'I am entirely at a loss, upon my honour; and so I lay the position before you, confiding wholly in your candour.. I am entirely at a loss: I cannot for the life of me conceive what manner of offence… It was not my landing of those monstrously unjust prisoners on Dragon Island (though he certainly disapproved of it), for the trouble began before that, quite early in the morning.' Stephen listened gravely, attentively, never interrupting; and very slowly, harking back for details overlooked and forward to straighten his chronology by anticipation, Jack laid before him the history of his relations with James Dillon – good, bad; good, bad -with this last extraordinary descent not only inexplicable but strangely wounding, because of the real liking that had grown up, in addition to the esteem. Then there was Marshall's unaccountable conduct, too; but that was of much Less importance.
With the utmost care, Jack reiterated his arguments about the necessity for having a happy ship if one was to command an efficient fighting machine; he quoted examples of like and contrary cases; and his audience listened and approved. Stephen could not bring his wisdom to the resolution of any of these difficulties, however, nor (as Jack would somewhat ignobly have liked) could he propose his good offices; for he was a merely ideal interlocutor, and his thinking flesh lay thirty leagues to the south and west, across a waste of sea. A rough waste, and a cross sea: after frustrating days of calm, light airs and then a strong south-wester, the wind had backed easterly in the night, and now it was blowing a gale across the waves that had built up during the day, so that the Sohpie went thumping along under double-reefed topsails and courses, the cross-sea breaking over the weather-bow and soaking the lookout on the fo'c'sle 'with a grateful spray, heeling James Dillon as he stood on the quarter-deck communing with the Devil and rocking the cot in which Jack silently harangued the darkness.
His was an exceedingly busy life; and yet since he entered an inviolable solitude the moment he passed the sentry at his cabin door, it let him a great deal of time for reflexion. It was not frittered away in very small exchanges, in listening to three-quarters of a scale on a quavering German flute or in sailors' politics. 'I shall speak to him, when we pick him up. I shall speak in the most general way, of the comfort it is to a man to have a confidential friend aboard; and of this singularity in the sailor's life, that one moment he is so on top of his shipmates, all hugger-mugger in the ward-room, that he can hardly breathe, let alone play anything but a jig on the fiddle, and the next he is pitched into a kind of hermit's solitude, something he has never known before.'
In times of stress Jack Aubrey had two main reactions: he either became aggressive or he became amorous; he longed either for the violent catharsis of action or for that of making love. He loved a battle: he loved a wench.
'I quite understand that some commanders take a girl to sea with them,' he reflected. 'Apart from the pleasure, think of the refuge of sinking into a warm, lively, affectionate…
'Peace. I wish there were a girl in this cabin,' he added, after a pause.
This disarray, this open, acknowledged incomprehension, were kept solely for his cabin and his ghostly companion, the outward appearance of the Sophie's captain had nothing hesitant about it, and it would have been a singularly acute observer to tell that the nascent friendship between him and his lieutenant had been cut short The master was such an observer, however, for although Jack's truly hideous appearance when signed and greased had caused a revulsion for a while, at the same time Jack's obvious liking for James Dillon had set up a jealousy that worked in the contrary direction. Furthermore, the master had been threatened in terms that left almost no room for doubt, in very nearly direct terms, and so for an entirely different cause he watched the captain and the lieutenant with painful anxiety.
'Mr Marshall,' said Jack in the darkness, and the poor man jumped as though a pistol had been fired behind him, 'when do you reckon we shall raise the land?'
'In about two hours' time, sir, if this wind holds.'
'Yes: I thought as much,' said Jack, gazing up into the rigging. 'I believe you may shake out a reef now, however; and at any further slackening set the topgallants – crack on all you can. And have me called when land is seen, if you please, Mr Marshall.'
Something less than two hours later he reappeared, to view the remote irregular line on the starboard bow: Spain; with the singular mountain the English called Egg-top Hill in line with the best bower anchor, and their watering bay therefore directly ahead.
'By God, you are a prime navigator, Marshall,' he said, lowering his glass. 'You deserve to be master of the fleet.'
It would take them at least an hour to run in, however, and now that the event was so close at hand, no longer at all theoretical, Jack discovered how anxious he was in fact – how very much the outcome mattered to him.
'Send my coxswain aft, will you?' he said, returning to his cabin after he had taken half a dozen uneasy turns.
Barret Bonden, coxswain and captain of the maintop, was unusually young for his post; a fine open-looking creature, tough without brutality, cheerful, perfectly in his place and, of course, a prime seaman – bred to the sea from childhood. 'Sit down, Bonden,' said Jack, a little consciously, for what he was about to offer was the quarter-deck, no less, and the possibility of advancement to the very pinnacle of the sailor's hierarchy. 'I have been thinking… should you like to be rated midshipman?'
'Why, no sir, not at all,' answered Bonden at once, his teeth flashing in the gloom. 'But I thank you very kindly for your good opinion, sir.'
'Oh,' said Jack, taken aback. 'Why not?'
'I ain't got the learning, sir. Why' – laughing cheerfully – it's all I can do to read the watch-list, spelling it out slow; and I'm too old to wear round now. And then, sir, what should I look like, rigged out like an officer? Jack-in-the green: and my old messmates laughing up their sleeves and calling out "What ho, the hawse-hole."'
'Plenty of fine officers began on the lower deck,' said Jack. 'I was on the lower deck myself, once,' he added, regretting the sequence as soon as he had uttered it.
'I know you was, sir,' said Bonden, and his grin flashed again.
'How did you know that?'
'We got a cove in the starboard watch, was shipmates with you, sir, in the old Reso, off the Cape.'
'Oh dear, oh dear,' cried Jack inwardly, 'and I never noticed him. So there I was, turning all the women ashore as righteous as Pompous Pilate, and they knew all the time well, well.' And aloud, with a certain stiffness, 'Well, Bonden, think of what I have said. It would be a pity to stand in your own way.'
'If I may make so bold, sir,' said Bonden, getting to his feet and standing there, suddenly constrained, lumpish and embarrassed, 'there's my Aunt Sloper's George – George Lucock, foretopman, larboard watch. He's a right scholar, can write so small you can scarcely see it; younger nor I am, and more soople, sir, oh, far more soople.'
'Lucock?' said Jack dubiously. 'He's only a lad. Was not he flogged last week?'
'Yes, sir: but it was only his gun had won again. And he couldn't hold back from his draught, not in duty to the giver.'
'Well,' said Jack, reflecting that perhaps there might be wiser prizes than a bottle (though none so valued), 'I will keep an eye on him.'
Midshipmen were much in his mind during this tedious working in. 'Mr Babbington,' he said, suddenly stopping in his up and down. 'Take your hands out of your pockets. When did you last write home?'
Mr Babbington was at an age when almost any question evokes a guilty response, and this was, in fact, a valid accusation. He reddened, and said, 'I don't know, sir.'
'Think, sir, think,' said Jack, his good-tempered face clouding unexpectedly. 'What port did you send it from? Mahon? Leghorn? Genoa? Gibraltar? Well, never mind.' There was no dark figure to be made out on that distant beach. 'Never, mind. Write a handsome letter. Two pages at least. And send it in to me with your daily workings tomorrow. Give your father my compliments and tell him my bankers are Hoares.' For Jack, like most other captains, managed the youngsters' parental allowance for them. 'Hoares,' he repeated absently once or twice, 'my bankers are Hoares,' and a strangled ugly crowing noise made him turn. Young Ricketts was clinging to the fall of the main burton-tackle in an attempt to control himself, but without much success. Jack's cold glare chilled his mirth, however, and he was able to reply to 'And you, Mr Ricketts, have you written to your parents recently?' with an audible 'No, sir' that scarcely quavered at all.
'Then you will do the same: two pages, wrote small, and no demands for new quadrants, laced hats or hangers,' said Jack; and something told the midshipman that this was no time to expostulate, to point out that his loving parent, his only parent, was in daily, even hourly communication with him. Indeed, this awareness of Jack's state of tension was general throughout the brig. 'Goldilocks is in a rare old taking about the Doctor,' they said. 'Watch out for squalls.' And when hammocks were piped up the seamen who had to pass by him to stow theirs in the starboard quarter-deck netting glanced at him nervously; one, trying to keep an eye on the quartermaster, and on the break of the deck, and on his captain, all at the same time, fell flat on his face. But Goldilocks was not the only one to be anxious, by any manner of means, and when Stephen Maturin was at last seen to walk out of the trees and cross the beach to meet the jolly-boat, a general exclamation of 'There he is!' broke out from waist to fo'c'sle, in defiance of good discipline:
'Huzzay!'
'How very glad I am to see you,' cried Jack, as Stephen groped his way 45oard, pushed and pulled by well-meaning hands. 'How are you, my dear sir? Come and breakfast directly – I have held it back on purpose. How do you lind yourself? Tolerably spry, I hope? Tolerably spry?'
'I am very well, I thank you,' said Stephen, who indeed looked somewhat less cadaverous, flushed as he was with pleasure at the open friendliness of his welcome. 'I will take a look at my sick-bay and then I will share your bacon with the utmost pleasure. Good morning, Mr Day. Take off your hat, if you please. Very neat, very neat: you do us credit, Mr Day. But no exposure to the sun as yet – I recommend the wearing of a close Welsh wig. Cheslin, good morning to you. You have a good account of our patients, I trust?'
'That,' he said, a little greasy from bacon, 'that was a point that exercised my mind a good deal during your absence Would my loblolly boy pay the men back in their own coin? Would they return to their persecution of him? How quickly could he come by a new identity?'
'Identity?' said Jack, comfortably pouring out more coffee 'Is not identity something you are born with?'
'The identity I am thinking of is something that hovers between a man and the rest of the world: a mid-point between his view of himself and theirs of him for each, of course, affects the other continually A reciprocal fluxion, sir. There is nothing absolute about this identity of mine. Were you, you personally, to spend some days in Spain at present you would find yours change, you know, because of the general opinion there that you are a false harsh brutal murdering villain, an odious man.'
'I dare say they are vexed,' said Jack, smiling. 'And I dare say they call me Beelzebub. But that don't make me Beelzebub.'
'Does it not? Does it not? Ah? Well, however that may be, you have angered, you have stirred up the mercantile interest along the coast to a most prodigious degree. There is a wealthy man by the name of Mateu who is wonderfully incensed against you. The quicksilver belonged to him, and being contraband it was not insured; so did the vessel you cut out at Almoraira; and the cargo of the tartan burnt off Tortosa – half of that was his. He is well with the ministry. He has moved their indolence and they have allowed him and his friends to charter one of their men-of-war…
'Not charter, my dear sir: no private person can possibly charter a man-of-war, a national vessel, a King's ship, not even in Spain.'
'Oh? Perhaps I use the wrong term: I often use the wrong term in naval matters. However. A ship of force, not only to protect the coasting trade but even more to pursue the Sophie, who is perfectly well known now, both by name and by description. This I had from Mateu's own cousin as we danced -'
'You danced?' cried Jack, far more astonished than if Stephen had said 'as we ate our cold roast baby'.
'Certainty I danced. Why would I not dance, pray?'
'Certainty you are to dance most uncommon graceful, I am sure. I only wondered. but did you indeed go about dancing?'
'I did. You have not travelled in Catalonia, sir, I believe?'
'Not I.'
'Then I must tell you that on Sunday mornings it is the custom, in that country, for people of all ages and conditions to dance, on coming out of church: so I was dancing with Ramon Mateu i Cadafalch in the square before the cathedral church of Tarragona, where I had gone to hear the Palestrina Missa Brevis. The dance is a particular dance, a round called the sardana; and if you will reach me your fiddle I will play you the air of the one I have in mind. Though you must imagine I am a harsh braying hoboy.' Plays.
'It is a charming melody, to be sure. Somewhat in the Moorish taste, is it not? But upon my word it makes my flesh creep, to think of you rambling about the countryside in ports – in towns. I had imagined you would have gone to earth, that you would have kept close with your friend, hidden in her room… that is to say.
'Yet I had told you, had I not, that I could ride the length and breadth of that country without a question or a moment's uneasiness?' 'So you had. So you had.' Jack reflected for a while. 'And so, of course, if you chose, you could find out what ships and convoys were sailing, when expected, how laden, and so on. Even the galleons themselves, I dare say?' 'Certainly I could,' said Stephen, 'if I chose to play the spy. It is a curious and apparently illogical set of notions, is it not, that makes it right and natural to speak of the Sophie's enemies, yet beyond any question wrong, dishonourable and indecent to speak of her prey?' 'Yes,' said Jack, looking at him wistfully. 'You must give a hare her law, there is no doubt. But what do you tell me about this ship of force? What is her rate? How many guns does she carry? Where does she lie?' 'Cacafuego is her name.'
'Cacafuego? Cacafuego? I have never heard of her. So at least she cannot be a ship of the line How is she rigged?'
Stephen paused 'I am ashamed to say I did not ask,' he said 'But from the satisfaction with which her name was pronounced, I take her to be some prepotent great argosy'
'Well, we must try to keep out of her way and since she knows what we look like, we must try to change our appearance. It is wonderful what a coat of paint and a waist-cloth will do, or even an oddly patched jib or a fished topmast – by the way, I suppose they told you in the boat why we were compelled to maroon you?'
'They told me about the frigates and your boarding the American.'
'Yes: and precious stuff it was, too. There were no such people aboard – Dillon searched her for close on an hour. I was just as glad, for I remembered you had told me the United Irishmen were good creatures, on the whole – far better than those other fellows, whose name I forget. Steel boys, white boys, orange boys?'
'United Irishmen? I had understood them to be French. They told me the American ship had been searched for some Frenchmen.'
'They were only pretending to be Frenchmen. That is to say, if they had been there at all, they might have pretended to be French. That is why I sent Dillon, who speaks it so well. But they were not, you see; and in my opinion the whole thing was so much cock. I was just as glad, as I say; but it seemed to upset Dillon most strangely. I suppose he was very eager to take them: or he was very much put out at our cruise being cut short. Ever since then however, I must not bore you with all that. You heard about the prisoners?'
'That the frigates had been so good as to give you fifty of theirs?'
'Merely for their own convenience! It was not for the good of the service at all. A most shabby, unscrupulous thing!' cried Jack, his eyes starting from his head at the recollection. 'But I dished 'em, though. As soon as we were done with the American we bore away for the Amelia, told her we had drawn a blank and made our signal for parting company; and a couple of hours later, the wind serving, we landed every man jack on Dragon Island.'
'Off Majorca?'
'Just so.'
'But is not that wrong? Will you not be reproved -courtmartialled?'
Jack winced, and clapping his hand to wood he said, 'Pray never say that ill-conditioned word. The mere sound of it is enough to spoil the day.'
'But will you not get into trouble?'
'Not if I put into Mahon with a thundering great prize at my tail,' said Jack, laughing. 'For now we may just have time to go and lie off Barcelona, do you see, if the wind is kind – I had quite set my heart upon it. We shall just have time for a quick stroke or two and then we must bear away for Mahon with anything we may have caught, for we certainly cannot spare another prize-crew, with our numbers so reduced. And we certainly cannot stay out much longer, without we eat our boots.'
'Still and all.'
'Never look so concerned, dear Doctor. There was no specific order as to where to land them, no order at all; and, of course, I'll square the head-money. Besides, I am covered: all my officers formally agreed that our shortage of water and provisions compelled us to do so – Marshall and Ricketts and even Dillon, although he was so chuff and pope-holy about it all.'
The Sophie reeked of grilled sardines and fresh paint. She lay fifteen miles off Cape Tortosa in a dead calm, wallowing on the oily swell; and the blue smoke of the sardines she had bought out of a night-fishing barca-longa (she had bought the whole catch) still hung sickeningly about her 'tweendecks; her sails and rigging, half an hour after dinner.
The bosun had a large working-party slung over her side, spreading yellow paint over the neat dockyard black and white; the sailmaker and a dozen palm-and-pricket men were busy at a long narrow strip of canvas designed to conceal her warlike character; and her lieutenant was pulling round her in the jolly-boat to judge of the effect. He was alone, except for her surgeon, and he was saying everything. I did everything in my power to avoid it. Everything, breaking all measures. I altered course, I shortened sail – unthinkable in the service – blackmailing the master to do so; and yet in the morning there she lay, two miles away under our lee, where she had no conceivable right to be. Ahoy, Mr Watt! Six inches lower all round.'
'It was just as well. If any other man had gone aboard they might have been taken.'
A pause, and James said, 'He leant over the table, so close I had his stinking breath in my face, and with a hateful yellow look he poured out this ugly stuff. I had already made up my mind, as I said; yet it looked exactly as though I were yielding to a vulgar threat. And two minutes later I was sure I had.'
'But you had not: it is a sick fancy. Indeed, it is not far from morose delectation: take great care of that sin, James, I beg. As for the rest, it is a pity you mind it so. What does it amount to, in the long run?'
'A man would have to be three parts dead not to mind it so; and quite dead to a sense of duty, to say nothing of.
Mr Watt, that will do very well.'
Stephen sat there, weighing the advantage of saying 'Do not hate Jack Aubrey for it: do not drink so much: do not destroy yourself for what will not last' against the disadvantage of setting off an explosion; for in spite of his apparent calm, James Dillon was on a hair-trigger, in a state of pitiful exacerbation. Stephen could not decide, shrugged, lifting his right hand, palm upwards, in a gesture that meant 'Bah, let it go,' and to himself he observed, 'However, I shall oblige him to take a black draught this evening – that at least I can do – and some comfortable mandragora; and in my diary I shall write "J D, required to play Iscariot either with his right hand or with his left, and hating the necessity (the absolute necessity), concentrates all this hatred upon poor JA, which is a remarkable instance of the human process; for, in fact, JD does not dislike JA at all – far from it."
'At least,' said James, pulling back to the Sophie, 'I do hope that after all this discreditable shuffling we may be taken into action. It has a wonderful way of reconciling a man with himself: and with everybody else, sometimes.'
'What is that fellow in the buff waistcoat doing on the quarterdeck?'
'That is Pram. Captain Aubrey is dressing him as a Danish officer; it is part of our plan of disguise. Do not you remember the yellow waistcoat the master of the Clomer wore? It is customary with them.'
'I do not. Tell me, do such things often happen, at sea?'
'Oh, yes. It is a perfectly legitimate ruse de guerre. Often we amuse the enemy with false signals too – anything but those of distress. Take great care of the paint, now.'
At this point Stephen fell straight into the sea – into the hollow of the sea between the boat and the side of the sloop as they drew away from one another. He sank at once, rose just as they came together, struck his head between the two and sank again, bubbling. Most of the Sophie's people who could swim leapt into the water, Jack among them; and others ran with boat-hooks, a dolphin-striker, two small grapnels, an ugly barbed hook on a chain; but it was the brothers Sponge that found him, five fathoms down (heavy bones for his size, no fat, lead-soled half-boots) and brought him up, his clothes blacker than usual, his face more white, and he streaming with water, furiously indignant.
It was no epoch-making event, but it was a useful one, since it provided the gun-room with a topic of conversation at a moment when very hard work was needed to maintain the appearance of a civilized community. A good deal of the time James was heavy, inattentive and silent; his eyes were bloodshot from the grog he swallowed, but it seemed neither to cheer nor yet to fuddle him. The master was almost equally withdrawn, and he sat there stealing covert glances at Dillon from time to time. So when they were all at table they went into the subject of swimming quite exhaustively – its rarity among seamen, its advantages (the preservation of life: the pleasure to be derived from it, in suitable climates: the carrying of a line ashore in an emergency), its disadvantages (the prolongation of death-agonies in shipwreck, in falling overboard unseen: flying in the face of nature – had God meant men to swim, etc.), the curious inability of young seals to swim, the use of bladders, the best ways of learning and practising the art of swimming.
'The only right way to swim,' said the purser for the seventh time, 'is to join your hands like you were saying your prayers' – he narrowed his eyes, joined his hands very exactly – 'and shoot them out so 'This time he did strike the bottle, which plunged violently into the solomongundy and thence, deep in thick gravy, into Marshall's lap.
'I knew you would do it,' cried the master, springing about and mopping himself. 'I told you so. I said "Soonar or latar you'll knock down that damned decantar", and you can't swim a stroke – prating like a whoreson ottar. You have wrecked my best nankeen trousars.'
'I didn't go for to do it,' said the purser sullenly; and the evening relapsed into a barbarous gloom.
Indeed, as the Sophie beat up, tack upon tack, to the northward, she could not have been described as a very cheerful sloop. In his beautiful little cabin Jack sat reading Steel's Navy List and feeling low, not so much because he had over-eaten again, and not so much because of the great number of men senior to him on the list, as because he was so aware of this feeling aboard. He could not know the precise nature of the complicated miseries inhabiting Dillon and Marshall. He could not tell that three yards from him James Dillon was trying to fend off despair with a series of invocations and a haggard attempt at resignation, while the whole of his mind that was not taken up with increasingly mechanical prayer converted its unhappy turmoil into hatred for the established order, for authority and so for captains, and for all those who, never having had a moment's conflict of duty or honour in their lives, could condemn him out of hand. And although Jack could hear the master's shoes crunching on the deck some inches above his head, he could not possibly divine the particular emotional disturbance and the sickening dread of exposure that filled the poor man's loving heart. But he knew very well that his tight, self-contained world was hopelessly out of tune and be was haunted by the depressing sentiment of failure of not having succeeded in what he had set out to do. He would very much have liked to ask Stephen Maturin the reasons for this failure; he would very much have liked to talk to him on indifferent subjects and to have played a little music; but he knew that an invitation to the captain's cabin was very like an order, if only because the refusing of it was so extraordinary – that had been borne in upon him very strongly the other morning, when he had been so amazed by Dillon's refusal. Where there was no equality there was no companionship: when a man was obliged to say 'Yes, sir,' his agreement was of no worth even if it happened to be true. He had known these things all his service life; they were perfectly evident; but he had never thought they would apply so fully, and to him.
Farther down in the sloop, in the almost deserted midshipmen's berth, the melancholy was even more profound: the youngsters were, in fact, weeping as they sat. Ever since
Mowett and Pullings had gone off in prizes these two had been at watch and watch, which meant that neither ever had more than four hours' sleep hard at that dormouse, lovebed age that so clings to its warm hammock; then again in writing their dutiful letters they had contrived to cover themselves with ink, and had been sharply rebuked for their appearance; what is more, Babbington, unable to think of anything to put, had filled his pages with asking after everybody at home and in the village, human beings, dogs, horses, cats, birds, and even the great hall clock, to such an extent that he was now filled with an overwhelming nostalgia. He was also afraid that his hair and teeth were going to fall out and his bones soften, while sores and blotches covered his face and body – the inevitable result of conversing with harlots, as the wise old-experienced clerk Richards had assured him. Young Ricketts' woe had quite another source: his father had been talking of a transfer into a store-ship or a transport, as being safer and far more homelike, and young Ricketts had accepted the prospect of separation with wonderful fortitude; but now it appeared that there was to be no separation – that he, young Ricketts, was to go too, torn from the Sophie and the life he loved so passionately. Marshall, seeing him staggering with weariness, had sent him below, and there he sat on his sea-chest, resting his face in his hands at half-past three in the morning, too tired even to creep into his hammock; and the tears oozed between his fingers.
Before the mast there was much less sadness, although there were several men – far more than usual – who looked forward with no pleasure to Thursday morning, when they were to be flogged. Most of the others had nothing positive to be glum about, apart from the hard work and the short commons; yet nevertheless the Sophie was already so very much of a community that every man aboard was conscious of something out of joint, something more than their officers' snappishness – what, they could not tell; but it took away from their ordinary genial flow. The gloom on the quarter-deck seeped forward, reaching as far as the goat-house, the manger, and even the hawse-holes themselves.
The Sophie, then, considered as an entity, was not at the top of her form as she worked through the night on the dying tramontana; nor yet in the morning, when the northerly weather was followed (as it so often happens in those waters) by wreathing mists from the south-west, very lovely for those who do not have to navigate a vessel through them, close in shore, and the forerunners of a blazing day. But this state was nothing in comparison with the tense alarm, not to say the dejection and even dread, that Stephen discovered when he stepped on to the quarter-deck just at sunrise.
He had been woken by the drum beating to quarters. He had gone directly to the cockpit, and there with Cheslin's help he had arranged his instruments. A bright eager face from the upper regions had announced 'a thundering great xebec round the cape, right in with the land'. He acknowledged this with mild approval, and after a while he fell to sharpening his catlin; then he sharpened his lancets and then his fleam-toothed saw with a little hone that he had bought for the purpose in Tortosa. Time passed, and the face was replaced by another, a very much altered pallid face that delivered the captain's compliments and desired him to come on deck. 'Good morning, Doctor,' said Jack, and Stephen noticed that his smile was strained, his eyes hard and wary. 'It looks as though we had caught a Tartar.' He nodded over the water towards a long, sharp, strikingly beautiful vessel, bright light red against the sullen cliffs behind. She lay low in the water for her size (four times the Sophie's bulk), but a high kind of flying platform carried out her stern, so that it jutted far over her counter, while a singular beak-like projection advanced her prow a good twenty feet beyond her stem. Her main and mizen masts bore immense curved double tapering lateen yards, whose sails were spilling the south-east air to allow the Sophie to come up with her; and even at this distance Stephen noticed that the yards, too, were red. Her starboard broadside, facing the Sophie, had no less than sixteen gunports in it; and her decks were extraordinarily crowded with men
'A thirty-two-gun xebec-frigate,' said Jack, 'and she cannot be anything but Spanish. Her hanging-ports deceived us entirely – thought she was a merchantman until the east moment – and nearly all her hands were down below. Mr Dillon, get a few more people out of sight without its showing. Mr Marshall, three or four men, no more, to shake out the reef in the fore topsail – they are to do it slowly, like lubbers. Anderssen, call out something in Danish again and let that bucket dangle over the side.' In a lower voice to Stephen, 'You see her, the fox? Those ports opened two minutes ago, quite hidden by all that bloody paintwork. And although she was thinking of swaying up her square yards – look at her foremast – she can have that lateen back in a moment, and snap us up directly. We must stand on – no choice – and see whether we can't amuse her. Mr Ricketts, you have the flags ready to hand? Slip off your jacket at once and toss it into the locker. Yes, there she goes.' A gun spoke from the frigate's quarter-deck: the ball skipped across the Sophie's bows, and the Spanish colours appeared, clear of the warning smoke. 'Carry on, Mr Ricketts,' said Jack. The Dannebrog broke out at the Sophie's gaff-end, followed by the yellow quarantine flag at the fore. 'Pram, come up here and wave your arms about. Give orders in Danish. Mr Marshall, heave to awkwardly in half a cable's length. No nearer.'
Closer and closer. Dead silence aboard the Sophie: gabble drifting across from the xebec. Standing just behind Pram, in his shirt sleeves and breeches – no uniform coat – Jack took the wheel. 'Look at all those people,' he said, half to himself and half to Stephen. 'There must be three hundred and more. They will hail us in a couple of minutes. Now, sir, Pram is going to tell them we are a Dane, a few days out of Algiers: I beg you will support him in Spanish, or any other language you see fit, as the opportunity offers.'
The hail came clear over the morning sea. 'What brig?'
'Good and loud, Pram,' said Jack.
'Clomer!' called the quartermaster in the buff waistcoat, and very faintly off the cliffs there came back the cry 'Clomer!' with the same hint of defiance, though so diminished.
'Back the foretopsail slowly, Mr Marshall,' murmured Jack, 'and keep the hands to the braces.' He murmured, for he knew very well that the frigate's officers had their glasses trained on the quarter-deck, and a persuasive fallacy assured him that the glasses would magnify his voice as well.
The way began to come off the brig, and at the same time the close groups aboard the xebec, her gun-crews, began to disperse. For a moment Jack thought it was all over and his heart, hitherto tranquil, began to bound and thump. But no. A boat was putting off.
'Perhaps we shall not be able to avoid this action,' he said. 'Mr Dillon, the guns are double-shotted, I believe?'
'Treble, sir,' said James, and looking at him Stephen saw that look of mad happiness he had known often enough, in former years – the contained look of a fox about to do something utterly insane.
The breeze and the current kept heaving the Sophie in towards the frigate, whose crew were going back to their task of changing from a lateen to a square rig: they swarmed thick into the shrouds, looking curiously at the docile brig, which was just about to be boarded by their launch.
'Hail the officer, Pram,' said Jack, and Pram went to the rail. He uttered a loud, seamanlike, emphatic statement in Danish; but very ludicrously in pidgin-Danish. And no recognizable form of Algiers appeared only the Danish for Barbary coast, vainly repeated.
The Spanish bowman was about to hook on when
Stephen, speaking a Scandinavian but instantly comprehensible Spanish, called out, 'Have you a surgeon that understands the plague aboard your ship?'
The bowman lowered his hook. The officer said, 'Why?'
'Some of our men were taken poorly at Algiers, and we are afraid We cannot tell what it is'
'Back water,' said the Spanish officer to his men. 'Where did you say you had touched?'
'Algiers, Alger, Argel: it was there the men went ashore. Pray what is the plague like? Swellings? Buboes? Will you come and look at them? Pray, sir, take this rope
'Back water,' said the officer again 'And they went ashore at Algiers?'
'Yes Will you send your surgeon?'
'No. Poor people, God and His Mother preserve you.'
'May we come for medicines? Pray let me come into your boat.'
'No,' said the officer, crossing himself. 'No, no. Keep off,
or we shall fire into you. Keep out to sea – the sea will cure them. God be with you, poor people. And a happy voyage to you.' He could be seen ordering the bowman to throw the boathook into the sea, and the launch pulled back fast to the bright-red xebec.
They were within very easy hailing distance now, and a voice from the frigate called out some words in Danish; Pram replied; and then a tall thin figure on the quarter-deck, obviously the captain, asked, had they seen an English sloop-of-war, a brig?
'No,' they said; and as the vessels began to draw away from one another Jack whispered, 'Ask her name.'
'Cacafuego,' came the answer over the widening lane of sea. 'A happy voyage.'
'A happy voyage to you.'
'So that is a frigate,' said Stephen, looking attentively at the Cacafuego.
'A xebec-frigate,' said Jack. 'Handsomely with those braces, Mr Marshall: no appearance of hurry. A xebec-frigate. A wonderfully curious rig, ain't it? There's nothing faster, I suppose broad in the beam to carry a vast great press of sail, but with a very narrow floor – but they need a prodigious crew; for, do you see, when she is sailing on a wind, she is a lateen, but when the wind comes fair, right aft or thereabouts, she strikes 'em down on deck and sways up square yards instead, a great deal of labour. She must have three hundred men, at the least. She is changing to her square rig now, which means she is going up the coast. So we must stand to the south – we have had quite enough of her company. Mr Dillon, let us take a look at the chart.'
'Dear Lord,' he said in the cabin, striking his hands together and chuckling, 'I thought we were dished that time – burnt, sunk and destroyed; hanged, drawn and quartered. What a jewel that Doctor is! When he waved the guess-rope and begged them so earnestly to come aboard! I understood him, though he spoke so quick. Ha, ha, ha! Eh? Did not you think it the drollest thing in life?'
'Very droll indeed, sir.'
'Que vengan, says he, most piteously, waving the line, and they start back as grave and solemn as a parcel of owls. Que vengan! Ha, ha, ha… Oh dear. But you don't seem very amused.'
'To tell you the truth, sir, I was so astonished at our sheering off that I have scarcely had time to relish the joke.'
'Why,' said Jack, smiling, 'what would you have had us do? Ram her?'
'I was persuaded that we were about to attack,' said James passionately. 'I was persuaded that was your intention. I was delighted.'
'A fourteen-gun brig against a thirty-two-gun frigate? You are not speaking in earnest?'
'Certainly. When they were hoisting in their launch and half their people were busy in the rigging our broadside and small-arms would have cut them to pieces, and with this breeze we should have been aboard before they had recovered.'
'Oh, come now! And it would scarcely have been a very honourable stroke., either.'
'Perhaps I am no great judge of what is honourable, sir,' said Dillon. 'I speak as a mere fighting man.'
Mahon, and the Sophie surrounded by her own smoke, firing both broadsides all round and one over in salute to the admiral's flag aboard the Foudroyant, whose imposing mass lay just between Pigtail Stairs and the ordnance wharf.
Mahon, and the Sophie's liberty-men stuffing themselves with fresh roast pork and soft-tack, to a state of roaring high spirits, roaring merriment: wine-barrels with flowing taps, a hecatomb of pigs, young ladies flocking from far and near.
Jack sat stiffly in his chair, his hands sweating, his throat parched and rigid. Lord Keith's eyebrows were black with strong silver bristles interspersed, and from beneath them he directed a cold, grey, penetrating gaze across the table. 'So you were driven to it by necessity?' he said.
He was speaking of the prisoners landed on Dragon Island: indeed, the subject had occupied him almost since the beginning of the interview.
'Yes, my lord.'
The admiral did not reply for some time. 'Had you been driven to it by a want of discipline,' he said slowly, 'by a dislike for subordinating your judgment to that of your seniors, I should have been compelled to take a very serious view of the matter. Lady Keith has a great kindness for you, Captain Aubrey, as you know; and myself I should be grieved to see you harm your own prospects; so you will allow me to speak to you very frankly…
Jack had known that it was going to be unpleasant as soon as he had seen the secretary's grave face, but this was far rougher than his worst expectations. The admiral was shockingly well informed; he had all the details – official reprimand for petulance, neglect of orders on stated occasions, reputation for undue independence, for temerity, and even for insubordination, rumours of ill behaviour on shore, drunkenness; and so it ran. The admiral could not see the smallest likelihood of promotion to post rank: though Captain Aubrey should not take that too much to heart – plenty of men never rose even to commander; and the commanders were a very respectable body of men. But could a man be entrusted with a line of battle ship if he were liable to take it into his head to fight a fleet engagement according to his own notions of strategy? No, there was not the least likelihood, unless something very extraordinary took place. Captain Aubrey's record was by no means all that could be wished. Lord Keith spoke steadily, with great justice, great accuracy in his facts and his diction; at first Jack had merely suffered, ashamed and uneasy; but as it went on he felt a glow somewhere about his heart or a little lower, the beginning of that rising jet of furious anger that might take control of him. He bowed his head, for he was certain it would show in his eye.
'Yet on the other hand,' said Lord Keith, 'you do possess one prime quality in a commander. You are lucky. None of my other cruisers has played such havoc with the enemy's trade; none has taken half as many prizes. So when you come back from Alexandria I shall give you another cruise.'
'Thank you, my lord.'
'It will arouse a certain amount of jealousy, a certain amount of criticism; but luck is something that rarely lasts – at least that is my experience – and we should back it while it is with us.'
Jack made his acknowledgements, thanked the admiral not ungracefully for his kindness in giving him advice, sent his duty – his affectionate duty, if he might say so – to Lady Keith, and withdrew. But the fire in his heart was burning so high in spite of the promised cruise that it was all he could do to get his words out smoothly, and there was such a look on his face as he came out that the sentry at the door instantly changed his expression of knowing irony to one of deaf, dumb, unmoving wood.
'If that scrub Harte presumes to use the same tone to me,' said Jack to himself, walking out into the street and crushing a citizen hard against the wall, 'or anything like it, I shall wring his nose off his head, and damn the service.'
'Mercy, my dear,' he roared, stepping into the Crown on his way, 'bring me a glass of vino, there's a good girl, and a copito of aguardiente. God damn all admirals,' he said,
letting the young green flowery wine run cool and healing down his throat.
'But he is a topping old admiral, dear Capitano,' said Mercedes, brushing dust off his blue lapels. 'He will give you a cruise when you are coming back from Alexandria.'
Jack cocked a shrewd eye at her, observed 'Mercy querido, if you knew half as much about Spanish sailings as you do about ours, how happy, felix, you would make me', tossed down the burning drop of brandy and called for another glass of wine, that appeasing, honest brew. 'I have an auntie,' said Mercedes, 'that know a great deal.' 'Have you, my dear? Have you indeed?' said Jack. 'You shall tell me about her this evening.' He kissed her absently, tapped his lace hat more firmly on to his new wig and said, 'Now for that scrub.'
But as it happened, Captain Harte received him with more than ordinary civility, congratulated him upon the Almoraira affair – 'that battery was a damned nuisance; hulled the Pallas three times and knocked away one of the Emerald's topmasts; should have been dealt with long ago' – and asked him to dinner. 'And bring your surgeon along, will you? My wife particularly desires me to invite him.'
'I am sure he will be very happy, if he is not already bespoke. Mrs Harte is well, I trust? I must pay my respects.'
'Oh, she's very well, I thank you. But it's no use calling on her this morning – she's out riding with Colonel Pitt. How she does it in this heat, I don't know. By the by, you can do me a service, if you will.' Jack looked at him attentively, but did not commit himself. 'My money-man wants to send his son to sea – you have a vacancy for a youngster: it is as simple as that. He is a perfectly respectable fellow, and his wife was at school with Molly. You will see them both at dinner.'
On his knees, and with his chin level with the top of the table, Stephen watched the male mantis step cautiously towards the female mantis. She was a fine strapping green specimen, and she stood upright on her four back legs, her front pair dangling devoutly; from time to time a tremor caused her heavy body to oscillate over the thin suspending limbs, and each time the brown male shot back. He advanced lengthways, with his body parallel to the table-top, his long, toothed, predatory front legs stretching out tentatively and his antennae trained forwards: even in this strong light Stephen could see the curious inner glow of his big oval eyes.
The female deliberately turned her head through forty-five degrees, as though looking at him. 'Is this recognition?' asked Stephen, raising his magnifying glass to detect some possible movement in her feelers. 'Consent?'
The brown male certainly thought it was, and in three strides he was upon her; his legs gripped her wing-covers; his antennae found hers and began to stroke them. Apart from a vibratory, well-sprung quiver at the additional weight, she made no apparent response, no resistance; and in a little while the strong orthopterous copulation began. Stephen set his watch and noted down the time in a book, open upon the floor.
Minutes passed. The male shifted his hold a little. The female moved her triangular head, pivoting it slightly from left to right. Through his glass Stephen could see her sideways jaws open and close; then there was a blur of movements so rapid that for all his care and extreme attention he could not follow them, and the male's head was off, clamped there, a detached lemon, under the crook of her green praying arms. She bit into it, and the eye's glow went out; on her back the headless male continued to copulate rather more strongly than before, all his inhibitions having been removed. 'Ah,' said Stephen with intense satisfaction, and noted down the time again.
Ten minutes later the female took off three pieces of her mate's long thorax, above the upper coxal joint, and ate them with every appearance of appetite, dropping crumbs of chitinous shell in front of her. The male copulated on, still firmly anchored by his back legs.
'There you are,' cried Jack. 'I have been waiting for you this quarter of an hour.'
'Oh,' said Stephen, starting up. 'I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. I know what importance you attach to punctuality – most concerned. I had put my watch back to the beginning of the copulation,' he said, very gently covering the. mantis and her dinner with a hollow ventilated box. 'I am with you now.'
'No you aren't,' said Jack. 'Not in those infamous half-boots. Why do you have them soled with lead, anyhow?'
At any other time he would have received a very sharp reply to this, but it was clear to Stephen that he had not spent a pleasant forenoon with the admiral; and all he said, as he changed into his shoes, was, 'You do not need a head, nor even a heart, to be all a female can require.'
'That reminds me,' said jack, 'have you anything that will keep my wig on? A most ridiculous thing happened as I was crossing the square: there was Dillon on the far side, with a woman on his arm Governor Wall's sister, I believe – so I returned his salute with particular attention, do you see. I lifted my hat right off my head and the damned wig came with it. You may laugh, and it is damned amusing, of course; but I would have given a fifty-pound note not to have looked ridiculous with him there.'
'Here is a piece of court plaster,' said Stephen. 'Let me double it over and stick it to your head. I am heartily sorry there should be this – constraint, between Dillon and you.'
'So am I,' said Jack, bending for the plaster: then with a sudden burst of confidence – the place being so different, and they on land, with no sort of sea-going relationship -he said, 'I never have been so puzzled what to do in all my life, lie practically accused me – I hardly like to name it -of want of conduct, after that Cacafuego business. My first impulse was to ask him for an explanation, and for satisfaction, naturally. But then the position is so very particular -it is heads I win tails you lose in such a case; for if I were to sink him, why, there he would be, of course; and if he were to do the same by me, he would be out of the Navy before you could say knife, which would amount to much the same thing, for him.'
'He is passionately attached to the service, sure.'
'And in either case, there is the Sophie left in a pitiable state… damn the man for a fool. And then again he is the best first lieutenant a man could wish for – taut, but not a slave-driver; a fine seaman; and you never have to give a thought to the daily running of the sloop. I like to think that that was not his meaning.'
'He would certainly never have meant to impugn your courage,' said Stephen.
'Would he not?' asked Jack, gazing into Stephen's face and balancing his wig in his hand. 'Should you like to dine at the Hartes'?' he asked, after a pause. 'I must go, and I should be glad of your company, if you are not engaged.'
'Dinner?' cried Stephen, as though the meal had just been invented. 'Dinner? Oh, yes: charmed – delighted.' 'You don't happen to have a looking-glass, I suppose?' said Jack.
'No. No. But there is one in Mr Florey's room. We can step in on our way downstairs.'
In spite of a candid delight in being fine, in putting on his best uniform and his golden epaulette, Jack had never had the least opinion of his looks, and until this moment he had scarcely thought of them for two minutes together
But now, having gazed long and thoughtfully, he said, 'I suppose I am rather on the hideous side?
'Yes,' said Stephen 'Oh yes 'very much so'
Jack had cut off the rest of his hair when they came into port and had bought this wig to cover his cropped poll, but there was nothing to hide his burnt face which, moreover,
had caught the sun in spite of Stephen Maturin s medicated grease, or the tumefaction of his battered brow and eye,
which had now reached the yellow stage, with a blue outer ring, so that his left hand aspect was not unlike that of the great West African mandrill
When they had finished their business at the prize-agent's house (a gratifying reception – - such bows and smiles) they walked up to their dinner Leaving Stephen contemplating a tree-frog by the patio fountain, Jack saw Molly Harte alone for a moment in the cool anteroom.
'Lord, Jack!' she cried, staring. 'A wig?'
'Tis only for the moment,' said Jack, pacing swiftly towards her.
'Take care,' she whispered, getting behind a jasper, onyx and cornelian table, three feet broad, seven and a half feet long, nineteen hundredweight. 'The servants.'
'The summerhouse tonight?' whispered he.
She shook her head and mutely, with great facial expression, said, 'Indisposйe.' And then in a low but audible tone, a sensible tone, 'Let me tell you about these people who are coming to dinner, the Ellises. She was of some sort of family, I believe – anyhow, she was at Mrs Capell's school with me. Very much older, of course: quite one of the great girls. And then she married this Mr Ellis, of the City. He is a respectable, well-behaved man, extremely rich and he looks after our money very cleverly. Captain Harte is uncommonly obliged to him, I know; and I have known Laetitia this age; so there is the double whatever you call it – bond? They want their boy to go to sea, so it would give me great pleasure if…
'I would do anything in my power to give you pleasure,' said Jack heavily. The words our money had stabbed very deep.
'Dr Maturin, I am so glad you were able to come,' cried Mrs Harte, turning towards the door. 'I have a very learned lady to introduce you to.'
'Indeed, ma'am? I rejoice to hear it. Pray what is she learned in?'
'Oh, in everything,' said Mrs Harte cheerfully; and this, indeed, seemed to be Laetitia's opinion too, for she at once gave Stephen her views on the treatment of cancer and on the conduct of the Allies – prayer, love and Evangelism was the answer, in both cases. She was an odd, doll-like little creature with a wooden face, both shy and extremely selfsatisfied, rather alarmingly young; she spoke slowly, with odd writhing motion of her upper body, staring at her interlocutor's stomach or elbow, so her exposition took some
Her husband was a tall, moist-eyed, damp-handed man,with a meek, Evangelical expression, and knock-knees: had it not been for those knees he would have looked exactly like a butler. 'If that man lives,' reflected Stephen, as Laetitia prattled on about Plato, 'he will become a miser: but it is more likely that he will hang himself. Costive; piles; ;t flat feet.'
They sat down ten to dinner, and Stephen found that Mrs Ellis was his left-hand neighbour. On his right there was a Miss Wade, a plain, good-natured girl with a splendid appetite, unhampered by a humid ninety degrees or the calls Fof fashion; then came Jack, then Mrs Harte, and on her right Colonel Pitt. Stephen was engaged in a close discussion of the comparative merits of the crayfish and the true lobster with Miss Wade when the insistent voice on his left broke in so strongly that soon it was impossible to ignore it. 'But I don't understand – you are a real physician, he tells me, so how come you to be in the Navy? How come you to be in the Navy if you are a real doctor?'
'Indigence, ma'am, indigence. For all that clysters is not – gold on shore. And then, of course, a fervid desire to bleed for my country.'
'The gentleman is joking, my love,' said her husband across the table. 'With all these prizes he is a very wann man, as we say in the City' nodding and smiling archly.
'Oh,' cried Laetitia, startled. 'He is a wit. I must take care of him, I declare. But still, you have to look after the common sailors too, Dr Maturin, not only the midshipmen and officers: that must be very horrid.'
'Why, ma'am,' said Stephen, looking at her curiously: for so small and Evangelical a woman she had drunk a remarkable quantity of wine and her face was coming out in blotches. 'Why, ma'am, I cut 'em off pretty short, I assure you. Oil of cat is my usual dose.'
'Quite right,' said Colonel Pitt, speaking for the first time. 'I allow no complaints in my regiment.'
'Dr Maturin is admirably strict,' said Jack. 'He often desires me to have the men flogged, to overcome their torpor and to open their veins both at the same time. A hundred lashes at the gangway is worth a stone of brimstone and treacle, we always say.'
'There's discipline,' said Mr Ellis, nodding his head.
Stephen felt the odd bareness on his knee that meant his napkin had glided to the floor; he dived after it, and in the hooded tent below he beheld four and twenty legs, six belonging to the table and eighteen to his temporary messmates. Miss Wade had kicked off her shoes: the woman opposite him had dropped a little screwed-up handkerchief:
Colonel Pitt's gleaming military boot lay pressed upon Mrs Harte's right foot, and upon her left – quite a distance from the right – reposed Jack's scarcely less massive buckled shoe.
Course followed course, indifferent Minorcan food cooked in English water, indifferent wine doctored with Minorcan verjuice; and at one point Stephen heard his neighbour say, 'I hear you have a very high moral tone in your ship.' But in time Mrs Harte rose and walked, limping slightly, into the drawing-room: the men gathered at the top end of the table, and the muddy port went round and round and round.
The wine brought Mr Ellis into full bloom at last; the diffidence and the timidity melted away from the mound of wealth, and he told the company about discipline – order and discipline were of primordial importance; the family, the disciplined family, was the cornerstone of Christian civilization; commanding officers were (as he might put it) the fathers of their numerous families, and their love was shown by their firmness. Firmness. His friend Bentham, the gentleman that wrote the Defence of Usury (it deserved to be printed in gold), had invented a whipping machine. Firmness and dread: for the two great motives in the world were greed and fear, gentlemen. Let them look at the French revolution, the disgraceful rebellion in Ireland, to say nothing – looking archly at their stony faces – of the unpleasantness at Spitheаd and the Nore – all greed, and to be put down by fear.
Mr Ellis was clearly very much at home in Captain Harte's house, for without having to ask the way he walked to the sideboard, opened the lead-lined door and took out the chamber-pot, and looking over his shoulder he went on without a pause to state that fortunately the lower classes naturally looked up to gentlemen and loved them, in their humble way; only gentlemen were fit to be officers. God had ordered it so, he said, buttoning the flap of his breeches; and as he sat down again at the table he observed that he knew one house where the article was silver – solid silver. The family was a good thing: he would drink a toast to discipline. The rod was a good thing: he would drink a toast to the rod, in all its forms. Spare the rod and spoil the child – loveth, chastitheth.
'You must come to us one Thursday morning and see how the bosun's mate loveth our defaulters,' said Jack.
Colonel Pitt, who had been staring heavily at the banker with an undisguised, boorish contempt, broke out into a guffaw and then left, excusing himself on the grounds of regimental business. Jack was about to follow him when Mr Ellis desired him to stay – he begged the favour of a few words.
'I do a certain amount of business for Mrs Jordan, and I have the honour, the great honour, of being presented to the Duke of Clarence,' he began, impressively. 'Have you ever seen him?'
'I am acquainted with His Highness,' said Jack, who had been shipmates with that singularly unattractive hot-headed cold-hearted bullying Hanoverian.
'I ventured to mention our Henry and said we hoped to make an officer of him, and he condescended to advise the sending of him to sea. Now, my wife and I have considered it carefully, and we prefer a little boat to a ship of the line, because they are sometimes rather mixed, if you understand me, and my wife is very particular – she is a Plantagenet; besides, some of these captains want their young gentlemen to have an allowance of fifty pounds per annum.'
'I always insist that their friends should guarantee my midshipmen at least fifty,' said Jack.
'Oh,' said Mr Ellis, a little dashed. 'Oh. But I dare say a good many of the things can be picked up second-hand. Not that I care about that – at the beginning of the war all of us in the alley sent His Majesty an address saying we should support him with our lives and fortunes. I don't mind fifty quid, or even more, so long as the ship is genteel. My wife's old friend Mrs H was telling us about you, sir; and what is more, you are a thorough-going Tory, just like me. And yesterday we caught sight of Lieutenant Dillon; who is Lord Kenmare's nephew, I understand, and has a pretty little estate of his own – seems quite the gentleman, So to put it in a nutshell, sir, if you will take my boy I shall be very much obliged to you. And allow me to add,' he said, with an awkward jocularity, clearly against his own better judgment, 'what with my inside knowledge and experience of the market, you won't regret it. You'll find your advantage, I warrant you, hee, hee!'
'Let us join the ladies,' said Captain Harte, actually blushing for his guest.
'The best thing is to take him to sea for a month or so,' said Jack, standing up. 'Then he can see how he likes the service and whether he is suited for it; and we can speak of it again.'
'I am sorry to have let you in for that,' he said, taking Stephen's arm and guiding him down Pigtail Stairs, where the green lizards darted along the torrid wall. 'I had no notion Molly Harte was capable of giving such a wretched dinner – cannot think what has come over her. Did you remark that soldier?'
'The one in scarlet and gold, with boots?'
'Yes. Now he was a perfect example of what I was saying, that the army is divided into two sorts – the one as kind and gentle as ever you could wish, just like my dear old uncle, and the other heavy, lumpish brutes like that fellow. Quite unlike the Navy. I have seen it again and again, and I still cannot understand it. How do the two sorts live together? I wish he may not be a nuisance to Mrs Harte – she is sometimes very free and unguarded, quite unsuspecting -can be imposed upon.'
'The man whose name I forget, the money-man, was an eminently curious study,' said Stephen.
'Oh, him,' said Jack, with an utter want of interest. 'What do you expect, when a fellow sits thinking about money all day long? And they can never hold their wine, those sorts of people. Harte must be very much in his debt to have him in the house.'
'Oh, he was a dull ignorant superficial darting foolish prating creature in himself, to be sure, but I found him truly fascinating. The pure bourgeois in a state of social ferment. There was that typical costive, haemorrhoidal facies, the knock-knees, the drooping shoulders, the flat feet splayed out, the ill breath, the large staring eyes, the meek complacency; and, of course, you noticed that womanly insistence upon authority and beating once he was thoroughly drunk? I would wager that he is very nearly impotent: that would account for the woman's restless garrulity, her desire for predominance, absurdly combined with those girlish ways, and her thinning hair – she will be bald in a year or so.'
'It might be just as well if everybody were impotent,' said Jack sombrely. 'It would save a world of trouble.'
'And having seen the parents I am impatient to see this youth, the fruit of their strangely unattractive loins: will he be a wretched mammothrept? A little corporal? Or will the resiliency of childhood…
'He will be the usual damned little nuisance, I dare say; but at least we shall know whether there is anything to be made of him by the time we are back from Alexandria. We are not saddled with him for the rest of the commission.'
'Did you say Alexandria?'
'Yes.'
'In Lower Egypt?'
'Yes. Did I not tell you? We are to run an errand to Sir Sidney Smith's squadron before our next cruise. He is watching the French, you know.'
'Alexandria,' said Stephen, stopping in the middle of the quay. '0 joy. I wonder you did not cry out with delight the moment you saw me. What an indulgent admiral – paler classis – 0 how I value that worthy man!'
'Why, 'tis no more than a straight run up and down the Mediterranean, about six hundred leagues each way, with precious little chance of seeing a prize either coming or going.'
'I did not think you could have been such an earthling,' cried Stephen. 'For shame. Alexandria is classic ground.'
'So it is,' said Jack, his good nature and pleasure in life flooding back at the sight of Stephen's delight. 'And with any luck I dare say we shall have a sight of the mountains of Candia, too. But come, we must get aboard: if we go on standing here we shall be run down.'