teeth flashing in the gloom. ‘But I thank you very kindly for your good opinion, sir.’
‘Oh,’ said Jack, taken aback. ‘Why not?’
‘I ain’t got the learning, sir. Why’ – laughing cheerfully
– it’s all I can do to read the watch-list, spelling it out slow; and I’m too old to wear round now. And then, sir, what should I look like, rigged out like an officer? Jack-in-the green: and my old messmates laughing up their sleeves and calling out “What ho, the hawse-hole.”‘
‘Plenty of fine officers began on the lower deck,’ said Jack. ‘I was on the lower deck myself, once,’ he added, regretting the sequence as soon as he had uttered it.
‘I know you was, sir,’ said Bonden, and his grin flashed again.
‘How did you know that?’
‘We got a cove in the starboard watch, was shipmates with you, sir, in the old Reso, off the Cape.’
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ cried Jack inwardly, ‘and I never noticed him. So there I was, turning all the women ashore as righteous as Pompous Pilate, and they knew all the time well, well.’ And aloud, with a certain stiffness, ‘Well, Bonden, think of what I have said. It would be a pity to stand in your own way.’
‘If I may make so bold, sir,’ said Bonden, getting to his feet and standing there, suddenly constrained, lumpish and embarrassed, ‘there’s my Aunt Sloper’s George – George Lucock, foretopman, larboard watch. He’s a right scholar, can write so small you can scarcely see it; younger nor I am, and more soople, sir, oh, far more soople.’
‘Lucock?’ said Jack dubiously. ‘He’s only a lad. Was not he flogged last week?’
‘Yes, sir: but it was only his gun had won again. And he couldn’t hold back from his draught, not in duty to the giver.’
‘Well,’ said Jack, reflecting that perhaps there might be wiser prizes than a bottle (though none so valued), ‘I will keep an eye on him.’
Midshipmen were much in his mind during this tedious working in. ‘Mr Babbington,’ he said, suddenly stopping in his up and down. ‘Take your hands out of your pockets. When did you last write home?’
Mr Babbington was at an age when almost any question evokes a guilty response, and this was, in fact, a valid accusation. He reddened, and said, ‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Think, sir, think,’ said Jack, his good-tempered face clouding unexpectedly. ‘What port did you send it from? Mahon? Leghorn? Genoa? Gibraltar? Well, never mind.’ There was no dark figure to be made out on that distant beach. ‘Never, mind. Write a handsome letter.
Two pages at least. And send it in to me with your daily workings tomorrow. Give your father my compliments and tell him my bankers are Hoares.’ For Jack, like most other captains, managed the youngsters’ parental allowance for them. ‘Hoares,’ he repeated absently once or twice, ‘my bankers are Hoares,’ and a strangled ugly crowing noise made him turn. Young Ricketts was clinging to the fall of the main burton-tackle in an attempt to control himself, but without much success. Jack’s cold glare chilled his mirth, however, and he was able to reply to ‘And you, Mr Ricketts, have you written to your parents recently?’ with an audible ‘No, sir’ that scarcely quavered at all.
‘Then you will do the same: two pages, wrote small, and no demands for new quadrants, laced hats or hangers,’ said Jack; and something told the midshipman that this was no time to expostulate, to point out that his loving parent, his only parent, was in daily, even hourly communication with him. Indeed, this awareness of Jack’s state of tension was general throughout the brig. ‘Goldilocks is in a rare old taking about the Doctor,’ they said.
‘Watch out for squalls.’ And when hammocks were piped up the seamen who had to pass by him to stow theirs in the starboard quarter-deck netting glanced at him nervously; one, trying to keep an eye
on the quartermaster, and on the break of the deck, and on his captain, all at the same time, fell flat on his face. But Goldilocks was not the only one to be anxious, by any manner of means, and when Stephen Maturin was at last seen to walk out of the trees and cross the beach to meet the jolly-boat, a general exclamation of ‘There he is!’ broke out from waist to fo’c’sle, in defiance of good discipline:
‘Huzzay!’
‘How very glad I am to see you,’ cried Jack, as Stephen groped his way 45oard, pushed and pulled by well-meaning hands. ‘How are you, my dear sir? Come and breakfast directly – I have held it back on purpose. How do you lind yourself? Tolerably spry, I hope?
Tolerably spry?’
‘I am very well, I thank you,’ said Stephen, who indeed looked somewhat less cadaverous, flushed as he was with pleasure at the open friendliness of his welcome. ‘I will take a look at my sick-bay and then I will share your bacon with the utmost pleasure. Good morning, Mr Day. Take off your hat, if you please. Very neat, very neat: you do us credit, Mr Day.
But no exposure to the sun as yet – I recommend the wearing of a close Welsh wig.
Cheslin, good morning to you. You have a good account of our patients, I trust?’
‘That,’ he said, a little greasy from bacon, ‘that was a point that exercised my mind a good deal during your absence Would my loblolly boy pay the men back in their own coin?
Would they return to their persecution of him? How quickly could he come by a new identity?’
‘Identity?’ said Jack, comfortably pouring out more coffee ‘Is not identity something you are born with?’
‘The identity I am thinking of is something that hovers between a man and the rest of the world: a mid-point between his view of himself and theirs of him for each, of course, affects the other continually A reciprocal fluxion, sir. There is nothing absolute about this identity of mine. Were you, you personally, to spend some days in Spain at present you would find yours change, you know, because of the general opinion there that you are a false harsh brutal murdering villain, an odious man.’
‘I dare say they are vexed,’ said Jack, smiling. ‘And I dare say they call me Beelzebub. But that don’t make me Beelzebub.’
‘Does it not? Does it not? Ah? Well, however that may be, you have angered, you have stirred up the mercantile interest along the coast to a most prodigious degree. There is a wealthy man by the name of Mateu who is wonderfully incensed against you. The quicksilver belonged to him, and being contraband it was not insured; so did the vessel you cut out at Almoraira; and the cargo of the tartan burnt off Tortosa – half of that was his.
He is well with the ministry. He has moved their indolence and they have allowed him and his friends to charter one of their men-of-war. .
‘Not charter, my dear sir: no private person can possibly charter a man-of-war, a national vessel, a King’s ship, not even in Spain.’
‘Oh? Perhaps I use the wrong term: I often use the wrong term in naval matters. However.
A ship of force, not only to protect the coasting trade but even more to pursue the Sophie, who is perfectly well known now, both by name and by description. This I had from Mateu’s own cousin as we danced -‘
‘You danced?’ cried Jack, far more astonished than if Stephen had said ‘as we ate our cold roast baby’.
‘Certainty I danced. Why would I not dance, pray?’
‘Certainty you are to dance most uncommon graceful, I am sure. I only wondered. but did you indeed go about dancing?’
‘I did. You have not travelled in Catalonia, sir, I believe?’
‘Not I.’
‘Then I must tell you that on Sunday mornings it is the custom, in that country, for people of all ages and conditions to dance, on coming out of church: so I was dancing with Ramon Mateu i Cadafalch in the square before
the cathedral church of Tarragona, where I had gone to hear the Palestrina Missa Brevis.
The dance is a particular dance, a round called the sardana; and if you will reach me your fiddle I will play you the air of the one I have in mind. Though you must imagine I am a harsh braying hoboy.’ Plays.
‘It is a charming melody, to be sure. Somewhat in the Moorish taste, is it not? But upon my word it makes my flesh creep, to think of you rambling about the countryside in ports – in towns. I had imagined you would have gone to earth, that you would have kept close with your friend, hidden in her room. . . that is to say.
‘Yet I had told you, had I not, that I could ride the length and breadth of that country without a question or a moment’s uneasiness?’ ‘So you had. So you had.’ Jack reflected for a while. ‘And so, of course, if you chose, you could find out what ships and convoys were sailing, when expected, how laden, and so on. Even the galleons themselves, I dare say?’ ‘Certainly I could,’ said Stephen, ‘if I chose to play the spy. It is a curious and apparently illogical set of notions, is it not, that makes it right and natural to speak of the Sophie’s enemies, yet beyond any question wrong, dishonourable and indecent to speak of her prey?’ ‘Yes,’ said Jack, looking at him wistfully. ‘You must give a hare her law, there is no doubt. But what do you tell me about this ship of force? What is her rate? How many guns does she carry? Where does she lie?’ ‘Cacafuego is her name.’