‘Allow me to name my friend – my particular friend –
and surgeon, Dr Maturin,’ said Jack, leading Stephen up to their hostess. ‘Mrs Harte.’
‘Your servant, ma’am,’ said Stephen, making a leg.
‘I am very happy to see you here, sir,’ said Mrs Harte, instantly prepared to dislike him very much indeed.
‘Dr Maturin, Captain Harte,’ went on Jack.
‘Happy,’ said Captain Harte, disliking him already, but for an entirely opposite reason, looking over Stephen’s head and holding out two fingers, only a little way in front of his sagging belly. Stephen looked deliberately at them, left them dangling there and silently moved his head in a bow whose civil insolence so exactly matched his welcome that Molly Harte said to herself, ‘I shall like that man.’ They went on to leave room for others, for the tide was flowing fast – the sea-officers all appeared within seconds of the appointed time.
‘Here’s Lucky Jack Aubrey,’ cried Bennet of the Aurore. ‘Upon my word, you young fellows do pretty well for yourselves. I could hardly get into Mahon for the number of your captures. I wish you joy of them, in course; but you must leave something for us old codgers to retire upon, Eh? Eh?’
‘Why, sir,’ said Jack, laughing and going, redder still, ‘it is only beginner’s luck – it will soon be out, I am sure, and then we shall be sucking our thumbs again.’
There were half a dozen sea-officers round him, contemporaries and seniors; they all congratulated him, some sadly, some a little enviously, but all with that direct goodwill Stephen had noticed so often in the Navy; and as they drifted off in a body towards a table with three enormous punch-bowls and a regiment of glasses upon it, Jack told them, in an uninhibited wealth of sea-jargon, exactly how each chase had behaved. They listened silently, with keen attention, nodding their heads at certain points and partially closing their eyes; and Stephen observed to himself that at some levels complete communication between men was possible. After this both he and his attention wandered; holding a glass of arrack-punch, he took up his stand next to an orange-tree, and he stood looking quite happy, gazing now at the uniforms on the one hand and now through the orange-tree on the other, where there were sofas and low chairs with women sitting in them hoping that men would bring them ices and sorbets; and hoping, as far as the sailors on his left were concerned, in vain. They sighed patiently and hoped that their husbands, brothers, fathers,
lovers would not get too drunk; and above all that none of them would grow quarrelsome.
Time passed; an eddy in the party’s slow rotatory current brought Jack’s group nearer the orange-tree, and Stephen heard him say, ‘There a hellish great sea running tonight..’
‘It’s all very well, Aubrey,’ said a post-captain, almost immediately afterward. ‘But your Sophies used to be a qui
et, decent set of men ashore. And now they have two pennies
to rub together’ they kick up, bob’s a-dying like – well, I don’t know. Like a set of mad baboons. They beat the crew of my
cousin Oaks’s barge cruelly, upon the absurd pretence of having a physician aboard, and so having the right to tie
up ahead of a barge belonging to a ship of the line which
carries no more than a surgeon – a very absurd pretence. Their two pennies have sent them out of their wits.’
‘I am sorry Captain Oaks’s men were beat, sir,’ said Jack, with a decent look of concern.
‘But the fact is true. We do have a physician aboard – an amazing hand with a saw or a clyster.’ Jack gazed about him in a very benevolent fashion. ‘He was with me not a pint or so ago. Opened our gunner’s skull, roused out his brains, set them to rights, stuffed them back in again – I could not bear to look, I assure you, gentlemen – bade the armourer take a crown piece, hammer it out
.~.. thin into a little dome, do you see, or basin, and so clapped it on, screwed it down and sewed up his scalp as neatly as a
sailmaker. Now that’s what I call real physic – none of your
damned pills and delay. Why, there he is. .
They greeted him kindly, urged him to drink a glass of punch – another glass of punch –
they had all taken
a great deal; it was quite wholesome – excellent punch, the very thing for so hot a day.
The talk flowed on, with only Stephen and a Captain Nevin remaining a little silent.
Stephen noticed a pondering, absorbed look in Captain Nevin’s eye – a look very familiar to him – and he was not surprised to be led away behind the orange-tree to be told in a low confidential fluent earnest voice of Captain Nevin’s difficulty in digesting even the simplest dishes. Captain’ Nevin’s dyspepsy had puzzled the faculty for years, for years, sir; but he was sure it would yield to Stephen’s superior powers; he had better give Dr Maturin all the details he could remember, for it was a very singular, interesting case, as Sir John Abel had told him – Stephen knew Sir John? – but to be quite frank (lowering his voice and glancing furtively round) he had to admit there were certain difficulties in – in evacuation, too . . . His voice ran on, low and urgent, and Stephen stood with his hands behind his back, his head bowed, his face gravely inclined in a listening attitude. He was not, indeed, inattentive; but his attention was not so wholly taken up that he did not hear Jack cry, ‘Oh, yes, yes! The rest of them are certainly coming ashore – they are lining the rail in their shore-going rig, with money in their pockets, their eyes staring out of their heads and their pricks a yard long.’ He could scarcely have avoided hearing it, for Jack had a fine carrying voice, and his remark happened to drop into one of those curious silences that occur even in very numerous assemblies.
Stephen regretted the remark; he regretted its effect upon the ladies the other side of the orange-tree, who were standing up and mincing away with many an indignant glance; but how much more did he regret Jack’s crimson. face, the look of maniac glee in his blazing
eyes and his triumphant, ‘You needn’t hurry, ladies – they won’t be allowed off the sloop till the evening gun.’
A determined upsurge of talk drowned any possibility of further observations of this kind, and Captain Nevin was settling down to his colon again when Stephen felt a hand on his arm, and there was Mrs Harte, smiling at Captain Nevin in such a manner that he backed and lost himself behind the punch-bowls.
‘Dr Maturin, please take your friend away,’ said Molly Harte in a low, urgent tone.
‘Tell him his ship is on fire -tell him anything. Only get him away – he will do himself such damage.’
Stephen nodded. He lowered his head and walked directly into the group, took Jack by the elbow and said, ‘Come,
come, come,’ in an odd, imperative half-whisper, bowing to those whose conversation he had interrupted. ‘There is not a moment to be lost.’
‘The sooner we are at sea the better,’ muttered Jack Aubrey, looking anxiously into the dim light over against Mahon quay. Was the boat his own launch with the remaining liberty-men, or was it a messenger from the angry, righteous
commandant’s office, bringing orders that would break off
the Sophie’s cruise? He was still a little shattered from his night’s excess, but the steadier part of his mind assured him
from time to time that he had done himself no good, that disciplinary action could be taken against him without any man
‘ thinking it unjust or oppressive, and that he was exceedingly averse to any immediate meeting with Captain Harte.
What air was moving came from the westward – an unusual wind, and one that brought all the foul reek of the tanneries drifting wetly across. But it would serve to help the Sophie down the long harbour and out to sea Out to sea, where he could not be betrayed by his
own tongue, where Stephen could not get himself into bad odour with authority, and where that infernal child Babbington did not have to be rescued from aged women of the town And where James Dillon could not fight a duel He had only heard a rumour of it, but it was one of those deadly little after-supper garrison affairs that might have cost him his lieutenant – as valuable an officer
as he had ever sailed with, for all his starchiness and unpredictability.
The boat reappeared under the stern of the Aurore. It was ‘the launch and it was filled with liberty-men: there were still one or two merry souls among them, but on the whole the Sophies who could walk were quite unlike those who had gone ashore – they had no money left, for one thing, and they were grey, drooping and mumchance for another.