Читать книгу Desolation Island - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 7

Chapter One

The breakfast-parlour was the most cheerful room in Ashgrove Cottage, and although the builders had ruined the garden with heaps of sand and unslaked lime and bricks, and although the damp walls of the new wing in which this parlour stood still smelt of plaster, the sun poured in, blazing on the covered silver dishes and lighting the face of Sophie Aubrey as she sat there waiting for her husband. A singularly lovely face, with the lines that their earlier poverty had marked upon it quite smoothed away; but it had a somewhat anxious look. She was a sailor’s wife, and although the Admiralty in the goodness of its heart had allowed her the company of her husband for a surprising length of time, appointing him (much against his will) to the command of the local Sea-Fencibles in recognition of his services in the Indian Ocean, she knew that this period was coming to an end.

The anxiety changed to unmixed pleasure as she heard his step: the door opened; a ray of sun fell on Captain Aubrey’s beaming face, a ruddy face with bright blue eyes; and she knew as certainly as though it had been written on his forehead that he had bought the horse he coveted. ‘There you are, sweetheart,’ he cried, kissing her and lowering himself into a chair by her side, a broad elbow-chair that creaked beneath his weight.

‘Captain Aubrey,’ she said, ‘I am afraid your bacon will be cold.’

‘A cup of coffee first,’ said he, ‘and then all the bacon in the world – Lord, Sophie –’ lifting the covers with his free hand – ‘here’s Fiddler’s Green – eggs, bacon, chops, kippered herrings, kidneys, soft tack … How is the tooth?’ Here he was referring to his son George, whose howls had made the household uneasy for some time past.

‘It is through!’ cried Mrs Aubrey. ‘He cut it in the night, and now he is as good as gold, poor lamb. You shall see him after breakfast, Jack.’

Jack laughed with pleasure; but after a pause, and in a slightly conscious tone, he said, ‘I rode over to Horridge’s this morning to stir them up. Horridge was not in the way, but his foreman said they had no notion of coming to us this month – the lime ain’t thoroughly slaked, it appears – and even then they will be at a stand, with their carpenter laid up, and the pipes not yet delivered.’

‘What nonsense,’ said Sophie. ‘There was a whole gang of them laying pipes at Admiral Hare’s only yesterday. Mama saw them as she was driving by; and she would have spoken to Horridge, but he dodged behind a tree. Builders are strange, unaccountable creatures. I am afraid you were very disappointed, my dear?’

‘Why, I was a little put out, I must confess: and on an empty belly, too. But, however, seeing I was there, I stepped into Carroll’s yard, and bought the filly. I bated him forty guineas of her, too; and, do you see, quite apart from the foals she will bring, it will be a remarkable saving, since she will train with Hautboy and Whiskers – with her to bring out their metal, I will lay fifty to one on placing Hautboy in the Worral Stakes.’

‘I long to see her,’ said Sophie, with a sinking heart: she disliked most horses, except those of the very gentle kind, and she particularly disliked these running horses, even though they descended, through Old Bald Peg, from Flying Childers and the Darley Arabian himself. She disliked them for many reasons, but she was better at disguising her feelings than her husband, and with a happy, eager look he ran on unchecked, ‘She will be up some time in the forenoon: the only thing I am not quite pleased about, is the new stable floor. If only we could have had some sun, and a good brisk north-easter, it would have dried out completely … nothing so bad for a horse’s hoofs as remaining damp. How is your mama this morning?’

‘She seems quite well, I thank you, Jack: a little remaining headache, but she ate a couple of eggs and a bowl of gruel, and she will come down with the children. She is quite excited about seeing the doctors, and she has dressed earlier than usual.’

‘What can be keeping Bonden?’ said Jack, glancing at the stern regulator, his astronomical clock.

‘Perhaps he fell off again,’ said Sophie.

‘Killick was there to prop him up: no, no, ’tis ten to one they are prating about their horsemanship in the Brown Bear tap, the infernal lubbers.’ Bonden was Captain Aubrey’s coxswain, Killick his steward; and whenever it could be managed they moved with him from one command to the next: both had been bred to the sea from their earliest years – Bonden, indeed, had been born between two of the Indefatigable’s lower-deck guns – and while both were prime man-of-war’s men, neither was a great hand with a horse. Yet it was clear to all that in common decency the mail addressed to the Commanding Officer of the Sea-Fencibles had to be fetched by a mounted man; and daily the two traversed the Downs on a powerful, thickset cob, conveniently low to the ground.

A powerful, thickset woman, Mrs Williams, Captain Aubrey’s mother-in-law, walked in, followed by a nurse with the baby and a one-legged seaman shepherding the two little girls. Most of the servants in Ashgrove Cottage were sailors, partly because of the extreme difficulty of inducing maids to stay within reach of Mrs Williams’s tongue: upon seamen, however, long inured to the admonition of the bosun and his mates, its lash fell unregarded; and in any case its virulence was much diminished, since they were men, and since in fact they kept the place as trim as a royal yacht. The rigid lines of the garden and shrubbery might not be to everyone’s taste, nor the white-painted stones that bordered every path; but no housekeeper could fail to be impressed by the gleaming floors, sanded, swabbed, and flogged dry every day before sunrise, nor by the blaze of copper in the spotless kitchen, the gleaming windowpanes, the paint perpetually renewed.

‘Good morning to you ma’am,’ said Jack, rising. ‘I trust I see you well?’

‘Good morning, Commodore – that is to say Captain – you know I never complain. But I have a list here –’ waving a paper with her symptoms written upon it – ‘that will make the doctors stare. Will the hairdresser be here before them, I wonder? We are not to be talking about me, however: here is your son, Commodore, that is to say Captain. He has cut his first tooth.’ She led the nurse forward by the elbow, and Jack gazed into the little pink, jolly, surprisingly human face among all the wool. George smiled at him, chuckled, and displayed his tooth: Jack thrust his forefinger into the wrapping and said, ‘How are you coming along, eh? Prime, I dare say. Capital, ha, ha.’ The baby looked startled, even stunned – the nurse backed away – Mrs Williams said, ‘How can you call out so loud, Mr Aubrey?’ with a reproachful look, and Sophie took the child into her arms, whispering, ‘There, there, my precious lamb.’ The women gathered round young George, telling one another that babies had sensitive ears – a thunder-clap might throw them into fits – little boys far more delicate than girls.

Jack felt a momentary and quite ignoble pang of jealousy at the sight of the women – particularly Sophie – concentrating their idiot love and devotion upon the little creature, but he had barely time to be ashamed of it, he had barely time to reflect ‘I have been Queen of the May too long’, before Amos Dray, formerly bosun’s mate in HMS Surprise and, in the line of duty, the most conscientious, impartial flogger in the fleet before he lost his leg, shaded his mouth with his hand and in a deep rumble whispered, ‘Toe the line, my dears.’

The two little pudding-faced twin girls in clean pinafores stepped forward to a particular mark on the carpet, and together, piping high and shrill, they cried, ‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Good morning, Charlotte. Good morning, Fanny,’ said their father, bending down until his breeches creaked to kiss them. ‘Why, Fanny, you have a lump on your forehead.’

‘I’m not Fanny,’ said Charlotte, scowling. ‘I’m Charlotte.’

‘But you are wearing a blue pinafore,’ said Jack.

‘Because Fanny put on mine; and she fetched me a swipe with her slipper, the – swab,’ said Charlotte, with barely contained passion.

Jack cast an apprehensive look at Mrs Williams and Sophie, but they were still cooing over the baby, and almost at the same moment Bonden brought in the post. He put it down, a leather bag with Ashgrove Cottage engraved on its brass plate; and the children, their grandmother and their attendants leaving the room at this point, he begged pardon for being late: the fact of the matter was, it was market-day down there. Horses and cattle.

‘Crowded, I dare say?’

‘Uncommon, sir. But I found Mr Meiklejohn and told him you was not attending at the office till Saturday.’ Bonden hesitated: Jack gave him a questioning look, and he went on, ‘The fact of the matter is, Killick made a purchase, a legal purchase. Which he asked me to tell you first, your honour.’

‘Aye?’ said Jack, unlocking the bag. ‘A nag, I suppose: well, I wish him joy of it. He may put it in the old byre.’

‘Not exactly a nag, sir, though it was in a halter: two legs and a skirt, if I may say so. A wife, sir.’

‘What in God’s name does he want with a wife?’ cried Jack, staring.

‘Why, sir,’ said Bonden, blushing and looking quickly away from Sophie, ‘I can’t rightly say. But he bought one, legal. It seems her husband and she did not agree, so he brought her to market in a halter; and Killick, he bought her, legal – laid down the pewter in sight of one and all, and shook hands on it. There was three to choose on.’

‘But you cannot possibly sell your wife – treat women like cattle,’ cried Sophie. ‘Oh fie, Jack; it is perfectly barbarous.’

‘It does seem a little strange, but it is the custom, you know, a very old custom.’

‘Surely you will never countenance such a wicked thing, Captain Aubrey?’

‘Why, as to that, I should not like to go against custom: common law too, for all I know. Not unless there was any constraint – undue influence, as they say. Where would the Navy be without we followed our customs? Let him come in.’

‘Well, Killick,’ he said, when the pair stood before him, his steward an ugly slab-sided middle-aged man rendered more awkward than usual by his present bashfulness, the young woman a snapping black-eyed piece, a perfect sailor’s delight. ‘Well, Killick, I trust you are not rushing into matrimony without due consideration? Matrimony is a very serious thing.’

‘Oh no, sir. I considered of it: I considered of it, why, the best part of twenty minutes. There was three to choose on, and this here –’ looking fondly at his purchase – ‘was the pick of the bunch.’

‘But, Killick, now I come to think of it, you had a wife in Mahon. She washed my shirts. You must not commit bigamy you know: it is against the law. You certainly had a wife in Mahon.’

‘Which I had two, your honour, t’other in Wapping Dock; but they was more in the roving, uncertificated line, if you follow me, sir, not bought legal, the halter put into my hand.’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘so I suppose you want to add her to the establishment. You will have to go in front of the parson first, however: cut along to the Rectory.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Killick. ‘Rectory it is.’

‘Lord, Sophie,’ said Jack when they were alone once more. ‘What a coil!’ He opened the bag. ‘One from the Admiralty, another from the Sick and Hurt Board, and one that looks as though it must be from Charles Yorke – yes, that is his seal – for me; and two for Stephen, care of you.’

‘I wish I could take care of him, poor dear,’ said Sophie, looking at them. ‘These are from Diana, too.’ She laid them on a side table, to wait with another, addressed in the same bold determined hand to Stephen Maturin, Esqr., MD, and gazed at them in silence.

Diana Villiers was Sophie’s cousin, a slightly younger woman, one with a far more dashing style and a black-haired, dark-blue-eyed beauty that some preferred to Mrs Aubrey’s: at a time when Sophie and Jack had been separated, long before their marriage, both Jack and Stephen Maturin had done all they could to win Diana’s favours; and in the result Jack very nearly wrecked both his career and his marriage, while Stephen, who had supposed she would marry him at last, had been most cruelly wounded by her departure for America under the protection of a Mr Johnson – so wounded that he had lost much of his taste for life. He had supposed she would marry him, for although his reason told him that a woman of her connections, beauty, pride and ambition could not be an equal match for the illegitimate son of an Irish officer in the service of His Most Catholic Majesty and a Catalan lady, a short, disagreeably plain man whose ostensible status was that of a naval surgeon, no more, his heart was entirely lost to her, and to his infinite cost it had overruled his head.

‘Even before we heard she was in England, I knew that something was working on his mind, poor dear Stephen,’ said Sophie. She would have added her ludicrous proof – a new wig, new coats, a dozen of the finest cambric shirts – but since she loved Stephen as few brothers are ever loved, she could not bear any ridicule to touch him. She said, ‘Jack, why do you not find him a decent servant? At the worst of times Killick would never have allowed you to go out in a shirt a fortnight old, odd stockings, and that dreadful old coat. Why has he never had a steady, reliable man?’

Jack knew very well why Stephen had never kept a servant for any length of time, never a man who could grow used to his ways, but had contented himself with casual and preferably illiterate Marines or ship’s boys or a half-witted member of the after-guard: for Dr Maturin, as well as being a naval surgeon, was one of the Admiralty’s most highly-valued intelligence agents, and secrecy was essential to the preservation of his life and the lives of his many contacts in the vast area controlled by Buonaparte, to say nothing of the prosecution of his work. This had necessarily come to Jack’s knowledge in the course of their service together, but he did not intend to pass it on, even to Sophie, and now he made a reply to the effect that whereas by steady application you might hope to persuade a parcel of pig-headed mules, nothing, no not purchase-upon-purchase, would ever shift Stephen from his chosen path.

‘Diana could, by waving her fan,’ said Sophie: her face was not well-suited for crossness, but now it expressed a variety of cross emotions – indignation for Stephen, displeasure at this renewed complication, and something of the disapproval or even jealousy of a woman with a very modest sexual impulse for one in whom it was quite the reverse – the whole tempered by an unwillingness to think or speak unkindly.

‘I dare say she could,’ said Jack. ‘And if she could make him happy again by doing so, I should bless the day. There was a time, you know,’ he went on, staring out of the window, ‘when I thought it was my duty as a friend – when I thought I was doing the right thing by him to keep them apart. I thought that she was just plain wicked – devilish – wholly destructive – and that she would be the end of him. But now I don’t know: perhaps you should never interfere in such things: too delicate. Yet if you see a fellow walking blindfold into a pit … I acted for the best, according to my lights; but it may be that my lights were not of the very brightest kind.’

‘I am sure you were right,’ said Sophie, touching his shoulder to comfort him. ‘After all, she had shown herself to be – well, to be, what shall I say? – a light woman.’

‘Why, as to that,’ said Jack, ‘the older I grow, the less I think of capers of that kind. People differ so, even if they are women. There may be women for whom these things are much as they might be for a man – women for whom going to bed to a man doesn’t necessarily signify, don’t affect them in the essence, as I might say, and don’t make whores of ’em. I beg your pardon, my dear, for using such a word.’

‘Do you mean,’ asked his wife, taking no notice of his last remark, ‘that there are men to whom breaking the commandment does not signify?’

‘I am got on to dangerous ground, I find,’ said Jack. ‘What I mean is … I know very well what I mean, but I am not clever at putting it into words. Stephen could explain it far better – could make it clear.’

‘I hope that neither Stephen nor any other man could make it clear to me that breaking marriage vows did not signify.’

At this juncture a terrible animal appeared among the builders’ rubble, a low dull-blue creature that might have been a pony if it had had any ears; it carried a small man on its back and a large square box. ‘Here is the hairdresser,’ cried Jack. ‘He is hellfire – he is extremely late. Your mother will have to be frizzed after the consultation: the doctors are due in ten minutes, and Sir James is as regular as a clock.’

‘The house on fire would not induce Mama to appear with her head undressed,’ said Sophie. ‘They will have to be shown the garden; and in any case Stephen will certainly be late.’

‘She could put on a cap,’ said Jack.

‘Of course she will put on a cap,’ said Sophie, with a pitying look. ‘How could she possibly receive strange gentlemen without a cap? But her hair must be dressed under it.’

The consultation for which these gentlemen were converging upon Ashgrove Cottage had to do with Mrs Williams’s health. At an earlier period she had undergone an operation for the removal of a benign tumour with a fortitude that astonished Dr Maturin, accustomed though he was to the uncomplaining courage of his seamen; but since then her spirits had been much oppressed by vapours, and it was hoped that the high authority of these eminent physicians would persuade her to take the waters at Bath, at Matlock Wells, or even farther north.

Sir James had travelled in Dr Lettsome’s chariot: they arrived together, and together they absolutely declined Captain Aubrey’s suggestion of viewing the garden; so Jack, called away to receive the horse-coper and his new filly, left them with the decanter.

The physicians had taken note of the new wings being added to Ashgrove Cottage, of the double coach-house, the long line of stables, the gleaming observatory-dome on its tower at a distance: now their practised eyes assessed the evident wealth of the morning-room, its new and massive furniture, the pictures of ships and naval engagements by Pocock and other eminent hands, of Captain Aubrey himself by Beechey in the full-dress uniform of a senior post-captain, with the red ribbon of the Bath across his broad chest, looking cheerfully at a bursting mortar-shell in which were to be seen the Aubrey arms with the honourable augmentation of two Moors’ heads, proper – Jack had recently added Mauritius and La Réunion to his grateful sovereign’s crown, and although the Heralds’ College had but a hazy notion of these possessions, they had felt that Moors would suit the case. The physicians looked about them as they sipped their wine, and with a visible satisfaction they gauged their fees.

‘Allow me to pour you another glass, my dear colleague,’ said Sir James.

‘You are very good,’ said Dr Lettsome. ‘It really is a most capital Madeira. The Captain has been fortunate in the article of prize-money, I believe?’

‘They tell me that he recaptured two or three of our Indiamen at La Réunion.’

‘Where is La Réunion?’

‘Why, it is what they used to call the Ile Bourbon – in the neighbourhood of the Mauritius, you know.’

‘Ah? Indeed?’ said Dr Lettsome; and they turned to the subject of their patient. The tonic effects of steel commended; the surprising side-effects of colchicum, when exhibited in heroic doses; valerian quite exploded; the great value of a pregnancy in these and indeed in almost all other cases; leeches behind the ears always worth a trial; lenitives considered, and their effect upon the spleen; hop-pillows; cold-sponging, with a pint of water on an empty stomach; low diet, black draughts; and Dr Lettsome mentioned his success with opium in certain not dissimilar cases. ‘The poppy,’ he said, ‘can make a rose of a termagant.’ He was pleased with his expression: in a louder, rounder voice he said, ‘Of a termagant, the poppy can make a rose.’ But Sir James’s face clouded over, and he replied, ‘Your poppy is very well, in its proper place; but when I consider its abuse, the danger of habituation, the risk of the patient’s becoming a mere slave, I am sometimes inclined to think that its proper place is the garden-plot. I know a very able man who did so abuse it, in the form of the tincture of laudanum, that he accustomed himself to a dose of no less than eighteen thousand drops a day – a decanter half the size of this. He broke himself of the habit; but in a recent crisis of his affairs he had recourse to his balm once more, and although he was never as who should say opium-drunk, I am credibly informed that he was not sober either, not for a fortnight on end, and that – Oh, Dr Maturin, how do you do?’ he cried as the door opened. ‘You know our colleague Lettsome, I believe?’

‘Your servant, gentlemen,’ said Stephen. ‘I trust you have not been waiting on me?’

Not at all, they said; their patient was not yet ready for them; might they tempt Dr Maturin to a glass of this capital Madeira? They might, said Dr Maturin, and as he drank he observed that it was shocking how corpses had risen: he had been cheapening one that very morning, and the villains had had the face to ask him four guineas – the London price for a provincial cadaver! He had represented to them that their greed must stifle science, and with it their own trade, but in vain: four guineas he had had to pay. In fact he was quite pleased with it: one of the few female corpses he had seen with that curious quasi-calcification of the palmar aponeuroses – fresh, too – but since it was only the hands that interested him at the moment, would either of his colleagues choose to go snacks?

‘I am always happy to have a good fresh liver for my young men,’ said Sir James. ‘We will stuff it into the boot.’ With this he rose, for the door had opened, and Mrs Williams came in, together with a strong smell of singed hair.

The consultation ran its weary course, and Stephen, sitting a little apart, felt that the grave attentive physicians were earning their fee, however exorbitant it might prove. They both had a natural gift for the histrionic side of medicine, which he did not possess to any degree: he also wondered at the skill with which they managed the lady’s flow. He wondered, too, that Mrs Williams should tell such lies, he being in the room: ‘she was a homeless widow, and since her son-in-law’s degradation she had been unwilling to appear in public.’ She was not homeless. The mortgage on Mapes, her large and spreading house, had been paid off with the spoils of Mauritius; but she preferred letting it. Her son-in-law, when in command of a squadron in the Indian Ocean, had held the temporary post of commodore, and as soon as the campaign was over, as soon as the squadron was dispersed, he had in the natural course of events reverted to the rank of captain: there was no degradation. This had been explained to Mrs Williams time and again; she had certainly understood the simple facts; and it was no doubt a measure of the strong, stupid, domineering woman’s craving for pity, if not approval, that she could now bring it all out again in his presence, knowing that he knew the falsity of her words.

Yet in time even Mrs Williams’s voice grew hoarse and Sir James’s manner more authoritative; the imminence of dinner became unmistakable; Sophie popped in and out; and at last the consultation came to an end.

Stephen went out to fetch Jack from the stables, and they met half way, among the steaming heaps of lime. ‘Stephen! How very glad I am to see you,’ cried Jack, clapping both hands on Stephen’s shoulders and looking down into his face with great affection. ‘How do you do?’

‘We have brought it off,’ said Stephen. ‘Sir James is absolute: Scarborough, or we cannot answer for the consequences; and the patient is to travel under the care of an attendant belonging to Dr Lettsome.’

‘Well, I am happy the old lady is to be looked after so well,’ said Jack, chuckling. ‘Come and look at my latest purchase.’

‘She is a fine creature, to be sure,’ said Stephen, as they watched the filly being led up and down. A fine creature, perhaps a shine too fine, even flashy; slightly ewe-hocked; and surely that want of barrel would denote a lack of bottom? An evil-tempered ear and eye. ‘Will I get on her back?’ he asked.

‘There will never be time,’ said Jack, looking at his watch. ‘The dinner-bell will go directly. But –’ casting an admiring backward eye as he hurried Stephen away – ‘is she not a magnificent animal? Just made to win the Oaks.’

‘I am no great judge of horseflesh,’ said Stephen, ‘yet I do beg, Jack, that you will not lay money on the creature till you have watched her six months and more.’

‘Bless you,’ said Jack, ‘I shall be at sea long before that, and so will you, I hope, if your occasions allow it – we must run like hares – I have great news – will tell you the moment the medicoes are away.’ The hares blundered on, gasping. Jack cried, ‘Your dunnage is in your old room, of course,’ and plunged up the stairs to shift his coat, reappearing to wave his guests to the dining-table as the clock struck the first stroke of the hour.

‘One of the many things I like about the Navy,’ said Sir James, half way through the first remove, ‘is that it teaches a proper respect for time. With sailors a man always knows when he is going to sit down to table; and his digestive organs are grateful for this punctuality.’

‘I could wish a man also knew when he was going to rise from table,’ observed Jack within, some two hours later, when Sir James’s organs were still showing gratitude to the port and walnuts. He was boiling with impatience to tell Stephen of his new command, to engage him, if possible, to sail with him once more on this voyage, to admit him to the secret of becoming enormously rich, and to hear what his friend might have to say about his own affairs – not those which had filled his recent absence, for there Stephen was no more loquacious than the quieter sort of tomb, but those which were connected with Diana Villiers and the letters that had so lately been carried up to his room. Yet aloud he said, ‘Come, Stephen, this will never do. The bottle is at a stand.’ Although Jack’s voice was loud and clear, Stephen did not move until the words were repeated, when he started from his reflections, gazed about, and pushed the decanter on: the two physicians looked at him attentively, their heads on one side. Jack’s more familiar eye could not make out any marked change: Stephen was pale and withdrawn, but not much more so than usual; perhaps a little dreamier; yet even so Jack was heartily glad when the doctors excused themselves from taking tea, called for their footman, were led into the coach-house by Stephen for a grisly interval with a saw, bundled a shrouded object into the back of the chariot (it had carried many another – the footman and the horses were old hands in the resurrection line), reappeared, pocketed their fees, took their leave, and rolled away.

Sophie was alone in the drawing-room with the tea-urn and the coffee-pot when at last Jack and Stephen joined her. ‘Have you told Stephen about the ship?’ she asked.

‘Not yet, sweetheart,’ said Jack, ‘but am on the very point of doing so. Do you remember the Leopard, Stephen?’

‘The horrible old Leopard?’

‘What a fellow you are, to be sure. First you crab my new filly, the finest prospect for the Oaks I have ever seen – and let me tell you, old Stephen, with all due modesty, that I am the best judge of a horse in the Navy.’

‘I make no doubt of it, my dear: I have seen several naval horses, ha, ha. For horses they must be called, since they generally have the best part of four legs, and no other member of the animal kingdom can call them kin.’ Stephen relished his own wit, and for some little time he uttered the creaking sound that was his nearest approach to laughter, and said, ‘The Oaks, forsooth!’

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘and now you say “the horrible old Leopard”. To be sure, she was something of a slug, and a ramshackle old slug, when Tom Andrews had her. But the Dockyard has taken her in hand – a most thoroughgoing overhaul – Snodgrass’s diagonal braces – new spirketting – Roberts’s iron-plate knees throughout – I spare you the details – and now she is the finest fifty-gun ship afloat, not excepting Grampus. Certainly the finest fourth-rate in the service!’ The finest fourth-rate in the service: perhaps. But as Jack knew very well, the fourth-rates were a poor and declining class; they had been excluded from the line of battle this last half-century and more; the Leopard had never been a shining example of them at any time. Jack knew her faults as well as any man; he knew that she was laid down and half built in 1776; that she had remained in that unsatisfactory state, quietly rotting in the open, for ten years or so; and that she had then been taken to Sheerness, where they eventually launched her on her undistinguished career in 1790. But he had watched her overhaul with a very attentive, professional eye, and although he knew she would never be an outstanding performer he was sure she was seaworthy: and above all he wanted her not for herself but for her destination: he longed for unknown seas, and the Spice Islands.

‘The Leopard had quite a number of decks, as I recall,’ said Stephen.

‘Why, yes: she is a fourth-rate, so she is a two-decker – roomy, almost as roomy as a ship of the line. You will have all the room in the world, Stephen; it will not be like being crammed up tight in a frigate. I must say that the Admiralty has done the handsome thing by me, for once.’

‘I think you should have had a first-rate,’ said Sophie. ‘And a peerage.’

Jack gave her a very loving smile and went on, ‘They offered me the choice between Ajax, a new seventy-four on the stocks, or the Leopard. The seventy-four will be a very fine ship, as good a seventy-four as you could wish; but she would mean the Mediterranean, under Harte; and there’s no distinction in the Mediterranean nowadays. Nor no fortune, either.’ Here again Jack was a little devious, for although it was quite true that at this stage of the war there was little for a sailor in the Mediterranean the presence of Admiral Harte had more importance than he chose to explain. In former days Jack had cuckolded the Admiral, an unscrupulous, revengeful man who would not hesitate to break him if he could. During his naval career, Jack had made a great many friends in the service, but he had also made a surprising number of enemies for so amiable a man: some had been jealous of his success; some (and these were his seniors) had found him too independent, even insubordinate in his youth; some disliked his politics (he hated a Whig); and some had the same grudge as Admiral Harte, or fancied they did.

‘You have all the distinction a man could wish, Jack,’ said Sophie. ‘Such dreadful wounds: and quite enough money.’

‘If Nelson had been of your mind, sweetheart, he would have cried quits after St Vincent. We should have had no Nile, and where would Jack Aubrey have been then? A mere lieutenant to the end of his days. No, no: a man can’t have enough distinction in his line of service. And I don’t know he can ever have enough money either, if it comes to that. But, however, Leopard is bound for the East Indies – not that there is likely to be much fighting there,’ he added with a glance at Sophie, ‘and the charming point about it is that a curious situation has arisen at Botany Bay. Leopard is to go south about, deal with the state of affairs in those parts, and then join Admiral Drury somewhere in the neighbourhood of Penang, making observations on her way. Think of the opportunities, Stephen – thousands of miles of almost unknown sea and coastline – wombats on shore for those that like them, because although this is not one of your leisurely exploring voyages, I am sure there would be time for a wombat or a kangaroo, when some important anchorage is to be surveyed – islands never seen, for sure, and their positions to be laid down – and in about a hundred and fifty east, twenty south, we should be in the full path of the eclipse, if only our times coincide – think of the birds, Stephen, think of the beetles and cassowaries, to say nothing of the Tasmanian Devil! There has not been such an opportunity for a philosophical chap since the days of Cook and Sir Joseph Banks.’

‘It sounds the sweetest voyage,’ said Stephen, ‘and I have always longed to see New Holland. Such a fauna – monotremes, marsupials … But tell me, what is this curious situation to which you advert – what is the state of affairs at Botany Bay?’

‘You remember Breadfruit Bligh?’

‘I do not.’

‘Of course you do, Stephen. Bligh, that was sent to Tahiti in the Bounty before the war, to collect breadfruit-trees for the West Indies.’

‘Yes, yes! He had an excellent botanist with him, David Nelson: a most promising young man, alas. I was looking into his work on the bromeliads only the other day.’

‘Then you will remember that his people mutinied on him, and took his ship away?’

‘Sure, I have some hazy recollection of it. They preferred the charms of the Tahitian women to their duty. He survived, did he not?’

‘Yes, but only because he was a most prodigious seaman. They turned him adrift with precious little food in a sixoared boat, loaded to the gunwales with nineteen men, and he navigated her close on four thousand miles to Timor. A most astonishing feat! But perhaps he is not quite so lucky with his subordinates: some time ago he was made Governor of New South Wales and the news is that his officers have mutinied on him again – they have deposed him and shut him up. Army people for the most part, I believe. The Admiralty don’t like it, as you may imagine, and they are sending out an officer of sufficient seniority to deal with the situation and set Bligh up again or bring him home, according to his judgement.’

‘What kind of man is Mr Bligh?’

‘I have never met him, but I know he sailed with Cook as master. Then he was given a commission, one of those rare promotions from warrant-rank: a reward, I dare say, for his uncommon seamanship. Then he did well at Camperdown, taking the Director, 64, right in among the Dutch ships of the line and then lying alongside their admiral – as bloody a fight as ever you could wish. And he did well at Copenhagen too: Nelson mentioned him particularly.’

‘Perhaps it is still another instance of a man’s being corrupted by authority.’

‘It may be so. But although I cannot tell you much about him, I know a man who can. Do you remember Peter Heywood?’

‘Peter Heywood? A post-captain who dined with us aboard the Lively? The gentleman upon whom Killick poured the boiling jam sauce, and whom I treated for a not inconsiderable burn?’

‘That’s the man,’ said Jack.

‘How did the sauce come to be boiling?’ asked Sophie.

‘The Port-Admiral was with us, and he always says, jam sauce ain’t worth eating if it don’t boil; so we shipped a little stove just abaft the scuttle of the coach. Yes, that’s the man: the only post-captain in the Navy who was ever condemned to death for mutiny. He was one of Bligh’s midshipmen in the Bounty, and one of the few men or boys to be taken.’

‘How did he come to commit so rash an act?’ asked Stephen. ‘He seemed to me a mild, peaceable gentleman; he bore the Admiral’s strictures on his flinging the jam about with becoming modesty; and he bore the jam itself with so Spartan a fortitude that I should have conceived him incapable of acting in such an inconsiderate manner. Was it the petulance of youth, or a sudden disgust, or a dusky amour?’

‘I never asked,’ said Jack. ‘All I know is that he and four others were ordered to be hanged, and I saw three of them run up to the yardarm of the Brunswick with a nightcap over their eyes when I was a youngster in the Tonnant. But the King said it was all stuff to hang young Peter Heywood. So he was pardoned, and presently Black Dick Howe, who had always been fond of him, gave him his commission. I never did learn the ins and outs of it, although Heywood and I were shipmates in the Fox: it is a delicate thing to touch upon, a court-martial – and such a court-martial! But we can certainly ask him about Bligh when he comes to the house on Thursday: it is important to know what kind of a man we have to deal with. In any case, I want to ask him about those waters. He knows them well, because he was wrecked in the Endeavour Straits. And even more than that, I want him to tell me about Leopard’s little ways: he commanded her in the year five. Or was it six?’

Sophie’s attentive ear caught a remote howl, a howl far fainter than it would have been before Ashgrove Cottage burst its seams, but still a howl. ‘Jack,’ said she, as she hurried from the room, ‘you must show Stephen the plans of the orangery. Stephen knows all about oranges.’

‘So I shall,’ said Jack. ‘But first, Stephen – a little more coffee? There is plenty in the pot – first let me tell you about an even more interesting plan. Turn your mind to the wood where the honey-buzzards are nesting.’

‘Yes, yes. The honey-buzzards,’ cried Stephen, brightening at once. ‘I have brought a jointed booth for them.’

‘What do they want with a jointed booth? They have a perfectly respectable nest.’

‘It is a portable booth. I mean to set it up at the edge of the wood, and advance it by degrees to the rise that dominates their tree. There I shall sit at my ease, unseen, protected from the vicissitudes of the weather, watching the progress of their domestic economy. It is supplied with flaps, and every convenience for making observations.’

‘Well, I showed you the Roman mine-shafts, I remember – miles of ’em, and mortal dangerous – but do you know what the Romans mined there?’

‘Lead.’

‘And do you know what all those lumpy hills are? One of them is the very place where you mean to set up your booth.’

‘Dross.’

‘Will, Stephen,’ said Jack, leaning forward with a very knowing look indeed, ‘now I shall tell you something you do not know, for once. That dross is full of lead; and what is more, that lead contains silver. The Romans’ way of smelting did not extract it all, no, not by a chalk as long as your arm, and there it lies, thousands and thousands of tons of valuable dross just waiting to be treated by Kimber’s new process.’

‘Kimber’s new process?’

‘Yes. I dare say you have heard of him – a very brilliant fellow. He proceeds by lixiviation with some particular chemicals and then by cupellation according to principles discovered by himself. The lead pays for the working, and the silver is pure profit. The scheme would answer even if there were only one part of lead in one hundred and thirty-seven of dross, and one part of silver in over ten thousand; and on the average of close on a hundred random samples, our dross contains more than seventeen times as much!’

‘I am amazed. I did not know the Romans ever mined silver in Britain.’

‘Nor did I. But here’s the proof.’ He unlocked the door of a cupboard under the window-seat and came staggering back with a pig of lead upon which there lay a little silver ingot, four inches long. ‘That was the result of no more than a first rough trial,’ he said. ‘No more than a few cart-loads of dross. Kimber set up a little furnace in the old linhay, and I saw the stuff pour out with my own eyes. I wish you had been there.’

‘So do I,’ said Stephen.

‘Of course, it will call for quite a considerable capital outlay – roads, buildings, proper furnaces and so on – and I had thought of using the girls’ portions; but it seems that they can’t be touched by reason of the trust – that they have to remain in Consols and Navy five per cents, although I proved that it was mathematically impossible for them to yield a seventh part as much, even going by the poorest sample. I do not mean to set it going full-blast until I am likely to be on shore for some years on end –’

‘You foresee this eventuality?’

‘Oh yes. Unless I am knocked on the head, or unless I am caught doing something very wicked, I should get my flag in the next five years or so – sooner, if those old fellows at the head of the list did not cling to life so – and since it is harder for an admiral to find employment than a captain, I shall have plenty of time to build up my stud and work my mine. But I do mean to make a start, in a modest way, just to get things running and to lay by a fair amount of treasure. Fortunately Kimber is very moderate in his demands: he leases me the use of his patent, and he will supervise the working of the stuff.’

‘For a salary?’

‘Yes, and a quarter share. A really modest salary, which I think particularly handsome of him, because there is a Prince Kaunitz begging and praying him to attend to his mines in Transylvania, proposing ten guineas a day and a third share; he showed me all sorts of letters from great men in Germany and Austria. But do not run away with the idea that he is one of your enthusiastic vapouring projectors, promising Peru tomorrow: no, no, he is a very honest fellow, scrupulous to a fault, and he gave me fair warning – we may have to operate at a loss for as much as a year. I quite see that, but I can’t wait to begin.’

‘Surely you do not mean that you will disturb my buzzards, Jack?’

‘Never you fear for them. There’s a long way to go yet: Kimber still needs time and money to make his patents watertight, and for certain experiments; they will have hatched and flown before we have even lit our furnaces, I dare say. And what is more, Stephen, what is more, you will be well on your way to wealth; because although Kimber is unwilling to admit many venturers, I made him promise to let you in on the ground floor, as he puts it.’

‘Alas, Jack. What I have is all bespoke, locked up in Spain. Indeed, I am so short in England that it is my intention to beg you to lend me, let us see –’ consulting a paper, ‘seven hundred and eighty pounds.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, when Jack came back with a draft on his banker. ‘I am obliged to you, Jack.’

‘I beg you will not speak nor think of obligation,’ said Jack. ‘Between you and me, it would be precious strange to speak of obligation. By the way, that is drawn on London, but for these coming days, there is plenty of gold in the house.’

‘No, no, my dear: this is for a particular purpose. For myself, I am as comfortable as my best friend could wish.’

His best friend gazed at him doubtfully: Stephen did not look comfortable in his mind, and he seemed ill at ease in his body too, weary, sad, constrained.

‘What do you say to a ride?’ he said. ‘I am half engaged to meet some men at Craddock’s: they promised me my revenge.’

‘With all my heart,’ said Stephen, but with so melancholy an attempt at heartiness that Jack could not refrain from saying, ‘Stephen, if anything is amiss, and if I can be of any kind of use, you know…’

‘No, no, Jack: you are very good, however. I am a little low in my spirits, to be sure; but I am ashamed that it should be so apparent. I lost a patient in London, and I am by no means sure that I did not lose him through my own fault. My conscience troubles me: and I grieve for him extremely, a young man full of promise. And then again, in London I met Diana Villiers.’

‘Ah,’ said Jack awkwardly. ‘Just so.’ And after a pause in which the horses were led to the door and in which Stephen Maturin reflected upon a third factor of his distress – the hare-brained leaving of a folder containing highly confidential papers in a hackney-coach – Jack added, ‘You said Villiers, not Johnson?’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen, mounting. ‘It seems that the gentle man already had a wife in America, and that the decree of nullity or whatever they have in those parts was not to be obtained.’

Diana Villiers was an uncomfortable subject between the two, and after they had ridden for some way, Jack, to change the current of his mind, remarked, ‘You would not think there was any skill in a game like Van John, would you? No. Yet these fellows strip me bare almost every time we sit down together. You used to do the same at picquet, but that is another pair of drawers.’

Stephen made no reply: he pushed his horse on faster and faster over the bare down, sitting forward with a set, urgent expression on his face, as though he were making an escape; and so they cantered and galloped over the firm turf until they came to the brow of Portsdown Hill, where Stephen reined in for the steep descent. They stood for a while, surrounded by the smell of hot horse and leather, looking down at the vast sweep of the harbour, Spithead, the Island, and the Channel beyond: men-of-war at their moorings, men-of-war moving in and out, a huge convoy tiding it down off Selsey Bill.

They smiled at one another, and Jack had a premonition that Stephen was about to say something of great importance: a false premonition. Stephen spoke only to remind him that Sophie had desired them to pick up some fish at Holland’s, and to add three dabs for the children.

Craddock’s was already lighting up when they left their horses with the ostler, and Jack led Stephen under a series of noble chandeliers to the card-room, where he gave a man at a little table inside the door eighteen-pence. ‘Let us hope the game will be worth the candle,’ he said, looking round. Craddock’s was frequented by the wealthier officers, country gentleman, lawyers, officials in Government employ, and other civilians; and it was among these that Jack saw the men he was looking for. ‘There they are,’ he said, ‘talking to Admiral Snape. The one in the bag wig is Judge Wray, and the other is his cousin, Andrew Wray, pretty eminent in Whitehall – spends most of his time down here on Navy Office business. I dare say they have made up our table already: I see Carroll standing by until they have finished with the Admiral – the tall fellow in a sky-blue coat and white pantaloons. Now there’s a man who understands horses for you. His stables are over behind Horndean.’

‘Running horses?’

‘Oh yes, indeed. His grandfather owned Potoooooooo, so it’s in the blood. Do you choose to take a hand? We play the French game here.’

‘I believe not; but I will sit by you, if I may.’

‘I should be very happy; you will bring me some of your luck. You was always lucky at cards. Now I must step over to the desk and buy some counters.’

While Jack was gone, Stephen paced about the room. Many of the tables were already occupied, and some quiet, intense, scientific whist was going on; but he had a feeling that the evening had not really begun. He met some naval acquaintances, and one of these, Captain Dundas, said, ‘I hope he will prove to be Lucky Jack Aubrey again this evening: last time I was here…’

‘There you are, Heneage,’ cried Jack, bearing down on them. ‘Will you join us? We have a table of Van John.’

‘Not I, Jack. We half-pay paupers can’t stand in the line with nabobs like you.’

‘Come along then, Stephen. They are just going to sit down.’ He led Stephen to the far end of the room. ‘Judge Wray,’ he said, ‘allow me to name Dr Maturin, my particular friend. Mr Wray. Mr Carroll. Mr Jenyns.’ They bowed to one another, uttered civil expressions, and settled down to the broad green baize. The judge carried judicial impenetrability into his social life to such a pitch that Stephen received little impression but that of self-consequence. Andrew Wray, his cousin, was a somewhat younger and obviously far more intelligent man; he had served under the political heads of the Admirality, and Stephen had heard of him in connection with the Patronage Office and the Treasury. Jenyns was neither here nor there, a man who had inherited a vast brewery and a broad, pale, unmeaning countenance; but Carroll was a more interesting creature by far, as tall as Jack though less burly, with a long face very like that of a horse, but of a horse endowed with a high degree of life and wit. As he shuffled, his jovial eye, as blue as Jack’s, fell upon Stephen, and he smiled, a singularly winning smile that compelled a return: the cards flowed through his hands in an obedient stream.

Each drew in turn, and the deal fell to Mr Wray. Stephen was not familiar with their version of the game, although its childish basis was clear enough; and for a while their cries of ‘imaginary tens’, ‘rouge et noir’, ‘sympathy and antipathy’, ‘self and company’, and ‘clock’ were amusing enough. He also took some pleasure in watching their faces – the judge’s pomp yielding to a sly satisfaction, and that succeeded by a sourness and an evil-tempered jerk of his mouth; the deliberate nonchalance of his cousin, betrayed now and then by a sudden blaze in his eye; Carroll’s intense eagerness, his whole person vividly alive with a look that reminded Stephen of Jack’s when he was taking his ship into action. Jack seemed very well with them all, even with the phlegmatic Jenyns, as though he had known them these many years; but that did not mean a great deal. With his open, friendly character, Jack was always well with his company, and Stephen had known him get along famously with country gentlemen whose talk was all of bullocks. There was no money on the table, only counters: these moved from one place to another, though with no determined tide as yet, and as Stephen did not know what they represented his interest in the matter faded quickly. Reminded by the shape of some of the tokens, he thought of Sophie’s fish, silently withdrew, and made his way along the busy High Street, past the George, to Holland’s, where he bought a couple of fine plump lampreys (his favourite dish) and the dabs: these he carried with him down to the Hard, where the Mentor’s crew, just paid off, were bawling and hallooing round a bonfire, together with a growing crowd of the thick, powerful young women known as brutes and a large number of pimps, idle apprentices, and pickpockets. The bonfire sent a ruddy glow far up into the night air, accentuating the darkness: disturbed gulls could be seen far above, their wings a reflected pink; and in the midst of the flames hung the effigy of the Mentor’s first lieutenant. ‘Shipmate,’ said Stephen into the ear of a bemused sailor whose brute was openly robbing him, ‘mind your poke.’ But even as he spoke he felt a violent twitch at the parcel under his arm. His lampreys and his dabs were gone – a wicked flying boy, not three foot tall, vanished in the milling crowd – and Stephen walked back to the shop, which could now afford him no more than a salmon of enormous price, and a pair of wizened plaice.

Their smell grew more apparent as they warmed against his bosom, and he left them with the horses before returning to his seat. Everything seemed much as it had been, except that Jack’s store of counters had grown thin and sparse; they still called ‘pay the difference’ and ‘antipathy’; but there was certainly a new tension. Jenyns’ pale expanse of face was sweating more profusely; Carroll’s whole being was electric with excitement; the two Wrays were even colder and more guarded. As he was drawing a card, Jack brushed one of his remaining counters, a mother-of-pearl fish, off the table: Stephen picked it up, and Jack said, ‘Thankee, Stephen, that’s a pony.’

‘It looks more like a fish,’ said Stephen.

‘That is our slang term for five and twenty pound,’ said Carroll, smiling at him.

‘Indeed?’ said Stephen, realizing that they were playing for far, far higher stakes than he had ever imagined. He watched the silly game with much keener attention, and presently he began to think it strange that Jack should lose so much, so often, so regularly. Andrew Wray and Carroll were the principal winners; the judge seemed to be more or less where he had begun; Jack and Jenyns had lost heavily, and they both called for fresh counters before Stephen had been back half an hour. During this half hour he had made up his mind that something was amiss. Something was holding the law of probabilities in abeyance. Just what it was he could not tell, but he was sure that if only he could as it were break the code he should find evidence for the collusion that he sensed. A dropped handkerchief allowed him to inspect their feet, a usual means of communication; but their feet told him nothing. And where did the collusion lie? Between whom? Was Jenyns in fact losing as much as he appeared to be losing, or was he a deeper man than he seemed? It was easy to be too clever by half, and to over-reach oneself, in matters of this kind: in natural philosophy and in political intelligence a good rule was to look into the obvious first, and to solve the easy parts of the problem. The judge had a trick of drumming his fingers on the table; so did his cousin. Natural enough: but was not Andrew Wray’s drumming of a somewhat particular kind? Not so much the ordinary rhythmic roll as the motion of a man picking out a tune with variations: was he mistaken in thinking that Carroll’s lively, piratical eye dwelt upon those movements? Unable to decide, he moved round the table and stood behind Wray and Carroll, to establish a possible relationship between the drumming and the cards they held. His move was not directly useful, however. He had not been there for any length of time before Wray called for sandwiches and half a pint of sherry, and the drumming stopped – a hand holding a sandwich is naturally immobilized. Yet with the coming of the wine, the law of probabilities reasserted itself: Jack’s luck changed; fish returned to him in a modest shoal; and he stood up somewhat richer than he had sat down.

He displayed no indecent self-complacency; indeed, all the gentlemen present might have been playing for love, from their lack of apparent emotion; but Stephen knew that secretly he was delighted. ‘You brought me luck, Stephen,’ he said, when they had mounted. ‘You broke the damnedest sequence of cards I have ever seen in my life, week after goddam week.’

‘I have also brought you a salmon, and a pair of plaice.’

‘Sophie’s fish!’ cried Jack. ‘God’s my life, they had gone completely out of my mind. Thank you, Stephen: you are a friend in a thousand.’

They rode through Cosham in silence, avoiding drunken seamen, drunken soldiers, and drunken women. Stephen knew that Jack had repaired his fortunes in the Mauritius campaign: even with the admiral’s share, the proctors’ fees, and the civilians’ jobbery deducted, the recaptured Indiamen alone must have set him quite high in the list of captains who had done well out of prizemoney. But even so … When they were clear of the houses he said, ‘As such I should tell you some of the disagreeable things that are said to fall to friends; yet since I have so lately borrowed a large sum of money from you, I can scarcely cry up thrift, nor even common prudence, with much decency or conviction. I am struck dumb; and must content myself with observing that Lord Anson, whose wealth had the same source as yours, was said to have gone round the world, but never into the world.’

‘I take your meaning,’ said Jack. ‘You think they are sharps and I am a flat?’

‘I assert nothing: only that in your place I should not play with those men again.’

‘Oh come, Stephen, a judge, for all love? And a man so high in Government service?’

‘I make no accusation. Though if I had a certainty where in fact I have only a suspicion, a man’s being a judge would not weigh heavily. Sure, it is weak and illiberal to speak slightingly of any considerable body of men; yet it so happens that the only judges I have known have been froward companions, and it occurs to me that not only are they subjected to the evil influence of authority but also to that of righteous indignation, which is even more deleterious. Those who judge and sentence criminals address them with an unbridled, vindictive righteousness that would be excessive in an archangel and that is indecent to the highest degree in one sinner speaking to another, and he defenceless. Righteous indignation every day, and publicly applauded! I remember an acquaintance of mine literally foaming – there was a line of white between his lips – as he condemned a wretched youth to transportation for carnal knowledge of a fine bold up-standing wench: yet this same man was himself a smell-smock, a cold, determined lecher, a voluptuary, a libertine, a discreet frequenter of Mother Abbot’s establishment in Dover Street; while another, in whose house I have drunk uncustomed wine, tea, and brandy, told a smuggler, with great vehemence, that society must be protected from such wicked men as he and his accomplices. Do not suppose, however, that I am calling this judge of yours a sharper: his respectability may be no more than a useful screen.’

‘Well, I shall take care of them,’ said Jack. ‘I have given them another meeting next week, but I shall keep a weather-eye wide open. A delicate business … it would never do to offend Andrew Wray…’

They walked their horses up the hill, and over on the right a nightjar churred, perched lengthways on the gibbet at the crest. After half a mile Jack said, ‘I cannot believe it of him. He is a great man in the City, apart from anything else. He understands the movement of the Funds, and once he told me that if I put money into Bank Stock, I should certainly make a handsome profit before the month was out. And sure enough, Mr Perceval made a statement, and some people cleared thousands. But I am not such a flat as that, Stephen; stocks and shares is gambling, and I stick to what I understand: ships and horses.’

‘And silver-mining.’

‘That is entirely different,’ cried Jack. ‘As I keep telling Sophie, the Lowthers did not have to understand coal when it was found on their land: all they had to do was to listen to experts, see that proper measures were taken, and then set up a coach and six, become the richest family in the north, with God knows how many members in Parliament and one of them now a lord of the Admiralty at this very minute – but no, she cannot abide poor Kimber, though he is a very civil, obliging little man: calls him a projector. We went to the play last time we were in town, and there was a fellow there, on the stage, that said he could not tell how it was, but every time he and his wife disagreed, it so happened that she was invariably in the wrong: and although everybody simpered and clapped, I thought he put it very well, and I whispered “Coal” in Sophie’s ear; but she was laughing so hearty she did not catch it.’ He sighed: and then, in a different tone, he said, ‘Lord, Stephen, how Arcturus blazes! The orange star up there. We shall have such a blow from the south-west tomorrow, or I’m a Dutchman: still, ’tis an ill wind that spoils the broth, you know.’

Their broth was waiting for them at the cottage, with Sophie, pink and sleepy, the very type of dutiful wife, to ladle it out for them. While Stephen was supping his, Jack left the room and came back with a beautiful model of a ship. ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s Moses Jenkins’ work, the Dockyard sculptor. Now that’s what I call art – Pheidias ain’t in the running. You recognize her, of course?’

Stephen bent low to see the ship as she would appear from the waterline. The figurehead, a lady in a flowing gown, mysteriously opening a covered dish, or perhaps playing cymbals, was vaguely familiar, but he could not put a name to her until his eye caught a bulbous yellow spotted dog in the sweep of the head just behind. ‘The horrible old – that is to say, the Leopard,’ he said.

‘Exactly so,’ said Jack, with an affectionate, approving look. ‘I was afraid her altered stern-transom might have thrown you out, but you smoked her right away. The new-built Leopard. Here is her diagonal bracing, do you see? Roberts’s iron-plate knees. Everything abaft the clamps of the quarterdeck refashioned. The only thing I do not quite care for is the new-fangled stern-post. It is all exactly to scale, and her measurements are, gundeck one hundred and forty-six foot five inches, keel one hundred and twenty foot and three-quarters of an inch, beam forty foot eight, and tonnage by our measurement, one thousand and fifty-six. The very thing for a really distant voyage! She only draws fifteen foot eight abaft, light, yet she has seventeen foot six depth of hold! You remember how we cried out for tenpenny nails in the dear old Surprise? Leopard’s maw will be stuffed with tenpenny nails, and with all kinds of other stores too, such quantities of ’em. And she has plenty of teeth, as you see: twenty-two twenty-four-pounders on the lower deck, twenty-two twelve-pounders on the upper deck, a couple of six-pounders on her forecastle, and four five-pounders on the quarterdeck; and I shall take my brass nines as stern-chasers. A broadside weight of metal of four hundred and forty-eight pound, more than enough to blow any Dutch or French frigate out of the water: for they have no ship of the line in the Spice Islands, so far away.’

‘The Spice Islands,’ murmured Stephen; and then, feeling that something more was called for, ‘What would her complement be, now?’

‘Three hundred and forty-three. Four lieutenants, three Marine officers, ten midshipmen: and even the surgeon has two mates, Stephen. No want of company, nor no want of room. And another charming thing about this commission is that at last I have time to prepare for it, and have people after my own heart. Tom Pullings is to be my first lieutenant, Babbington is on his way back from the West Indies, and I hope to pick up Mowett at the Cape. You will see Pullings on Thursday, along with Heywood. And Tom will be as eager as we are to hear about those waters and about Bligh, because obviously he takes over if – I mean, he would be in command if I were on shore.’

Thursday brought Mr Pullings, and in his candid pleasure at seeing Jack and Stephen again he seemed scarcely to have changed from the long-legged, long-armed, shy, friendly, tubular youth Stephen had first met as a midshipman so many years ago; but in fact he was a man of far greater weight, more burly both in character and person. It was apparent, from his competent handling of young George, produced for his inspection, and from his behaviour to Captain Heywood, that he was now in the full tide of his life, and swimming well. His behaviour was of course perfectly deferential, but it was that of a man who had seen a great deal of service, and who thoroughly understood his profession.

Yet in spite of their eagerness, they learnt little about Bligh. ‘He did not wish to say anything against Captain Bligh – a capital navigator – very touchy himself, but had no notion of how he offended others – would give you the lie in front of all hands one day and invite you to dinner the next – you never knew where you were with him – led Christian, the master’s mate, a sad life of it, yet probably liked him in his own strange way – never knew where he was with Bounty’s people – no idea at all – was amazed when they turned on him – an odd, whimsical man: had gone to great pains to teach Heywood how to work his lunar observations, yet had sworn his life away with a most inveterate malice – had also brought his carpenter to court-martial for insolence, and that after they had survived the voyage in the launch together – four thousand miles in an open boat, and you bring a man to trial at Spithead!’

A silence followed this, broken only by the cracking of nuts. Heywood had been a boy at the time: waking from a deep sleep, he found the ship in the hands of armed, angry, determined mutineers, the captain a prisoner, the launch going over the side; he hesitated, lost his head, and went below. It was not very criminal, but it was not very heroic either: he did not like to dwell upon it.

Jack, aware of his feelings, sent the bottle round; and after some time Stephen asked Captain Heywood what he could tell him about the birds of Tahiti. Precious little, it appeared: there were parrots of different sorts, he recalled, and some doves, and gulls ‘of the usual kind’.

Stephen lapsed into a reverie while they discussed the Leopard’s little ways, and he did not emerge from it until Heywood cried, ‘Edwards! There’s a man I don’t mind telling you my opinion of. He was a blackguard, and no seaman neither; and I hope he rots in hell.’ Captain Edwards had commanded the Pandora, which was sent to capture the mutineers, and which found those who had remained on Tahiti. Heywood looked back to the boy he had been, putting off from the shore as soon as the ship was seen, delighted, and sure of a welcome: he emptied his glass, and with bitter resentment he said, ‘That damned villain of a man put us in irons, built a thing he called Pandora’s Box on the quarterdeck, four yards by six, and crammed us into it, fourteen men, innocent and guilty all together – kept us in it four months and more while he looked for Christian and the others – never found them, of course, the lubber – in irons all the time, never allowed out, even to go to the head. And we were still in the box and still in irons when the infernal bugger ran his ship on to a reef at the entrance to the Endeavour Straits. And what do you think he did for us when she went down? Nothing whatsoever. Never had our irons taken off, never unlocked the box, though it was hours before she settled. If the ship’s corporal had not tossed the keys through the scuttle at the last moment, we must all have been drowned: as it was, four men were trodden under and smothered in the wicked scuffle – water up to our necks … Then, although the wretched fellow had four boats out, he had not the wit to provision them: a little biscuit and two or three beakers of water were all we had until we reached the Dutchmen at Coupang, a thousand miles away and more: not that he would ever have found Coupang, either, but for the master. The scoundrel. If it were not uncharitable, I should drink to his damnation for ever and a day.’ Heywood drank, in any case, but silently; and then, his mood changing abruptly, he told them about the East Indian waters, the wonders of Timor, Ceram, and the tame cassowaries stalking among the bales of spice, the astonishing butterflies of Celebes, the Java rhinoceros, the torrid girls of Surabaya, the tides in the Allus Strait. It was a fascinating account, and in spite of messages from the drawing-room, where the coffee was growing cold, they would have listened for ever; but while he was speaking of the pilgrim dhows bound for Arabia, Heywood’s voice faltered. He repeated himself once or twice, looking anxiously from side to side, took a good hold on the table and rose to his feet, where he stood swaying, speechless, until Killick and Pullings led him out.

‘It would be the voyage of the world,’ said Stephen. ‘How I wish I could make it, alas.’

‘Oh, Stephen,’ cried Jack. ‘I had counted on you.’

‘You know something of my affairs, Jack: I am not my own master, and I am afraid that when I return from London – for I must go up on Tuesday, I find – I shall have to decline. It is scarcely possible at all. But at least I can promise you will have an excellent surgeon. I know a very able young man, a brilliant operator, a profound naturalist – an authority on corals – who would give his eye-teeth to go with you.’

‘The Mr Deering, to whom you sent all our Rodriguez coral?’

‘No. John Deering was the man I spoke of this afternoon. He died under my knife.’