Читать книгу Treason’s Harbour - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 8
ОглавлениеChapter One
A gentle breeze from the north-east after a night of rain, and the washed sky over Malta had a particular quality in its light that sharpened the lines of the noble buildings, bringing out all the virtue of the stone; the air too was a delight to breathe, and the city of Valletta was as cheerful as though it were fortunate in love or as though it had suddenly heard good news.
This was more than usually remarkable in a group of naval officers sitting in the bowered court of Searle’s hotel: to be sure, they looked out upon the arcaded Upper Baracca, filled with soldiers, sailors and civilians pacing slowly up and down in a sunlight so brilliant that it made even the black hoods the Maltese women wore look gay, while the officers’ uniforms shone like splendid flowers – a cosmopolitan crowd, for although most of the colour was the scarlet and gold of the British army many of the nations engaged in the war against Napoleon were represented and the shell-pink of Kresimir’s Croats, for example, made a charming contrast with the Neapolitan hussars’ silver-laced blue. And then beyond and below the Baracca there was the vast sweep of the Grand Harbour, pure sapphire today, flecked with the sails of countless small craft plying between Valletta and the great fortified headlands on the other side, St Angelo and Isola, and the men-of-war, the troopships and the victuallers, a sight to please any sailor’s heart.
Yet on the other hand all these gentlemen were captains without ships, a mumchance, melancholy class in general and even more so at this time, when the long, long war seemed to be working up to its climax, when competition was even stronger than before, and when distinction and worthwhile appointments, to say nothing of prize-money and promotion, depended on having a sea-going command. Some were absolutely shipless, either because their vessels had sunk under them, which was the case with Edward Long’s archaic Aeolus, or because promotion had set them ashore, or because an unfortunate court-martial had done the same. Most however were only grass-widowers; their ships, battered by years of blockading Toulon in all weathers, had been sent in for repair. But the dockyards were overcrowded, the repairs were often serious and far-reaching and always very slow, and here the captains had to sit while the precious sea-time ran by, cursing the delay. Some of the richer men had sent for their wives, who were no doubt a great comfort to them, but most were condemned to glum celibacy or to what local solace they could find. Captain Aubrey was one of these, for although he had recently captured a neat little prize in the Ionian Seas it had not yet been condemned in the Admiralty court and in any case his affairs were horribly involved at home, with legal difficulties of every kind; besides, accommodation in Malta had grown shockingly expensive and now that he was older he no longer dared lay out large sums that he did not yet possess; he therefore lived as a bachelor, as modestly as a post-captain decently could, up three pair of stairs at Searle’s, his only amusement being the opera. Indeed, he was perhaps the most unfortunate of those whose ships were in the repairers’ hands, for he had contrived to send no less than two separate vessels into dock, so that he had a double set of slow devious stupid corrupt incompetent officials, tradesmen and artificers to deal with: the first was the Worcester, a worn-out seventy-four-gun ship of the line that had very nearly come apart in a long, fruitless chase of the French fleet in dirty weather, and the second was the Surprise, a small, sweet-sailing frigate, a temporary command in which he had been sent to the Ionian while the Worcester was repairing and in which he had engaged two Turkish ships, the Torgud and the Kitabi, in an extremely violent action that had left the Torgud sinking, the Kitabi a prisoner and the Surprise full of holes between wind and water. The Worcester, that ill-conceived, ill-built coffinship, would have been much better broken up and sold for firewood; but it was upon her worthless, profitable hull that the dockyard spent all its slow creeping care, while the Surprise lay in limbo for want of a few midship knees, the starboard knighthead and bumkin, and twenty square yards of copper sheathing, while her crew, her once excellent crew of picked seamen, grew idle, dissolute, debauched, drunken and unhealthy, while some of the very best hands and even petty-officers were stolen from him by unscrupulous superiors and even his perfect first lieutenant left the ship.
Captain Aubrey should have been the gloomiest of a glum gathering, but in fact he had been rattling away, talking loud, and even singing, with such good will that his particular friend, the Surprise’s surgeon Stephen Maturin, had withdrawn to a quietor arbour, taking with him their temporary shipmate Professor Graham, a moral philosopher on leave from his Scottish university, an authority on the Turkish language and Eastern affairs in general. Captain Aubrey’s high spirits were caused partly by the beautiful day acting on a constitutionally cheerful nature, partly by the infectious merriment of his companions, but more, very much more, by the fact that at the farthest end of the table sat Thomas Pullings, until very recently his first lieutenant and now the most junior commander in the Navy, the very lowest of those entitled to be called captain, and that only by courtesy. The promotion had cost Mr Pullings some pints of blood and a surprisingly ugly wound – a glancing blow from a Turkish sabre had sliced off most of his forehead and nose – but he would willingly have suffered ten times the pain and disfigurement for the golden epaulettes that he kept glancing at with a secret smile, while his hand perpetually strayed to the one or to the other. It was a promotion that Jack Aubrey had worked for these many years, and one that he had almost despaired of achieving, for Pullings, though an eminent seaman, likeable and brave, had no advantages of person or birth: even on this occasion Aubrey had had no confidence that his dispatch would have the desired effect, since the Admiralty, always loth to promote, could take refuge in the excuse that the Torgud’s captain was a rebel and not the commander of a ship belonging to a hostile power. Yet the beautiful commission had come straight back, travelling in the Calliope and reaching Captain Pullings so short a time ago that he was still in his first amazed happiness, smiling, saying very little, answering at random, and suddenly laughing out loud with no apparent cause.
Dr Maturin too was fond of Thomas Pullings: like Captain Aubrey he had known him as midshipman, master’s mate and lieutenant; he esteemed him highly and had sewn back his nose and forehead with even more than his usual care, sitting by his cot night after night during his days of fever. But Dr Maturin had been baulked of his John Dory. This was Friday; he had been promised a John Dory and he had looked forward to it; but on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the gregale had blown with such force that no fishing-boats had put out, and since Searle, unused to Catholic officers (rare birds in the Navy, where every lieutenant, on receiving his first commission, was required to renounce the Pope), had not even laid in any salt stock-fish, Maturin was obliged to dine on vegetables cooked in the English manner, waterlogged, tasteless, depressing. He was not ordinarily a greedy man, nor very ill-natured, but this disappointment had come on top of a series of vexations and some very grave anxieties, and on the second day of his giving up tobacco.
‘You might say that Duns Scotus stands in much the same relationship to Aquinas as Kant to Leibnitz,’ said Graham, carrying on their earlier conversation.
‘Sure, I have often heard the remark in Ballinasloe,’ said Maturin. ‘But I have no patience with Emmanuel Kant. Ever since I found him take such notice of that thief Rousseau, I have had no patience with him at all – for a philosopher to countenance that false ranting dog of a Swiss raparee shows either a criminal levity or a no less criminal gullibility. Gushing, carefully-calculated tears – false confidences, untrue confessions – enthusiasm – romantic vistas.’ His hand moved of itself to his cigar-case and came away disappointed. ‘How I hate enthusiasm and romantic vistas,’ he said.
‘Davy Hume was of your opinion,’ said Graham. ‘I mean with regard to Monsieur Rousseau. He found him to be little more than a crackit gaberlunzie.’
‘But at least Rousseau did not make a noise,’ said Maturin, looking angrily at his friends in the farther bower. ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau may have been an apostate, a cold-hearted prevaricating fornicator, but he did not behave like a Bashan bull when he was merry. Will you look how they call out to those young women now, for shame?’
The young women, who nightly capered on the stage or lent their voices to the chorus, and who often accompanied the younger officers on their boating picnics to Gozo or Comino or their expeditions to what meagre groves the island had to offer, did not seem outraged: they called back and laughed and waved, and one of them, coming up the steps, poised herself for a moment on the arm of Captain Pellew’s chair, drank off his glass of wine, and told them they must all come to the opera on Saturday – she was to sing the part of the fifth gardener. At this Captain Aubrey made some amazingly witty remark: it was lost to Maturin, but the roar of laughter that followed must certainly have been heard in St Angelo.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said Maturin. ‘In Ireland I have known many a numerous gathering rejoice at little more than a genteel murmur; and it is to be supposed that the same applies to Scotland.’
Graham could suppose no such thing, but he was benevolently inclined towards Maturin and he said no more than ‘Heuch: ablins.’
‘Some of my best friends are Englishmen,’ continued Maturin. ‘Yet even the most valuable have this same vicious inclination to make a confused bellowing when they are happy. It is harmless enough in their own country, where the diet deadens the sensibilities, but it travels badly: it is perceived as a superabundancy of arrogance, and is resented more than many worse crimes. The Spaniard is a vile colonist, murderous, rapacious, cruel; but he is not heard to laugh. His arrogance is of a common, universal kind, and his presence is not resented in the same way as the Englishman’s. Take the case of this island alone: it is scarcely a decade since the Navy rescued the people from the horrible tyranny of the French and filled the place with wealth rather than carrying away the treasures of the churches by the shipload, but already there is a great and growing discontent and I believe the laughter has much to do with it. Though there is enough plain stupid arrogance to account for much of it, for all love. Will you look at this, now?’
Graham took the paper, held it at arm’s length, and read ‘The King’s Civil Commissioner observes with regret that some weak and inconsiderate persons, deceived under specious pretexts, have suffered themselves to become the instruments of a few turbulent and factious individuals. They have been seduced to subscribe a paper purporting to be an application to the King for certain changes in the existing form of government of these islands.’
‘There is Sir Hildebrand’s style in all its shining perfection,’ said Maturin. ‘Ebenezer Graham, you have his ear: could you not advise him to forget his pomp, his righteous indignation, for a moment and reflect upon the immense importance of Maltese good will? Could you not persuade him to address them with common civility and in their own language, or at least in Italian? Could you not … what is it, child?’ he said, breaking off to attend to a little boy who had slipped through the greenery and who was standing at his side, smiling shyly, waiting to say that his sister – fifteen years of age, no more, my lord – was kind to English gentlemen: her fees were astonishingly moderate, and full satisfaction was guaranteed.
It was not much of an interruption, but it broke Maturin’s flow of speech, and when the boy had gone Graham observed, ‘For your part, you have Captain Aubrey’s ear. Could you not advise him to avoid Mr Holden’s company, rather than hail him in that public manner?’
Mr Holden had been dismissed the service for using his ship to protect some Greeks fleeing from a Turkish punitive expedition: he was now acting for a small, remote, ineffectual and premature Committee for Greek Independence, and since the English government had to keep on terms with the Sublime Porte he was a most unwelcome visitor to official Malta.
The advice, of course, was far too late. Holden was already sitting at his old shipmate’s table, one hand holding a glass of wine, the other stretched out, pointing at a singularly magnificent diamond spray in Jack Aubrey’s hat. ‘What, what is that?’ he cried.
‘It is a chelengk,’ said Jack with some complacency. ‘Ain’t I elegant?’
‘Wind it up again. Wind it up for him,’ said his friends, and the Captain set his hat, his best, gold-laced, number one full-dress scraper, on the table: the splendid bauble – two close-packed lines of small diamonds, each topped by a respectable stone and each four or five inches long – had a round, diamond-studded base; this he twisted anti-clockwise for several turns, and as he put on his hat again the chelengk sprang into motion, the round turning with a gentle whirr and the sprays quivering with a life of their own, so that Captain Aubrey sat in a small private coruscation, a confidential prismatic firework display, astonishingly brilliant in the sun.
‘Where, where did he get it?’ cried Holden, turning to the others, as though Captain Aubrey might not be addressed while the chelengk blazed and trembled.
Did Holden not know? – Why, from the Grand Signior, of course, the Sultan of Turkey – For taking the rebellious Torgud and her consort – Where had Holden been, not to have heard of the action between the Surprise and the Torgud, the neatest action this last age?
‘I knew the Torgud, of course,’ said Holden. ‘She carried very heavy metal, and she was commanded by that murderous bloody-minded dog Mustapha Bey. Pray, Jack, how did you set about her?’
‘Well, we were just opening the Corfu channel, do you see, with a steady topgallant breeze at south-east,’ said Jack. ‘And the ships lay thus…’
In the quieter, more philosophic bower Dr Maturin, sitting with his legs crossed and his breeches unbuckled at the knee, felt a slight movement upon his calf, as of an insect or the like: instinctively he raised his hand, but years of natural philosophy – of a desire to know just what the creature was, and a wish to spare the honey-bee or the innocent resting moth – delayed the stroke. He had often paid for his knowledge in the past, and now he paid for it again: he had scarcely recognized the great twelve-spotted Maltese horse-fly before it thrust its proboscis deep into his flesh. He struck, crushed the brute, and sat watching the blood spread on his white silk stocking, his lips moving in silent rage.
Graham said, ‘You were speaking of your freedom from tobacco: but should we not consider a determination not to smoke as an even greater deprivation of liberty? As an abolition of the right of present choice, which is freedom’s very essence? Should not a wise man feel himself free to smoke tobacco or not to smoke tobacco, as the occasion requires? We are social animals; but by ill-timed austerities, that lead to moroseness, we may be led to forget our social duties, and so loosen the bonds of society.’
‘I am sure that you mean kindly in speaking so,’ said Maturin. ‘Yet you must allow me to say that I wonder at it – I wonder that a man of your parts should believe in a simple, single cause for so complex an effect as a state of mind. Is it conceivable that mere absence of tobacco alone could make me testy? No, no: in psychology as in history we must look for multiple causality. I shall smoke a small cigar, or part of a small cigar, out of compliment to you; but you will see that the difference, if it exists at all, is very slight. Indeed, the springs of mood are wonderfully obscure, and sometimes I am astonished at what I find welling up from them – at the thoughts and attitudes that present themselves, fully formed, before the mental eye.’
It was quite true. The John Dory and the yearning for tobacco were not enough to account for Maturin’s ill-temper, which in any case had lasted for some days, surprising him as he woke each morning. As he pondered it suddenly occurred to him that at least one of the many reasons was the fact that he was sexually starved and that recently his amorous propensities had been stirred. ‘The bull, confined, grows vicious,’ he observed to himself, drawing the grateful smoke deep into his lungs: but that was not a full explanation, by any means. He moved out into the sun, to the leeward side of the arbour, so that he should not fumigate Professor Graham; and there, blinking in the strong light, he turned the matter over in his mind.
His move brought him into sight from the Apothecary’s Tower, a tall, severe building with an incongruous clock in its forehead. Its gaunt, unfurnished topmost room had not been occupied since the time of the Knights; the floor was coated with soft grey dust and bat-dung, and in the dim rafters high overhead the bats themselves could be heard moving about, while all the time the clock ticked away the seconds in a deep, resonating tone. It was a cheerless, inimical room, yet it provided watchers with a fine view of the Baracca, of Searle’s hotel and of its courtyard, though not, obviously, of its covered bowers. ‘There is one of them,’ said the first watcher. ‘He has just moved into the sun.’
‘The naval surgeon, smoking a cigar?’ asked the second.
‘He is a naval surgeon, and a very clever one, they say; but he is also an intelligence-agent. His name is Maturin, Stephen Maturin: Irish father, Spanish mother – can pass for either; or for French. He has done a great deal of damage; he has been the direct cause of many of our people’s death and he was aboard the Ocean when your cousin was poisoned.’
‘I shall deal with him tonight.’
‘You will do nothing of the kind,’ said the first man sharply. His Italian had a strong southern accent, but he was in fact a French agent, one of the most important French agents in the Mediterranean, and the Maltese with him bowed submissively. Lesueur was the Frenchman’s name and he was not unlike a somewhat older version of the Dr Maturin whose face he was now examining so attentively with a pocket spy-glass – a slight man of under the middle height, sallow, stooping, bookish, with an habitually closed, reserved expression, a man who would rarely draw attention but who having drawn it would give the impression of more than usual self-possession and intelligence: and Lesueur also had the easy authority of one with great sums of money at his command. He was dressed as a fairly prosperous merchant. ‘No, no, Giuseppe,’ he said more kindly, ‘I commend your zeal, and I know you are an excellent hand with a knife; but this is not Naples, nor even Rome. His abrupt, unexplained disappearance would make a great deal of noise – the implications would be obvious, and it is absolutely essential that our existence should not be suspected. In any event there is little to be learnt from a corpse, whereas the living Dr Maturin may supply us with a great deal of information. I have set Mrs Fielding on him, and you and Luigi will watch his other meetings with the greatest care.’
‘Who is Mrs Fielding?’
‘A lady who works for us: she reports directly to me or Carlos.’ He might have added that Laura Fielding was a Neapolitan married to a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a young man who had been captured by the French during a cutting-out expedition and who was now confined in the punishment-prison of Bitche for having escaped from Verdun; and as he had killed one of the gendarmes who were pursuing him it was likely that he would be condemned to death when his trial came on. But the trial was postponed again and again, and by an exceedingly roundabout route Mrs Fielding was told that it might be postponed indefinitely if she would cooperate with a person who was interested in the movements of shipping. The matter was put to her as having to do with international insurance – with great Venetian and Genoese firms whose French correspondents had the government’s ear. The story might not have answered with anyone thoroughly accustomed to business, but the man who told it was a convincing speaker and he produced a perfectly authentic letter written by Mr Fielding to his wife not three weeks before, a letter in which he spoke of ‘this exceptional opportunity to send his love and to tell his dearest Laura that the trial had been put off again – his confinement was now much less severe, and it seemed possible that the charges might not be pressed with the utmost rigour’.
Mrs Fielding was well placed for the gathering of intelligence: not only was she very widely received, but to eke out her minute income she gave Italian lessons to officers’ wives and daughters and sometimes to officers themselves, and this brought her acquainted with a good many pieces of more or less confidential information, each in itself trifling enough, but each helping to build up a valuable picture of the situation. In spite of her poverty she also gave musical parties, offering her guests lemonade from the prolific tree in her own courtyard and one Naples biscuit apiece; and this added to her value from Lesueur’s point of view, for she played the piano and a beautiful mandoline, sang quite well, and gathered all the more talented naval and military amateurs in a singularly relaxed and unguarded atmosphere. Yet he had not made anything like full use of her potentialities until now, preferring to let her get thoroughly used to the notion that her husband’s welfare depended on her diligence. Lesueur might have told Giuseppe all this without any particular harm, but he was a man as close and reserved as his face, and he liked keeping information to himself – all information. Yet on the other hand Giuseppe, who had been away for a great while, had to have some knowledge of the present situation: he also had to be humoured to a certain degree. ‘She teaches Italian,’ said Lesueur grudgingly, and paused. ‘You see the big man in the arbour on the far left?’
‘The one-armed commander in a scratch-wig?’
‘No. At the other end of the table.’
‘The great fat yellow-haired post-captain with that sparkling thing in his hat?’
‘Just so. He is very fond of the opera.’
‘That red-faced ox of a man? You astonish me. I should have thought beer and skittles more his line. Look how he laughs. They must surely hear him in Ricasoli. He is probably drunk: the English are perpetually drunk – do not know decency.’
‘Perhaps so. At all events he is very fond of the opera. In passing, let me caution you against letting your dislike cloud your judgement, and against underestimating your enemy: the red-faced ox is Captain Aubrey, and although he may not look very wise at present he is the man who negotiated with Sciahan Bey, destroyed Mustapha, and turned us out of Marga. No fool could have done any one of those things, let alone all three. But as I was about to say, being here for some time and being fond of the opera, he decided to have Italian lessons so that he might understand what was going on.’ Giuseppe was about to make some remark on the simplicity of this notion, but seeing the look on Lesueur’s face he closed his mouth. ‘His first teacher was old Ambrogio, but as soon as Carlos heard of this he sent proper people to tell Ambrogio to fall sick and to recommend Mrs Fielding. Let us have no interruptions, I beg,’ he said, holding up his hand as Giuseppe’s mouth opened again. ‘She is already twelve minutes overdue and I wish to say all that I have to say before she comes. The whole point is this: Aubrey and Maturin are close friends; they have always sailed together; and by bringing the woman into contact with Aubrey I bring her into contact with Maturin. She is young, good-looking, quite intelligent, and of good reputation – no known lovers at all. No lovers since her marriage, that is to say. In these circumstances I have little doubt of his becoming involved with her, and I look forward to some very valuable information indeed.’
As Lesueur said these words, Maturin turned in his seat and looked straight at the Apothecary’s Tower: it was exactly as though his strange pale eyes pierced the slatted shutters to the men within and they both silently fell back a pace. ‘A nasty looking crocodile,’ said Giuseppe, in little more than a whisper.
Stephen Maturin’s general uneasiness had been increased by the sense of being stared at, but this had scarcely reached the fully conscious level: his intelligence had not caught up with his instinct and although his eyes were correctly focused his mind was considering the tower as a possible haunt of bats. He knew that since the departure of the Knights its lower part had served as a merchant’s warehouse, but the top was almost certainly unused: a more suitable place could hardly be imagined. Clusius had dealt with the island’s flora at great length, and Pozzo di Borgo with the birds; but the Maltese bats had been most pitifully neglected.
Yet although Dr Maturin was devoted to bats, and to natural philosophy in general, it was only the surface of his mind that was concerned with them at present. The healing cigar had taken off some of his more peevish discontent, but he was still deeply disturbed. As Lesueur had said, he was an intelligence-agent as well as a naval surgeon, and on his return to Malta from the Ionian he had found the already worrying situation more worrying still. Not only was confidential information bandied about in the most reckless way, so that a Sicilian wine-merchant of his acquaintance could tell him, quite correctly, that the 73rd Regiment would leave Gibraltar next week, bound for Cerigo and Santa Maura, but far more important plans were being conveyed, at least in part, to Toulon and Paris.
There had been a most unfortunate vacation of power. In Valletta itself the popular naval governor, a man who had fought with the Maltese against the French, a man who liked the people, knew their leaders intimately well, and spoke their language had, against all reason, been replaced by a soldier, and a stupid arrogant booby of a soldier at that, who publicly referred to the Maltese as a pack of Popish natives who should be made to understand who was master. The French could not have asked for better: they already had intelligence networks in the island and now they reinforced them with money and men, recruiting the dissatisfied in surprising numbers.
But even more important was the interval between the death of Admiral Sir John Thornton and the appointment of a new Commander-in-Chief. Sir John had been a good chief of intelligence as well as an outstanding diplomat, strategist and seaman, yet by far the greater part of his improvised organization was unofficial, based upon personal contact, and it had fallen to pieces in the incompetent hands of his second-in-command and temporary successor, Rear-Admiral Harte: men of substance, often important officials in governments from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, would trust themselves to Sir John or his secretary, but they had nothing to say to an ill-tempered, indiscreet, ignorant stop-gap. Maturin himself, whose services in this respect were wholly voluntary, he being moved by nothing but an intense hatred of the Napoleonic tyranny, had declined to appear in any character other than that of a surgeon while Harte held the command.
This period was now at an end, however: Sir Francis Ives, the new and respectable Commander-in-Chief, was now with the main body of the fleet, blockading Toulon, where the French, with twenty-one line-of-battle ships and seven frigates, showed signs of great activity, while at the same time he was picking up all the complex threads of his command, tactical, strategic, and political, with their necessary complement of intelligence. At the same time the Admiralty was sending an official to deal with the situation in Malta, their acting Second Secretary, no less, Mr Andrew Wray. He had a reputation for brilliant parts, and he had certainly done very well at the Treasury under his cousin Lord Pelham: there was no doubt that he was an exceptionally able man. And Maturin had no doubt that quite apart from coping with the French he would need all his abilities to overcome the ill-will of the Army and the jealousy and obstruction of the other British intelligence organizations that had made their devious way into the island. There were mysterious gentlemen from various departments, darkening counsel, hampering one another, and causing confusion; and Stephen Maturin’s only consolation when he contemplated the situation was that the French were probably worse. Despotic government tends to breed spies and informers, and there were traces of at least three different Paris ministries at work in Malta, each in ignorance of the others, with a man from a fourth keeping watch on them all. The ostensible purpose of Mr Wray’s visit was to check corruption in the dockyard, and it appeared to Maturin that he would probably be more successful in this than in counter-espionage. Intelligence was a highly specialized concern, and as far as he knew this was Wray’s first direct connection with the department. Corruption on the other hand was universal, open to all; and since Wray in his youth had kept a carriage and a considerable establishment on an official salary of a few hundred a year and no private means it was likely that he was tolerably well acquainted with the subject. Maturin had first met Wray some years ago, when Jack Aubrey was ashore, uncommonly rich in prize-money and the spoils of the Mauritius campaign: the meeting – a casual exchange of bows and how d’ye do, sirs – had taken place in a gambling club in Portsmouth, where Jack was playing with several acquaintances. The introduction amounted to nothing in itself and Maturin would never have remembered Wray but for the fact that some days later, when Maturin was in London, it seemed that Jack had accused Wray or his associates, in terms only just ambiguous enough for decency, of cheating at cards. Wray did not ask for the barbarous satisfaction usual in such cases. It is possible that he understood Jack’s words to apply to some other player – Stephen had had no first-hand account of the affair – yet there had been signs of hostile influence inside the Admiralty for some time past: ships refused, good appointments going to men with a far less spectacular fighting-record, no promotion for Jack’s subordinates, and at one time Stephen had suspected that Wray might be taking his revenge in this way. But on the other hand it might be the result of other causes; it might for example be the result of the ministers’ dislike of General Aubrey, Jack’s father, an everlasting member of parliament in the Radical interest and a sad trial to them all – an explanation supported by the fact that Wray’s reputation had not suffered. Ordinarily a man who did not fight in such circumstances was put to the hiss of the world, but when Aubrey and Maturin, who had had to sail very shortly after the unpleasantness, came back from the Indies and beyond Stephen found that it was generally assumed that there had been either a meeting or an explanation, and that Wray was received everywhere: Stephen saw him several times in London. And if Wray had not suffered in reputation he could hardly feel lastingly revengeful. In any case his manner of life had changed entirely since those days: he had made a very good marriage, from a worldly point of view, and although Fanny Harte brought him little beauty and less affection (she was against the match from the start, being attached to William Babbington, of the Royal Navy), her fortune allowed him to lead the expensive life he liked, to lead it without recourse to expedients, and to look forward to a much greater degree of wealth when the Rear-Admiral died, since Harte had inherited an extraordinarily large sum from a money-lending relative in Lombard Street, and Fanny was his only child. Furthermore, after Jack Aubrey’s brilliant and very publicly acknowledged little victory in the Ionian where among other things he had provided the Navy with an excellent base and had delighted the Grand Turk, a point of great diplomatic importance at this juncture, he was reasonably safe from the insidious marginal comment hinting at misconduct or the semi-official note bringing up the indiscretions of his youth.
‘Here is the other one,’ said Lesueur, as Graham came out of the green shade and sat by Stephen Maturin. ‘There were confusing reports about him, and at one time he seemed to be part of a different organization altogether; but now it appears that he is only a linguist, employed to deal with Turkish and Arabic documents, and that he must soon go back to his university. You will have him watched, however, and his connections noted. Where that woman can be I cannot tell. She was supposed to be here twenty-three, no, twenty-four minutes ago, to give Aubrey his lesson. Now she will not have time before his meeting.’
A long pause, and Giuseppe, who had the corner shutter to peer through as well as that which gave the frontal view, said, ‘There is a lady hurrying down the side-alley with a maid.’
‘Has she a dog? A great enormous Illyrian mastiff ?’
‘No, sir, she has not.’
‘Then it is not Mrs Fielding,’ said Lesueur in a cross, positive voice. But he was mistaken, as he perceived the moment the lady and her black-cowled maid turned the corner and hurried into the court of Searle’s hotel.
All the men at Aubrey’s table sprang to their feet, for this was not an example of local solace, no fifth gardener: far from it. Indeed, when Captain Pelham fell flat on his face it would hardly have been an exaggerated testimony of his respect if it had been voluntary, instead of too much Marsala and an inconvenient chair-leg.
There was an amiable hubbub as Mrs Fielding tried to apologize to Captain Aubrey and at the same time to satisfy those officers who wished to know how she did, and what had happened to Ponto. This was the grim censorious puritanical unsmiling creature with a collar of steel spikes, the Illyrian mastiff, an animal the size of a moderate calf that always stalked by Laura Fielding’s side, holding in its long stride to match her shorter step and protecting her from the least familiarity by its mere presence; or if that were not enough then by a thunderous growl. As far as it could be made out, Ponto had been left at home in disgrace for killing an ass; he was perfectly capable of doing so, but Mrs Fielding’s English was sometimes a little wild and the calmness with which she spoke of the act made it seem that there was some mistake. ‘Upon my word, gentlemen,’ she went on, with scarcely a pause, ‘you are all very fine today. White breeches! Silk stockings!’
Why, yes, they said. Had she not heard? Calliope had brought Mr Wray of the Admiralty last night, and they were going to pay their respects at the Governor’s in twenty minutes, square-rigged and with a vast expenditure of breeches-ball and hair-powder, confident that their collective beauty would strike him dumb with amazement.
It was pleasant to see how the captains, some of them true tartars aboard, most of them thoroughly accustomed to battle, and all of them capable of assuming great responsibility, played the fool before a pretty woman. ‘There is a capital book to be written on the human mating display in all its ludicrous variety,’ observed Dr Maturin. ‘Not, however, that this is more than a faint shadowing-forth of the full ceremony. Here we have no strong rivalry, no burning eagerness among the men, no real hope’ – this with a penetrating glance at his friend Aubrey – ‘and in any event the lady is not at leisure.’ Mrs Fielding was certainly not at leisure in Maturin’s particular sense of the word, but it was pleasant too to see how well she took their open though respectful admiration, their kindly banter and their flights of wit – no missishness, no bridling, no simpering, but no bold over-confidence either: she hit just the right note of friendliness, and Maturin watched her with admiration. He had earlier noticed her ignoring of Pelham’s drunkenness – she was used to men of war – and now he observed her instant recovery from the shock of seeing Pullings’ face as Jack Aubrey led him out of the arbour’s shade to be presented and the particularly kind way in which she wished him joy of his promotion and asked him to her house that evening – a very small party, just to hear the rehearsal of a quartet: he saw her childish delight when the chelengk was put through its paces and her frank greed when she had it in her hands and she was admiring the big stones at the top. He watched her with curiosity, and with something more than that. For one thing she reminded him strongly of his first love: she had the same build, rather small but as slim and straight as a rush, and the same striking dark red hair; and by a very singular coincidence she too had arranged it so that a touchingly elegant nape was to be seen, and an ear with a delicate curve. For another she had shown him particular attention.
Insects might still delude Maturin and pierce his skin, but at this late stage it was difficult for women to do so. He knew that no one could possibly admire him for his looks; he had no illusions about his social charms or his conversation; and although he felt that his best books, Remarks on Pezophaps Solitarius and Modest Proposals for the Preservation of Health in the Navy, were not without merit he did not believe that either would set any female bosom in a blaze. Even his wife had not been able to get through more than a few pages, in spite of her very real good will. His status in the Navy was modest – he was not even a commissioned officer – and he had neither patronage nor influence. Nor was he rich.
Mrs Fielding’s amiability and her invitations were therefore prompted by something other than a notion (however remote) of gallantry or of profit: what it might be he could not tell unless indeed it had to do with intelligence. If that were so then clearly it was his duty to be all compliance. There was no other way in which he could sift the matter; no other way in which he could either surprise her connections or induce her to reveal them, or use her to convey false information. He might be completely mistaken – after a while an intelligence-agent tended to see spies everywhere, rather as certain lunatics saw references to themselves in every newspaper – but whether or no he intended to play his part in the hypothetical game. And he the more easily persuaded himself that this was the right course since he liked her company, liked her musical evenings, and was convinced that he could govern any untimely emotion that might rise in his heart. It was for Mrs Fielding that he had put on these white stockings (for neither his rank nor his inclination required his presence at the reception), and it was for Mrs Fielding that he now advanced, swept off his hat, made his most courtly leg and cried, ‘A very good day to you, ma’am. I trust I find you well?’
‘All the better for seeing you, sir,’ said she, smiling and giving him her hand. ‘Dear Doctor, cannot you persuade Captain Aubrey to take his lesson? We only have to memorate the trapassato remoto.’
‘Alas, he is a sailor; and you know the sailor’s slavish devotion to clocks and bells.’
A shadow passed over Laura Fielding’s face: her only disagreement with her husband had been on the subject of punctuality. With a slightly artificial cheerfulness she went on, ‘Just the regular trapassato remoto – not ten minutes.’
‘Look,’ said Stephen, pointing to the clock in the Apothecary’s Tower. They all turned, and once again the watchers involuntarily recoiled. ‘Ten minutes is all these fine gentlemen have in which to pace stately to the Governor’s; for they must not pelt up the cruel slope, creasing their careful neckcloths, losing their hair-powder, gasping in the heat, and arriving in a state of crimson dissolution. You had much better sit down with me and drink a glass of iced cow’s milk in the shade; the goat I cannot recommend.’
‘I dare not,’ she said, as the captains took their leave, walking off in order of seniority, ‘I should be late for Miss Lumley. Captain Aubrey,’ she called, ‘if by any chance I should be delayed for this evening’s rehearsal, I beg you will step in and show Captain Pullings the lemon-tree – it has been watered today! Giovanna is going to Notabile directly, but the door will not be really shut.’
‘I should be very happy to show Captain Pullings the lemon-tree,’ said Jack, and at the word captain Pullings laughed aloud once more. ‘It is the finest lemon-tree of my acquaintance. And pray, ma’am, will Ponto be going to Notabile too?’
‘No. Last time he killed some goats and childs. But he knows the naval uniform. He will not say anything to you, unless perhaps you touch the lemons.’
‘Your plan seems to answer, sir,’ said Giuseppe, watching the officers and Graham start climbing the steps towards the palace and Stephen and Mrs Fielding sit down to a dish of iced cream flavoured with coffee – they had agreed that Miss Lumley was not a sea-officer and could not therefore have so morbidly acute a sense of measured time.
‘I believe it may answer very well,’ said Lesueur. ‘In general I have found that the uglier the man, the greater his vanity.’
‘Now, sir,’ said Laura Fielding, licking her spoon, ‘since you have been so very kind, and since I should like to send Giovanna off to Notabile, I shall ask you to be kinder still and walk with me as far as St Publius: there are always a great many blackguard soldiers hanging about the Porta Reale, and without my dog…’
Dr Maturin declared that he should be happy to act as vicar to so noble a creature, and indeed he looked unusually pleased and cheerful as they left the courtyard and as he handed her across the Piazza Regina, crowded with soldiers and two separate herds of goats; but by the time they were walking past the Auberge de Castile part of his mind had drifted away, back to the subject of mood and its origins. Another part was very much in the present, however, and his silence was in some degree deliberate; it did not last long, but as he had foreseen it disturbed Laura Fielding. She was under a constraint – a constraint that he perceived more and more clearly – and both her tone and her smile were somewhat artificial when she said, ‘Do you like dogs?’
‘Dogs, is it?’ he said, giving her a sideways glance and smiling. ‘Why now, if you were an ordinary commonplace everyday civilly-prating gentlewoman I should smirk and say “Lord, ma’am, I dote upon ’em,” with as graceful a writhe of my person as I could manage. But since it is you I shall only observe that I understand your words as a request that I should say something: you might equally have asked did I like men, or women, or even cats, serpents, bats.’
‘Not bats,’ cried Mrs Fielding.
‘Certainly bats,’ said Dr Maturin. ‘There is as much variety in them as in other creatures: I have known some very high-spirited, cheerful bats, others sullen, froward, dogged, morose. And of course the same applies to dogs – there is the whole gamut from false fawning yellow curs to the heroic Ponto.’
‘Dear Ponto,’ said Mrs Fielding. ‘He is a great comfort to me; but I wish he were a little wiser. My father had a Maremma dog, a bog-dog, that could multiply and divide.’
‘Yet,’ said Maturin, pursuing his own thought, ‘there is a quality in dogs, I must confess, rarely to be seen elsewhere and that is affection: I do not mean the violent possessive protective love for their owner but rather that mild, steady attachment to their friends that we see quite often in the best sort of dog. And when you consider the rarity of plain disinterested affection among our own kind, once we are adult, alas – when you consider how immensely it enhances daily life and how it enriches a man’s past and future, so that he can look back and forward with complacency – why, it is a pleasure to find it in brute creation.’
Affection was also to be found in commanders: it fairly beamed from Pullings as Jack Aubrey led him up to the Governor and his guest. Jack did not at all relish this meeting with Wray, but since he felt that he could not avoid it without meanness he was glad that etiquette required that he should present his former lieutenant: the necessary formality would take away some of the awkwardness. Not that there seemed a great deal of awkwardness ahead, he reflected, looking along the line. Wray looked much the same, a tall, good-looking, animated, gentlemanlike fellow wearing a black coat with a couple of foreign orders; he was perfectly well aware of Jack’s approach – their eyes had met some time before – but he was laughing away with Sir Hildebrand and a red-faced civilian, apparently quite unmoved, as though he had not the least reason to look furtive, or even uneasy in his mind.
The line moved on. It was their turn. Jack made the presentation to the Governor, who replied with a slight inclination of his head, an indifferent look, and the word ‘Happy’. Then he urged Pullings on a step and said, ‘Sir, allow me to name Captain Pullings. Captain Pullings, Mr Secretary Wray.’
‘I am delighted to see you, Captain Pullings,’ said Wray, holding out his hand, ‘and I congratulate you with all my heart on your share in the Surprise’s brilliant victory. As soon as I read Captain Aubrey’s dispatch’ – bowing to Jack – ‘and his glowing account of your unparalleled exertions I said Mr Pullings must be promoted. There were gentlemen who objected that the Torgud was not in the Sultan’s service at the moment of her capture – that the promotion would be irregular – that it would establish an undesirable precedent. But I insisted that we should attend to Captain Aubrey’s recommendation, and I may tell you privately,’ he added in a lower tone, smiling placidly at Jack as he did so, ‘that I insisted all the more strongly, because at one time Captain Aubrey seemed to do me an injustice, and by promoting his lieutenant I could, as the sea-phrase goes, the better wipe his eye. Few things have given me greater pleasure than bringing out the commission, and I am only sorry that the victory should have cost you such a cruel wound.’
‘Mr Wray: Colonel Manners of the Forty-Third,’ said Sir Hildebrand, who felt that this had been going on far too long.
Jack and Pullings bowed and gave place to the Colonel: Jack heard the Governor say ‘That was Aubrey, who took Marga,’ and the soldier’s almost instant keen reply ‘Ah? It was held by the enemy, I recollect?’ but his mind was deeply perturbed. Was it possible that he had misjudged Wray? Could any man have such boundless impudence to speak so if it were false? Wray could certainly have barred the promotion if he had wished; there was the perfect excuse of the Torgud’s being a rebel. Jack tried to recall the exact details of that far-away unhappy, angry evening in Portsmouth – just what was the sequence of events? – just how much had he drunk? – who were the other civilians at the table? – but he had been through a great deal of much more open violence since that time and he could no longer fix the grounds of his then certainty. Cheating there had been, and for large sums of money, of that he was still sure; but there had been several players at the table, not only Andrew Wray.
He became aware that Pullings had been talking about the Second Secretary in a tone approaching enthusiasm for some time – ‘such magnanimity, magnanimity, you know what I mean, sir – benevolent eye – uncommon learned too, no sort of doubt about it – should certainly be First Secretary if not First Lord’ – and that they were standing at a table covered with bottles, decanters and glasses.
‘So here’s to his health, sir, in admiral’s flip,’ cried Pullings, putting an ice-cold silver tankard into his hand.
‘Admiral’s flip, at this time of day?’ said Jack, looking thoughtfully at Captain Pullings’ round, happy face, with its livid wound now glowing purple – the face of one who had already swallowed a pint of marsala and who was in any case quite overcome with joy – the face of an ordinarily abstemious man who was now in no state to drink champagne mixed with brandy half and half. ‘Would not a glass of pale ale do as well? Capital stuff, this East India pale ale.’
‘Come, sir,’ said Pullings reproachfully. ‘It’s not every day I wet the swab.’
‘Very true,’ said Jack, remembering the time he first put on a commander’s epaulette – only one in those days – and his unbounded delight. ‘Very true. To Mr Secretary’s very good health, then. May he prosper in all his designs.’
The admiral’s flip did for poor Pullings even sooner than might have been expected. They were separated by a tide of thirsty officers, many of whom wished Pullings joy of his promotion, and Jack had not been talking to his old friend Dundas for five minutes before he saw two of them leading, almost carrying, Pullings away. He followed and found that they had put him on a seat in a quiet corner of the garden, where he was very nearly asleep, pale, but smiling still. ‘You are all right, Tom, are you not?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, sir,’ said Pullings from a great distance. ‘It was only a little close in there. Like the hold of a slave-ship.’ He added that he was thinking of Mrs Pullings, of Mrs Captain Pullings, and what she would say to an income of sixteen guineas a month. Sixteen beautiful guineas a lunar month!
‘What she will say to your poor phiz is more to the point,’ said Jack to himself, contemplating the now mute, insensible commander. A very ugly wound indeed: he had rarely seen an uglier. Yet Stephen Maturin assured him that the great gash would heal and that the eye was in no danger; and in medical matters he had never known Stephen go far wrong. A bell struck within his mind, a warning-bell for his appointment. He said, ‘Mrs Fielding, pretty thing,’ and returning to the palace he walked fast through the crowd to the fore-court and there called ‘Surprise’. The cry was at once taken up by the various seamen and Marines there present and within seconds his coxswain appeared, wiping his mouth – a rather splendid coxswain, for on these occasions any ship worth her copper liked her captain, his barge, and those that belonged to it, to do her credit, and Bonden had come out in a tall round hat with Surprise on it, a light-blue coat with a velvet collar, satin breeches and silver-buckled shoes, the whole (apart from the shoes, which had been taken from a dead renegado) the work of his own and his friends’ needles. ‘Bonden,’ said Jack, ‘Mr – Captain Pullings is taken a little poorly.’
‘Paralytic, sir?’ asked Bonden in a spirit of pure enquiry: no moral or even aesthetic question arose.
‘Not as who should say paralytic,’ said Jack: but this was at once understood as decent form, no more, and Bonden said that he would borrow a stretcher from the pile always ready in the guard-room when the Governor gave a party, rouse out a couple of strong, reliable bargemen for the fore-end, and cut round to the garden-gate, for to avoid scandal, sir, and letting the redcoats laugh.
‘Make it so, Bonden, make it so: the garden-gate in five minutes,’ said Jack. Ten minutes later he was half way down the ladder-like street that led to his hotel, walking beside the stretcher borne shoulder-high in front by two of the frigate’s bargemen and at knee-level by the powerful coxswain behind, so that it was tolerably straight: the commander himself was lashed in with the traditional seven turns, like a hammock. The scandal of a naval officer disguised in drink no longer seemed to affect any of the party now that the palace redcoats were out of sight, and Jack’s only care was to preserve his hat. The houses on either side had covered, closed-in balconies, and every twenty yards or so, where the slope of the street brought the balcony conveniently low, a hand from behind the shutters would make a dart at his head, accompanied by a laugh, silvery or beery as the case might be, and an invitation to step within. Officers as imposing as post-captains were rarely treated so, at least in daylight, but this was the feast of St Simeon Stylites, and a great deal of licence was tolerated; in any case Jack’s hat (which, out of love for Lord Nelson and a liking for the ways of his youth, he wore athwartships rather than fore and aft) had been snatched at in countless ports since before he needed to shave, and he was fairly good at preserving it.
He preserved it now, and reaching the court of the hotel he hailed his steward, who could be seen on the roof, staring in the wrong direction. ‘The roof, there. Lend a fist, Killick: bear a hand, now.’
Killick came running down. ‘There you are at last, sir,’ he cried, clapping on to the stretcher in an absent-minded way, his eyes fixed on Jack’s hat. ‘Which I been looking out for you this last bleeding watch and more.’ Killick was an unimproved foremast-hand, rougher than most, impervious to what civilizing influence the cabin might exert and deeply, obstinately ignorant, self-opinionated, and ill-informed. But he did know that ‘a diamond the size of a pea was worth a king’s ransom’, and he did know that the chelengk was made of diamonds because he had privately written Preserved Killick HMS Surprise none so Pretty on a window-panel with it. The two topmost stones were certainly as big as the dried naval peas he had eaten all his life – the green kind he had never seen – and he was persuaded that the chelengk ranked with the crown jewels: or even higher, since not one of the crown jewels had clockwork in it. Ever since the present had arrived from Constantinople his life had been one long anxiety, particularly as they were now ashore, with thieves at every hand; he hid the object in a different place every night, usually wrapping its outer case in sailcloth and covering that with filthy rags, the whole nestling among concealed fish-hooks and rat-traps set to go off at a sneeze.
He and Bonden put Pullings tenderly to bed in a neat, seamanlike fashion, and Jack, looking at his watch, realized that if he were not to be late for Mrs Fielding’s rehearsal he would have to step out; he also realized that he had not sent his violin round earlier in the day, a foolish oversight in a town where all officers wore uniform, and could not be seen carrying so much as a packet themselves, let alone a musical instrument. ‘Bonden,’ he said, ‘jump to the Doctor’s parlour, take my fiddle-case from the window-seat, and come along to Mrs Fielding’s with me. I am going directly.’
Bonden made no reply, only twisting his head to one side, looking dogged, and pretending to be busy with the string of Captain Pullings’ nightcap; but Killick plucked Jack’s hat from the bedside table with such force that the chelengk quivered again and said, ‘Not in that scraper you ain’t.’ The diamonds were of course his first consideration, but there was also the hat itself, Captain Aubrey’s best gold-laced hat, and Killick hated to see good uniforms worn to skin and bone, rack and ruin; or indeed worn at all. And although he was an open-handed creature himself (none more prodigal than Preserved Killick when ashore with a hat-full of prize-money) he disliked seeing Captain Aubrey’s victuals or wine eaten or drunk by anyone but admirals or lords or very good friends; and he had been known to give junior officers and midshipmen the mixed leavings of yesterday’s bottles. Now he came back with a little mean shrunken threadbare hat that had seen cruel hard service in the Channel. ‘Oh well, damn the scraper,’ said Jack, reflecting that the chelengk would be horribly out of place at the rehearsal. ‘Bonden, what are you at?’
‘I shall have to shift my togs first,’ said Bonden, looking away.
‘Which he means was he to carry a fiddle the redcoats might call out Give us a tune, sailor,’ said Killick. ‘You wouldn’t like that, your honour, not with Surprise on the ribbon of his hat. No. What you would like is for me to call a blackguard boy to carry it; and Bonden will go along and keep an eye on him, as in duty bound.’
It was all hellfire nonsense, began Captain Aubrey, and they were a couple of God-damned swabs; but then reflecting that they had followed him many a time on to the deck of an enemy man-of-war, when there was no question of carrying fiddle-cases or being laughed at, he said there was no time to be lost – they might do as they chose – but if that fiddle were not at Mrs Fielding’s within five minutes of his own arrival, they might look out for another ship.
In fact the fiddle was there before him. Bonden’s little barefoot boy knew every short cut and they were waiting at the big double doors giving on to the street when Jack came hurrying down through an adverse tide of black-cowled women, men of half a dozen nations, some scented, and goats. ‘Well done,’ he said, giving the boy a shilling. ‘I shall be just in time. Bonden, you may cut along: I shall want my gig at six in the morning.’ He took his fiddle and hurried down the long stone passage that pierced the building from front to back, leading to the little garden house where Laura Fielding lived; but when he reached the door that opened on to this inner court he found that his haste had been quite unnecessary – there was no answer to his knock. He waited a decent interval, then pushed the door; and as it opened he caught a great heady waft from her lemon-tree. It was an enormous tree, certainly as old as Valletta, if not older, and it had some flowers all the year round. Jack sat on the low surrounding wall, rather like a well-head, and gasped for a while; the bed had had its enormous quarterly watering that very day, and the damp earth gave out a grateful freshness.
He had quite recovered his good humour during his walk – it rarely deserted him for long – and now, opening his coat and taking off his hat, he contemplated the lemons in the gathering twilight with the utmost satisfaction, the cool air wafting about him. He had stopped puffing and he was about to take his fiddle out of its case when he took notice of a sound that had been vaguely present for some time but that now seemed to increase – a desperate unearthly wailing, fairly regular.
‘It is scarcely human,’ he said, cocking his ear and trying to think of possible origins – a windmill turning with no tallow on its shaft, a lathe of some kind, a man run melancholy-mad and shut up behind the wall on the left. ‘Yet sound is the strangest thing for reverberation,’ he reflected, standing up. Beyond the lemon-tree there stood the little house, and from its right-hand corner ran an elegant flight of arches, screening another courtyard at an angle to the first: he walked through, and at once the sound grew very much louder – it was coming from a broad, deep cistern sunk in the corner to receive rain-water from the roofs.
‘God help us,’ said Jack, running towards it with a vague but very horrible notion of the maniac’s having flung himself in out of despair. And when he leant over the edge of the dark water some four or five feet below, the notion seemed to be confirmed – a dim hairy form was swimming there, straining up its huge lamentable head and uttering a hoarse wow wow wow of extraordinary volume. Another glance, however, showed him that it was Ponto.
The cistern had been more than half emptied to water the lemon-tree (buckets stood by it still): the wretched dog, impelled by some unknown inquisitiveness and betrayed by some unknown blunder, had fallen in. There was still enough water for him to be out of his depth but enough had been taken to make it impossible for him to reach the rim and heave himself out. He had been in the water a great while, and all round the walls there were the bloody marks of his paws where he had tried to scrabble up. He looked quite mad with terror and despair and at first he took no notice of Jack at all, howling on and on without a pause.
‘If he is out of his wits he will have my hand off, maybe,’ said Jack, having spoken to the dog with no effect. ‘I must get hold of his collar: a damned long lean.’ He took off his coat and sword and reached down, far down, but not far enough although he felt his breeches complain. He straightened, took off his waistcoat, loosened his neckcloth and the band of his breeches and leant over again, down into the dimness and the howling that filled the air. This time his hand just touched the water: he saw the dog surge across, called out, ‘Hey there, Ponto, give us your scruff,’ and poised his hand to seize the collar. To his vexation the animal merely swam heavily to the other side, where it tried to climb the hopeless wall with its flayed, clawless paws, howling steadily.
‘Oh you God-damned fool,’ he cried. ‘You silly calf-headed bitch. Give us your scruff: bear a hand now, you infernal bugger.’
The familiar naval sounds, uttered very loud and echoing in the cistern, pierced through the dog’s distress, bringing sense and comfort. He swam over: Jack’s hand brushed the hairy head, whipped down to the collar, the damned awkward spiked collar, and took what grip it could. ‘Hold fast,’ he said, slipping his fingers farther under. ‘Stand by.’ He drew breath, and with his left hand gripping the cistern-rim and his right hooked under the collar, the two as far apart as they could be, he heaved. He had the dog half way out of the water – a very great weight with such a poor grip, but just possible – when the edge of the cistern gave way and he fell bodily in. Two thoughts flashed into his plunging mind: ‘There go my breeches’ and ‘I must keep clear of his jaws’, and then he was standing on the bottom of the cistern with the water up to his chest and the dog round his neck, its forelegs gripping him in an almost human embrace and its strangled breath in his ear. Strangled, but not demented: Ponto had clearly recovered what wits he possessed. Jack let go the collar, turned the dog about, grasped his middle, and crying ‘Away aloft’ thrust him up towards the rim. Ponto got his paws on to it, then his chin; Jack gave his rump one last powerful heave and he was gone: the mouth of the cistern overhead was empty, but for the pale sky and three stars.
