Читать книгу The Reverse of the Medal - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 8

Chapter One

The West Indies squadron lay off Bridgetown, sheltered from the north-east tradewind and basking in the brilliant sun. It was a diminished squadron, consisting of little more than the ancient Irresistible, wearing the flag of Sir William Pellew, red at the fore, and two or three battered, worn-out, undermanned sloops, together with a storeship and a transport; for all the seaworthy vessels were far away in the Atlantic or Caribbean, looking for the possible French or American men-of-war and the certain privateers, numerous, well-armed, well-handled, full of men, swift-sailing and eager for their prey, the English and allied merchant ships.

Yet although they were old, weather-worn and often iron-sick they were a pleasant sight lying there on the pure blue sea, as outwardly trim as West Indies spit and polish could make them, with paint and putty disguising the wounds of age and their bright-work all ablaze; and although some of them had suffered so from fever in Jamaica and on the Spanish Main that they could scarcely muster hands enough to win their anchors, there were still plenty of men, both officers and foremast-jacks, who were intimately acquainted with the ship that was beating up against the steady breeze and with many of the people in her. She was the Surprise, a twenty-eight-gun frigate that had been sent to protect the British whalers in the South Seas from the Norfolk, an American man-of-war of roughly equal force. The Surprise was even older than the Irresistible – indeed she had been on her way to the breaker’s yard when she was suddenly given the mission – but unlike her she was a sweet sailer, particularly on a bowline; and if she had not been towing a dismasted ship she would certainly have joined the squadron a little after dinner. As things were, however, it was doubtful whether she would be able to do so before the evening gun.

The Admiral was inclined to think that she might manage it; but then the Admiral was somewhat biased by his strong desire to know whether the Surprise had succeeded in her task, and whether the vessel she had in tow was a prize captured in his extensive waters or merely a distressed neutral or a British whaler. In the first case Sir William would be entitled to a twelfth of her value and in the second to nothing whatsoever, not even to the pressing of a few seamen, for the South Sea whalers were protected. He was also influenced by his ardent wish for an evening’s music. Sir William was a large bony old man with one forbidding eye and a rough, determined face; he looked very much the practical seaman and formal clothes sat awkwardly upon his powerful frame; but music meant a very great deal to him and it was generally known in the service that he never put to sea without at least a clavichord, and that his steward had been obliged to take tuning lessons in Portsmouth, Valletta, Cape Town and Madras. It was also known that the Admiral was fond of beautiful young men; but as this fondness was reasonably discreet, never leading to any disorder or open scandal, the service regarded it with tolerant amusement, much as it regarded his more openly-avowed but equally incongruous passion for Handel.

One of these beautiful young men, his flag-lieutenant, now stood by him on the poop, a young man who had begun life – naval life – as a reefer so horribly pimpled that he was known as Spotted Dick, but who with the clearing of his skin had suddenly blossomed into a sea-going Apollo: a sea-going Apollo perfectly unaware of his beauty however, attributing his position solely to his zeal and his perfectly genuine professional merits. The Admiral said, ‘It may very well be a prize.’ He gazed long through his telescope, and then referring to the captain of the Surprise, he added, ‘After all, they call him Lucky Jack Aubrey, and I remember him coming into that damned long narrow harbour of Port Mahon with a train of captured merchantmen at his tail like Halley’s comet. That was when Lord Keith had the Mediterranean command: Aubrey must have made him a small fortune at every cruise – a very fine eye for a prize, although . . . But I was forgetting: you sailed under him, did you not?’

‘Oh yes, sir,’ cried Apollo. ‘Oh yes, indeed. He taught me all the mathematics I know, and he grounded us wonderfully well in seamanship. Never was such a seaman, sir: that is to say, among post-captains.’ The Admiral smiled at the young man’s enthusiasm, his flush of candid admiration, and as he trained his glass on the Surprise once more he said, ‘He is a tolerably good hand with a fiddle, too. We played together all through a long quarantine.’

But the flag-lieutenant’s enthusiasm was not shared by everyone. Only a few feet below them, in his great cabin, the captain of the Irresistible explained to his wife that Jack Aubrey was not at all the thing. Nor was his ship. ‘Those old twenty-eight-gun frigates should have been sent to the knacker’s yard long ago – they belong to the last age, and are of no sort of use except to make us ridiculous when an American carrying forty-four guns takes one. They are both called frigates, and the landsman don’t see the odds. “Oh my eye,” he cries, “an American frigate has taken one of ours – the Navy is gone to the dogs – the Navy is no good any more.” ’

‘It must be a great trial, my dear,’ said his wife.

‘Twenty-four pounders, and scantlings like a line-of-battle ship,’ said Captain Goole, who had never been able to digest the American victories. ‘And as for Aubrey, well, they call him Lucky Jack, and to be sure he did take a great many prizes in the Mediterranean – Keith favoured him outrageously – gave him cruise after cruise – many people resented it. And then again in the Indian Ocean, when the Mauritius was taken in the year nine. Or was it ten? But I have not heard of anything much since then. No. It is my belief he overdid it – rode his luck to death. There is a tide in the affairs of men...’ He hesitated.

‘I dare say there is, my dear,’ said his wife.

‘I do beg, Harriet, that you will not incessantly interrupt every time I open my mouth,’ cried Captain Goole. ‘There, you have driven it out of my head again.’

‘I am sorry, my dear,’ said Mrs Goole, closing her eyes. She had come from Jamaica to recover from the fever and to escape being buried among the land-crabs; and sometimes she wondered whether it was a very clever thing to have done.

‘However, what the proverb means is that you must make hay while the sun shines but not force things. The minute your luck begins to turn sullen you must strike your topgallantmasts down on deck directly, and take a reef in your topsails, and prepare to batten down your hatches and lie to under a storm staysail if it gets worse. But what did Jack Aubrey do? He cracked on as though his luck was going to last for ever. He must have made a mint of money in the Mauritius campaign, quite apart from the Med; but did he put it into copper-bottomed two-and-a-half per cent stock and live quietly on the interest? No, he did not. He pranced about, keeping a stable of race-horses and entertaining like a lord-lieutenant and covering his wife with diamonds and taffeta mantuas...’

‘Taffeta mantuas, Captain Goole?’ cried his wife.

‘Well, expensive garments. Paduasoy – Indian muslin – silk: all that kind of thing. And a fur pelisse.’

‘How I should love some diamonds and a fur pelisse,’ said Mrs Goole, but not aloud: and she conceived a rather favourable opinion of Captain Aubrey.

‘Gambling, too,’ said her husband. ‘I have absolutely seen him lose a thousand guineas at a sitting in Willis’s rooms. And then he tried to mend his fortunes by some crackpot scheme of getting silver out of the dross of an ancient lead-mine – trusted in some shady projector to carry it on while he was at sea. I hear he is in very deep water now.’

‘Poor Captain Aubrey,’ murmured Mrs Goole.

‘But the real trouble with Aubrey,’ said the captain after a long pause during which he watched the distant frigate go about on to the larboard tack and head for Needham’s Point, ‘is that he cannot keep his breeches on.’

This seemed a very general failing in the Navy, for it was the character her husband gave to many, many of his fellow-officers; and in the first days of her marriage Mrs Goole had supposed that the fleet was largely manned by satyrs. Yet none had ever caused Mrs Goole the slightest uneasiness and as far as she was concerned they might all have been glued into their small-clothes. Her husband perceived her want of total conviction and went on, ‘No, but I mean he goes beyond all measure: he is a rake, a whore-monger, a sad fellow. When we were midshipmen together in the Resolution, on the Cape station, he hid a black girl called Sally in the cable tiers – used to carry her most of his dinner – cried like a bull-calf when she was discovered and put over the side. The captain turned him before the mast: disrated him and turned him before the mast as a common seaman. But perhaps that was partly because of the tripe, too.’

‘The tripe, my dear?’

‘Yes. He stole most of the captain’s dish of tripe by means of a system of hooks and tackles. We were on precious short commons in our mess, and the girl needed some too – famous tripe it was, famous tripe: I remember it now. So he was turned before the mast for the rest of the commission to learn him morals, and that is why I am senior to him. But it did not answer: presently he was at it again, in the Mediterranean this time, debauching a post-captain’s wife when he was only a lieutenant, or a commander at the best.’

‘Perhaps he has grown wiser with age and increasing responsibility,’ suggested Mrs Goole. ‘He is married now, I believe. I met a Mrs Aubrey at Lady Hood’s, a very elegant, well-bred woman with a fine family of children.’

‘Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,’ cried Goole. ‘The very last thing I heard of him was that he was careering about Valletta with a red-haired Italian woman. No, no, the leopard don’t change his spots. Besides, his father is that mad rakish General Aubrey, the radical member that is always abusing the ministry, and this fellow is his father’s son – he was always rash and foolhardy. And now he is going to dismast himself. See how he cracks on! He will certainly run straight on to the Needham’s Point reef. He cannot possibly avoid it.’

This seemed to be the general opinion aboard the flagship, and talk died away entirely, to revive some minutes later in laughter and applause as the Surprise, racing towards destruction under a great spread of canvas, put her helm alee, hauled on an unseen spring leading from her larboard cathead to the towline, and spun about like a cutter.

‘I have not seen that caper since I was a boy,’ said the Admiral, thumping the rail with pleasure. ‘Very prettily done. Though you have to be damned sure of your ship and your men to venture upon it, by God. Determined fellow: now he will come in easily on this leg. I am sure he is bringing a prize. Did you smoke the spring to his larboard cathead? Good afternoon to you, ma’am,’ – this to Mrs Goole, whose husband had abandoned her for a hundred fathoms of decayed cablet – ‘Did you smoke the spring to his larboard cathead? Richardson will explain it to you,’ he said, making his rheumatic way down the steps to the quarterdeck.

‘Well, ma’am,’ said Richardson with a shy, particularly winning smile, ‘it was not altogether unlike clubhauling, with the inertia of the tow taking the place of the pull of the lee-anchor...’

The manoeuvre was particularly appreciated by the watch below, plying spyglasses at the open gunports, and as the Surprise ran in on her last leg they exchanged tales about her – her extraordinary speed if handled right and her awkwardness if handled wrong – and about her present skipper. For with all his faults Jack Aubrey was one of the better-known fighting captains, and although few of the men had been shipmates with him many had friends who had been engaged in one or another of his actions. William Harris’s cousin had served with him in his first and perhaps most spectacular battle, when, commanding a squat little fourteen-gun sloop, he boarded and took the Spanish Cacafuego of thirty-two, and now Harris told the tale again, with even greater relish than usual, the captain in question being visible to them all, a yellow-haired figure, tall and clear on his quarterdeck, just abaft the wheel.

‘There’s my brother Barret,’ said Robert Bonden, sail-maker’s mate, at another gunport. ‘Has been Captain Aubrey’s coxswain this many a year. Thinks the world of him, though uncommon taut, and no women allowed.’

‘There’s Joe Noakes, bringing the red-hot poker for the salute,’ said a coal-black seaman, having grasped the spyglass. ‘He owes me two dollars and an almost new shore-going Jersey shirt, embroidered with the letter P.’

The smoke of the frigate’s last saluting gun had hardly died away before her captain’s gig splashed down and began pulling for the flagship in fine style. But half way across the roadstead the gig met the flotilla of bumboats bringing sixpenny whores out to the Surprise: it was a usual though not invariable practice – one that most captains liked on the grounds that it pleased the hands and kept them from sodomy, though others forbade it as bringing the pox and great quantities of illicit spirits aboard, which meant an endless sick-list, fighting, and drunken crime. Jack Aubrey was one of these. In general he loved tradition, but he thought discipline suffered too much from wholesale whoredom on board; and although he took no high moral stand on the matter he thoroughly disliked the sight of the brawling promiscuity of the lower deck of a newly-anchored man-of-war with some hundreds of men and women copulating, some in more or less screened hammocks, some in corners or behind guns, but most quite openly asprawl. His strong voice could now be heard, coming against the breeze, and the Irresistibles grinned.

‘He’s telling the bumboats to go and—themselves,’ said Harris.

‘Yes, but it’s cruel hard for a young foremast jack as has been longing for it watch after watch,’ observed Bonden, a goatish man, quite unlike his brother.

‘Never you fret your heart about the young foremast jack, Bob Bonden,’ said Harris. ‘He will get what he wants as soon as he goes ashore. And at any rate he knew he was shipping with a taut skipper.’

‘The taut skipper is going to get a surprise,’ said Reuben Wilks, the lady of the gunroom, and he laughed, deeply though kindly amused.

‘Along of the black parson?’ said Bonden.

‘The black parson will bring him up with a round turn, ha, ha,’ said Wilks; and another man said, ‘Well, well, we are all human,’ in the same tolerant, amiable tone. ‘We all have our little misfortunes.’

‘So that is Captain Aubrey,’ said Mrs Goole, looking across the water. ‘I had no idea he was so big. Pray, Mr Richardson, why is he calling out? Why is he sending the boats back?’ The lady’s parents had only recently married her to Captain Goole; they had told her that she would have a pension of ninety pounds a year if he was knocked on the head, but otherwise she knew very little about the Navy; and, having come out to the West Indies in a merchantman, nothing at all about this naval custom, for merchantmen had no time for such extravagances.

‘Why, ma’am,’ said Richardson, with a blush, ‘because they are filled with – how shall I put it? With ladies of pleasure.’

‘But there are hundreds of them.’

‘Yes, ma’am. There are usually one or two for every man.’

‘Dear me,’ said Mrs Goole, considering. ‘And so Captain Aubrey disapproves of them. Is he very rigid and severe?’

‘Well, he thinks they are bad for discipline; and he disapproves of them for the midshipmen, particularly for the squeakers – I mean the little fellows.’

‘Do you mean that these – that these creatures could be allowed to corrupt mere boys?’ cried Mrs Goole. ‘Boys that their families have placed under the captain’s particular care?’

‘I believe it sometimes happens, ma’am,’ said Richardson; and when Mrs Goole said ‘I am sure Captain Goole would never allow it,’ he returned no more than a civil, noncommittal bow.

‘So that is the fire-eating Captain Aubrey,’ said Mr Waters, the flagship’s surgeon, standing at the lee-rail of the quarterdeck with the Admiral’s secretary. ‘Well, I am glad to have seen him. But to tell you the truth I had rather see his medico.’

‘Dr Maturin?’

‘Yes, sir. Dr Stephen Maturin, whose book on the diseases of seamen I showed you. I have a case that troubles me exceedingly, and I should like his opinion. You do not see him in the boat, I suppose?’

‘I am not acquainted with the gentleman,’ said Mr Stone, ‘but I know he is much given to natural philosophy, and conceivably that is he, leaning over the back of the boat, with his face almost touching the water. I too should like to meet him.’

They both levelled their glasses, focusing them upon a small spare man on the far side of the coxswain. He had been called to order by his captain and now he was sitting up, settling his scrub wig on his head. He wore a plain blue coat, and as he glanced at the flagship before putting on his blue spectacles they noticed his curiously pale eyes. They both stared intently, the surgeon because he had a tumour in the side of his belly and because he most passionately longed for someone to tell him authoritatively that it was not malignant. Dr Maturin would answer perfectly: he was a physician with a high professional reputation, a man who preferred a life at sea, with all the possibilities it offered to a naturalist, to a lucrative practice in London or Dublin – or Barcelona, for that matter, since he was Catalan on his mother’s side. Mr Stone was not so personally concerned, but even so he too studied Dr Maturin with close attention: as the Admiral’s secretary he attended to all the squadron’s confidential business, and he was aware that Dr Maturin was also an intelligence agent, though on a grander scale. Stone’s work was mainly confined to the detection and frustration of small local betrayals and evasions of the laws against trading with the enemy, but it had brought him acquainted with members of other organizations having to do with secret service, not all of them discreet, and from these he gathered that some kind of silent, hidden war was slowly reaching its climax in Whitehall, that Sir Joseph Blaine, the head of naval intelligence, and his chief supporters, among whom Maturin might be numbered, were soon to overcome their unnamed opponents or be overcome by them. Stone loved intelligence work; he very much hoped to become a full member of one of the many bodies, naval, military and political, that operated behind the scenes with what secrecy they could manage in spite of the indiscretion, not to say the incurable loquacity of certain colleagues; and he therefore stared with intense curiosity at a man who was, according to his fragmentary, imprecise information, one of the Admiralty’s most valued agents – stared until the quarterdeck filled with ceremonial Marines and the sound of bosun’s pipes and the first lieutenant said, ‘Come, gentlemen, if you please. We must receive the Captain of Surprise.’

‘The Captain of Surprise, sir, if you please,’ said the secretary at the cabin door.

‘Aubrey, I am delighted to see you,’ cried the Admiral, striking a last chord and holding out his hand. ‘Sit down and tell me how you have been doing. But first, what is that ship you are towing?’

‘One of our whalers, sir, the William Enderby of London, recaptured off Bahia. She rolled her masts out in a dead calm just north of the line, she being so deep-laden and the swell so uncommon heavy.’

‘Recaptured, so a lawful prize. And deep-laden, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. The Americans put the catch of three other ships into her, burnt them and sent her home alone. The master of Surprise, who was a whaler in his time, reckons her at ninety-seven thousand dollars. A sad time we have had with her, both of us being so precious short of stores. We did rig jury-masts made out of various bits and pieces and made fast with our shoe-strings, but she lost them in last Sunday’s blow.’

‘Never mind,’ said the Admiral, ‘you have brought her in, and that is the main thing. Ninety-seven thousand dollars, ha, ha! You shall have everything you need in the way of stores: I shall give particular orders myself. Now give me some account of your voyage. Just the essentials to begin with.’

‘Very good, sir. I was unable to come up with the Norfolk in the Atlantic as I had hoped, but south of Falkland’s Islands I did at least recapture the packet she had taken, the Danaë ...’

‘I know you did. Your volunteer commander – what was his name?’

‘Pullings, sir. Thomas Pullings.’

‘Yes, Captain Pullings – brought her in for wood and water before carrying her home. He was in Plymouth before the end of the month – having been chased like smoke and oakum for three days and nights by a heavy privateer – an amazing rapid passage. But tell me, Aubrey, I heard there were two chests of gold aboard that packet, each as much as two men could lift. I suppose you did not recapture them too?’

‘Oh dear me no, sir. The Americans had transferred every last penny to the Norfolk within an hour of taking her. We did recover some confidential papers, however.’

At this point there was a silence, a silence that Captain Aubrey found exceedingly disagreeable. An untoward fall, the bursting open of a hidden brass box, had shown him that these papers were in fact money, a perfectly enormous sum of money, though in a less obvious form than coin; but this was unofficial knowledge, acquired only by accident, in his capacity as Maturin’s friend, not his captain; and the real custodian of it was Stephen, whose superiors in the intelligence service had told him where to find the box and what to do with it. They had not told him why it was there, but no very great penetration was required to see that a sum of such extraordinary magnitude, in such an anonymous and negotiable form, must be intended for the subversion of a government at least. It was clearly something that Captain Aubrey could not speak about openly except in the improbable event of the Admiral’s having been informed and of his giving a lead; but Jack hated this concealment – there was something sly, shifty and mean about it, together with an edge of very dangerous dishonesty – and he found the silence more and more oppressive until he saw that in fact it was caused by Sir William’s private conversion of ninety-seven thousand dollars into pounds and his division of the answer by twelve: this with a piece of black pencil on the corner of a dispatch. ‘Forgive me for a moment,’ said the Admiral, looking up from his sum with a cheerful face. ‘I must pump ship.’

The Admiral vanished into the quarter-gallery, and as Jack Aubrey waited he recalled the conversation he had had with Stephen while the Surprise was running in. By nature and profession Stephen was exceedingly close; they had never spoken about these bonds, obligations, bank-notes and so on until it became obvious that Jack would be summoned aboard the flagship in the next few hours, but then in the privacy of the frigate’s stern-gallery, he said, ‘Everyone has heard the couplet

In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave If secret gold sap on from knave to knave

but how many know how it goes on?’

‘Not I, for one,’ said Jack, laughing heartily.

‘Will I tell you, so?’

‘Pray do,’ said Jack.

Stephen held up a watch-bill by way of symbol, and with a significant look he continued,

‘Blest paper credit! last and best supply!

That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

A single leaf shall waft an army o’er

Or ship off senates to a distant shore.

Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen

And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.’

‘I wish someone would try to corrupt me,’ said Jack. ‘When I think of how my account with Hoares must stand at the present moment, I would ship any number of senates to a distant shore for five hundred pounds; and for another ten the whole board of Admiralty too.’

‘I dare say you would,’ said Stephen. ‘But you take my meaning, do you not? Were I in your place I should glide over that unhappy brass box and its contents, with just a passing reference to certain confidential papers to salve your conscience. I will come with you, if I may, so that if the Admiral prove inquisitive, I may toss him off with a round turn.’

Jack looked at Stephen with affection: Dr Maturin could dash away in Latin and Greek, and as for modern languages, to Jack’s certain knowledge he spoke half a dozen; yet he was quite incapable of mastering low English cant or slang or flash expressions, let alone the technical terms necessarily used aboard ship. Even now, he suspected, Stephen had difficulty with starboard and larboard.

‘The less said about these things the better,’ added Stephen. ‘I wish...’ But here he stopped. He did not go on to say that he wished he had never seen these papers, had never had anything to do with them; but that was the case. Money, though obviously essential on occasion, usually had a bad effect on intelligence – for his part he had never touched a Brummagem farthing for his services – and money in such exorbitant, unnatural amounts might be very bad indeed, endangering all those who came into contact with it.

‘I don’t know how it is, Aubrey,’ said the Admiral, coming back, ‘but I seem to piss every glass these days. Perhaps it is anno Domini, and nothing to be done about it, but perhaps it is something that one of these new pills can set right. I should like to consult your surgeon while Surprise is refitting. I hear he is an eminent hand – was called in to the Duke of Clarence. But that to one side: carry on with your account, Aubrey.’

‘Well, sir, not finding the Norfolk in the Atlantic I followed her round into the South Sea. No luck at Juan Fernandez, but a little later I had word of her playing Old Harry among our whalers along the coast of Chile and Peru and among the Galapagos. So I proceeded north, retaking one of her prizes on the way, and reached the islands a little after she had left; but there again I had fairly certain intelligence that she was bound for the Marquesas, where her commander meant to establish a colony as well as snapping up the half dozen whalers we had fishing in those waters. So I bore away westward, and to cut a long story short, after some weeks of sweet sailing, when we were right in her track – saw her beef-barrels floating – we had a most unholy blow, scudding under bare poles day after day, that we survived and she did not. We found her wrecked on the coral-reef of an uncharted island well to the east of the Marquesas; and not to trouble you with details, sir, we took her surviving people prisoner and proceeded to the Horn with the utmost dispatch.’

‘Well done, Aubrey, very well done indeed. No glory, nor no cash from the Norfolk, I am afraid, it being an act of God that dished her; but dished she is, which is the main point, and I dare say you will get head-money for your prisoners. And then of course there are these charming prizes. No: a very satisfactory cruise, upon the whole. I congratulate you. Let us drink a glass of bottled ale: it is my own.’

‘Very willingly, sir. But there is something I should tell you about the prisoners. From the beginning the captain of the Norfolk behaved very strangely; in the first place he said the war was over...’

‘That’s fair enough. A legitimate ruse de guerre.’

‘Yes, but there were other things, together with a want of candour that I could not understand until I learnt that he was trying, naturally enough, to protect part of his crew; some of his men were deserters from the Navy and some had taken part in the Hermione ...’

‘The Hermione!’ cried the Admiral, his face growing pale and wicked at the mention of that unhappy frigate and the still unhappier mutiny, when her crew murdered their inhuman captain and most of his officers and handed the ship over to the enemy on the Spanish Main. ‘I lost a young cousin there, Drogo Montague’s boy. They broke his arm and then fairly hacked him to pieces, only thirteen and as promising a youngster as you could wish, the damned cowardly villains.’

‘We had a certain amount of trouble with them, sir, the ship having been blown off for a while; and some were obliged to be knocked on the head.’

‘That saves us the trouble of hanging them. But you have some left, I trust?’

‘Oh yes, sir. They are in the whaler, and if they might be taken off quite soon I should esteem it a kindness. We have never a boat to bless ourselves with, apart from my gig, and our few Marines are fairly worn to the bone with guarding them watch and watch.’

‘They shall be clapped up directly,’ cried the Admiral, pealing on his bell. ‘Oh it will do my heart good to see ’em dingle-dangle at the yardarm, the carrion dogs. Jason should be in tomorrow and with you that will give us just enough post-captains for a court-martial.’

Jack’s heart sank. He loathed a court-martial: he loathed a hanging even more. He also wanted to get away as soon as he had completed his water and taken in stores enough to carry him home, and from the obvious paucity of senior officers off Bridgetown he had thought he might be able to sail in two days’ time. But it was no good protesting. The secretary and the flag-lieutenant were both in the cabin; orders were flying; and now the Admiral’s steward brought in the bottled ale.

It was intolerably fizzy as well as luke-warm, but once his orders were given the Admiral drank it down in great gulps, with evident pleasure; presently the savage expression faded from his grim old face. After a long pause in which the clump of Marines’ boots could be heard, and the sound of boats shoving off, he said, ‘The last time I saw you, Aubrey, was when Dungannon gave us dinner in the Defiance, and afterwards we played that piece of Gluck’s in D minor. I have hardly had any music since, apart from what I play for myself. They are a sad lot in the wardroom here: German flutes by the dozen and not a true note between ’em. Jew’s harps are more their mark. And all the mids’ voices broke long ago; in any case there’s not one can tell a B from a bull’s foot. I dare say it was much the same for you, in the South Sea?’

‘No, sir, I was much luckier. My surgeon is a capital hand with a violoncello; we saw away together until all hours. And my chaplain has a very happy way of getting the hands to sing, particularly Arne and Handel. When I had Worcester in the Mediterranean some time ago he brought them to a most creditable version of the Messiah.’

‘I wish I had heard it,’ said the Admiral. He refilled Jack’s glass and said, ‘Your surgeon sounds a jewel.’

‘He is my particular friend, sir: we have sailed together these ten years and more.’

The Admiral nodded. ‘Then I should be happy if you would bring him this evening. We might take a bit of supper together and have a little music; and if he don’t dislike it, I should like to consult him. Yet perhaps that might be improper; I know these physical gentlemen have a strict etiquette among themselves.’

‘I believe your surgeon would have to give his consent, sir. They probably know one another, however, and it would be no more than a formality; Maturin is aboard at this moment, and if you wish I will speak to him before I pay my call on Captain Goole.’

‘You are going to wait on Goole, are you?’ asked Sir William.

‘Oh yes, sir: he is senior to me by a good six months.’

‘Well, do not forget to wish him joy. He was married a little while ago: you would have thought him safe enough, at his age, but he is married, and has his wife aboard.’

‘Lord!’ cried Jack. ‘I had no idea. I shall certainly give him joy – and he has her aboard?’

‘Yes, a meagre yellow little woman, come from Kingston for a few weeks to recover from a fever.’

Jack’s heart and mind were so filled with thoughts of Sophie, his own wife, and with a boundless longing for her to be aboard that he missed the sense of the Admiral’s words until he heard him say ‘You will tip it the civil to them, Aubrey, when you run each of ’em to earth. These medicos are a stiff-necked, independent crew, and you must never cross them just before they dose you.’

‘No, sir,’ said Jack, ‘I shall speak to them like a sucking dove.’

‘Pig, Aubrey: sucking pig. Doves don’t suck.’

‘No, sir. I shall probably find them together, talking about medical matters.’

So indeed they were. Mr Waters was showing Dr Maturin some of his pictures of the most typical cases of leprosy and elephantiasis that he had met with on the island – remarkably well-drawn, well-coloured pictures – when Jack came in, delivered his message, took one glance at the paintings and hurried away to have a word with the Admiral’s secretary before paying the necessary call on Captain Goole.

Mr Waters finished his description, returned his last example of Barbados leg to its folder, and said, ‘I am sure you have observed that most medical men are hypochondriacs, Dr Maturin.’ This, delivered with a painfully artificial smile, was clearly a prepared statement: Stephen made no reply, and the surgeon went on, ‘I am no exception, and I wonder whether I too may importune you. I have a swelling here’ – putting his hand to his side – ‘that gives me some concern. I have no opinion at all of any of the surgeons on this station, least of all my assistants, and I should very much value your reflections upon its nature.’

‘Captain Aubrey, sir, what may I have the pleasure of doing for you?’ asked the secretary, smiling up at him.

‘You would put me very much in your debt by producing a bag of mail for the Surprise,’ said Jack. ‘It is a great while since any of us has heard from home.’

‘Mail for Surprise?’ said Mr Stone doubtfully. ‘I scarcely think – but I will ask my clerks. No, alas,’ he said, coming back, ‘I am very sorry to say that there is nothing for Surprise.’

‘Oh well,’ said Jack, forcing a smile, ‘it don’t signify. But perhaps you have some newspapers, that will give me an idea of how things stand in the world: for obviously you are much too busy with this damned court-martial to tell me the history of the last few months.’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Mr Stone. ‘It will take me no time to tell you that things are going from bad to worse. Buonaparte is building ships in every dockyard, faster than ever; and faster than ever ours are wearing out, with perpetual blockade and perpetually keeping the sea. He has very good intelligence and he foments discord among the allies – not that they need much encouragement to hate and distrust one another, but it is wonderful how he touches on the very spot that hurts, almost as though he had someone listening behind the cabinet door, or under the council table. To be sure our armies make some progress in Spain; but the Spaniards . . . well, you know something of the Spaniards, sir, I believe. And in any event, it is doubtful that we can go on supporting all these people or even paying for our own part of the war. I have a brother in the City, and he tells me that the funds have never been so low, and that trade is at a stand: men walk about on Change with their hands in their pockets, looking glum: there is no gold to be had – you go to the bank to draw out some money, money that you deposited with them in guineas, and all they will give you is paper – and nearly all securities are a drug on the market: South Sea annuities at fifty-eight-and-a-half for example! Even East India stock is at a very shocking figure, and as for Exchequer bills . . . There was a flurry of activity at the beginning of the year, with a rumour of peace causing prices to rise; but it died away when the rumour proved false, leaving the City more depressed than ever. The only thing that prospers is farming, with wheat at a hundred and twenty-five shillings the quarter, and land is not to be had for love or money; but at present, sir, a man with say five thousand pounds could buy stock, capital stock, that would have represented a handsome estate before the war. Here are some papers and magazines that will tell it all in greater detail; they will depress your spirits finely, I do assure you. Yes, Billings,’ – this to a clerk – ‘what is it?’

‘Although there is no mail for Captain Aubrey, sir,’ said Billings, ‘Smallpiece says there was someone inquiring for him, a black man; and he conceives the black man might have a message at least, if not a letter.’

‘Was he a slave?’ asked Jack.

‘Was he a slave?’ called Billings, cocking his ear for the answer. Then, ‘No, sir.’

‘Was he a seaman?’ asked Jack.

No, he was not; and when at last Smallpiece came sidling in, intensely, painfully shy and almost inarticulate, it appeared that the black man seemed to be an educated person – had first inquired for Surprise in a general way among those that went ashore, when first the squadron came to Bridgetown, and then, since the frigate was reported in these waters, more particularly for Captain Aubrey.

‘I know no educated black man,’ said Jack, shaking his head. It was not impossible that a West Indian lawyer might employ a Negro clerk; and affairs being in so critical a state at home, it was not impossible that the clerk might wish to serve a writ on him. This could only be done on shore, however, and Jack instantly determined to remain aboard throughout his stay. He took the newspapers, thanked Mr Stone and his clerks, and returned to the quarterdeck. Here he found his midshipman, horribly shabby among all the snowy flagship youngsters, but obviously stuffing them up with prodigious tales of the Horn and the far South Sea, and to him he said, ‘Mr Williamson, my compliments to Captain Goole and would it be convenient if I were to wait upon him in ten minutes.’

Mr Williamson brought back the answer that Captain Aubrey’s visit would be convenient, and to this, on his own initiative, he added Captain Goole’s best compliments. He would have made them respectful too, if a certain sense of the possible had not restrained him at the last moment; for he loved his Captain.

During this time Jack leant over the quarterdeck rail, by the starboard hances, in the easy way allowed to those of his rank, looking down into the waist and over the side. He had given his bargemen leave to come aboard and there was only the boatkeeper in the gig, talking eagerly to some unseen friend through an open port on the lower deck. There were several hands on the gangway and in the waist who stood facing aft and looking at him fixedly in the way peculiar to former shipmates who wished to be recognized, and again and again he broke off his small-talk with the first and flag lieutenants to call out ‘Symonds, how do you do?’ ‘Maxwell, how are you coming along?’ ‘Himmelfahrt, there you are again, I see,’ and each time the man concerned smiled and nodded, putting his knuckle to his forehead or pulling off his hat. Presently Barret Bonden and his Irresistible brother came up the forehatchway and he noticed that both of them looked at him not only with particular attention but also with that curious, slightly amused and even arch expression that he had seen, more or less clearly, on the faces of those men in the flagship who had sailed with him before. He could not make it out, but before he could really put his mind to the question his time was up and he walked aft to the captain’s cabin.

Of his own free will Captain Goole would never have received Captain Aubrey. Midshipman Goole had behaved meanly, discreditably over that far-distant tripe; he had played a material though admittedly subordinate part in the theft, he had eaten as much as anyone in the berth; and on being hauled up before Captain Douglas he had blown the gaff – while utterly denying his share he had nevertheless turned informer. It was a pitiful performance and he had never forgiven Jack Aubrey. But he had no choice about seeing him; in the matter of formal calls the naval etiquette was perfectly rigid.

‘I would not receive him, still less introduce him to you,’ said Goole to his wife, ‘if the rules of the service did not require it. He will be here directly, and he must stay for at least ten minutes. I shall not offer him anything to drink, however; and he will not take root. In any case he drinks far too much, like his friend Dundas – another man who cannot keep his breeches on, by the way – half a dozen natural children to my certain knowledge – birds of a feather, birds of a feather. It is the ruin of society.’ A pause. ‘You would never think so to look at him now, but Aubrey was once considered handsome; and it may be that which – hush, here he is.’

Jack had not forgotten Captain Douglas’s tripe, nor the spectacular consequences of its theft – consequences that had seemed catastrophic at the time, although in fact he could scarcely have spent his time more profitably, since his half-year as a common seaman gave him an intimate, inside knowledge of the lower deck, its likes and dislikes, its beliefs and opinions, and of the true, unvarnished nature of its daily life – nor had he forgotten Goole. But he had forgotten the details of Goole’s conduct, and although he remembered him as something of a scrub he bore him no ill-will; indeed, as he now walked into the cabin he was quite pleased to see such an old shipmate and he congratulated Goole on his marriage with perfect sincerity, smiling upon them both with an amiable candour that improved Mrs Goole’s already favourable opinion of him. She did not find it at all surprising that he had been considered handsome; even now, although his scarred, weather-beaten countenance had nothing, but nothing, of the bloom of youth and although he weighed too much, he was not ill-looking; he had a certain massive, leonine style, and he fairly towered over Goole, who had no style of any kind; and his blue eyes, all the bluer in his mahogany face, had the good-natured expression of one who is willing to be pleased with his company.

‘I am a great friend to marriage, ma’am,’ he was saying.

‘Indeed, sir?’ she replied; and then, feeling that something more was called for, ‘I believe I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs Aubrey just before I left England, at Lady Hood’s.’

‘Oh, how was she?’ cried Jack, his face lighting up with extraordinary pleasure.

‘I hope she was the same lady, sir,’ said Mrs Goole hesitantly. ‘Tall, with golden hair done up so, grey eyes and a wonderful complexion; a blue tabby gown with long sleeves gathered here – ’

‘Really, Mrs Goole,’ said her husband.

‘That is Sophie for sure,’ said Jack. ‘It is an age since I had any word from home, being the far side of the Horn – would give the world to hear from her – pray tell me just how she looked – what she said – I suppose none of the children were there?’

‘Only a little boy, a fine little boy, but Mrs Aubrey was telling Admiral Sawyer about her daughters’ chickenpox, now so far behind them that she had allowed Captain Dundas to take them a-sailing in his cutter.’

‘Bless them’ cried Jack, sitting down beside her; and they engaged in a close conversation on the subject of chickenpox, its harmless and even beneficent nature, the necessity for passing through such things at an early age, together with considerations on the croup, measles, thrush, and redgum, until the flagship’s bell reminded him that he must return to the Surprise for his fiddle.

The diseases that Dr Maturin and Mr Waters discussed were of quite a different order of gravity, but at last Stephen stood up, turned down the cuffs of his coat, and said, ‘I believe I may venture to assert, though with all the inevitable reserves, of course, that it is not malignant, and that we are in the presence not of the tumour you mentioned, still less of a metastasis – God between us and evil – but of a splanchnic teratoma. It is awkwardly situated however and must be removed at once.’

‘Certainly, dear colleague,’ said Waters, fairly glowing with relief. ‘At once. How grateful I am for your opinion!’

‘I never much care for opening a belly,’ observed Stephen, looking at the belly in question with an objective, considering eye, rather like a butcher deciding upon his cut. ‘And of course in such a position I should require intelligent assistance. Are your mates competent?’

‘They are reckless drunken empirical sots, the pair of them, the merest illiterate sawbones. I should be most reluctant to have either of them lay a hand on me.’

Stephen considered for a while: it was difficult enough in all conscience to love one’s fellow men by land, let alone cooped up in the same ship with no possibility of escape from daily contact, or even to remain on civil terms; and clearly Waters had not accomplished this necessary naval feat. He said, ‘I have no mate myself. The gunner, running mad, murdered him off the coast of Chile. But our chaplain, Mr Martin, has a considerable knowledge of physic and surgery; he is an eminent naturalist and we have dissected a great many bodies together, both warm-blooded and cold; but as far as I can recall he has not seen the opening of a living human abdomen and I am sure it would give him pleasure. If you wish, I will ask him to attend. In any case I must return to the ship for my violoncello.’

Stephen mounted the Irresistible’s various ladders, losing his way once or twice but emerging at last into the brilliant light of the quarterdeck. He stood blinking for a while, and then, putting on his blue spectacles, he saw that the larboard side of the ship was crowded with bumboats and returning liberty-men. The flag-lieutenant was leaning over the rail, chewing a piece of sugar-cane and bargaining for a basket of limes, a basket of guavas, and an enormous pine-apple; when these had been hoisted aboard Stephen said to him, ‘William Richardson, joy, will you tell me where the Captain is, now?’

‘Why, Doctor, he went back to the ship just after five bells.’

‘Five bells,’ repeated Stephen. ‘Sure, he said something about five bells. I shall be reproved for unpunctuality again. Oh, oh. What shall I do?’

‘Do not let it prey on your mind, sir,’ said Richardson. ‘I will pull you over in the jolly-boat; it is no great way, and I should like to see some of my old shipmates again. Captain Pullings told me that Mowett was your premier now. Lord! Only think of old Mowett as a first lieutenant! But, sir, you are not the only one to be asking after Captain Aubrey. There is a person just come aboard again on the same errand – there he is,’ he added, nodding along the larboard gangway to where a tall young black man stood among a group of hands. Stephen recognized them all as men he had sailed with in former commissions, most of them Irish, all of them Catholics, and he observed that they were looking at him with curiously amused expressions while at the same time they gently, respectfully urged the tall young black man to go aft; and before Stephen had time to call out a greeting – before he could decide between ‘Ho, shipfellows’ and ‘Avast, messmates’ – the young man began walking towards the quarterdeck. He was dressed in a plain snuff-coloured suit of clothes, heavy square-toed shoes and a broad-brimmed hat; he had something of the air of a Quaker or a seminarist, but of an uncommonly powerful, athletic seminarist, like those from the western parts of Ireland who might be seen walking about the streets of Salamanca; and it was in the very tones of an Irish seminarist that he now addressed Stephen, taking off his hat as he did so. ‘Dr Maturin, sir, I believe?’

‘The same, sir,’ said Stephen, returning his salute. ‘The same, at your service.’ He spoke a little at random, for the bare-headed young man standing there in the full sun before him was the spit, the counterpart, the image of Jack Aubrey with some twenty years and several stone taken off, done in shining ebony. It made no odds that the young man’s hair was a tight cap of black curls rather than Jack’s long yellow locks, nor that his nose had no Roman bridge; his whole essence, his person, his carriage was the same, and even the particular tilt of his head as he now leant towards Stephen with a modest, deferential look. ‘Pray sir, let us put on our hats, for all love, against the power of the sun,’ said Stephen. ‘I understand you have business with Captain Aubrey?’

‘I have, sir, and they are after telling me you would know might I see him at all. I hear no boats are allowed by his ship, but it is the way I have a letter for him from Mrs Aubrey.’

‘Is that right?’ said Stephen. ‘Then come with me till I bring you where he is. Mr Richardson, you will not object to another passenger? We might take turns with plying the oars, the weight being greater.’

The pull across was comparatively silent: Richardson was busy with his sculls; the black man had the gift, so rare in the young, of being quiet without awkwardness; and Stephen was much taken up with this transposition of his most intimate friend; however, he did say, ‘I trust, sir, that you left Mrs Aubrey quite well?’

‘As well, sir, as ever her friends could desire,’ said the young man, with that sudden flashing smile possible only to those with brilliant white teeth and a jet-black face.

‘I wish you may be right, my young friend,’ said Stephen inwardly. He knew Sophie very well; he loved her very dearly; but he knew that she was quick and perceptive and somewhat more subject to jealousy and its attendant miseries than was quite consistent with happiness. And without being a prude she was also perfectly virtuous, naturally virtuous, without the least self-constraint.

The young man was not unexpected in the Surprise; the rumour of his presence had spread to every member of the ship’s company except her Captain and he came aboard into an atmosphere of kindly, decently-veiled but intense curiosity.

‘Will you wait here now while I see is the Captain at leisure?’ said Stephen. ‘Mr Rowan will no doubt show you the various ropes for a moment.’

‘Jack,’ he said, walking into the cabin. ‘Listen, now. I have strange news: there was a fine truthful young black man aboard the Admiral inquiring for you, told me he had a message from Sophie, so I have brought him along.’

‘From Sophie?’ cried Jack.

Stephen nodded and said in a low voice, ‘Brother, forgive me, but you may be surprised by the messenger. Do not be disconcerted. Will I bring him in?’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

‘Good afternoon to you, sir,’ said the young man in a deep, somewhat tremulous voice as he held out a letter. ‘When I was in England Mrs Aubrey desired me to give you this, or to leave it in good hands were I gone before your ship came by.’

‘I am very much obliged to you indeed, sir,’ said Jack, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘Pray sit down. Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of madeira and the Sunday cake. I am truly sorry not to be able to entertain you better, sir – I am engaged to the Admiral this evening – but perhaps you could dine with me tomorrow?’

Killick had of course been listening behind the door and he was prepared for this: he and his black mate Tom Burgess came in at once, making a reasonably courtly train, as like a land-going butler and footman as they could manage; but Tom’s desire to get a really good view of the visitor, who sat facing away from him, was so violent that they fell foul of one another just as the wine was pouring. When the ‘God-damned lubbers’ had withdrawn, crestfallen, and they were alone again Jack looked keenly at the young man’s face – it was strangely familiar: surely he must have seen him before. ‘Forgive me,’ he said, breaking the seal, ‘I will just glance into this to see whether there is anything urgent.’ There was not. This was the third copy of a letter sent to the ports where the Surprise might touch on her homeward voyage: it spoke of the progress of Jack’s plantations, the slow indeterminate stagnation of the legal proceedings, and the chickenpox, then at its height; and at the bottom of the page a hurried postscript said that Sophie would entrust this to Mr Illegible, who was bound for the West Indies and who had been so kind as to call on her.

He looked up, and again this uneasy sense of familiarity struck him; but he said, ‘It was exceedingly kind of you to bring me this letter. I hope you left everyone at Ashgrove Cottage quite well?’

‘Mrs Aubrey told me the children were taken with the chickenpox, and she was concerned for them, sure; but a gentleman that was sitting by whose name I did not catch said there was no danger at all, at all.’

‘I do not believe my wife quite caught your name either, sir,’ said Jack. ‘At all events I cannot make out what she writes.’

‘My name is Panda, sir, Samuel Panda, and my mother was Sally Mputa. Since I was going to England with the Fathers she desired me to give you these,’ – holding out a package – ‘and that is how I came to go to Ashgrove Cottage, hoping to find you there.’

‘God’s my life,’ said Jack, and after a moment he slowly began to open the package. It contained a sperm-whale’s tooth upon which he had laboriously engraved HMS Resolution under close-reefed topsails when he was a very young man, younger even than the tall youth facing him; it also contained a small bundle of feathers and elephant’s hair bound together with a strip of leopard’s skin.

‘That is a charm to keep you from drowning,’ observed Samuel Panda.

‘How kind,’ said Jack automatically. They looked at one another with a naked searching, eager on the one side, astonished on the other. There were few mirrors hanging in Jack’s part of the ship – only a little shaving-glass in his sleeping-cabin – but the extraordinarily elaborate and ingenious piece of furniture that Stephen’s wife Diana had given him and that was chiefly used as a music-stand had a large one inside the lid. Jack opened it and they stood there side by side, each comparing, each silently, intently, looking for himself in the other.

‘I am astonished,’ said Jack at last. ‘I had no idea, no idea in the world...’ He sat down again. ‘I hope your mother is well?’

‘Very well indeed, sir, I thank you. She prepares African medicines in the hospital at Lourenço Marques, which some patients prefer.’

Neither spoke until Jack said ‘God’s my life’ again, turning the whale tooth in his hand. Few things at sea could amaze him and he had suffered some shrewd blows without discomposure, but now his youth coming so vividly to life took him wholly aback.

‘Will I tell you how I come to be here, sir?’ asked the young man out of the silence, in his deep, gentle voice.

‘Do, by all means. Yes, pray do,’ said Jack.

‘We removed to Lourenço Marques about the time I was born – my mother came from Nwandwe, no great way off – and there it was that the Fathers took me in when I was a little small boy, and very sickly, it appears. My mother was married to an ancient Zulu witch-doctor at the time – a heathen, of course – so they brought me up and educated me.’

‘Bless them,’ said Jack. ‘But is not Lourenço Marques on Delagoa Bay – is it not Portuguese?’

‘It is Portuguese, sir, but Irish entirely. That is to say, the Mission came from the County Roscommon itself; and it was Father Power and Father Birmingham took me to England with them, where I hoped I should find you, and so on to the Indies.’

‘Well, Sam,’ said Jack, ‘you are very welcome, I am sure. And now you have found me, what can I do for you? Had it been earlier, as I could have wished, it would have been easier; but as I said, I had not the least notion . . . It is too late for the Navy, of course, and in any event . . . yet stay, have you ever thought of being a captain’s clerk? It can lead to a purser’s berth, and the life itself is very agreeable; I have known many a captain’s clerk take charge of a boat in a cutting-out expedition...’

He spoke at some length, and with considerable warmth, of the pleasures of a life at sea; but after a while he thought he detected a look of affectionate amusement in Sam’s eye, a discreet and perfectly respectful look, but enough to cut off his flow.

‘You are very kind, sir,’ said Sam, ‘and truly benevolent; but I am not come to ask for anything at all, apart from your good word and the blessing.’

‘Of course that you have – bless you, Sam – but I should like something more substantial, to help you to live. Yet perhaps I mistake – perhaps you have a capital place, perhaps these gentlemen employ you?’

‘They do not, sir. Sure, I attend them, in duty bound too, particularly Father Power and he lame of a foot; but it is the Mission sustains me.’

‘Sam, do not tell me you are a Papist,’ cried Jack.

‘I am sorry to disappoint you, sir,’ said Sam, smiling, ‘but a Papist I am, and so much so that I hope in time to be a priest if ever I can have a dispensation. At present I am only in minor orders.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, recollecting himself, ‘one of my best friends is a Catholic. Dr Maturin – you met him.’

‘The learned man of the world he is, I am sure,’ said Sam, with a bow.

‘But tell me, Sam,’ said Jack, ‘what are you doing at present? What are your plans?’

‘Why, sir, as soon as the ship comes, the Fathers sail for the Mission’s house in the Brazils. They take me with them, although I am not ordained, because I speak the Portuguese and because I am black; it is thought I will be more acceptable to the Negro slaves.’

‘I am sure you will,’ said Jack. ‘That is . . . I am sure I shall be able to say that one of my best friends is not only Catholic but black into the bargain – why, Stephen, what’s amiss?’

‘I am sorry to burst in upon you, but your signal is flying aboard the Admiral. Mowett is deeply disturbed at the possibility of lateness. The gig is alongside and my ’cello is already in it. I say my ’cello is already in the gig.’

Jack checked a blasphemous cry, caught up his violin and said, ‘Come along with us, Sam. The gig will pull you ashore and take you off again tomorrow, if you choose to see the ship and dine with me and Dr Maturin.’