They travelled in a variety of hired coaches and carriages, sometimes drawn by an improbable number of animals but always, however many or however few, running as fast as ever they could be induced to run. That is to say Sir Joseph, Standish, whom Jack had offered a lift after their explanation, the baggage, the musical instruments and the large number of documents Stephen needed travelled so, with Killick and Bonden (no great horsemen) sitting with the driver or up behind, except in the blinding rain of Galicia, when Sir Joseph made them come inside. Jack and Stephen rode: there were great numbers of lost, stolen, strayed cavalry horses from the various armies to be had and each travelled with a remount and a groom, pushing ahead in the evening to attend to supper and bed.
It was hard going, on and on, always on and on, passing
wonders without ever a pause – never so much as a glass of wine in Oporto itself –
mud in the north, mud axle-deep, and once a band that tried to stop the coach but that scattered in the face of determined professional pistol and carbine fire. Yet for Blaine it was nothing like such hard going as it had been on the way down: now he had a guide perfectly accustomed to the language and the manners of the people, familiar with the road and most of the towns, widely acquainted, so that they stayed at two country houses and one monastery as well as the
best inns the country afforded. He was also now part of a formidable armed party, including powerful sailors capable of dealing with most situations, such as freeing a bogged wheel by means of a tackle seized to a stout tree, the fall running along a dry bank, so that all hands could bowse upon it. Indeed the travelling itself was almost pleasant and the evening was very much so: on his way down Sir Joseph, spending public money, had not exactly stinted himself, but he had a certain conscience, whereas
Stephen, once he had overcome a reluctance to part with copper, flung gold about like jack-ashore, and Aubrey had never been less than lavish whenever he had anything to be lavish with. Having travelled like kings all day, they ran dinner and supper into one regal feast in the evening, and after it Standish would play to them.
Sir Joseph was devoted to music; he appreciated Standish’s playing at its true worth, and Stephen hoped that he might deal with the situation by finding the unhappy man some harmless minor position under Government. But this was not to be. One evening in Santiago Standish was playing a brilliant Corelli partita entirely from memory –
not a hemidemisemiquaver of all the multitude out of place – when Jack, who had drunk a great deal of the thin, piercing white wine from the landlady’s own vineyard, was obliged to tiptoe to the door. He opened it with the utmost precaution and a bulky officer in the uniform of the First Foot Guards fell into the room. He was covered with confusion –
apologized most profusely for listening – fairly worshipped good music – Corelli, was it not?
– congratulated the gentleman most heartily. When the music
was done they invited him to stay and drink port with them. His name was Lumley; he was in charge of the regiment’s depot in Santiago – they had already noticed a number of battered guardsmen creeping about the muddy streets – and as it so often happens in cases of this kind they found they had a large number of acquaintances in common. When the others had gone to bed he shared a last pot with Stephen, who gave him a discreet account of Standish and his position. ‘Do you think he would be my secretary?’ asked Colonel Lumley. ‘The duties would be very light – my clerks do most of the paper-work –
but I should give a great deal to have such a violin at hand.’
‘It seems to me quite probable,’ said Stephen, and he might have added, ‘Indeed, I believe the poor man would accept any work that would keep him alive rather than go aboard ship again, and in the Bay of Biscay at that’, if he had not thought it liable to influence even a very benevolent employer; arid Colonel Lumley had, at least in these circumstances, the kindest face. Instead he observed, ‘So probable that I am sure it is worth making the offer.’
The offer was made and accepted. The party set off as soon after dawn as the ostlers could be roused from their straw, with Standish standing by the stable gates in the drizzle waving until they were out of sight. His happiness, his relief, his sense of reprieve affected them all, even Bonden and Killick, who imitated post-horns on the back of the coach and made antic gestures at the passing peasants and soldiers most of the morning; but the mounting south-south-west wind veering to south-west with heavy rain damped their ardour, and presently Sir Joseph made them get inside again, where they sat stiff, mum and genteel until at last the gasping mules brought the carriage down through Corunna to the port.
Here Jack and Stephen were waiting for them on the quay, beside the Nimble, the cutter that was to carry Sir Joseph and his party home.
‘This could not be better,’ said Jack as he heaved the coach door open against the blast. ‘It is almost sure to strengthen,
and even if it don’t we may well see Ushant by Thursday
• evening.’
In the last grey twilight Blaine looked at the streaming, shining quay, the streaming, shining mules drooping their heads under the rain, the uneasy surface of the harbour, the steeply-chopped white water beyond, where the tide was ebbing against the Atlantic
rollers. He made no reply, but took Jack’s arm and staggered across the brow into the cutter, his eyes half-closed.
• •
Stephen settled with the coachman and his carbine-bearing companion, paid the grooms, telling them they might keep the horses, and so in his turn crossed the brow. The baggage had long since been whipped across by a line of seamen, and as soon as Stephen was aboard they cast off fore and aft, filled the jib and stood for the open sea.
The two-hundred-ton Nimble, fourteen guns, was one of the largest cutters in the Royal Navy, and for those accustomed to doggers, hoys, galliots and smacks in general she seemed a behemoth, particularly when she had topgallants and even royals spread on her tall single mast; but for the rest of the world, especially those used to rated ships, she might have seemed designed for dwarfs. Even Maturin, who was rather a small man, stood bent, with bowed head, in the cabin. Yet as it so often happened in the Navy, she was commanded by one of the tallest officers the service possessed: he came in, having seen his cutter well clear of the land, and stood there, a pink-faced, smiling, anxious young man in a lieutenant’s coat.
‘You are very welcome, gentlemen,’ he said again. ‘May I offer you a little something to stay you before supper? Sandwiches, for example, and a glass of sillery?’
‘That would be delightful,’ said his guests, to whom it was clear that the sandwiches had already been cut and the wine put over the side in a net to cool.
‘Where is Sir Joseph?’ asked the captain of the Nimble.
‘He turned in at once,’ said Jack, ‘because, says he, prevention is better than cure.’
‘I hope it answers, I am sure. Lord Nelson’s coxswain told
me the admiral used to suffer most cruelly for the first few days, if he had been ashore for a while. Stubbs’ – directing his voice through a scuttle – ‘light along the sandwiches and the wine.’
‘The bubbly stuff is all very well,’ said Jack, looking at the light through his glass, ‘but for flavour, for bouquet and for quality, give me good sillery every time. Capital wine, sir: but now I come to think of it, I do not believe I caught your name.’
‘Fitton, sir. Michael Fitton,’ said the young man with a shy, expectant look.
‘Not John Fitton’s son?’ asked Jack.
‘Yes, sir. He often spoke about you, and I saw you once at home when I was a boy.’
‘We were shipmates in three commissions,’ said Jack, shaking his hand. ‘Isis, Resolution, and Colossus, of course.’ He looked down, for it was on the gun-deck of the Colossus, not three feet away from him, that John Fitton had been killed during the battle of St Vincent.
At this moment Sir Joseph, whose cupboard opened into the cabin, called out in a choking voice for his servant, and when the hurrying to and fro was over Stephen said, gazing about, ‘So this is a cutter. Well, I am prodigiously glad to have seen a cutter. Pray why is it so called?’