‘That is very generally the peccant part,’ said Mr Florey.
Clerk David Richards was also having his dinner; but he was eating it in the bosom of his family. ‘As everyone knows,’ he told the respectful throng, ‘the captain’s clerk’s position is the most dangerous there is in a man-of-war: he is up there all the time on the quarterdeck with his slate and his watch, to take remarks, next to the captain, and all the small-arms and a good many of the great guns concentrate their fire upon him Still, there he must stay, supporting the captain with his countenance and his advice.’
‘Oh, Davy,’ cried his aunt, ‘and did he ask your advice?’
‘Did he ask my advice, ma’am? Ha, ha, upon my sacred word.’
‘Don’t swear, Davy dear,’ said his aunt automatically. ‘It ain’t genteel.’
‘”La, Mr Richards bach,” says he, when the maintop begins to tumble about our ears, tearing down through
the quarter-deck splinter-netting like so much Berlin wool, “I don’t know what to do. I am quite at a loss, I protest.” “There’s only one thing for it, sir,” says I. “Board ’em. Board ’em fore and aft, and I give you my sacred
word the frigate’s ours in five minutes.” Well, ma’am and cousins, I do not like to boast, and I confess it took us ten minutes; but it was worth it, for it won us as pretty a copper-fastened, new-sheathed xebec frigate as any I have seen. And when I came aft, having dirked the Spanish captain’s clerk, Captain Aubrey shook me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes, “Richards,” says he, “we ought all to be very grateful to you,”says he. “Sir, you are very good,” says I, “but I have done nothing but what any taut captain’s clerk would do.” “Well,” says he, ” ’tis very well.” ‘ He took a draught of porter and went on, ‘I very nearly said to him, “I tell you what, Goldilocks” – for we call him Goldilocks in the service, you know, in much the same way as they call me Hellfire Davy, or Thundering Richards – “just you rate me midshipman aboard the Cacafuego when she’s bought by Government, and we’ll cry quits.” Perhaps I may, tomorrow; for I feel I have the genius of command. She ought to fetch twelve pound ten, thirteen pound a ton, don’t you think, sir?’
he said to his uncle. ‘We did not cut up her hull a great deal.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Williams slowly. ‘If she was bought in by Government she would fetch that and her stores as much again: Captain A would clear a neat five thou’ apart from the
head-money; and your share would be, let’s see, two hundred and sixty-three, fourteen, two. If she was bought by Government.’
‘What do you mean, Nunckie, with your if?’
‘Why, I mean that a certain person does the Admiralty buying; and a certain person has a lady that is not over-shy; and a certain person may cut up horrid rough. O Goldilocks, Goldilocks, wherefore are thou Goldilocks?’ asked Mr Williams, to the unspeakable amazement of his nieces. ‘If he had attended to business instead of playing Yardo, the parish bull, he. . .
‘It was she as set her bonnet at him!’ cried Mrs Williams, who had never yet let her husband finish a sentence since his ‘I will’ at Trinity Church, Plymouth Dock, in 1782.
‘0 the minx!’ cried her unmarried sister; and the nieces’ eyes swung towards her, wider still.
‘The hussy,’ cried Mrs Thomas. ‘My Paquita’s cousin was the driver of the shay she came down to the quay in; and you would never credit. . .
‘She should be flogged through the town at the cart’s tail, and don’t I wish I had the whip.’
‘Come, my dear. .
‘I know what you are thinking, Mr W.,’ cried his wife.
‘and you are to stop it this minute. The nasty cat; the wretch.’
The wretch’s reputation had indeed suffered, had been much blown upon in recent months, and the Governor’s wife received her as coldly as she dared; but Molly Harte’s looks had improved almost out of recognition – she had been a fine woman before, and now she was positively beautiful. She and Lady Warren arrived together for the concert, and a small troop of soldiers and sailors had waited outside to meet their carriage: now they were crowding about her, snorting and bristling with aggressive competition, while their wives, sisters and, even, sweethearts sat in dowdy greyish heaps at a distance, mute, and looking with pursed lips at the scarlet dress almost hidden amidst the flocking uniforms.
The men fell back when Jack appeared, and some of them returned to their womenfolk, who asked them whether they did not find Mrs Harte much aged, ill dressed, a perfect frump? Such a pity at her age, poor thing. She must be at least thirty, forty, forty-five. Lace mittens! They had no idea of wearing lace mittens. This strong light was unkind to her; and surely it was very outré to wear all those enormous great pearls?
She was something of a whore, thought Jack, looking at her with great approval as she stood there with her head high, perfectly aware of what the women were saying, and defying them: she was something of a whore, but the knowledge spurred his appetite. She was only for the successful; but with the Cacafuego moored by the Sophie in Mahon harbour, Jack found that perfectly acceptable.
After a few moments of inane conversation – a piece of dissembling which Jack thought he accomplished with particular brilliance, alas – they all surged in a shuffling mob
into the music-room, Molly Harte to sit looking beautiful by her harp and the rest to arrange themselves on the little gilt chairs.
‘What are we to have?’ asked a voice behind him, and turning Jack saw Stephen, powdered, respectable apart from having forgotten his shirt, and eager for the treat.
‘Some Boccherini – a ‘cello piece – and the Haydn trio that we arranged. And Mrs Harte is going to play the harp. Come and sit by me.’
‘Well, I suppose I shall have to,’ said Stephen, ‘the room being so crowded. Yet I had hoped to enjoy this concert: it is the last we shall hear for some time.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Jack, taking no notice. ‘There is Mrs Brown’s party.’
‘We shall be on our way to Malta by then. The orders are writing at this moment.’
‘The sloop is not nearly ready for sea,’ said Jack. ‘You must be mistaken.’
Stephen shrugged. ‘I have it from the secretary himself.’
‘The damned rogue. . . ‘cried Jack.
‘Hush,’ said all the people round them; the first violin gave a nod, brought down his bow, and in a moment they were all dashing away, filling the room with a delightful complexity of sound, preparing for the ‘cello’s meditative song.
‘Upon the whole,’ said Stephen, ‘Malta is a disappointing place. But at least I did find a very considerable quantity of squills by the sea-shore: these I have conserved in a woven basket.’
‘It is,’ said Jack. ‘Though God knows, apart from poor Pullings, I should not complain.
They have fitted us out nobly, apart from the sweeps – nobody could have been more attentive than the Master Attendant – and they entertained us like emperors. Do you suppose one of your squills would be a good thing, in a general way, to set a man up? I feel as low as a gib cat – quite out of order.’
Stephen looked at him attentively, took his pulse, gazed at his tongue, asked squalid questions, examined him. ‘Is it a wound going bad?’ asked Jack, alarmed by his gravity.
‘It is a wound, if you wish,’ said Stephen. ‘But not from our battle with the Cacafuego.
Some lady of your acquaintance has been too liberal with her favours, too universally kind.’
‘Oh, Lord,’ cried Jack, to whom this had never happened before.
‘Never mind,’ said Stephen, touched by Jack’s horror. ‘We shall soon have you on your feet again: taken early, there is no great problem. It will do you no harm to keep close, drink nothing but demulcent barley-water and eat gruel, thin gruel – no beef or mutton, no wine or spirits. If what Marshall tells me about the westward passage at this time of the year is true, together with our stop at Palermo, you will certainly be in a state to ruin your health, prospects, reason, features and happiness again by the time we raise Cape Mola.’
He left the cabin with what seemed to Jack an inhuman want of concern and went directly below, where he mixed a draught and a powder from the large stock that he (like all other naval surgeons) kept perpetually at hand. Under the thrust of the gregale, coming in gusts off Delamara Point, the Sophie’s lee-lurch slopped out too much by half.