‘It shall be done. Most happy,’ said Captain Keats. ‘Which way do you go, sir? Up or down?’
‘Down, sir. I have appointed to meet a – a person at the Crown.’
‘Then our ways lie together,’ said Captain Keats, taking Jack’s arm; and as they crossed the Street to walk in the shade he called out to a friend, ‘Tom, come and see who I have in tow. This is Captain Aubrey Of the Sophie! You know Captain Grenville, I am sure?’
‘This gives me very great pleasure,’ cried the grim, battle-scarred Grenville, breaking out into a one-eyed smile: he shook Jack by the hand and instantly asked him to dinner.
Jack had refused five more invitations by the time he and Keats parted at the Crown: from mouths he respected he had heard the words ‘as neat an action as ever I knew’, ‘Nelson will rejoice in this’, and ‘if there is justice on earth, the frigate will be bought by Government and Captain Aubrey given command of her’. He had seen looks of unfeigned respect, good will and admiration upon the faces of seamen and junior officers passing in the crowded street; and two commanders senior to him, unlucky in prizes and known to be jealous, had hurried across to make their compliments, handsomely and with good grace.
He walked in, up the stairs to his room, threw off his coat and sat down. ‘This must be what they call the vapours,’ he said, trying to define something happy, tremulous, poignant, churchlike and not far from tears in his heart and bosom. He sat there: the feeling lasted, indeed grew stronger; and when Mercedes darted in he gazed at her with a
mild benevolence, a kind and brotherly look. She darted in, squeezed him passionately and uttered a flood of Catalan into his ear, ending ‘Brave, brave Captain – good, pretty and brave.’
‘Thank you, thank you, Mercy dear; I am infinitely obliged to you. Tell me,’ he said, after a decent pause, trying to shift to an easier position (a plump girl: a good ten stone), ‘diga me, would you be a good creature, bona creatura, and
fetch me some iced negus? Sangria colda? Thirst, soif, very thirst, I do assure you, my dear.’
‘Your auntie was quite right,’ he said, putting down the beaded jug and wiping his mouth.
‘The Vinaroz ship was there to the minute, and we found the false Ragusan. So here, acqui, aqui is auntie’s reward, the recompenso de tua tia, my dear’ – pulling a leather purse out of his breeches pocket – ‘y aqui’ – bringing out a neat sealing-waxed packet
– ‘is a little regalo para vous, sweetheart.’
Present?’ cried Mercedes, taking it with a sparkling eye, nimbly undoing the silk, tissue-paper, jeweller’s cotton, and finding a pretty little diamond cross with a chain. She shrieked, kissed him, darted to the looking-glass, shrieked some more – eek, eek! – and came back with the stone flashing low on her neck. She pulled herself in below and puffed herself out above, like a pouter-pigeon, and lowered her bosom, the diamonds winking in the hollow, down towards him, saying, ‘You like him? You like him? You like him?’
Jack’s eyes grew less brotherly, oh far less brotherly, his glottis stiffened and his heart began to thump. ‘Oh, yes, I like him,’ he said, hoarsely.
‘Timely, sir, bosun of the Superb,’ said a tremendous voice at the opening door. ‘Oh, beg pardon, sir.
‘Not at all, Mr. Timely,’ said Jack. ‘I am very happy to see you.’
‘And indeed perhaps it was just as well,’ he reflected, landing again at the Rope-Walk stairs, leaving behind him a numerous body of skilful, busy Superbs rattling down the newly set-up shrouds, ‘there being so much to do. But what a sweet girl it is . . .’ He was now on his way to the Governor’s dinner. That, at least, was his intention; but a bemused state of mind, swimming back into the past and onwards into the future, together with a reluctance to seem to parade himself in what the sailors called the High Street, brought him by obscure back, ways filled with the smell of new fermenting wine and purple-guttered with the
lees, to the Franciscan church at the top of the hill. Here, summoning his wits into the present, he took new bearings; and looking with some anxiety at his watch he paced rapidly along by the armoury, passed the green door of Mr Florey’s house with a quick upward glance and headed north-west by north for the Residence.
Behind the green door and some floors up Stephen and Mr Florey were already sat down to a haphazard meal,
spread wherever there was room on odd tables and chairs. Ever since coming back from the hospital they had been dissecting a well-preserved dolphin, which lay on high
bench by the window, next to something covered by a sheet. ‘Some captains think it the best policy to include every case of bloodshed or temporary incapacity,’ said Mr Florey,
‘because a long butcher’s bill looks well in the Gazette. Others will admit no man that is not virtually dead, because a small number of casualties means a careful commander. I think your list is near the happy mean, though perhaps a trifle cautious – you are looking at it from the point of view of your friend’s advancement of course?’
‘Just so.’
‘Yes . . . Allow me to give you a slice of this cold beef. Pray reach me a sharp knife – beef, above all, must be cut thin, if it is to savour well.’
‘There is no edge on this one,’ said Stephen. ‘Try the catling.’ He turned to the dolphin.
‘No,’ he said, peering under a flipper. ‘Where can we have left it? Ah’ – lifting the sheet –
‘here is another. Such a blade: Swedish steel,no doubt. You began your incision at the Hippocratic point, I see,’ he said, raising the sheet a little more, and gazing at the young lady beneath it.
‘Perhaps we ought to wash it,’ said Mr Florey.
‘Oh, a wipe will do,’ said Stephen, using a corner of the sheet. ‘By the way, what was the cause of death?’ he asked, letting the cloth fall back.
‘That is a nice point,’ said Mr Florey, carving a first slice and carrying it to the griffon vulture tied by the leg in a corner of the room. ‘That is a nice point, but I rather incline to believe that the battering did her business before the water. These amiable weaknesses, follies . . . Yes. Your friend’s advancement.’ Mr Florey paused, gazing at the long straight double-edged catling and waving it solemnly over the joint. ‘If you provide a man with horns, he may gore you,’ he observed with a detached air, covertly watching to see what effect his remark might have.
‘Very true,’ said Stephen, tossing the vulture a piece of gristle. ‘In general fenum habent in cornu. But surely,’ he said, smiling at Mr Florey, ‘you are not throwing out a generality about cuckolds? Do not you choose to be more specific? Or do you perhaps refer to the young person under the sheet? I know you speak from your excellent heart, and I assure you no degree of frankness can possibly offend.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Florey, ‘the point is, that your young friend – our young friend, I may say, for I have a real regard for him, and look upon this action as reflecting great credit upon the service, upon us all – our young friend has been very indiscreet: so has the lady. You follow me, I believe?’
‘Oh, certainly.’
‘The husband resents it, and he is in such a position that he may be able to indulge his resentment, unless our friend is very careful – most uncommon cautious. The husband will not ask for a meeting, for that is not his style at all -a pitiful fellow. But he may try to entrap him into some act of disobedience and so bring him to a court-martial. Our friend is famous for his dash, his enterprise and his good luck rather than for his strict sense of subordination: and some few of the senior captains here feel a good deal of jealousy and uneasiness at his success. What is more, he is a Tory, or his family is; and the husband and the present First Lord are rabid Whigs, vile ranting dogs of Whigs. Do you follow me, Dr Maturin?’
‘I do indeed, sir, and am much obliged to you for your candour in telling me this: it confirms what was in my mind, and I shall do all I can to make him conscious of the delicacy of his position. Though upon my word,’ he added with a sigh, ‘there are times when it seems to me that nothing short of a radical ablation of the membrum virile would answer, in this case.’