the ladies of the town had been particularly kind to the children, much smaller then, and apt to do themselves harm – and a journey there, even a stay of a week or so, was considered a finer treat than Bath or Lyme.
The memorious gelding paced into the stable, and while Padeen tried to extricate the rear-children from the dog-boxes, where in their squabbling they had contrived to entangle themselves in a half-bale of close-meshed netting, Stephen walked into the William’s Head. ‘Mrs. Hake,’ he said, ‘good day to you, ma’am. How do you do?’
‘Why, it is the Doctor!’ cried she. ‘Very well, sir, I thank you: and I trust you are the same?’
‘Tolerably so, ma’am: and I should be even more so if you would feed the children. They have been quarrelling and whining this last half hour, but tea and those round things with cream will mend their temper – they are not fundamentally vicious. I have just run down to see whether you have any news of Surprise and Captain Aubrey.’
‘Captain Aubrey, sir?’ she replied with a look if not of actual horror then of the very deepest pale stupidity mixed with alarm and as it were distress. ‘Surprise and Captain Aubrey?’ She sat down heavily, still gazing at him. ‘But they was here this morning –
snapped up a score of old shipmates, oh ha, ha, ha! They was right happy to go, too, ha, ha, ha! And rode pretty over the bar at three-quarter ebb with the breeze as fair for Seppings’ yard as ever you could wish.
And you never knew. Oh, ha, ha, ha ha!’ She beat her knees and laughed and laughed.
‘God bless you, sir, and please forgive me. I’ll feed those vermin childer right away. Come, children,’ she called from the door towards the stable-yard. ‘Tea will be ready this directly minute.’ And then to Stephen, ‘Which he sent a young gentleman on a pony to tell Mrs.
Aubrey he was quite well and should be home tomorrow.’ She hurried into the kitchen, where she could be heard telling the maids, ‘And the Doctor says to me “I have just run down to see whether you have any news of Surprise and Captain Aubrey”, and I says to him . . .’
Stephen walked out on to the familiar strand: news of his arrival had spread, and several of his former shipmates, particularly those he had treated, came to shake his hand, give him good day, and say how well the barky looked, in spite of her wounded bows; but some, even most, were shy of doing so, which puzzled him. Presently he invited five or six men he knew particularly well to come and take a pot of ale with him; and when they had sat down in the parlour he said to the eldest, a former quartermaster, ‘What is amiss here in Shelmerston? Why do some of my old shipmates seem uneasy in their minds?’
‘Well, sir,’ said Proctor, ‘it is like this: with the end of the war – with the two ends of the war, the one when you was in Bellona and this one just now, with Waterloo – well, at the end of the war, for most of the people here it was the end of all peace. I mean the peace of being sure of your victuals, however rough, and a little money to send home. We were turned ashore; paid off. Ordinarily, for a sailorman, living in the usual sort of port, that means finding another ship – not very hard, when trade is brisk. But this ain’t the usual sort of port.
With our damned bar and our damned rocks, there is hardly any coastwise trade. This was first a fishing-village: but the fishing fell off-would not keep above a score of boats. So presently we became a kind of privateering port; and we did pretty well, sir, as you know, so long as there were enemies to privateer upon – French, Spanish, Portuguese, Americans some of the time, the Dutch and the northern ports like Papenburg and so on.
But where are they now? All at peace.’
‘Was there not a little running of uncustomed goods?’
‘Well, sir, I must admit that some people – I name no names, mark you – did not object to occasional smuggling. You had to be a damned good seaman with a right weatherly craft to prosper; yet as I think you know very well, sir, brandy was what you might call the life-blood of Shel-merston.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, sir: just lean over and look out of the window, a little south of east.’
‘Cutters?’
‘Yes, sir. The new sharp-built revenue cutters, very well-manned and very well built – just up the way, and how young Mr. Seppings found it in his heart to do so, I do not know.
They can eat the wind out of any of ours. And right high on the cliff they have a look-out post. The wicked dogs get half the fine and half the goods. It is enough to make your heart bleed, to see their zeal.’
‘I can well believe it.’
‘So, do you see, when we saw Surprise come in this morning it was like – well, I must not be irreverent, but it was a wonderful sight. And when his honour took a dozen of us aboard to run her up to the yard, oh we were right glad that she was to make a voyage, after repairs.’
‘Did Captain Aubrey tell you about his intention?’
‘Oh yes, sir. He said it was just for surveying the Horn, the Straits and the Chile coast –
little chance of any prize, unless we happened to run into a pirate. Hard-lying guaranteed, but nothing much in the way of hard-lying money. But those he picked, oh, was they glad to have a berth with him! They knew something about Captain Aubrey’s luck -we all know something about Captain Aubrey’s luck: and if you could put in a word for any of us, sir, we should be right grateful.’
Although the children were very urgent to push on to Seppings’ yard, Stephen would have none of it, and presently the dog-cart was creeping up the rocky hill-road out of Shelmerston. ‘There is the Sethians’ chapel,’ he said, nodding in the direction of a white building with enormous brilliant letters of brass on its face. ‘Seth,’ they read. ‘What is Seth? Who is Seth?’
‘He was one of Adam’s sons, brother to Cain and Abel.’
‘Oh look!’ cried Brigid. ‘Just over the horizon! There is Ringle fairly tearing in.’
‘We shall see them all tomorrow,’ said Stephen. ‘What joy!’
Yet they had first to pick up Surprise’s young gentleman, Mr. Wells, whose pony had tossed him into a deep ditch lined with stones and surrounded by brambles, and had then run away. Fortunately he was rather dwarvish even for a first-voyager, and they were able to cram him into the dogcart, although at the cost of blood-stains all round.
Home, and frocks had to be changed, Mr. Wells stripped, daubed with balm, hog’s lard and court-plaster – even a few stitches here and there – and then everyone, including Mr.
and Mrs. Andrews, had to be fed. Stephen had known battles more wearing, and he retired to his own room quite early.
Dr. Maturin had certain practices that he would have condemned in others as unhealthy, self-indulgent and even immoral, such as the smoking of tobacco and Indian hemp (or bhang), the drinking of alcohol in all its forms from mild ale to brandy, the taking of opium and coca, and the frequent inhalation of nitrous oxide; but in his own case he had nothing to say against any of them. Indeed, he judged their effects wholly beneficial: and this was
because he never (or very rarely) countenanced the least excess. Yet there was still another practice that he had often abandoned as improper, and had as often taken up again in spite of the pricks of conscience: this was the keeping of a diary – harmless enough in almost all cases and even benign; but not in that of an intelligence-agent. As he knew very well, it might be captured, explanations might be demanded, the code might even be broken, exposing his colleagues, his allies and informers. This was an extremely unlikely event, since he knew many languages and used them all; yet even so it was with a feeling of guilt that he now opened his bag and drew out a very small book – the volumes had grown smaller, more rapidly disposable, with the years, and the writing so minute that few ordinary eyes could read it at all, while Stephen himself had to wear powerful spectacles.
‘After long consideration,’ he wrote, ‘I think I must treat the whole of Blaine’s remarks about Horatio and his inferences as confidential.’ And having written this, together with an outline of what was permissible, with his crow-quill he leant back and reflected upon the manner in which he should keep the whole transaction on a purely naval basis. He reflected long upon Jack’s character, its curiously unworldly aspects, its frankness; and having walked up and down for some time, scratching himself, he said, ‘I think it can be done,’ and went to bed.