‘Good, good: very good. You ease my mind: but tell me, Jack – for I see that in spite of a sleepless night you are eager to be up and about, inspecting booms, gunwales, lifts . . .
Pray tell me when you are inclined to sit down quietly and talk about the less physical aspects of our affair.’
Jack looked at him thoughtfully, revolving the less physical aspects: then smiling he said,
‘Although I have a very good first lieutenant, there are many things aloft that I should not rest easy without seeing. And below too, of course. Let us say after dinner, over a private pot of coffee.’
Jack Aubrey pushed back his chair, loosened his waistcoat, and said, ‘I had no idea I was so hungry: I am afraid I must have eaten like an ogre.’
Killick could be seen to smile: Jack’s appetite always pleased him – his one deviation into amiability.
‘Oh come,’ said Maturin. ‘Six mutton chops is not at all excessive in a man of your weight: an abstemious ogre would call it moderation. Those dear Americans said that the animal came from some favoured state: indeed it was both succulent and tender.’
They toyed with an elderly Essex cheese, much helped by burgundy; and Jack, recalled to a sense of his duty, asked whether Stephen’s inspection had been as satisfactory as his own.
‘It was pretty well, I thank you: not quite as good, since three recent fractures will have to be re-set. But upon the whole I cannot complain. They were tumbled about, to be sure; yet most – not that there are many in the sick-berth at present – withstood the tumbling and the uneasy motion of the ship very well. I have often noticed that a prolonged and violent blow tends to dispel the megrims; and it may well be that the visible approach of death, the immediate horror of the last, may restore a virtuous equilibrium.’
‘Killick,’ called Jack. ‘Light along the coffee, there.’
It took a little longer than usual and Killick – the door held by his mate Grimble – entered crabwise> the great pot and its cups flanked by a decanter. ‘With Delaware’s compliments, sir: Dutch schnapps.’
‘They have won again,’ said Jack, shaking his head. ‘How I hope that we gave them something, at least.’
‘I did have half a carboy of tincture of hogweed conveyed into their boat,’ said Stephen in a doubtful voice. ‘It was the best hogweed,’ he added, with even less certainty.
‘Well, may it prosper them,’ said Jack. ‘Though they are little better than republicans and democrats, may it prosper them.’
‘Amen,’ said Stephen, and they fell to drinking alternate sips.
‘You are in the moon, brother,’ said Jack after a while. ‘What are you thinking about?”
‘My transition to a C major passage in the adagio,’ said Stephen, and he whistled it.
‘I know the piece.’
‘It seemed to me, out of nothing, during the blast, that it was out of place, a little flashy.’
‘I should never, never say flashy: but out of place – well, perhaps.’
‘Thank you, Jack. I shall leave it out. Now may I pour you a cup of coffee and leap on to Rio?’
‘By all means.’
‘You have told me a certain amount about Sir David Lind-say, but not as I remember a considered opinion in a consecutive narrative. Do you feel inclined to do so now? He may possibly be of the first importance in our enterprise.”
‘That is scarcely my line of country, you know, Stephen. Even a pretty simple dispatch in which I know all the details comes out looking like an unravelled stocking, even when you and Adams have had a hand in it.’
‘Certainly: an impersonal account for official publication must be shockingly difficult to write, and the Dear knows that very few admirals or their secretaries manage it handsomely. But as between friends in a ship that seems to be sailing along in an exemplary fashion – these are the southeast trades, I gather? – could you not tell me roughly what to expect?’
‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘no one can say he is not a good seaman. He has fought two or three creditable sloop or frigate actions and he handles a ship well; yet he does not look at all like a sailor. If you were to see him in civilian clothes you might put him down for a soldier; and I think that is because, being rather on the small side, he holds himself up quite
straight. He is a gentlemanlike fellow. I know nothing about his family, but they have had a baronetcy for a couple of generations and I believe they live in the north country or just in Scotland. He speaks – perhaps rather too much and too long . . . but Stephen, do not think I am taking the man to pieces: I am just speaking openly, as I would not speak at anyone else.’
‘I fully understand you, my dear.’
‘Well, since I have said so much, I will tell you that he is extremely touchy – cannot bear interruption, and the least aspersion on his understanding or his knowledge of the world, let alone his family, is very ill-received indeed. Oh, and I should have said before this that he was bred in one of the great English public schools, until an uncle took him aboard as a rather elderly mid. During his time there he did much more reading, came by more Latin and Greek than most people in the service, which is no doubt one of the reasons for his talking so. But to go back to his touchiness: if you go on prating to that extent, somebody is sure to interrupt or contradict, and that, as I said, he cannot bear.’
‘Yet he must have borne both at school?’
‘And in the midshipmen’s berth as well. But once he had the King’s commission and the implied licence that goes with it, he had a pretty free hand. He was in fact extremely quarrelsome, and I do not think anyone went out in the special sense of pistols for two and coffee for one, so often as Lindsay. I do not think it increased his reputation for courage: probably the reverse, it being forced and exaggerated. Yet courage was there, without a doubt: you do not board an enemy of equal strength and carry her unless you are tolerably brave.’
‘Certainly.’
‘But it was that touchiness, impatience of control, or possibly courage, which proved fatal to him. During fleet exercises, when his 28-gun frigate was being coppered, he was given a ship-sloop, and he let her fall very badly from her station, spoiling the line in a shocking manner. The admiral sent for him and, from what I have heard, uttered a long and particularly scathing reproach. Lindsay bore it; but in the morning he sent the admiral a challenge. How he induced anyone to carry it I do not know, because calling your superior officer out – above all a flag-officer – is just plain impossible in the service. Calling him out for having given you a punishment or an order or a reproach that you do not like, is just plain impossible, as any friend would have told him. He had few friends, I think. At all event, he was taken up, laid by the heels, court-martialled and dismissed the service.
‘For some time he ranged up and down, making speeches about injustice and spending a mint of money on lawyers -he had inherited – and then he vanished, coming into these parts, as I understand it, with the reputation of one who loved freedom and who had suffered for it. There are a good many English merchants in Chile and the Argentine: some of them liked having a genuine baronet about, and some of them and of their South American friends were all in favour of freedom, so long as it was freedom from Spain –
freedom to shoot your admiral in Hyde Park was another matter, but it was swept along with the general cry of liberty.’
‘By the way, does the gentleman speak Spanish?’
‘Oh, remarkably well, I am told.’
Chapter Seven
On a singularly beautiful morning well south of those vile calms and enervating breathless heat the Surprise hauled to the wind well off the looming American coast, and Jack, walking up and down with a piece of toast in his hand, said, ‘Stephen, do you choose to go into the top? With this gentle, steady roll the masts scarcely move at all.’
‘Is it the Sugar Loaf you wish to see?’
‘I should be happy to see the Loaf- indeed, I can already make him out on the rise – but for this occasion I could wish him away, since what really concerns me at present is the activity in the port, the coming and going, the yards: and the Sugar Loaf hides almost everything. But I shall have to send Ringle in any case, to arrange for victuals, water and wood: perhaps you had rather go in her?’