‘Thank you, Mr. Wells. Ride back and tell him that we are just about to take our leave.’
A packet it was, and a fine fat one too, with English letters of various degrees of antiquity, a great parcel of dockets for Mr. Candish the purser, post for the cabin, gunroom and midshipmen’s berth, and two waxed sailcloth rolls for Dr. Maturin.
‘Forgive me,’ said Stephen, and as he went he heard orders given for the general distribution. It was long before he came back: his first roll had contained some curious feathers of an unidentified nocturnal bird, probably cousin to the rednecked nightjar, and a particularly agreeable note from Sierra Leone, written before Christine Wood had received his letter; and the second was a coded message from Jacob, written according to a system they rarely used – a system in which Jacob had clearly lost his way, for although the first section spoke of certain Chileans and their arrangements (apparently with some anxiety), the second, third and fourth could not be induced to yield any meaning at all, whatever combinations were applied to them.
The attempt at decoding took much time and spirit, and well before he abandoned all hope the ship was alive with steps and voices once more, sounds that died as the letters were read; yet when he walked into the cabin he found Jack still smiling over his post. ‘There you are, Stephen,’ he cried.
‘I do hope your letters were as pleasant as mine? I had a very agreeable foretaste on Friday, and I meant to keep it for today: but here is a confirmation,’ holding up a sheet -‘so I shall contain no longer. You remember that dear man Lawrence?’
‘Faith, I shall not soon forget him. He did his profession infinite credit.’ Mr. Lawrence was the barrister who had done his utmost to defend Jack Aubrey when he was charged with rigging the Stock Exchange – a completely false charge brought by those who profited by the fraud and a trial conducted on political motives by one of the most prejudiced and unscrupulous judges to have sat on the English bench. Lawrence had worked extremely hard to save his innocent client, and his failure to do so had marked him deeply.
‘He did indeed. We often dine together when I am in town; and long ago, oh very long ago, before ever we went to Java and New South Wales, he happened to say that a nephew of his who had worked for years with Arthur Young had set up as an agricultural consultant and agent, but found it difficult to get a start. “I am the man for him,” I said, and I told him about the little estate my cousin left me.’
‘The place with a glorious spread of fritillaries in the water-meadows and the borough you represent in Parliament?’
‘Just so. I have nothing against fritillaries: but I do assure you, Stephen, that with their sodden fields, the few farms and small-holdings produce nothing whatsoever except the ten or eleven electors and their families and just enough for them to eat. Every Lammas they send me a petition begging to be forgiven their rent this year, and please may they have twelve loads of stone for Old Hog Lane? It is an estate that costs me half a guinea for every snipe I have shot there: not that I have ever gone down much – it is far away, over vile roads, and there is no pleasure in looking at those barren fields and those coarse rank pastures. My cousin only bought the place because of the parliamentary seat.
Indeed, the borough may be rotten, but the land is very much worse. Kil-lick,’ he called, barely raising his voice at all.
‘Sir?’ replied Killick, almost immediately.
‘Light along a pot of coffee, will you?’
After a pause, Jack went on, ‘One really should keep a log-book, you know; a diary: after some years it is difficult to put your ideas in order. At least, that is what I find. Well, the nephew – his name is Leicester, by the way: John Leicester – went down and reported that things were bad, very bad, but not incurable, and given the lie of the land, draining would answer very well. It would take time, it would take years; but most of the tenants would
give their labour according to a scheme he had devised which would allow them time for their farming, and there would be no great outlay of money. So since at that time there had been some elegant prizes I told him to carry on: but there were to be no evictions, no distraints . . .’
‘Pot of coffee, sir,’ said Killick.
‘Where was I? Told him to carry on, which he did; and we sailed away. I almost entirely forgot it … to be sure, Leicester, who was acting as agent as well, did send annual reports, but with so many things happening I am afraid I neglected them until last year, when he paid in rents of I think nearly forty pounds; and this year he spoke of the likelihood of a really abundant wheat harvest, ha, ha! However, I did not mention it, for fear of ill-luck: but today I have the truly welcome news that he has given the tenants a Lammas dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, at which they drank my health, and that he had placed £450
to my credit at the bank. £450, Stephen! More than my pay as a post-captain. There: that was my good news.’
‘And very good, very welcome news it is, my dear. I give you joy with all my heart. There you are … I am very glad of it.’
So he was; but Jack, though not preternaturally sharp, detected the uneasiness, not so much in Stephen’s expression as in a kind of particular tension in his attitude, and he said,
‘Forgive me, Stephen, for boring you with all this personal and rather commonplace talk about money – you are uneasy.’
‘No. You mistake: I was not in the least degree bored, weary, inattentive. And if I am at all uneasy, it is from another cause. Jack, tell me how long will these repairs take before you can sail?’
‘With two saint’s days coming and the vast amount of work to be done in so many of the shipwrights’ own houses, eight or nine days.’
‘Then I must beg for Ringle to carry me to England. And if she could sail tonight how happy I should be.’
It was at once clear to Jack that the request and the Gibraltar packet were connected: he asked no questions but passed the word for Mr. Reade, and when he came, said, ‘William, how soon can you be under way?’
‘In twenty minutes, sir, if I may sail without my carpenter.’
‘You have his mate aboard?’
‘No. He is aboard you, sir.’
‘Then I shall send him over directly. Good-bye to you, William: you have the breeze as fair as ever you could wish.’
Almost all voyages, from that of Noah’s Ark to the sending of the ships to Troy, have been marked by interminable delays, with false starts and turning wind and tide; perhaps the schooner Ringle was too slim and slight to count as a worthy adversary, because she gently sailed her anchor out of the ground and then bore away a little east of north with a wind that allowed her to spread every sail she possessed, other than those reserved for foul or very foul weather.
It was indeed almost perfect sailing, the captain rarely leaving the deck, and all hands (a select body by now) perfectly ready to clap on to any rope or line that showed the least inclination to heave slack and recall it to the most rigid sense of its duty – anything for an extra eighth part of a knot.
Most of this time Stephen spent in his low triangular berth, vainly applying various formulae to Jacob’s meaningless groups of seven: he did however share his meal with William Reade, who reminded him of a wonderful run they had made racing up the Channel and reaching the Nore just in time for the first stirring of the flood tide that swept them up to the Pool in some period of time so wonderfully short that Reade had had the record signed and witnessed by several eminent hands.
‘How I hope we may do the same this time, sir,’ he said.
‘I hope so, indeed,’ said Stephen.
But alas for their hopes: the Channel, awkward as ever, had had enough of south-west breezes in all their variety, and now indulged itself in strong rain from the north and north-east, combined with adverse tides that ran with great force long after their legal time. It was a worn ship’s company that set Dr. Maturin ashore in the Pool of London, comforted only by the thought that they should now lie snug at harbour-watch, with sailors’ pleasures a short biscuit-toss away – would lie snug until orders came down from Whitehall.