continued Mrs Broad, ‘but them black teeth fairly curdle the blood in your weins.’
Yet it being Dr Maturin, and since Mrs Maturin was quite used to black teeth in India, some days’ trial were eventually conceded; and before the end of those days the Grapes’ blood was flowing quite normally: Ahmed, always clean, sober, meek and obliging, passed in and out exciting no adverse comment, whereas by contrast Killick ashore was often something of a nuisance, always noisy and frequently drunk; and when at the end of their stay in London a cart came to carry them and the baggage to the Portsmouth coach Mrs Broad, Lucy and Nancy shook Mr Ahmed by the hand as well as Mr Killick, and wished him a prosperous voyage and a happy return; they would be very pleased to see him again.
Jack and Stephen had left earlier by post-chaise, and when they were clear of the town, the horses stepping out briskly, Jack said, ‘I wish Tom Pullings were with us. He does so love riding in a chaise and four.’
‘Where will he be by now, do you suppose?’ asked Stephen.
‘If they picked up the trades well north of the line, they might be somewhere near Cape San Roque: I hope so, I am sure. I hate to think of the Surprise rolling her masts out and spewing her oakum in the doldrums.’ He shuffled among the papers on the seat beside him. ‘Here are my orders – Admiralty orders, I am happy to say, so that if by any improbable chance we take a prize there will be no iniquitous admiral’s third – and here is what Muffitt sent me this morning – most obliging of him – extracts from his logs in the South China Sea these twenty-five years past and more, charts, remarks on typhoons, currents, variations of the compass and the setting-in of the monsoons. It is extremely valuable, and it would be even more so if the Indiamen did not keep as close as they could to an established course from Canton to the Sunda Strait: they could hardly do otherwise in a sea that as far as anyone can tell is nowhere more than a hundred fathom water and generally less
than fifty. A shallow, unexplored sea with volcanoes all round and therefore sudden unexpected shoals. It is not blue-water sailing at all, and as he frankly told me down at Greenwich they often prefer to lie to at night, or even anchor, which is easy enough in such modest depths.’
‘A very sensible precaution too. I wonder everyone does not adopt it.’
‘Why, Stephen, some people are in a hurry: men-of-war, for instance. It is no good carrying your pig to market and finding. . .’ He paused, frowning.
‘It will not drink?’
‘No, it ain’t that neither.’
‘That there are no pokes to be had?’
‘Oh well, be damned to literary airs and graces – it is no good hurrying as we have been hurrying these last few days and carrying your ship half way round the world, cracking on to make all sneer again, if you are going to balance your mizen all night once you are past Java Head. Lord, Stephen, I am quite fagged with running about London so.
Pillar and post ain’t in it.’ He yawned, made some indistinct remarks about time and tide, and went to sleep in his corner, going out like a light – his usual habit.
He was bright awake however well before the chaise reached Ashgrove, and he gazed out at his plantations, now in finer leaf than when last he saw them, and at the rather stunted shrubs along the drive, with delight. He was expected, for the clash of the new iron gate could be heard a great way off, and with even greater delight he saw his family in front of the house, the children waving already. But as he jumped out he saw with concern that in spite of her welcome Sophie looked thoroughly upset, her smile constrained, her whole attitude anxious. Mrs Williams was looking very grave. Diana was taken up with telling Stephen about a horse. The children seemed unaffected.
‘A dreadful thing has happened,’ said Sophie as soon as she had him alone. ‘Your brother – my brother, since he is yours, and I love him dearly’ – Sophie, when moved, had a way of
talking very quick, her words tumbling over one another – ‘I mean dear Philip of course has run away from school and he declares he will go to sea with you.’
‘Is that all?’ cried Jack with great relief. ‘Where is he?’
‘On the landing. He dared not come down.’
Jack opened the door and hailed, ‘Ho Philip, there. Come down, old fellow.’ And when he came, ‘Why brother, how glad I am to see you.’
‘Give you joy, sir,’ said Philip in a trembling voice.
‘That is kind in you, Philip,’ said Jack, shaking his hand, ‘and it grieves me all the more to disappoint you. But this won’t do, d’ye see? I cannot take my own brother as a youngster in a new command where I know none of the people and they know nothing about me. All the fellows in the midshipmen’s berth and everybody else for that matter would put you down as a favourite at once. It would not do; upon my word it would not do.
But do not take it too hard. Next year, if you mind your mathematics, Captain Dundas will take you in the Orion, I promise, a ship of the line. He has plenty of squeakers of your age
– do not take it too hard.’
He turned away, because Philip was almost certainly going to cry, and Sophie said, There was a message from the Commissioner, asking you to call as soon as you could’
I shall write him a note at once And another inviting poor Bushel of the Diane to dinner tomorrow. Or would that put you out, my dear?’
‘Not in the least, my love
Then please tell Bonden to stand by, dressed like a Christian, to go down with Dray as soon as the letters are wrote.’
Jack knew very well that the Commissioner would have to confer with the Master Shipwright to put the Navy Board’s order into just the right shape and indeed to start the urgent work even before the order had a formal existence: the highlyskilled confidential joiners who were to fashion places for the treasure had already come down – treasure which, combined with the envoy’s less tangible offerings, would outweigh anything the French could provide; at least that was what the ministry hoped.
He had never met Captain Bushel, and his invitation was necessarily formal; but he put it in as friendly a manner as he could, hoping that it might make the supersession slightly less painful.
It appeared to have no such effect, however. Bonden brought back a note in which Captain Bushel regretted that a previous engagement prevented him from accepting Captain Aubrey’s invitation: he ventured to suggest that Captain Aubrey should come aboard tomorrow at half past three o’clock. Captain Aubrey would understand that Captain Bushel, having introduced the officers, should prefer to leave the ship before his successor was read in.
The note came when Captain Aubrey was deep in a very earnest game of speculation, the children hooting and roaring steadily. Philip had recovered his spirits; his niece Caroline was particularly kind in guiding his play, and his eyes sparkled as he piped his bids. At the moment Jack only took notice of the refusal and then carried on with his plot for undermining George, who had little notion of the laws of probability. But later he reflected that Bushel must be rather a pitiful fellow to resent his displacement to such a pitch. The previous engagement might possibly exist, but the total lack of any formal compliments or thanks for the invitation was churlish, while the appointing of a time was most incorrect, and the failure to offer a boat to take him out was shabby in the extreme. It would be perfectly in order for Jack to choose his own date and his own hour: he was senior to Bushel by several years. But although he had never been superseded himself he knew it was generally a most disagreeable process; perhaps so disagreeable in this case that it justified a high degree of resentment. ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I shall follow the scrub’s
directions.’ And in a more inward voice, scarcely a whisper to his most private being, he said, ‘Indeed, I should do anything short of slaughtering Sophie and the children to be in my place again.’ For although he had been gazetted and although his name was on the list, it was the symbolic and for the sea-officer quasi-sacramental reading-in that would pass the ring and marry him to the Navy once more.