolk Island well, and Owen, who spent several months among the Easter Islanders.'
       'Ah yes. Well, Philips, how are you coming along?'
       'Wery indifferent, sir, I am sorry to say,' said Philips in a weak, gasping voice.
       'And Owen, how are you?'
       'I do not complain, sir; but the burning pain is something cruel.'
       'Then why the Devil don't you keep out of brothels, you damned fool? A man of your age! Low knocking-shops in Sydney Cove of all places, where the pox is the worst in the world. Of course you burn. And you are always at it: every goddam port . . . if your pay were docked for venereals as it is in the regular service you would not have a penny coming to you when we pay off, not a brass farthing.' Captain Aubrey, still breathing hard, asked the other patients how they did—they were all much better, thank you, sir—and returning he said to Philips, 'So you were in Sirius when she was heaved ashore: was there no good holding-ground near the island?'
       'No, sir,' said Philips, speaking like a Christian now. 'It was terrible: coral rock everywhere inshore.'
       'It was far worse off of Easter Island, sir: coral rock far offshore too, then no bottom with the deep-sea line; and an almighty surf,' said Owen, but in an undertone.
       'We could not land on the south side of the island, sir, so we went round to the north-east: and there we were lying to with a light breeze off the shore and all hands fishing for gropers when the Supply brig, who was laying outside of us, hailed Captain Hunt that we was being heaved inshore. Which was true. It was all hands make sail, and make sail we did; but then the flood set in—it sets from the north on that side of the island, sir—and what with that and the swell we could not make head against it, not even with the breeze on our quarter. We let go both bowers, but the coral cut their cables directly; we let go the sheet-anchor and the spare and they parted too; and at one bell in the afternoon watch we struck, drove farther over the reef, and cut away our masts. Our captain gave orders to open the after hatchway and stave all the liquor . . .' All this Philips had delivered with barely a pause; now he drew breath, and in the interval Owen said, 'On Easter Island, sir . . .'
       'Doctor,' said Jack, 'I shall ask Mr Adams to see these men separately and take notes of what they have to say. Now I am going forward to see what your pumping has done about our rats as well as our smell. Colman, the lantern, there.'
       In his hurry Padeen dropped the lantern, lit it again, dropped it once more, and was cursed for an unhandy grass-combing lubber in