a glow somewhere about his heart or a little lower, the beginning of that rising jet of furious anger that might take control of him. He bowed his head, for he was certain it would show in his eye.
‘Yet on the other hand,’ said Lord Keith, ‘you do possess one prime quality in a commander. You are lucky. None of my other cruisers has played such havoc with the enemy’s trade; none has taken half as many prizes. So when you come back from Alexandria I shall give you another cruise.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘It will arouse a certain amount of jealousy, a certain
amount of criticism; but luck is something that rarely lasts
– at least that is my experience – and we should back it while
it is with us.’
Jack made his acknowledgements, thanked the admiral not ungracefully for his kindness in giving him advice, sent his duty – his affectionate duty, if he might say so – to Lady Keith, and withdrew. But the fire in his heart was burning so high in spite of the promised cruise that it was all he could do to get his words out smoothly, and there was such a look on his face as he came out that the sentry at the door instantly changed his expression of knowing irony to one of deaf, dumb, unmoving wood.
‘If that scrub Harte presumes to use the same tone to me,’ said Jack to himself, walking out into the street and crushing a citizen hard against the wall, ‘or anything like it, I shall wring his nose off his head, and damn the
service.’
‘Mercy, my dear,’ he roared, stepping into the Crown on his way, ‘bring me a glass of vino, there’s a good girl, and a copito of aguardiente. God damn all admirals,’ he said, letting the young green flowery wine run cool and healing down his throat.
‘But he is a topping old admiral, dear Capitano,’ said Mercedes, brushing dust off his blue lapels. ‘He will give you a cruise when you are coming back from Alexandria.’
Jack cocked a shrewd eye at her, observed ‘Mercy querido, if you knew half as much about Spanish sailings as you do about ours, how happy, felix, you would make me’, tossed down the burning drop of brandy and called for another glass of wine, that appeasing, honest brew. ‘I have an auntie,’ said Mercedes, ‘that know a great deal.’ ‘Have you, my dear? Have you indeed?’ said Jack. ‘You shall tell me about her this evening.’ He kissed her absently, tapped his lace hat more firmly on to his new wig and said, ‘Now for that scrub.’
But as it happened, Captain Harte received him with more than ordinary civility, congratulated him upon the Almoraira affair – ‘that battery was a damned nuisance; hulled the Pallas three times and knocked away one of the Emerald’s topmasts; should have been dealt with long ago’
– and asked him to dinner. ‘And bring your surgeon along, will you? My wife particularly desires me to invite him.’
‘I am sure he will be very happy, if he is not already bespoke. Mrs Harte is well, I trust? I must pay my respects.’
‘Oh, she’s very well, I thank you. But it’s no use calling on her this morning – she’s out riding with Colonel Pitt. How she does it in this heat, I don’t know. By the by, you can do me a service, if you will.’ Jack looked at him attentively, but did not commit himself. ‘My money-man wants to send his son to sea – you have a vacancy for a youngster: it is as simple as that. He is a perfectly respectable fellow, and his wife was at school with Molly.
You will see them both at dinner.’
On his knees, and with his chin level with the top of the table, Stephen watched the male mantis step cautiously towards the female mantis. She was a fine strapping green specimen, and she stood upright on her four back legs, her front pair dangling devoutly; from time to time a tremor caused her heavy body to oscillate over the thin suspending limbs, and each time the brown male shot
back. He advanced lengthways, with his body parallel to the
table-top, his long, toothed, predatory front legs stretching out tentatively and his antennae trained forwards: even in this strong light Stephen could see the curious inner glow of his big oval eyes.
The female deliberately turned her head through forty-five degrees, as though looking at him. ‘Is this recognition?’ asked Stephen, raising his magnifying glass to detect some possible movement in her feelers. ‘Consent?’
The brown male certainly thought it was, and in three strides he was upon her; his legs gripped her wing-covers; his antennae found hers and began to stroke them. Apart from a
vibratory, well-sprung quiver at the additional weight, she made no apparent response, no resistance; and in a little while the strong orthopterous copulation began. Stephen set his watch and noted down the time in a book, open upon the floor.
Minutes passed. The male shifted his hold a little. The female moved her triangular head, pivoting it slightly from left to right. Through his glass Stephen could see her sideways jaws open and close; then there was a blur of movements so rapid that for all his care and extreme attention he could not follow them, and the male’s head was off, clamped there, a detached lemon, under the crook of her green praying arms. She bit into it, and the eye’s glow went out; on her back the headless male continued to copulate rather more strongly than before, all his inhibitions having been removed. ‘Ah,’ said Stephen with intense satisfaction, and noted down the time again.
Ten minutes later the female took off three pieces of her mate’s long thorax, above the upper coxal joint, and ate them with every appearance of appetite, dropping crumbs of chitinous shell in front of her. The male copulated on, still firmly anchored by his back legs.
‘There you are,’ cried Jack. ‘I have been waiting for you this quarter of an hour.’
‘Oh,’ said Stephen, starting up. ‘I beg your pardon. I
beg your pardon. I know what importance you attach to punctuality – most concerned. I had put my watch back to the beginning of the copulation,’ he said, very gently covering the. mantis and her dinner with a hollow ventilated box. ‘I am with you now.’
‘No you aren’t,’ said Jack. ‘Not in those infamous half-boots. Why do you have them soled with lead, anyhow?’
At any other time he would have received a very sharp reply to this, but it was clear to Stephen that he had not spent a pleasant forenoon with the admiral; and all he said, as he changed into his shoes, was, ‘You do not need a head, nor even a heart, to be all a female can require.’
‘That reminds me,’ said jack, ‘have you anything that will keep my wig on? A most ridiculous thing happened as I was crossing the square: there was Dillon on the far side, with a woman on his arm Governor Wall’s sister, I believe
– so I returned his salute with particular attention, do you see. I lifted my hat right off my head and the damned wig came with it. You may laugh, and it is damned amusing, of course; but I would have given a fifty-pound note not to have looked ridiculous with him there.’
‘Here is a piece of court plaster,’ said Stephen. ‘Let me double it over and stick it to your head. I am heartily sorry there should be this – constraint, between Dillon and you.’
‘So am I,’ said Jack, bending for the plaster: then with a sudden burst of confidence – the place being so different, and they on land, with no sort of sea-going relationship -he said, ‘I never have been so puzzled what to do in all my life, lie practically accused me – I hardly like to name it -of want of conduct, after that Cacafuego business. My first impulse was to ask him for an explanation, and for satisfaction, naturally. But then the position is so very particular -it is heads I win tails you lose in such a case; for if I were to sink him, why, there he would be, of course; and if he were to do the same by me, he would be out of the Navy before you could say knife, which would amount to much the same thing, for him.’
‘He is passionately attached to the service, sure.’
‘And in either case, there is the Sophie left in a pitiable
state . . . damn the man for a fool. And then again he is the best first lieutenant a man could wish for – taut, but
not a slave-driver; a fine seaman; and you never have to