‘Not at all, at all. We were discussing duels and when they were, by general consent, permissible, when they were universally condemned, and when they were absolutely required. Mrs Oakes asked whether the military code did not oblige the officer who was beaten by Earl Howe to ask for satisfaction, a blow being an intolerable affront, and we all said no, because he was a very old gentleman and therefore allowed to be a little testy, because his immense deserts excused him almost anything, and because he could be said to have asked pardon by patting the lieutenant on the shoulder and saying “Well, so she ain’t Invincible after all.” ‘
‘I am so ashamed,’ said Clarissa. ‘I lived very much out of the world when I was young, and that was one of my two pieces of fashionable wisdom. The other was that if you paid for anything in a shop with a bank-note you must always clearly state its value, so that there may be no argument about the change.’
‘How I wish I had been taught that when I was a boy,’ said Jack. ‘Bank-notes did not often come my way, but the first decent prize-money I ever saw had one in it, a ten-pounder on Child’s, no less; and the damned – I beg pardon, ma’am -the shabby fellow at the Keppel’s Knob gave me change for five, swearing there was not a tenner in the house – I might look in the till if I wished, and if I found a tenner there I might have it all. But Doctor, how did the Spartan dog come in.’
‘It seemed to me to express the state of mind of a deeply injured furious duellist when he plunges his sword into the opponent’s bowels.’
‘May I cut you a trifle of pudding, ma’am?’ asked Pullings, moved by the association of ideas.
Clarissa might decline, but Captain Aubrey, feeling that he must do honour to the gunroom’s feast, already tolerably damped, held out his plate; and now for the first time he realized with a pang that a third slice was going to be more of a labour than a delight: non sum qualis eram drifted up from those remote years when he was flogged into at least a remote, nodding acquaintance with Latin; the rest he could not recall. It might have had nothing to do with pudding at all, but the effect was the same.
‘Mr Martin,’ he asked, ‘what is the Latin for pudding, for a pudding of this kind?’
‘Heavens, sir, I cannot tell,’ said Martin. ‘What do you say, Doctor?’
‘Sebi confectio discolor,’ said Stephen. ‘Will I pour you a glass of wine, colleague?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,” said Davidge, standing between Jack and Pullings, ‘but it will be eight bells in two minutes and Oakes and I must relieve the gunner.’
‘Lord,’ cried Pullings, ‘so you must. How time flies! But you must drink to the bride and bridegroom first. Come, gentlemen, bumpers if you please, and no heel-taps. Here’s to the bride’ – bowing to Clarissa – ‘and here’s to the happy man,’ bowing to Oakes.
They all rose, and swaying on the roll they cried Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay, stretched out their glasses to Clarissa, crying Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay again, and then to Oakes, with a final cheer in which all the seamen servants joined, a fine deep roar.
When the party had broken up, Stephen took Padeen forward and they emptied Reade with a powerful emetic, undressed him, cleaned him, and put him back into his hammock, still three parts drunk and very unhappy. Stephen sat with him for a while after Padeen had carried off the basin, dirty clothes and dressings: Reade had the whole starboard midshipmen’s berth to himself, immediately opposite the Oakeses, and very spacious it looked under the swinging lantern. The Surprise had from early times been a law unto herself as far as berthing was concerned, and now that she carried no Marines and a smaller body of seamen, the carpenter, bosun and gunner had taken advantage of the elbow-room to move themselves into cabins right forward, private triangular snugs, so that now the two midshipmen’s berths were comparatively isolated, with the gunroom bulkhead and the ladder to the upper deck aft, the great screened-off space where the crew slept forward, and nothing in the broad passage between them but the captain’s pantry, a stout erection the height of the ‘tween decks, seven feet across and five fore and aft.
At one time Reade had spoken in a confused, incoherent way about Mrs Oakes: he had loved her so: he was sure his heart must break. But now he was asleep: even pulse, regular breath. Stephen dowsed his light and walked quietly out into the gloom of the lower deck. A movement on the far side, the larboard side, of the captain’s pantry caught his eye, a dark coat that at once slipped out of sight: it was perhaps a little surprising that
the dark coat did not call out to him, did not ask after Reade, but he thought nothing of it until he was climbing the ladder by the gunroom door, when he glanced to the left and realized that the man must now be standing against the forward side of the pantry, the only side hidden from the ladder. ‘It would have been much wiser to hurry on through the screen,’ he reflected. ‘So much less furtive, so much more easily explained in the extremely improbable event of any explanation being called for.’
He climbed on, grasping the rail with both hands, the ring of his lantern between his teeth, for the Surprise was now capering like a wanton, the movement growing stronger as he rose.
It had early been laid down that there would be no beating to quarters today, and he found Jack Aubrey gazing out of the windward scuttle with his hands behind his back and a sombre look on his face. He turned, brightening, and said ‘Why, there you are, Stephen. A pot of coffee will be up in a moment, if that wicked fellow has not upset his kettle again –
she is grown a little skittish. You have been looking at Reade, I dare say? How does he do, poor little chap?’
‘He will survive, with the blessing.’
‘I suppose when you lose an arm there is less of you to take up your wine. I know Nelson was very abstemious and – Hold up,’ he cried, ‘Clap on to the locker.’ He eased Stephen into a chair, saying, ‘God’s my life, Stephen, you absolutely turned a somersault. I hope nothing is broke?’
‘Nothing, I thank you,’ said Stephen, feeling his head. ‘But had I not been wearing a wig, Martin would have had a depressed fracture of the skull to deal with. Surely, Jack, that was a very wild capricious bound?’
‘She will do it sometimes, I am afraid, with a cross-sea and an increasing breeze that has not settled – that varies three or four points in as many minutes. There are all sorts of platitudes about ships being like women: unpredictable, if you know what I mean.’
‘It was a shrewd blow,’ said Stephen, rubbing the top of his head.
Killick came in with the coffee-pot slung in elegant gimbals and two thick, resistant, heavy-weather mugs that had seen service in many a furious sea. He instantly grasped the situation and told Stephen in a rather louder, more didactic voice than usual that he should always keep a weather-eye open, and have one hand for himself and another for the ship.
‘Your best new-curled wig, too,’ he said, taking it away. ‘All crushed and filthy.’
‘When we have had our cup, I shall take off my finery and go on deck,’ said Jack. ‘I believe the evening will be a little too lively for music, so what do you say to backgammon?’
‘With all my heart,’ said Stephen.
For many years they had played chess, with fairly even fortunes; but they played with such intensity, being extremely unwilling to lose, that in time it came to resemble hard labour rather than amusement; and they being unusually close friends remorse for beating the other sometimes outweighed the triumph of winning. They had also played countless games of piquet, but in this case luck ran so steadily in Stephen’s direction, good cards and sequences flocked to him in such numbers, that it became dull; and they had fixed upon backgammon as a game in which the mere throw of the dice played so large a part that it was not shameful to lose, but in which there was still enough skill for pleasure in victory. As well as those of the usual kind, they had heavy-weather tables in which the men were provided with a peg, and Stephen had set them out long, long before Jack returned, wet, with his hair draggled down the side of his face. ‘I believe you will have a