‘Why, sir,’ said the boy, ‘I understood you were for the shore, and I have the jolly-boat under the stern, if you please to walk this way.’
Witherby landed him at the Ragged Staff steps, and once he was through the Southport Gate he found the familiar surroundings a comfort: the move into the unknown Pomone, though wholly unimportant in itself, had for once been strangely disturbing. He made his way steadily along to Thompson’s comfortable, unpretentious hotel, glancing right and left at shops and buildings he had known these many years. Many red-coats, many sea-officers, but nothing to touch the hive-like multitudes of Gibraltar in full wartime.
He turned in at Thompson’s door. ‘Dr Jacob, if you please,’ he said. ‘He is expecting me.’
‘Yes, sir. Should you like him to come down?’
‘Oh no. Tell me the number of his room and I will go up.’
‘Very good, sir. Pablito, show the gentleman to the third floor back.’
Pablito tapped; the door opened, and a well-known voice said, ‘Dr Maturin, I presume?’
The door closed. Pablito’s feet echoed on the stairs. Dr Jacob seized Stephen, kissed him on both cheeks and led him into a cool, shaded room where a jug of horchata stood on a low table and smoke from the hookah hung from the ceiling down to eye level.
‘I am so exceedingly happy that it is you,’ said Jacob, guiding him to a sofa. ‘I was so nearly sure of it from Sir Joseph’s calculated indiscretions that I brought you an example of the palmar aponeurosis and the contractions which so interested you and Dupuytren.’ He slipped into his bedroom and came out carrying a jar: but realizing that his gift could not be fully appreciated in the half-light he thrust open the balcony doors and led Stephen out into the brilliant sun.
‘You are altogether too good, dear Amos,’ said Stephen, gazing at the severed hand, clear in its spirits of wine, the middle fingers so hard-clenched against the palm that
their nails had grown into the flesh. ‘You are too good entirely. I have never seen so perfect an example. I long to make a very exact dissection.’
But Jacob, taking no notice, turned him gently to the full sun and looked hard into his face. ‘Stephen, you have not made some cruel self-diagnosis, I trust?’
‘I have not,’ said Stephen, and in as few words as possible he explained the situation – his personal situation. Amos did not oppress him with any sympathy other than a deeply affectionate pressure on the shoulder, but suggested that they should walk out high on the Rock, where they could speak about their present undertaking in complete safety.
that is to say, if you still feel concerned.’
‘I am wholly concerned, wholly committed,’ said Stephen. ‘If it were not so wicked, I could almost be grateful for this very evil man and his odious system.’
They walked out of the town, up and up to the ridge itself, where the cliffs fall down to Catalan Bay and where Stephen saw, with a muted satisfaction, that the peregrine eyrie was occupied again, the falcon standing on the outer edge, bating and calling. All the way along they walked, with the migrant birds passing overhead, sometimes very low, and on either side, Stephen mechanically noting the rarities (six pallid harriers, more than he had ever seen together), right out to the far end overlooking Europa Point, and back again; and all the time, with a much more conscious, concentrated mind, Stephen listened to all that Jacob, with his remarkable sources of information, had gathered about the Adriatic ports, the Muslim fraternities and the progress of their urgent request for money to pay their mercenaries. Jacob
also spoke, and with equal authority, of the probable donor and of the pressure that might be brought to bear on the Dey of Algiers. ‘But where Africa is concerned,’ he said, ‘it seems to me that little or nothing should be attempted until we have had at least some success in the Adriatic.’
Stephen agreed, his eyes following a troop of black storks as they passed over the flagship; and quite suddenly he realized that the Royal Sovereign was no longer flying the courtmartial signal. Indeed, the captains’ barges were already dispersing.
On the way down they walked almost in silence. They had said all that could usefully be said at this point, though more intelligence was to be expected at Mahon – and Stephen very often glanced at the flagship’s main yardarm. In these waters the Commander-in-Chief was all-powerful:
he could confirm a court’s sentence of death without the least reference to the King or the Admiralty. In naval courtsmartial sentence was pronounced at once: it was final, with no appeal: and Lord Keith was not one for delay.
By the time they reached the town there was no man hanging from the yardarm; but on the battlements this side of the Southport Gate there were several officers, including Jack Aubrey and some of the Pomone’s people, looking earnestly southward along the strand. Stephen joined them, saying, ‘Sir, may I introduce Dr Jacob, the assistant surgeon of whom I told you?’
‘Very happy, sir,’ said Jack, shaking Jacob’s hand. He would obviously have said more, but at this moment a strong murmur all along from the bastion increased immensely as two boats left the flagship, pulling for the shore and towing a bare grating, the soaked and wretched prisoners upon it. A few minutes later the grating was cast off: a small surf brought it in and the men scrambled in the shallows. There was some sparse cat-calling
from the crowd, but not much; and half a dozen people helped them to dry land, dragging their belongings.
‘Dr Jacob, sir,’ said Jack, ‘I hope that you will be able to come aboard without delay. I am eager to be out of sight of this place.’ And privately to Stephen he said, ‘I repeated your “No penetration, no sodomy”, which floored one and all; though I must say that most of them were glad to be floored. I persuaded the others to find no more than gross indecency.’
‘And is being towed ashore on a grating the set penalty for gross indecency?’
‘No. We call it the use and custom of the sea: that is the way it has always been.’
Chapter Two
For several years now Stephen Maturin had been perfectly aware that a life at sea, above all in a man-of-war, was not the waterborne picnic sometimes imagined by those living far inland; but he had never supposed that anything could be quite so arduous as this existence between the two, neither floating free nor firmly ashore, with what conveniences the land might provide.
The squadron, necessarily gathered together in a hurry and necessarily short-handed, had to be thoroughly reorganized, above all the unhappy Pomone: a ship always suffered from a trial for sodomy and although her people had not been in her for anything like an ordinary commission it was long enough for them to feel their position acutely – to resent the calls they heard ashore or the smiles and meaning silence when a group of them walked into a bar. After all, one of their officers had been dismissed from the service in the most ignominious fashion possible and towed ashore on a grating in the view of countless spectators; and some of the discredit clung to his former shipmates. This corporate shame had a thoroughly bad effect on discipline, which had never been the Pomone’s strongest point; and a new captain, with a second lieutenant who knew nobody aboard, was unlikely to remedy this state of affairs in the near future. She did have a good bosun, however, and the gunner, though discouraged, was willing and knowledgeable. He and Captain Pomfret were suitably shocked when the Commodore invited them to accompany Surprise well out into the Strait, off Algeciras, so that both ships might exercise the great
guns, firing at towed targets. The Pomones brought their ship out creditably and they were reasonably brisk at the dumb-show of running the eighteen-pounders in and out, but some of the gun-crews were hesitant about firing them. Only three or four in the starboard battery had much notion of anything but point-blank aim or of judging the roll.
The first and second captains were competent upon the whole, but the midshipmen in charge of the divisions left much to be desired and some of the ordinary hands belonging to the gun might never have seen an eighteen-pounder fired in earnest before. The fury of the recoil shocked them extremely and after the first wavering, ragged broadside several had to be led or carried below, hurt by iron-taut tackles and breechings or even by the angles of the carriage itself. The Marines who took their places did at least stand clear, but
on the whole it was a most lamentable exhibition, and the Surprises had no compunction in making it even more obviously ludicrous by destroying, utterly destroying, the hitherto unscathed target with three broadsides in five minutes and ten seconds.