But blended with those memories were others of the doctors grouped round him, of cool bandages applied to his burning arm.
"Bind it up in the blood and leave the bandage unopened for a week, that's my practice," said the pontifical Doctor Clarke to Doctor Downing across Peabody's recumbent body — this Clarke wore hair powder which soiled the shoulders of his coat, Peabody saw. He did not know how he had got back to his cabin, but there he was, undoubtedly; and overhead was the clatter and rumble of the guns being secured again.
"I make it a rule never to have a rule," said Downing. "Open your hand, sir, if you please. Ah, no more than a few fibers severed, I fancy."
Chapter XXI
TURN TO the other side, sir, please," said Washington. He was shaving his captain with all the gusto Peabody expected of him. Washington had been perfectly delighted to find Peabody crippled in both arms — it gave him enormous pleasure to wait upon him hand and foot, to pass his shirt over his head and part his hair, and Peabody hated it. He had forbidden Washington to chatter while attending on him — curious how the act of shaving someone else seemed to loosen a man's tongue — but Washington sidestepped the order by asking Peabody to move his head as the operation demanded. Washington might well have suffered some internal injury as a result of accumulated pressure had he not done so, in fact — for the chance to say those few words he was willing even to forego the pleasure of tweaking his captain's nose and turning his chin from side to side. It was hateful to have Washington attend to him, and yet it was delicious to have Anne do so. There was enchantment in the touch of her slender fingers, always cool somehow in the sweltering heat of the West Indian autumn. There was a queer pleasure in being dependent upon Anne, for him who had made it a rule all his life to be dependent upon nobody. There was a mad shock of joy when he discovered for certain that there was pleasure for her in looking after him. She would stoop and slip the pumps off his feet, the stockings from his legs, and she could smile while she did it. And when she took his head on her shoulder and put her lips against his forehead troubles and anxieties and responsibilities lost their weight. Memories of a red-coated figure writhing in bonds were not nearly so acute then; even the memories of fighting a losing fight on the deck of the Susanna, of the imminent approach of sudden death, were dulled.
That crossing of swords with Lerouge had had a profound effect upon Peabody, which even he realized. He was not the same man as had laid his ship so deftly alongside the Susanna, perhaps because of the unexpected nature of the danger he had encountered. He had thought of death from disease, of death among the waves of the sea, of unseen death from a flying cannon shot, but the death he had seen face to face had been at the hands of a pirate, and as a direct result of his own shortcomings in the mere matter of handling a sword. It had had an effect upon him similar to the spiritual upheaval of a religious experience, making him take fresh stock of himself, unsettling him; to feel his face against Anne's smooth throat, to know himself to be loved dearly — these were matters of desperate importance now in the impermanence of life. Yet even so Washington had to shave him.
The wounds healed quickly enough. Downing grudgingly admitted that in this particular case Doctor Clarke's method of binding up clean cuts in the blood and leaving them was justifiable. Downing had a theory that the inconsequential behavior of wounds was not as inconsequential as people thought, and that whether they turned gangrenous or not depended to a certain extent on whether some foreign agency were introduced into them. He was a little nervous about this theory — because he had seen wounds heal even with a lump of lead inside them and wounds go gangrenous and refuse to close when there was simply nothing foreign to be seen about them; so that he laughed a little deprecatingly when he hinted that the sword blade which had transfixed Peabody's forearm and cut his hand must have been quite clean, and he saw to it that the wounds were exposed as little as possible to the tropical air.
In these conditions they healed quickly — within three days he was allowed to take his right arm out of its sling, and his ability to use the fingers of his right hand relieved him of his hated dependence upon Washington; and as soon as the cuts on his palm had closed over, Downing encouraged him to use his left hand, as well. Otherwise, as Downing said, there was a danger that the scars might prevent his being able to extend his hand fully. There only remained a soreness deep down inside his right forearm, and an angry red blotch to show where Lerouge's sword had entered. That was all — save for a mental soreness, that continual feeling of humiliation at the memory of his helplessness before Lerouge. Peabody was wrongheaded about it; he had not felt fear at the time, and yet he suspected himself of it in the light of his present reactions. It made Anne's kisses all the sweeter, and yet their added sweetness did not mask the bitterness of the distorted memory. Anne, under the vast dome of the mosquito net, with her husband at her side, was aware — as of course she would be — of the tangled unhappiness of the man.
The convalescent captain came on board his ship to the usual compliments. She was ready for sea again, complete in every particular; it was good to look round her and lay new plans for the future. But Hubbard, who came up to greet him, was worried about something — Peabody could see it in his long face.
"We've got a couple of deserters on board, sir," he said.
"Deserters from where?"
Hubbard jerked his head towards the British squadron which lay on the other side of the bay.
"They're off the Calypso, sir," he said. "They had a flogging coming to them and they didn't stay for it."
"How did they get on board?"
"They swam here, sir, and climbed up through the hawsehole during the middle watch. The anchor watch ought to have seen 'em, sir. I've punished 'em already."
"And the deserters are still here?"
"Yes, sir. Would you like to speak to 'em, sir?"
The two men were a fair sample of the sailors the British Navy had been forced to use in their desperate struggle against the whole world. Larson was elderly, a Swede, slow-spoken and still unfamiliar with English. Williams was a Cockney, hardly more than twenty, pert and sly and with a desperate squint, a warehouse boy in a London draper's before a boating frolic on the Thames had brought him within the clutches of the press.
"What in hell did you come to my ship for?" demanded Peabody.
Williams jerked his thumb across the bay and winked with the eye which was under his control.
"They row guard every night between the ships and the quay, sir," he said. "I seen too many o' the boys try it, an' I seen wot 'appened to 'em arterward. We couldn't come nowhere but 'ere, sir."
"But what did you want to desert for?"
"Me, sir? Captain's coxs'n, 'e copped me prigging from the cabin stores, sir. It'd ha' been five dozen for me this morning, sir. An' Larson, 'ere — well, sir, you can see how slow 'e is, sir. Boatswain's mate 'ad a down on 'im, sir. Always in 'ot water, 'e was, sir."
"Dat is zo," said Larson.
Peabody looked the two over again. He knew well enough what life on the lower deck of British ships of war was like — the fierce discipline necessary both to restrain the motley crews and to inculcate the unquestioning obedience which had carried the Navy through such sore trials; the bad food and worse other conditions, which were all that a bankrupt Admiralty could afford for its slaves; the feeling of a lifetime's condemnation as the war dragged on, and on, and the desperate straits of the British Government gave no chance of leave or release. And some petty tyrant had been abusing his power and making Larson's life hell for him. He was sorry for the Swede, although he could feel no sympathy for the squinting Cockney who had deserted his colors.