‘I do not agree. And if, as I do not suppose possible now that I have made my views clear, you were so unwise as to commit a trespass, you would not only be ejected by my powerful, dangerous Irish servant, but you would lay yourself open to a most determined prosecution – a prosecution not only for trespass but also for keeping, and having kept, an
unlicensed betting office. Furthermore, the least hint of such an indiscretion would infallibly lead to your man Briggs being pressed into the Navy and sent aboard a ship full of common and often violent sailors, none of whom has any reason to love him, a ship bound for the deadly West Indies, or perhaps for Botany Bay.’
‘Sir,’ cried George, intercepting him in the garden, ‘Papa says would you like to take a quick glance at the squadron while there is still some light on the sea.’
‘I should like it of all things,’ said Stephen. ‘George, here is a three-shilling piece for thee.’
‘Oh thank you, sir. Thank you very much. We never got our fourpence, but now Amos is just going down to Hampton and I shall go with him and fairly gorge. . .’ His words were lost in the distance.
‘Come in, Stephen,’ called Jack from the depths, the very moderate depths, of the observatory. ‘I have the glass just so. Mind the cantilever – Oh never touch that sprocket –
take care of the eye-piece box, if you please – never mind: I shall pick them up and clean them later – now slide in here and sit square on the stool: square on the stool, there –
leave that screw alone, for God’s sake – hold on to the turret-casing, if you must hold on. It will be easier when your eyes have grown accustomed to the gloom: gloom for contrast, you understand.
There: sit tight. I have shipped cross-wires, as you see – no, get your eye right into the eye-piece, Stephen: what a fellow you are – in point of fact they are stretched threads of spider’s web, exactly placed. Ingenious, ain’t it? Herschel’s sister showed me how to do it.
The focus is right for my good eye, but if you find it blurred, turn this screw’ – guiding his fingers
– ‘until it is sharp. For the moment there is very little turbulence. The telescope is exactly pointed, so never touch anything else, whatever you do.’
Stephen squared himself still more, thrust his eye even deeper into the eye-piece, drew several deep breaths, and timidly turned the screw. Instantly the cross-lines showed clear, and at their intersection, broadside on, there was a ship of the line, sharp and distinct, in another world, another though familiar dimension: her topsails were hanging loose to dry and many of her people were over the side on stages, painting ship, but this did not take away from her beauty, nor from the sense of concentrated power. It made a living ship of her, a ship with no collective self-consciousness and anxiety, holding her breath for her portrait or an admiral’s inspection.
‘Now there is the great elegant ship of the world,’ said Stephen. ‘A seventy-four, I make no doubt?’
‘Well done, Stephen,’ cried Jack, and if he had been speaking to any other man he would have clapped him on the back. ‘A noble seventy-four she is. And that red swallow-tail burgee is my broad pennant. The Admiral sent his flag-lieutenant particularly desiring me to hoist it, which I took very kindly. One has to have permission, you know.’
‘So she is the Bellona, the chief argosy of your command! Huzzay, huzza! I congratulate you, Jack. Why, I declare, she has a poop, which adds much to her dignity.’
‘And not only dignity but safety too. When you are on the quarterdeck in a hot action with a really malignant enemy firing great guns and small arms, it is a wonderful comfort to have a solid poop behind you.’
‘For my part I prefer to be far, far below. Pray show me the rest of the squadron.’
‘There is Pyramus,’ said Jack, moving the glass very slightly until the cross-lines rested on a fine thirty-eight-gun frigate.
‘She is like the French Belle Poule, you know. Frank Holden has her now, a fine dashing fellow; but I doubt we shall keep her. There are nasty rumours of her being sent off on a cruise of her own and being replaced by something smaller, older, slower. I am afraid the air is beginning to shimmer down over the harbour and Gosport,’ he went on, turning the telescope and guiding it by the finder, ‘but if you focus again for your eyesight I think you will make out a ship creeping along by Priddy’s Hard. She is the Stately, sixty-four: she was given me when the Terrible, our other seventy-four, was suddenly and very unfairly snatched away; and I am afraid we shall certainly keep her. A sixty-four-gun ship is a very pitiful craft, Stephen; worse in a way than the horrible old Leopard, with a mere fifty. In her we could run from the Dutch seventy-four without a blush, crack on until all sneered again with a clear conscience; but a sixty-four would have to turn and fight or feel dishonoured.
Stately’s captain, William Duff – you remember Billy Duff in Malta, Stephen? – does all he possibly can, but.. . Alas, the light is going. The sun has dipped. I can just make out the Aurora, twenty-eight, and the Orestes brig, but they are fading, and I shall have to tell you about them when we have had something to eat. You must be cruel sharp-set.’
‘With the blessing I shall see them all tomorrow. I must be aboard early, to attend to my assistants and medical supplies.
How many are we in all?’
‘To tell you the truth, Stephen, I do not know. There is so much chopping and changing. We are still a frigate short; it is just possible that we may lose the Pyramus; the sloops and brigs come and go; and the date is perpetually postponed. I should never have insisted on your coming back so soon. After
all, I have known the Navy all my life, and never, never, has any squadron put to sea on the date the port admiral or commodore was told in the first place. Nor with the same ships. But now, upon my word, you must and shall be fed. Sophie complains that she saw nothing of you, because of the children’s measles – keeps mentioning it. We will drag her from her accounts and sit down comfortably with a dish of muffins. You shall see the squadron by early morning light,before breakfast, if it don’t rain; and then we can ride down to Pompey.’
Stephen had been put to sleep in his usual room, far from children and noise, away in that corner of the house which looked down to the orchard and the bowling-green, and in spite of his long absence it was so familiar to him that when he woke about three he made his way to the window almost as quickly as if dawn had already broken, opened it and walked out on to the balcony. The moon had set: there was barely a star to be seen.
The still air was delightfully fresh with falling dew, and a late nightingale, in indifferent voice, was uttering a routine jug-jug far down in Jack’s plantations; closer at hand, and more agreeable by far, nightjars churred in the orchard, two of them, or perhaps three, the sound rising and falling, intertwining so that the source could not be made out for sure.
There were few birds he preferred to nightjars, but it was not that they had brought him out of bed: he stood leaning on the balcony rail and presently Jack Aubrey, in a summerhouse by the bowling-green, began again, playing very gently in the darkness, improvising wholly for himself, dreaming away on his violin with a mastery that Stephen had never heard equalled, though they had played together for years and years.
Like many other sailors Jack Aubrey had long dreamed of lying in his warm bed all night long; yet although he could now do so with a clear conscience he often rose at unChristian hours, particularly if he were moved by strong emotion, and crept from his bedroom in a watch-coat, to walk about the house or into the stables or to pace the bowling-green. Sometimes he took his fiddle with him. He was in fact a better player than Stephen, and now that he was using his precious Guarnieri rather than a robust sea-going fiddle the difference was still more evident: but the Guarnieri did not account for the whole of it, nor anything like. Jack certainly concealed his excellence when they were playing together, keeping to Stephen’s mediocre level: this had become perfectly clear when Stephen’s hands were at last recovered from the thumbscrews and other implements applied by French counterintelligence officers in Minorca; but on reflexion Stephen thought it had been the case much earlier, since quite apart from his delicacy at that period, Jack hated showing away.