‘What made him take so decided a step?’
‘Oh, it was over a girl, a likely black girl called Sally,’ said Jack. ‘She came off in a bumboat and I hid her in the cable-tier. But Captain Douglas and I had disagreed about a good many other things – obedience, mostly, and getting out of bed in the morning, and respect for the schoolmaster (we had a schoolmaster aboard, a drunken sot named Pitt) and a dish of tripe. Then the second time Lord Keith saw me was when I was fifth of the Hannibal and our first lieutenant was that damned fool Carrol – if there’s one thing I hate more than being on shore it’s being under the orders of a damned fool that is no seaman.
He was so offensive, so designedly offensive, over a trivial little point of discipline that I was obliged to ask him whether he would like to meet me elsewhere. That was exactly what he wanted: he ran to
the captain and said I had called him out. Captain Newman said it was nonsense, but I must apologize. But I could not do that, for there was nothing to apologize about – I was in the right, you see. So there I was, hauled up in front of half a dozen post-captains and two admirals: Lord Keith was one of the admirals.’
‘What happened?’
‘Petulance – I was officially reprimanded for petulance. Then the third time – but I will not go into details,’ said Jack. ‘It is a very curious thing, you know,’ he went on, gazing out of the stern window with a look of mild, ingenuous wonder, ‘a prodigious curious thing, but there cannot be many men who are both damned fools and no seamen, who reach post rank in the Royal Navy – men with no interest, I mean, of course – and yet it so happens that I have served under no less than two of them. I really thought I was dished that time –
career finished, cut down, alas poor Borwick. I spent eight months on shore, as melancholy as that chap in the play, going up to town whenever I could afford it, which was not often, and hanging about that damned waiting-room in the Admiralty. I really thought I should never get to sea again – a half-pay lieutenant for the rest of my life. If it had. not been for my fiddle, and fox-hunting when I could get a horse, I think I should have hanged myself. That Christmas was the last time I saw Queeney, I believe, apart from just once in London.’
‘Is she an aunt, a cousin?’
‘No, no. No connexion at all. But we were almost brought up together – or rather, she almost brought me up. I always remember her as a great girl, not a child at all, though to be sure there can’t be ten years between uS. Such a dear, kind creature. They had Damplow, the next house to ours – they were almost in our park – and after my mother died I dare say I spent as much time there as I did at home. More,’ he said reflectively, gazing up at the tell-tale compass overhead. ‘You know Dr Johnson – Dictionary Johnson?’
‘Certainly,’ cried Stephen, looking strange. ‘The most
respectable, the most amiable of the moderns. I disagree with all he says, except when he speaks of Ireland, yet I honour him; and for his life of Savage I love him. What is more, he occupied the most vivid dream I ever had in my life, not a week ago. How strange that you should mention him today.’
‘Yes, ain’t it? He was a great friend of theirs, until their mother ran off and married an Italian, a Papist. Queeney was wonderfully upset at having a Papist to her father-in-law, as you may imagine. Not that she ever saw him, however. “Anything but a Papist,” says she. “I should rather have had Black Frank a thousand times, I declare.” So we burnt thirteen guys in a row that year – it must have been ’83 or ’84 – not long after the Battle of the Saints. After that they settled at Damplow more or less for good -the girls, I mean, and their old she-cousin. Dear Queeney. I believe I spoke of her before, did I not? She taught me mathematics.’
‘I believe you did: a Hebrew scholar, if I do not mistake?’
‘Exactly so. Conic sections and the Pentateuch came as easy as kiss my hand to her.
Dear Queeney. I thought she was to be an old maid, though she was so pretty; for how could any man make up to a girl that knows Hebrew? It seemed a sad pity: anyone so sweet-tempered should have a prodigious great family of children. But, however, here she is married to the admiral, so it all ends happy. . . yet, you know, he is amazingly ancient –
grey-haired, rising sixty, I dare say. Do you think, as a physician – I mean, is it possible. . .
?’
‘Possibilissima.’
‘Possibile è la cosa, e naturale,’ sang Stephen in a harsh, creaking tone, quite unlike his speaking voice, which was not disagreeable. ‘E se Susanna vuol, possibilissima,’
discordantly, but near enough to Figaro to be recognized.
‘Really? Really?’ said Jack with intense interest. Then after a pause for reflexion, ‘We might try that as a duetto,
improvising . . . She joined him at Leghorn. And there I was, thinking it was my own merit, recognized at last, and honourable wounds’ – laughing heartily – ‘that had won me my promotion. Whereas I make no doubt it was all dear Queeney, do you see? But I have not told you the best – and this I certainly owe to her. We are to have a six weeks’ cruise down the French and Spanish coasts, as far as Cape Nao!’
‘Aye? Will that be good?’
‘Yes, yes! Very good. No more convoy duty, you understand. No more being tied to a lubberly parcel of sneaking rogues, merchants creeping up and down the sea. The French and the Spaniards, their trade, their harbours, their supplies – these are to be our objects.
Lord Keith was very earnest about the great importance of destroying their commerce. He was very particular about it indeed – as important as your great fleet actions, says he; and so very much more profitable. The admiral took me aside and dwelt upon it at length – he is a most acute, far-sighted commander; not a Nelson, of course, but quite out of the ordinary. I am glad Queeney has him. And we are under no one’s orders, which is so delightful. No bald-pated pantaloon to say “Jack Aubrey, you proceed to Leghorn with
these hogs for the fleet”, making it quite impossible even to hope for a prize. Prize-money,’
he cried, smiling and slapping his thigh; and the marine sentry outside the door, who had been listening intently, wagged his head and smiled too.
‘Are you very much attached to money?’ asked Stephen.
‘I love it passionately,’ said Jack, with truth ringing clear in his voice. ‘I have always been poor, and I long to be rich.’
‘That’s right,’ said the marine.
‘My dear old father was always poor too,’ went on Jack. ‘But as open-handed as a summer’s day. He gave me fifty pounds a year allowance when I was a midshipman, which was uncommon handsome, in those days. * . or would have been, had he ever managed to persuade Mr Hoare to pay it, after the first quarter. Lord, how I suffered in the old Reso
–
mess bills, laundry, growing out of my uniforms * * * of course I love money. But I think we should be getting under way – there’s two bells striking.’
Jack and Stephen were to be the gun-room’s guests, to taste the sucking-pig bought at Leghorn. James Dillon was there to bid them welcome, together with the master, the purser and Mowett, as they plunged into the gloom: the gun-room had no stern-windows, no sash-ports, and only a scrap of skylight right forward, for although the peculiarity of the Sophie’s construction made for a very comfortable captain’s cabin (luxurious, indeed, if only the captain’s legs had been sawn off a little above the knee), unencumbered with the usual guns, it meant that the gun-room lay on a
lower level than the spar-deck and reposed, upon a kind of shelf, not unlike an orlop.
Dinner was rather a stiff, formal entertainment to begin with, although it was lit by a splendid Byzantine silver hanging lamp, taken by Dillon out of a Turkish galley, and although it was lubricated by uncommonly good wine, for Dillon was well-to-do, even wealthy, by naval standards. Everyone was unnaturally well behaved: Jack was to give the tone, as he knew very well – it was expected of him, and it was his privilege. But this kind of deference, this attentive listening to every remark of his, required the words he uttered to be worth the attention they excited – a wearing state of affairs for a man accustomed to ordinary human conversation, with its perpetual interruption, contradiction and plain disregard. Here everything he said was right; and presently his spirits began to sink under the burden. Marshall and Purser Ricketts sat mum, saying please and thank you, eating with dreadful precision; young Mowett (a fellow guest) was altogether silent, of course; Dillon worked away at the small talk; but Stephen Maturin was sunk deep in a reverie.