Patrick O'Brian

The Commodore

An Excerpt

The two homeward-bound ships, Jack Aubrey's Surprise, an elderly twenty-eight-gun frigate sold out of the service some years ago but now, as His Majesty's hired vessel Surprise, completing a long confidential mission for Government, and HMS Berenice, Captain Heneage Dundas, an even older but somewhat less worn sixty-four-gun two-decker, together with her tender the Ringle, an American schooner of the kind known as a Baltimore clipper, had been sailing in company ever since they met north and east of Cape Horn, about a hundred degrees of latitude or six thousand sea-miles away in a straight line, if straight lines had any meaning at all in a voyage governed entirely by the wind, the first coming from Peru and the coast of Chile, the second from New South Wales.

The Berenice had found the Surprise much battered by an encounter with a heavy American frigate: even more so by a lightning-stroke that had shattered her mainmast and, far worse, deprived her of her rudder. The two captains had been boys together, midshipmen and lieutenants: very old shipmates and very intimate friends indeed. The Berenice had supplied the Surprise with spars, cordage, storage and a remarkably efficient Pakenham substitute rudder made of spare topmasts; and the two ship's companies, in spite of an initial stiffness arising from the Surprise's somewhat irregular status, agreed very well together after two ardent cricket-matches on the island of Ascension, where a proper rudder was shipped, and there was a great deal of ship-visiting as all three lay with loose flapping sails in the doldrums, a sweltering fortnight with melted tar dripping from the yards. Though unconscionably long, it was a most companionable voyage, particularly as the Surprise was able to do away with much of the invidious difference between deliverer and delivered by providing the sickly and under-manned Berenice with a surgeon, her own having been lost, together with his only mate, when their boat overturned not ten yards from the ship—neither could swim, and each seized the other with fatal energy—so that her people, sadly reduced by Sydney pox and Cape Horn scurvy, were left to the care of an illiterate but fearless loblolly-boy; and to provide her not merely with an ordinary naval surgeon, equipped with little more than a certificate from the Sick and Hurt Board, but with a full-blown physician in the person of Stephen Maturin, the author of a standard work on the diseases of seamen, a Fellow of the Royal Society with doctorates from Dublin and Paris, a gentleman fluent in Latin and Greek (such a comfort to his patients), a particular friend of Captain Aubrey's and, though this was known to very few, one of the Admiralty's—indeed of the Ministry's—most valued advisors on Spanish and Spanish-American affairs: in short an intelligence-agent, though on a wholly independent and voluntary basis.

Yet a surgeon, even if he may also be a physician with a physical bob and a gold-headed cane who has been called in to treat Prince William, the Duke of Clarence, is not a mainmast, still less a rudder: he may uphold the people's spirits and relieve their pain, but he can neither propel nor steer the ship; the Surprises had therefore every reason to feel loving gratitude toward the Berenices, and since they knew the difference between right and wrong at sea they made full acknowledgement of their obligations as they passed through the frigid, temperate and torrid zones and so to the merely wet and disagreeable climate of home waters; but at no time could they be brought to love the Berenice herself.

Their feelings were shared by the crew of the Ringle, very much so indeed; for both the frigate and the schooner were quite exceptionally weatherly vessels, fast, capable of sailing very close to the wind—the schooner wonderfully close—and almost innocent of leeway, while the much larger and more powerful two-decker was but a slug on a bowline. She got along well enough when the breeze was abaft the beam—she liked it plumb on the quarter best—but as it came forward so her people exchanged anxious looks; and when at last studdingsails could no longer stand and when the ship was hauled close to the wind, the bowlines twanging taut, all their exertions could not bring her to within six points, nor prevent her sagging most disgracefully to leeward, like a drunken crab.

Most unhappily she had been compelled to behave in this manner for several days now, ever since an accurate observation had told them that they could set about painting ship, renewing the blacking on the yards and polishing everything that could be induced to take a shine, so that they might strike soundings fully prepared to sail home in glory. But for all of these days the breeze had been contrary, and although the Surprise—even more so the schooner—could have beaten up to good effect, working a great way to windward, they had been kept back by their unweatherly companion. And now they were far into this dirty night, this filthy goddam night, with their beautifully painted topsides being spoilt by spray, when they might have been bowsing up their jibs ashore; or at least the Surprises might, they being from Shelmerston, a little place much closer than the Berenice's Portsmouth.

Feeling ran high, especially on the Surprise's quarterdeck, where an unusually vicious blast, cutting against the tide on its turn, had soaked all hands; but below, in the great cabin, the two captains sat unmoved as the Berenice floundered along under topsails and courses, shipping a great deal of water and drifting to leeward at her usual horrid rate, while the Surprise kept exactly in her due station astern with no more than double-reefed topsails and a jib half in, and the Ringle even less. Both men knew that all seamanship could do was being done, and a long profesional career had taught them not only to accept the inevitable but not to fret about it. Even before they struck soundings Heneage Dundas had suggested that the Surprise should ignore naval convention and part company, going ahead as fast as she chose.

"She ain't carrying dispatches,' replied Jack with a frown—a ship carrying them was excused from all ordinary decencies or politeness; forbidden indeed to delay for even a minute—so there the matter rested; and now, Dundas having dined and supped aboard the frigate, they sat there with a broad-bottomed decanter of port between them, half-hearing the stroke of the sea on the larboard bow and then on the starboard when the ship had gone about on yet another of her long legs, and the hanging lamp swung over the locker, intermittently lighting a backgammon board, a sea-going board with the men still held by their pegs in Jack Aubrey's improbable winning position.

"Well, you shall have her,' said Dundas, emptying his glass. "And you shall have her with all her gear and her ground-tackle too.'

"Come, that is handsome in you, Hen,' said Jack. "Thank you kindly.'

"But I will say this, Jack: you have the most infernal luck. You had no right even to save your gammon.'

"It was a damned near-run thing, I must admit,' said Jack, modestly; then after a pause he laughed and said, "I remember your using those very words in the old Bellerophon, before we had our battle.'

"So I did,' cried Dundas. "So I did. Lord, that was a great while ago.'

"I still bear the scar,' said Jack. He pushed up his sleeve, and thereon his brown forearm was a long white line.

"How it comes back,' said Dundas; and between them, drinking port, they retold the tale, with minute details coming fresh to their minds. As youngsters, under the charge of the gunner of the Bellerophon, 74, in the West Indies, they had played the same game. Jack, with his infernal luck, had won on that occasion too: Dundas claimed his revenge, and lost again, again on a throw of double six. Harsh words, such as cheat, liar, sodomite, booby and God-damned lubber flew about; and since fighting over a chest, the usual way of settling such disagreements in many ships, was strictly forbidden in the Bellerophon, it was agreed that as gentlemen could not possibly tolerate such language they should fight a duel. During the afternoon watch the first lieutenant, who dearly loved a white-scoured deck, found that the ship was almost out of the best kind of sand, and he sent Mr Aubrey away in the blue cutter to fetch some from an island at the convergence of two currents where the finest and most even grain was found. Mr Dundas accompanied him, carrying two newly-sharpened cutlasses in a sailcloth parcel, and when the hands had been set to work with shovels the two little boys retired behind a dune, unwrapped the parcel, saluted gravely, and set about each other. Half a dozen passes, the blades clashing, and when Jack cried out "Oh Hen, what have you done?' Dundas gazed for a moment at the spurting blood, burst into tears, whipped off his shirt and bound up the wound as best he could. When they crept aboard a most unfortunately idle, becalmed and staring Bellerophon, their explanations, widely different and in both cases so weak that they could not be attempted to be believed, were brushed aside, and their captain flogged them severely on the bare breech. "How we howled,' said Dundas. "You were shriller than I was,' said Jack. "Very like a hyena.'

Killick, his steward, had long since turned in, so Jack fetched more port himself; and after they had been drinking it for some time he noticed that Dundas was growing curiously silent.

Orders and bosun's pipes on deck, and the Surprise came smoothly about with no more than the watch, settling easily on the starboard tack.

"Jack,' said Dundas at last, in a tone that Jack had heard before, "this is perhaps an improper moment, while I am swilling your capital wine. . . but you did speak of some charming prizes in the Pacific.'

"Certainly I did. We were required to act as a privateer, you know, and since I could not disobey my instructions we took not only some whalers, which we sold on the coast, but also a vile great pirate fairly stuffed with what she had taken out of a score of other ship: maybe two score.'

"Well, I tell you what it is, Jack. The glass is rising, as I dare say you have noticed.' Jack nodded, looking at his friend's embarrassed face with real compunction. "That is to say, it is likely the weather will clear, with the wind backing west and even south of west: tomorrow or the next day we should run up the Channel and then we shall part company at last, with you putting into Shelmerston and me carrying right on to Pompey.' This, though eminently true, called for some further observation if it were to make much sense; but Dundas seemed incapable of going on. He hung his head, a pitiful attitude for so distinguished a commander.

"Perhaps you have a girl aboard that you would like landed somewhere else?' suggested Jack.

"Not this time,' said Dundas. "No. Jack, the fact of the matter is that as soon as the Berenice makes her number and it is known in the town that she is at hand the tipstaffs will come swarming out of their holes and the moment I set foot on shore I shall be arrested—arrested for debt and carried off to a sponging-house. I suppose you could not lend me a thousand guineas? It is a terrible lot of money, I know. I am ashamed to ask for it.'

"In course I could. As I told you, I am amazingly flush—Crocus is my second name. But would a thousand be enough? What was the debt? It would be a pity to spoil the ship for a. . .'

"Oh, it would be amply enough, I am sure; and I am prodigiously obliged to you, Jack. I dare not come down on Melville at this point: it would be different if he loved me as much as he loves you, but the last time he showed me out of the door he called me an infernal trundle-thrift whoremonger and condemned me to this vile New Holland voyage in the Berenice.' Heneage's elder brother, Lord Melville, was at the head of the Admiralty, and he could do such things. "No. The judgment was for five hundred odd—the same young person, I am sorry to say, or rather her famous attorney—but even with legal charges and interest I am sure a thousand would cover it handsomely.'

They talked about arrest for debt, sheriff's officers, sponging-houses and the like for some time, with profound and dear-bought knowledge of the subject, and after a while Jack agreed that a thousand would see his friend clear until he could draw his long-overdue pay and see the factor who looked after his Scottish estate: with a vessel as slow and unwieldy and unlucky as the Berenice there could be no question of prize-money, above all on such an unpromising voyage.

"How happy you make me feel, Jack,' said Dundas. "A draft on Hoare's—for you bank with Hoare's, as I well remember—will be like Ajax's shield when I go ashore.'

"There is nothing like gold for satisfying an attorney out of hand.'

"Truer word you never spoke, dear Jack. But even if you had gold—you will never tell me you have gold, English gold, Jack?—it would take hours to tell out a thousand guineas.'

"God love you, Hen. All this morning and much of this afternoon Tom, Adams and I were counting and weighing like a gang of usurers, making up bags for the final sharing-out when we drop anchor in Shelmerston. The Doctor helped too, nipping about among our heaps and taking out all the ancient coins—there were some of Julius Caesar and Nebuchadnezzar, I think, and he clasped an Irish piece called an Inchiquin pistole to his bosom, laughing with pleasure—but he threw us out of our count and I was obliged to beg him to go away, far, far away. When he had gone we sorted and counted, sorted and counted and weighed, only finishing just before dinner. Those large bags on the left of the stern-window locker hold a thousand guineas apiece—they are part of the ship's share—while the smaller bags hold mohurs, ducats, louis d'ors, joes and all kinds of foreign gold by weight of five hundred each, and the chests all along the side and down in the bread-room hold sacks of a hundred in silver, also by weight: there are so many that the ship is a good strake by the stern, and I shall be glad when they are better stowed. Take one of those thousands on the left, then. I can make up the sum in a moment from the rest, but silver would be much too heavy for you to carry.'

"God bless you, Jack,' said Dundas, hefting the comfortable bag in his hand. "Even this weighs well over a stone, ha, ha, ha!' and as he spoke four bells struck, four bells in the graveyard watch. This was almost immediately followed by an exchange of orders and distant cries on deck: they were not the routine noises that preceded going about, however, and both captains listened intently, Heneage still holding the bag poised in his hand, like a Christmas pudding. Some moments later a wet, one-armed midshipman burst in and cried "Beg pardon, sir, but Mr Wilkins desires his compliments and duty and there is a ship about two miles to windward, he thinks a seventy-four, in any case a two-decker, and he don't quite like her answer to the private signal.'

"Thank you, Mr Reade,' said Jack. "I shall be on deck directly.'

"And pray be so good as to rouse out my bargemen,' called Dundas, stuffing the bag into his shirt and buttoning his waistcoast over it. And when Reade had vanished at a run, "Jack, infinite thanks: I must get back to my ship. Clear and come within hail'—he was the senior captain—'and short-handed though Berenice is, I believe the two of us can take on any seventy-four afloat.'

Out on the cold wet quarterdeck Jack's eyes grew used to the comparative darkness as Dundas groped awkwardly down into the tossing barge, clasping his anxious belly as he went. Comparative darkness, for now an old hunchbacked moon was sending enough light through the low cloud for him to make out a blur of white to windward, a blur that resolved itself into topsails and courses as he focused his glass, and a double row of lit gunports. But it was the hoist that fixed almost the whole of his attention, the reply to the private signal that distinguished friend from foe. It was a string of three lanterns, the topmost winking steadily: there should have been four.

"I replied do not understand your signal, sir,' said Wilkins, "but she still keeps this one hoisted.' Jack nodded. "Clear for action and make sail to close the Berenice,' he said.

"All hands and beat to quarters,' roared Wilkins to the bosun's enchanted mate. "Forward there, forward: forestaysail and full jib.' The Surprise was in very good order: she had seen a great deal of action and she was kept in high training for a great deal more; she could change from a darkling ship, three parts asleep, to a brilliantly-lit man-of-war with guns run out, hammocks in the netting, magazines opened and protected with fearnought screens, and every man in his accustomed, appointed station together with all his mates, ready to give battle at the word of command. But she could not do so in silence, and it was the roar of the drum, the muffled thunder of four hundred feet and the screech of trucks that started Stephen Maturin from his profound and rosy peace.

He had left Jack and Dundas quite early, for he was something of a check on their flow of reminiscences; and in any case very highly detailed accounts of war at sea reduced him almost to tears after the first hour. They had drunk the usual Saturday toast of sweethearts and wives, and the civil Dundas had added particular compliments to Sophie and Diana, pledging both in bumpers, bottoms up. This meant that Stephen, an abstemious, meagre creature, weighing nine stone and odd ounces, far exceeded his usual two or three glasses, and although he had meant to retire to the rarely-used cabin below to which he was entitled as the ship's surgeon rather than the more spacious, airier place he usually shared with Jack, and there, after his evening rounds, to lie reading, the wine, without making him drunk, had to some extent affected his concentration, and as the book he was reading—Clousaz' Examen de Pyrrhonisme—called for a great deal he put it down at the end of a chapter, aware that he had made nothing of the last paragraph, lay back in his swinging cot and instantly returned to thinking about his wife and daughter, the first a spirited young woman called Diana with black hair and blue eyes, a splendid rider, and the second Brigid, a child he had longed for this many a year but whom he had not yet seen. This reverie was very usual with him, and it required no sort of concentration at all, but rather the reverse, being a series of images, sometimes imprecise, sometimes intensely vivid, of conversations, real or imaginary, and of an indefinite sense of present happiness. Yet tonight for the first time in all this very long parting—no less than a complete circumnavigation of the world by sea, with a great deal happening on land as well—there was a subtle difference, a change of key. At any moment now, he had learnt, they might strike soundings, an expression that in itself had a chilling quality, quite apart from its meaning; and the fact itself brought what had been a vague futurity into the almost immediate present. Now it was not so much a question of wandering in past felicity as of reflecting upon the reality he would meet in a few days' time or even less if the wind came fair.

He looked forward to seeing Diana and Brigid with the utmost eagerness, of course, as he had for thousands and thousands of miles; but now this eagerness was mixed with an apprehension that he could not or would not readily name. For almost the whole of this enormous voyage they had been out of touch: he knew that his daughter had been born and that Diana had bought Barham Down, a large, remote house with excellent stabling, good pasture and plenty of gallops—great stretches of down—for the Arabs she intended to breed; but apart from that virtually nothing.

Years had passed, and years had a bad name: a verse of Horace floated into his mind:

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes;
eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum. . .

The years in passing rob us of our delight,
of merriment and carnal love, of each in turn,
all sport and dining out. . .

In any case things were not yet quite so desperate: although Venus might be a somewhat remote and flickering planet he still loved a cheerful dinner among friends and a severe, close-fought game of whist or fives. Yet changed he had to some degree, of that there was no doubt: more and more, for example, it seemed to him that the proper study of mankind was man rather than beetle or even bird.

He had changed: of course he had changed, and probably more than he knew. It was inevitable. What kind of Diana would he find, and how would they agree? She had married him mostly out of friendship—she liked him very well—perhaps to some degree out of pity, he having loved her so long: he was not at all agreeable to look at and from the physical point of view he had never been much of a lover—a state of affairs much influenced by years of addiction to opium, which he neither smoked nor ate but drank in the form of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum, sometimes, in his despair over Diana, reaching heroic doses. Diana, on the other hand, had never taken so much as a drachm, not a scruple of opium, nor anything else to diminish her naturally ardent temperment.

As the night wore on he worried himself foolishly, as one will in the dark with vitality low and courage, reasoning power and common sense all at their lowest ebb: at times he comforted himself with the reflexion that Brigid was there, a great bond between them; at others he said that the image of Diana as a mother was perfectly absurd; and he longed for the old tincture to ease the torment of his mind. He did possess a substitute in the leaves of the coca plan, much esteemed in Peru for the tranquil euphoria they produced when chewed; but they had the disadvantage of utterly banishing sleep, and sleep was what he wanted more than anything else in the world.

Somehow, at some point, he must have attained it, since the drum's echoing beat to quarters jerked him up from the depths. In most respects he remained a wholly unimproved landsman in spite of many years at sea, but there were a few naval characteristics to be found in him. Almost all had to do with his function as a naval sugeon, and even before his mind was fully aware of the situation his legs were hurrying him towards his action-station below and right aft on the orlop deck. It being cold as well as damp in the stuffy, fetid triangular hole that he occupied he had turned in all standing, so that he only had to put on an apron to be ready for duty. On reaching the sick-berth he found his loblolly-boy, a large and powerful, almost monoglot Munsterman called Padeen, hauling two chests together under the great lantern to make an operating-table. "God and Mary be with you, Padeen,' he said in Irish. "God and Mary and Patrick be with your honour,' said Padeen. "Is there to be a battle at all?'

"The Dear knows. How are Williams and Ellis?'

These were the two invalids in the starboard sick-berth, whom Padeen had been sitting with. They had been sparring, in a spirit of fun, with loggerheads, those massy iron balls with long handles to be carried red-hot from the fire and plunged into buckets of tar or pitch so that the substance might be melted with no risk of flame. "They are sober now, sir; and penitent, the creatures.'

"I shall look at them, when we have everything ready,' said Stephen, beginning to range saws, scalpels, ligatures and tourniquets. Fabien, his assistant, joined him, followed by two little girls, Emily and Sarah: they were only just awake, and they would have been a sleepy pink had they not been extremely black. They had been found long ago on a Melanesian island whose other inhabitants had all been wiped out by the smallpox brought by a visiting whaler; and since they were then too ill and wretched to look after themselves in that charnel-house of a village, Stephen had brought them away. They did not attend at the very horrible surgery that he was sometimes obliged to carry out, but their small, delicate hands were wonderfully skilful at bandaging. They looked after those who had been operated upon, and the convalescents; they were also very useful to Dr Maturin in his frequent dissections of natural specimens, having no trace of squeamishness. They had entirely forgotten the language of Sweeting Island, apart from counting in it as they skipped, but they spoke perfect English, quarterdeck with never an oath or the much more earthy and emphatic lower-deck version, as occasion required.

Between them they laid out all the material that might be needed during an action and after it: lint, bandages, splints; the purely surgical instruments such as catlings, bistouries and retractors; and their grim companions, the gags and the leather-covered chains. When all these were arranged in their due order, the essentials within reach of the surgeon's hand and himself tied into his apron, they relaxed and listened with the utmost attention, trying to piece through the general confused run of the water alongside the ship, the voice of the eddy on the windward side of the rudder, and the reverberation of the taut rigging transmitted to the hull, to hear some sound that might tell them what was afoot. None came, and presently their sense of urgency diminished. The little girls sat on the deck outside the lantern's strong ring of light, silently playing the game in which an outstretched hand represented a sheet of paper, a stone, or a pair of scissors. Stephen walked into the other berth, looked at his patients and asked them how they did. "Prime, sir,' they answered, and thanked him kindly.

"Well, I am glad of that,' he said. "Yet although they were good clean breaks, immobilized at once, it will be long before you can go aloft, or dance upon the green, if ever we get home, which God send.'

"Amen, amen, sir,' they answered together.

"But how did you ever come to be so indiscreet and thoughtless as to beat one another with those vile great loggerheads?'

"It was only in fun, sir, like we sometimes do, meaning no harm. One has a swipe and the other dodges, turn and turn about.'

"In all my experience of the sea I have never heard of such a dreadful practice.'

The patients looked meek, avoiding one another's eyes; and presently Ellis said "It all depends on the ship, sir. We often used to play in the Agamemnon; and my father, which he was carpenter's crew in the old George, had a real set-to, real serious, with a forecastleman that called him a. . .'

"Called him what?'

"I hardly like to say it.'

"Murmur it in my ear,' said Stephen, bending low.

"A nymph,' whispered Ellis.

"Did he indeed, the wicked dog? How did it end, so?'

"Well, sir, they were at right loggerheads, like I said—the whole forecastle agreed it was right—and my dad fetched him such a crack they had to take his leg off that very evening, much mangled. But it was a blessing to the poor bugger in the end. Having but one leg left, Captain the Honourable Byron, who was always very good to his men, got him a cook's warrant, and he lived till he was drowned on the Coromandel coast.'

"Sir,' cried Reade in the doorway, with a covered can of coffee in his hand, "the Captain sends this with his compliments to raise your spirits and soften the blow. There is to be no action after all. The vessel to windward proved to be that famous, seamanlike ship of the line Thunderer, seventy-four. She hauled her wind, not liking the look of us, and in doing so some of the more brilliant officers aboard, those who could count above three, I mean, made out that she had a false signal flying: one lantern short.'

"Must they not be flogged round the fleet?'

"I am afraid not, sir. They say they are senior to us, which is quite true; that any possible inconvenience is regretted; and that Captain Dundas, Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin are desired to breakfast aboard. Lord, sir, I should not be in that signal-lieutenant's shoes for instant promotion to flag-rank.'

Most of the exchanges that Reade reported were more or less imaginary, and in any case they had been slowly, laboriously transmitted through dense rain by hoists of lights variously arranged; but the breakfast invitation, which was true enough, was repeated at first light by flags and again by a sodden midshipman in a boat; and the two captains, together with Dr Maturin, came alongside just before eight bells in the morning watch, ravenous, cold, wet, indignant.

Their host, an elderly man called Fellowes, was in much greater danger of promotion to flag-rank than Reade, being so high on the post-captain's list that the next batch of admirals to be gazetted must necessarily include him as a rear-admiral of the blue squadron unless by some unspeakable misfortune he should be yellowed—attached to no particular squadron and given no command. But this unspeakable misfortune might be now at hand. The Thunderer's wretched signal-lieutenant, now confined to his cabin, had aroused a perfectly justified rage in two quite eminent bosoms: the son of a former First Lord and the brother of the present holder of that awful office, in the first place; and in the second that of the Tory member of parliament for Milport. Captain Aubrey might represent no more than a handful of burgesses, all tenants on his cousin's estate (it was a family seat) but his vote in the House counted as much as that of the member for the county. The ill-will of either of these gentlemen might have a horribly yellowing effect. And then there was this Dr Maturin, after whom the Admiralty official the Thunderer was carrying to Gibraltar had asked with such curious insistence. . . had he not been called in to treat Prince William?

Captain Fellowes greeted his guests with the utmost cordiality, with apologies, explanations, and a breakfast-table covered with all the luxuries that a ship only a few days outward-bound could offer: beef-steaks; mutton-chops; bacon; eggs in all their charming variety; soft-tack, crusty or toasted; mushrooms; pork sausages; a veal and ham pie; fresh butter; fresh milk, fresh cream, even; tea and cocoa: everything except the coffee that Jack's and Stephen's souls longed for.

Mr Philips, the black-clad Admiralty official, Stephen's neighbour, said "I do not suppose you have seen the most recent Proceedings of the Royal Society. I have the volume hot from the press in my cabin, and should be charmed to show it to you.' Stephen said that he should be very happy, and Philips went on "May I help you to one of these kippered herrings, sir? They are uncommon fat and unctuous.'

"You are very good, sir,' said Stephen, "but I believe I must refrain. They would increase my thirst.' And in a low confidential tone (in fact they knew one another quite well enough for such a remark), "Would there never be a drop of coffee, at all?'

"I hope so,' said Philips, and he asked the passing steward.

"Oh no, sir. Oh no. This is a cocoa-ship, sir; though tea is countenanced.'

"Coffee relaxes the fibres,' called out the Thunderer's surgeon in an authoritative voice. "I always recommend cocoa.'

"Coffee?' cried Captain Fellowes. "Would the gentleman like coffee? Featherstonehaugh, run along and see whether the wardroom or the gunroom has any.'

"Coffee relaxes the fibres,' said the surgeon again, rather louder. "That is a scientific fact.'

"Perhaps the Doctor might like to have his fibres relaxed,' said Captain Dundas. "I am sure I should, having stood to all night.'

"Mr McAber,' called Captain Fellowes down the table to his first lieutenant, "pray be so good as to encourage Featherstonehaugh in his search.'

But no amount of zeal could find what did not exist. Stephen protested that it did not signify—it was of no consequence—there was always (God willing) another day—and that if he might be indulged in a cup of small beer it would go admirably with this pickled salmon. And when at last the uncomfortable meal was over he walked off to Philips' cabin to see the new volume of the Proceedings.

"How is Sir Joseph?' he asked when they were alone, referring to his close friend and hierarchical superior the head of Naval Intelligence.

"He is physically well,' said Philips, "and perhaps a little stouter than when you last saw him: but he is worried. I shall not venture to say what about: you know how cloisonné these matters are with us, if I may use the expression.'

"We say bulkheaded in the Navy,' observed Stephen.

"Bulkheaded? Thank you, sir, thank you: a far better term. But this letter'—drawing it from an inner pocket—"will no doubt tell you.'

"I am obliged to you,' said Stephen, glancing at the black Admiralty seal with its fouled anchor. "Now please be so good as to give me a detailed account of events since last February, when I had an intelligent report from the Spanish.'

Philips looked down, reflected for a while, and said "I wish I could tell you a happier tale. There is progress in Spain, to be sure, but everywhere else there are diplomatic reverses; and everywhere he keeps finding resources in allies, men, money, ships and naval stores, which we cannot do, or only with great and ruinous difficulty. We are stretched to the uttermost, and may break; he seems indestructible. Things are going so badly that if he delivers one more knock-down blow we may have to ask for conditions. Let me take Europe country by country. . .'

He was dealing with the success of Buonaparte's agents in Wallachia when a lieutenant came in with the news that as soon as the Doctor was in the Berenice's barge the captains would be piped over the side: they were making their farewells this very minute. "And the wind is backing, too,' he added. "You will have a drier pull.'

Drier it might have been, but not for those who habitually stood on the lowest of the steps on the ship's side, holding on to the entering ropes and pondering until she rolled and the sea rose, soaking him, this time farther than the waist. Stephen came aboard the Surprise dripping, as usual; and as usual Killick, worn thin and old and preternaturally shrewish by the task of looking after both the Captain and the Doctor, a feckless pair with their clothes and their limbs, seized him and fairly propelled him into the sleeping cabin, crying "Your best breeches, too—your only decent breeches—take off your drawers too sir if you please—we don't want no bleeding colds in the head—and now put on this here gown and dry your feet—sopping, fairly sopping—with this here towel and I will find you something reasonably warm. God love us, where's your wig?'

"In my bosom, Killick,' answered Stephen in a conciliating tone. "It is protecting my watch, itself wrapped in a handkerchief.'

"Wig in his bosom—wig in his bosom,' muttered Killick as he gathered up the clothes. "Bedlam ain't in it.'

Jack had shot up the side far quicker than his surgeon, and now he called from the great cabin "Why, Stephen, have you. . .' Then, recollecting that his friend disliked being asked if he had got wet, he coughed and went on in a very cheerful, incongruously cheerful, voice ". . .ever had such a miserable God-damned breakfast? Small beer; and greasy mutton-chops on a cold plate. A cold plate, forsooth. I have eaten better in a Dutch herring-buss off the Texel. And not a single God-damned letter—not a note—not so much as a tailor's bill. But never mind. The wind is backing. It is already come north-north-east, and if it carries on another couple of points or so we shall be in Shelmerston by Wednesday, in spite of the Berenice.'

"Had you any reason to expect letters, brother?'

"Of course I had. When we were putting in to Fayal for water we exchanged numbers with Weasel as she cleared the point, homeward-bound. She was sure to report us, and I had hoped for something at least. But no, not a word, though Dundas had a great package. Such a package, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord, Stephen,' he said, coming in, for the half-naked Maturin was as free from shame as his ancestor, the sinless Adam. "But I beg pardon. I am interrupting you'—glancing at the letter in Stephen's hand.

"Never in life, my dear. Tell me what makes you so happy in spite of your disappointment.'

Jack sat close by him and, in a voice intended to be so low that it would escape Killick's attentive ear—a vain hope—he said "Heneage's letter had such a charming piece about me. Melville said he was so happy to hear that Surprise was almost in home water—had always thought it magnanimous in me—that was his very word, Stephen: magnanimous—to accept such an irregular command in spite of having been so shabbily used, and that now he had the opportunity of expressing his sense of my merits—of my merits, Stephen: do you hear me, there?—by offering me a neat little squadron that was putting together to cruise off the West African coast with some fast-sailing sloops to intercept slavers—you would approve of that, Stephen—and perhaps three frigates and a couple of seventy-fours in case of what he called certain eventualities. And I should be a first-class commodore, Stephen, with a broad swallow-tailed burgee, a captain under me and a pennant-lieutenant, not like that hard-labour Mauritius campaign, when I almost had to win the anchor myself as a mere second-class dogsbody. Oh ha, ha, ha, Stephen! I can't tell you how happy it makes me: I can take care of Tom—he'll never be made post else: this is his only chance. And there is no mad hurry. We shall have a month and more at home, long enough for Sophie and Diana to get sick of us. Ha, ha—Shelmerston—pull ashore, leap into a post-chaise from the Crown and astonish them all at Ashgrove! What do you say to a pot of coffee at last?'

"With all my heart: and Jack, let me give you joy in the highest degree of your splendid command'—shaking his hand—"but as for Shelmerston, why, listen, Jack,' said Stephen, who had deciphered Sir Joseph's double-coded message from memory alone, "I must be in town as quickly as ever I can fly. I shall have to forgo Shelmerston for now and stay with the Berenice. Not only is she on her way, whereas you will have to turn to the left for a considerable distance, but only an inhuman brute could go ashore after such an absence, kiss a cheek or two and then leap into a chaise. This, however, I can perfectly well do in Plymouth, where never a cheek awaits me.'

Jack looked at him keenly, saw that he was not to be shifted, and called out "Killick. Killick, there.'

"What now?' replied Killick, surprisingly close at hand.

"Light along a pot of coffee. D'you hear me, there?'

"Aye aye, sir: pot of coffee it is.'

The order had been long expected, the kettle was hot, the berries ground; and the elegant pot came gleaming in a few minutes later, scenting the whole cabin. Of all the many virtues, Preserved Killick possessed only two, polishing silver and making coffee; but these he possessed to such a high degree that for those who liked their plate brilliant and their coffee prompt, freely roasted, freshly ground and piping hot it was worth putting up with his countless vices.

They carried their cups into the great cabin and sat on the cushioned bench—in fact a series of lockers—that ran the whole width of the noble sweep of stern-windows, and Jack said "I am heartily sorry for it. Our homecoming will not be the same, no, not by a very long chalk. Though you must know best, in course. But when you say as quick as ever you can fly, do you mean it literally?'

"I do too.'

"Then why not go in the Ringle? Even if the wind don't back another point she will sail straight to Pompey as it lays, without going about, and get there at least twice as fast as that poor old knacker's yard of a Berenice.' Then seeing Stephen's look of surprise he poured him another cup and went on

"I never told you—there was no time last night or this morning, with that ass, that thundering great ass, playing off his humours—but I won her from Heneage after supper: a throw of sixes when I was on the very point of being gammoned. He had already borne six men, but he could not re-enter for a great while; and so I won. Tom and Reade and Bonden will run you up-Channel—they handle her beautifully—and I will add a few hands that don't belong to Shelmerston.'

Stephen made a few customary protests, but very few, since he was thoroughly used to both the Navy's generosity and rapid decision. Jack swallowed another cup and hurried off, bawling for his gig.

Alone in the great cabin Stephen reflected on Sir Joseph's message. It required him to proceed to London without the loss of a minute, and it did so even more briefly than was usual. Joseph Blaine hated prolixity almost as much as he hated Napoleon Buonaparte, yet this extreme curtness perplexed Stephen until, recalling times past, he turned the half-sheet over and there on the lower left-hand corner found the faintly-pencilled letter pi, signifying many. In this case it meant the Committee, a body made up of the leading men in the intelligence service and the Foreign Office that had sent him to Peru to forestall or rather to outstrip the French in their attempt at winning over the chiefs of the movement for independence from Spain. Clearly they wanted to know what he had accomplished, and in all probability this extreme haste meant that they were having some difficulty in represetning the matter in a favourable or even a tolerable light to their Spanish allies. He ran through the long series of complicated events that would make up his account, and as he did so he gazed at the frigate's wake, a wake, all things considered, that had now attained a perfectly enormous length.

He was still reflecting when Tom Pullings, the ship's nominal captain—nominal, because of an inept scheme for disguising the Surprise as a privateer under the command of an unemployed half-pay officer in order to deceive the Spaniards—came in and cried "There you are, Doctor. Such news! Berenice hove to and struck soundings clear not half a glass ago, and the Ringle will be alongside directly. Killick, Killick, there. The Doctor's sea-chest as quick as you like.'

He had scarcely left to see to his own before Jack came swarming aboard again by the stern ladder. "There you are, Stephen,' he cried. "Heneage hove his ship to and struck soundings clear—white sand and small shells—and all is laid along aboard the schooner. Killick, ho. Killick, there. The Doctor's sea-chest. . .'

"Which I done it, ain't I?' Killick's voice quivered with indignation. "All corded up: nightshirt on top; slippers; common check shirt and trousers for the run up to the South Foreland; white shirt and neckcloth for London and decent black breeches; best wig tucked down in the right-hand forward corner.' He stumped off, and could be heard shoving the chest about, telling his mate "to look alive, there, Bill.'

"As for my collections,' said Stephen, referring to the many barrels and crates in the hold, containing the specimens of an ardent natural philosopher whose interests ranged from cryptogams to larger mammals, by way of insects, reptiles and birds, above all birds, and who had travelled thousands upon thousands of miles, "I confide them entirely to you. And there are the little girls. Jemmy Ducks has a wife in the village, I believe?'

"He had the equivalent, or at least he had when we sailed; and I do not suppose Sarah and Emily would know the odds. Anyhow, I shall see them stowed until you come back. You will be coming back, I collect?'

"Certainly; I shall post down as soon as ever I can. I should be very sorry to see my Titicaca grebe decay.'

"Schooner alongside, if you please, sir,' said Bonden, Jack's coxswain and a very old friend: Stephen had taught him to read.

"And Jack, you will salute Diana most affectionately for me, I beg; and assure her that if I had my will. . .'

"Come, sir, if you please,' said Tom Pullings. "Schooner's alongside and we are fending off something cruel, in this ugly cross-sea.'

They got him over safely, dry and uncrushed, though somewhat winded from having leapt, against all advice, as the schooner was on her lively rise. He had not been aboard her when she was the Berenice's tender, for although he did contemplate her from time to time with a certain mitigated interest, his own little green-painted skiff was infinitely more suitable for moving about, exploring the immediate surface of the ocean and the modest depths within reach of his net on those occasions when the ships were becalmed. Now he found her motion much brisker than that of the Surprise, six or seven times heavier, and he walked carefully aft to the larboard main shrouds, where he seemed to be in no man's way and where he was firmly supported by the aftermost pair. In the mean time the hands forward had flattened in the jib so that the Ringle's head paid off: a moment later the foresail and then the mainsail rose; the sheet came right aft and she leant over to leeward, moving faster and faster. Stephen clung on, strangely exhilarated; he meant to pluck out his handerkerchief and wave to his friends, but before he could get at it with any safety they were racing past the Berenice, which really seemed to be standing still, though she had a respectable bow-wave and a fine spread of canvas.

Heneage Dundas took off his hat and called out something, kind and cheerful no doubt but the wind bore it away: Stephen raised his hand in salute—a rash move, for the next moment he was dashed from his hold, coming up against the powerful Barret Bonden, who was at the tiller—the schooner had no wheel. Without allowing the Ringle to deviate from her course for an instant Bonden seized the Doctor with his left hand and passed him to Joe Plaice, who made him fast, though with a reasonable latititude of movement, to an eye-bolt on the transom.

Here he collected himself and settled in moderate comfort quite soon, looking directly aft; and to his astonishment he saw that the Berenice and Surprise were already a great way off. The people on their forecastles were small, diminishing as he watched, individually unrecognizable apart from Awkward Davies with his red waistcoat. By now the Ringle had set her foretopsail (she was after all a topsail schooner) and with the breeze more than two points free—two points for her, since she could lie closer than five from the wind, whereas even that weatherly ship the Surprise, being square-rigged, could not do better than six, while the poor fat Berenice could barely manage seven, and that at the cost of immense leeway—she fairly tore along, a delight to all hands aboard.

Presently the two ships were hull-down except on the top of the rise, white against the dark grey of the clouds. Stephen saw them go about, standing towards Ushant and growing smaller still, for unless the wind backer farther still, they, unlike the Ringle, were condemned to beat up, tack upon tack. He watched them with a strange medley of feelings: the Berenice as a kindly ship and one in which he had spent many a pleasant evening with Jack, Dundas and Kearney, the first lieutenant, playing keen but perfectly civil whist, or merely in discursive uncontentious rambling talk about ports, local manners, and naval supplies, from China to Peru, all from personal experience; but the Surprise had been his home for longer than he could easily recall. There had been intervals ashore and intervals in other ships; but he had probably lived in her longer than in any other dwelling he had known, his having been a wandering, unfixed life.

It was three days before the breeze finally relented, backing into the west and even south of west, a leading wind for those bound up-Channel; and in the afternoon watch of that day, being arrived at the height of Shelmerston, the Surprise and the Berenice parted company at last, each cheering the other with the heartiest good will.

The Surprise steered west under topgallantsails, a lovely sight, trim, new-painted, with all her people, even the watch on deck, in shore-going rig as brilliant as so long an absence allowed—bright blue jackets with brass buttons, white duck trousers, embroidered shirts, little pumps with bows, Barcelona neckerchiefs. The long, meticulously exact final sharing-out of the gains from the privateering side of the voyage had taken all morning, as grave as a high court, under the supervision of all commissioned officers, all warrant officers, and representatives of the four parts of the ship. The single-share man's dividend amounted to £364 6s. 8d, and even the little girls, who by general agreement were allowed a half share to be divided between them, had more pieces of eight than they could easily count, the pieces going at 4/6d. It was a grave, long-drawn out ceremony, but now grog and dinner had intervened, diminishing the solemnity, and many of the hands walked about, clashing their loaded pockets and laughing for mere pleasure as the ship sailed easily in on the making tide towards that infinitely familiar shore.

They had to check her way well before the entrance to the harbour, lying there to a stream-anchor with brailed-up topsails until there should be enough water on the bar to let the deep-laden frigate over without a scrape, and the people lined her side, gazing landwards. More than half of them were from Shelmerston, and they pointed out all changes and everything that remained as it had always been.

Some of the few Anglicans aboard cried out that the weather-vane on their parish church, a basking-shark, had had its tail renewed: the old squeak might have gone, never to be heard again. But others took great comfort in the low, square tower, whose Norman severity had been softened by several hundred years of rain and south-west gales: no alteration that even the keenest eyes could make out. Most of the villagers however belonged to one or another of the Nonconformist sects that flourished there; and of these the Sethians were the richest and most influential. They drew the utmost satisfaction from their high-perched chapel, whose white marble, decorated with huge gleaming brass inlays, now caught the sun, gleaming through a gap in the veiled and watery sky. It had benefited much from a former voyage in which Captain Aubrey captured, among other prizes, a ship with her hold crammed with great leather bottles of quicksilver, and it was destined to benefit to a still greater extent from this even more prosperous venture.

Just what form the splendour should take was not yet decided, but as they surveyed the land there was some talk of spires. A Knipperdolling, an Anabaptist, standing within a yard or so, one of the few hands whose imperfect digestion made him fractious after meals, gave it as his opinion that spires smacked of Popery. In spite of the general cheerfulness aboard this might have led to discord if William Burrowes, an elderly forecastleman of great authority, had not called out, in a voice that reminded all hands of the proper tone on great occasions, "There is old Sandby's sail-loft, as bloody awkward as ever, with that cruel great overhang and no crane.'

This led to a general enumeration of houses, shops and inns unchanged; yet gradually the mood of exultation fell; a certain uneasiness became apparent—there was nobody going in and out of the Crown, which was against nature; all the inshore fishing-boats were drawn up; there was no one standing staring on the beach, though anybody with a glass, and there were glasses by the score in Shelmerston, could not only recognize the ship but also see the great silver-gilt candlestick taken from a pirate in the great South Sea and now hoisted to her main topgallant masthead: what was amiss? The uneasiness spread slowly and many would have nothing whatsoever to do with it: but when a thick-witted oaf called Harris said that it reminded him of Sweeting Island in the Pacific, where all the people had died suddently, leaving only Sarah and Emily, everyone turned upon him with surprising ferocity—he might stash that; he might stow his gob; or in the sea-going phrase, he "might bugger off', taking his ugly black-poxed carcass with him, and his face like an ill-scrubbed hammock.

"Man the capstan,' called Jack, as the first drops fell.

They won the stream-anchor with no pain at all, the hands crowding to the bars and thrusting with enormous force; and as soon as it was catted the tide swung the ship's head inshore. They filled the foretopsails, gliding smoothly over the bar with a fathom to spare. And as they came in so an aged, aged man with his face in a bandage pushed off, a small boy sculling over the stern.

"What ship is that?' he hailed in a high shrill creaking old voice, one hand to his ear.

"Surprise,' replied Jack in the silence.

"Where do you hail from?'

"Shelmerson: last from Fayal.'

"Surprise. That's right: Surprise,' said the very old man, nodding. "Do you have a young fellow named John Somers aboard?'

The silence continued for a moment. John Somers had been drowned off the Horn.

"Speak up, young Somers,' said Jack in a low voice.

"Grandad,' called John's brother. "I am William. John was. . .John was called to Heaven. I am his younger brother, Grandad.'

"William? William? Yes. I know ee,' said the old man with little or no emotion.

"How is Mum?' asked William.

"Dead and buried this year and more.'

"Let go the anchor,' called Jack Aubrey.

While the ship was being made safe and the boats were getting over the side someone asked the boy who he was. "Art Compton,' he said.

"Then you are my nephew,' exclaimed Peter Wills. "I have a poll parrot for Alice. How are they all at home, and where is everybody?'

"They are well enough, I reckon, Uncle Peter. They are all gone off to see Jack Singleton and his mates hanged, over to Worsley. I was left behind to look after Cousin Somers here. Which we drew straws.'

"Red cutter away,' cried Jack, and so on through the frigate's boats. They pulled ashore through the increasing drizzle, and Jack went straight to the Crown, leading the little girls by the hand and knocking until a decrepit caretaking ostler came to open the door.

The rain cleared well before sunset, and with the return of the ordinary people and the Shelmerston whores from the hanging—seven men and a child on one gibbet, a sight that had drawn the whole county—the little town grew more cheerful by far, in spite of the news of more deaths, of some quite unlooked-for births and some frank desertions, more cheerful, with fiddles in most of the inns and ale-houses and visiting from cottage to cottage with presents in a truly wonderful abundance.

But by the time the Crown and all the other houses along the strand were full of noise and light and tumbling anecdote, Jack, having left Sarah and Emily with Mrs Jemmy, a fat, gasping lady, was travelling as fast as a chaise and four could carry him over good roads towards Ashgrove Cottage.

His massive sea-chest was lashed on behind, of course, but his most recent present for Sophie, a suit of the finest Madeira lace, could not bear crushing, and it travelled on his knee. This caused him to sit rather stiffly, yet even so he went to sleep now and then, the last time after the senior post-boy, having left the main road, asked him for an exact direction. Jack gave it to him, made him repeat it, and dropped off again, as sailors will, in five minutes, wondering whether anyone would still be awake at home.

Half an hour later the sound of hooves changed and died away, the motion ceased and Jack started into full wakefulness, astonished by the blaze of light in his house, or not so much in his house itself as on the other side of the stable-yard into which the chaise had wandered. At one time Jack, in a temporary period of wealth, had launched into the breeding and training of race-horses, of which he considered himself as good a judge as any in the Navy, and this splendid brick-paved yard and the handsome buildings all round dated from that time. The light gleamed from the handsomest of them all, a double coach-house: it poured out into the murky night, with song, laughter and the sound of loud, animated conversation, too loud for the arrival of the chaise to be noticed within.

Jack picked up the suit of lace, which he had been treading on for the last few miles, settled with the post-boys, desired them to carry his chest out of the rain and walked in. A voice cried "It's the Captain', the cheerful din died quite away apart from a single woman's voice deaf to anything but its own story, "So I says to him 'You silly bugger, ain't you ever seen a girl do a. . .'' and a song far in the background "Wherever I roam I long and I long and I long for my home.'

Hawker, the groom, came up with a nervous smile and said "Welcome home, sir, and please to forgive us this liberty. It was Abel Crawley's birthday, and all the ladies being away, we thought you would not mind—' He gestured towards Abel Crawley, now seventy-nine to the day, dead-drunk and speechless, apparently dead: he had been a forecastleman in one of Lieutenant Aubrey's earlier ships, the Arethusa; and indeed nearly all the men present had been Jack's shipmates at one time or another, and most were incapacitated. Their companions were what would have been expected, the short thick girls or youngish women known as Portsmouth brutes: the mule-cart that had brought them stood at the far end of the yard.

In the keenness of his disappointment Jack felt inclined to top it the holy Joe for a moment, but he only said "Where is Mrs Aubrey?'

"Why, at Woolcombe, sir, with the children and all the servants apart from Ellen Pratt. And Mrs Williams and her friend Mrs Morris are at the Bath.'

"Well, tell Ellen to make me supper and get a bed ready.'

"Sir, not to tell a lie, Ellen is somewhat overtook: but I will grill you a steak directly, and a Welsh rabbit; and Jennings will make you up a bed. Only I am afraid you will have to drink beer, sir: which Mrs Williams locked up the wine-cellar.'

In the morning Jack made his own coffee and ate a number of eggs with toasted bread in the kitchen. He had no heart to look round the shut-up house—it was meaningless without Sophie in it—but he did make a quick tour of his garden—no longer his, alas, but now the child of some alien spade—before walking into the yard.

"Tell me, Hawker, what horses have we in the stable?' he asked.

"Only Abhorson, sir.'

"What is Abhorson?'

"A black gelding, sir: sixteen hands, past mark of mouth.'

"What is he doing here?'

"He belongs to Mr Briggs, sir, the Honourable Mrs Morris's manservant. There ain't no stabling at their place in Bath, so when they are there the nag stays here; when they are here Briggs rides to Bath every so often.'

"Is he up to my weight?'

"Oh, yes, sir: a strong, big-boned animal. But today he is full of beans, and may be nappy.'

"Never mind. How are his shoes?'

"New all round last week sir. Which Mrs Williams is very particular about Briggs's horse,' said the groom with a curious emphasis. "So is the Honourable Mrs Morris too, for that matter.'

"Very well. Have him at the door in five minutes, will you? And see if you can find me a cloak. We shall have rain before ever I reach Dorset.'

Abhorson was indeed a powerful brute, but with his heavy common head and small eyes he looked neither intelligent nor handsome: he flung away from Jack's caress and made an irregular crab-like movement so that the groom at this head was towed sideways and Jack, trying to mount, went hop, hop, hop half across the yard before swinging into the saddle.

He had not been on a horse since he was in Java, half a world away; but once there, with the leather creaking agreeably under him and his feet well in the stirrups he felt pleasantly at home; and although Abhorson was undoubtedly nappy, inclined to indulge in such capers as tossing his head, snorting very violently and going along in a silly mincing diagonal gait, Jack's powerful hands and knees had their effect, and by the time the rain or rather the drizzle bregan they were travelling quite well together through the new plantations. Jack was possessed with admiration at the lovely growth of his trees, far beyond what he had expected and in very beautiful fresh leaf; but this was only the forefront of his mind: all the deeper part that was not taken up with the idea of Woolcombe, the family house he had recently inherited, and with Sophie and the children in it, kept revolving the delightful prospect of his squadron, the Royal Navy's unattached ships and officers perpetually forming fresh combinations of possibility. "But I shall certainly keep the Ringle as my tender,' he observed aloud.

The drizzle increased to downright rain. He returned from these very happy speculations—he was a man unusually gifted for happiness when happiness was at all possible: and now it was flooding in from every side—and told Abhorson to cheer up, for it could not last long, coming down so hard. The horse was moving with a dogged, sullen pace, but he moved his ears as though there were at least some communication, and Jack twisted round to get at the cloak rolled up behind the saddle.

As he did so a blackbird shot across the road right under the horse's nose, cackling loud. Abhorson gave a violent sideways leap, a turning leap that threw Jack with perfect ease—a heavy, heavy fall, Jack's head hitting the stone that marked his boundary.