The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Historical fiction
ISBN: 9780001054981
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1984-04-30T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The Surprise lay moored head and stern in forty fathom water on the north side of the island, in Cumberland Bay, the only sheltered road, and Jack Aubrey sat on his quarterdeck in an elbow chair with an awning over his head to keep off the sun, digesting his dinner - lobster soup, three kinds of fish, a roast shoulder of kid, sea-elephant steak grilled to a turn - and contemplating the now familiar shore of Juan Fernandez. No more than two cables' lengths away began the noble sward, a sweet smooth green with two brooks running through it upon which his tent had been pitched until that morning, a green theatre rimmed by green forest, and beyond the forest wild rocky hills rising in abrupt, fantastic shapes - black crags in general, but clothed with green wherever greenery could take hold, and not the rank lush excessive exuberance of the tropics either but the elegant green of the county Clare. On one of the nearer precipices he could see Stephen and Martin creeping up a goat-path, anxiously shepherded by Padeen, Stephen's servant and an intrepid cragsman whose enormous frame had been founded on sea-birds' eggs throughout his childhood, by Bonden, with a coil of one-inch line over his shoulder, and by Calamy, who was obviously giving advice, begging them to take care, to watch where he was putting his feet, and not to look down. They had heard of a humming-bird peculiar to the island, the cock being bright pink and the hen bright green, and since the recovery of the invalids they had spent what waking hours they could spare from the Juan Fernandez ferns and epiphytes to combing the countryside in search of a nest.

From a ravine over towards East Bay came the crackle of gunfire: that was Howard of the Marines, the American officers and a party of liberty-men who were roaming the island with fowling-pieces, shooting anything that moved. Only a small party, and one made up of those particularly skilled men who until now had scarcely had a free hour from the urgent task of refitting the ship. A small party, because for most of the frigate's people liberty had come to an end with yesterday's evening gun, and they had spent this forenoon striking camp - the hospital-tent had been an imposing affair with ample room for all the severe cases of scurvy and the other invalids - and carrying water, wood, dried fish and other stores aboard. There might still be a score of people on the island, apart from the look-out men he had established on the Sugar Loaf, which commanded a fine view of the Pacific, but they had only a short time left; they had to be back before the end of the afternoon watch, when he intended to weigh, run out of the sheltered anchorage on what little tide there was (for the wind was steady in the south-south-east) and steer as straight and fast as ever he could for the Galapagos Islands.

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