pigtail in both hands and with his last remaining strength hurled him against the corner post, himself falling as he did so.
In the silence that followed the enormous din the seconds carried their men away: but whereas Evans’s friends could just prop him, staggering, half-conscious, half-blind to the mark when time was called, Killick and Farley could not.
Bonden lay flat on his back, his face to the placid sky; and Stephen, kneeling over him, said, ‘Do not fear, Jack. There is a concussion, sure, but there is no fracture. The coma may last some hours or even days, but then, with the blessing you will have your coxswain again. Killick, now, will you find a hurdle? We must carry him home and put him in the dark.’
Behind them fighting had broken out between the Woolcombe men, who swore the throw was foul, and the now anxious minority of the gamekeeper’s friends and their supporters.
But Killick and a shepherd had brought the hurdle, and the sad little train walked off towards Woolcombe House, disregarding the battle.
‘Was it fair, at all?’ asked Stephen in a low voice, when they had gone a little way.
‘Well, just, just, I believe,’ said Dundas. ‘Gentleman Jackson held Mendoza by the hair when he beat him in ’97 and
surely that is Mrs Oakes coming along the path with the stable dog?’
It was indeed: and a variety of signs – her somewhat hesitant attitude, the improbability of her choice of a walk, and many more scarcely to be defined – awoke all the intelligence-agent in Maturin. Profiting from the hurdle-bearers’ necessary slowness he hurried forward: Clarissa had a total confidence in him and told him exactly what was afoot, taking no more than ten words to do so. ‘Will I deal with it?’ he asked. She nodded and he rejoined the party. ‘Jack,’ he cried at some distance, ‘I grieve to say that there has been a sad misunderstanding and the chaise you are sharing with Mr Judd has been ordered for Wooton: it stands there at this moment, and he begs you will join him directly.’
Jack was not always very quick in taking the point of Stephen’s longer, more elaborate and even wholly mythical anecdotes, but he knew his friend intimately well – he could interpret a certain fixity of look better than most men – he had a vague recollection of Mr Judd as one of the deeper old files of Whitehall, and without hesitation he replied, ‘Hell and death: I must go at once.’ And to Clarissa, ‘Thank you so much for coming. Please give my dear love to Sophie and tell her I am very sorry if the blunder was my fault, as I dare say it was.’
‘I will see you a furlong on your way,’ said Stephen. ‘No more, because of my patient.’
In the course of this furlong he told his news and Jack cried, ‘God bless Diana and Mrs Oakes, that fine woman I am sure Sophie would have thought of it in time – she don’t want spirit, no, nor yet bottom – but perhaps not quite quick enough. It had to be taken on the half-volley. Bless
them I would not have missed that committee for the world, and as for the blockade during three or four days, why at this stage of the war, my withers are unwrung’ A pause ‘Yet I do wish to God I were going up without this damned
unlucky omen. It really does cast a prodigious damp on a man’s spirit. The keeper was dead beat: there was not another round in him. And even if he had come up to the mark Bonden only had to give him a shove to floor him for good.’
Stephen knew of old that it was useless to call out against the weakness of mere superstition: no sailor he had ever known, even the most eminent, even a full admiral in all the glory of gold lace, had ever been moved an inch by reason, however eloquent. He therefore came to a halt, said, ‘Fare thee well, dear Jack, and may all the luck in the world go with thee. I must follow my patient.’
‘You do not fear for him, Stephen?’ asked Jack, looking earnestly into his face.
‘I do not. God bless, now.’
‘One last thing. Do you suppose they meant to nobble me?’
‘That is an expression I do not know.’
‘Of course not. I beg pardon. It is a cant word I first heard when I was breeding horses at Ashgrove: the riff-raff hanging about racing-stables and Newmarket and so on use it to mean interfering with a horse so he don’t run well, and you can safely bet on him losing.
There was a nobbler called Dawson hanged for it not long since. What I should have said was: do you think Griffiths and his uncle, our commanding officer, worked out this order to rejoin so as to prevent me from attending the committee?’
‘It would not surprise me in Griffiths; but since I have never set eyes on Lord Stranraer I cannot form any opinion of him at all.’
‘To be sure. It was a foolish question. But I hope you will see him on Sunday. I mean to come back on Friday, post down to Torbay on Saturday, and there we are sure to find some vessel belonging to the squadron that will carry us out, perhaps by Sunday. They always put in to Torbay, you know.’
‘Until Friday, then: and God and St Patrick go with you.’
There are few more versatile saints than Patrick, and he managed the parliamentary business and the return journey supremely well until the very last lap, when one of the horses lost a shoe just outside Trugget’s Hatch, a village that would have been in clear sight of Woolcombe had a hill not stood between them. There they waited at the King’s Head and Eight Bells, and while the smith was blowing up his forge Jack sat in the bar, where he called for a pot of ale.
‘Well, squire,’ said the landlord, setting it down and wiping the table, ‘might I be so bold…’
He knew Jack well; he had a sister married to a commoner on Simmon’s Lea; he was by only one remove an interested party; yet he hesitated until he saw Captain Aubrey’s beaming face emerge from the tankard, with an unmistakable look of satisfied desire.’. . .
so bold as to ask whether everything was to your liking?’
‘Mr Andrews, I could not have wished for better. The petition for inclosure was rejected both for inadequate majority and above all for the lord of the manor’s direct and firmly-stated opposition. So the common is safe and we can go on in the way we are used to.’
The landlord laughed aloud with pleasure, and having dried his hand on his breeches he held it out. ‘Give you joy of your victory, sir. That will wipe Black Whiskers’ eye: the lads went through his pheasant coverts the night after that dirty God-damned match, and I dare say that when they hear of this they will stir up his deer. Oh, sir, may I tell Tom, my sister Hawkins’s son? She will be so relieved. She was cruel anxious – worn thin and pale – not a scrap of paper to show the place is theirs, though there are Hawkinses in the churchyard by the score.’ His voice could be heard moving towards the back of the house: ‘Tom! Tom!
Tom! Get on your nag and tell your mam she’s safe at last. The Captain did the buggers in the eye.’
Tom’s nag was np Flying Childers, but running in its own curious nameless pace, belly very near to the ground, feet twinkling, it did reach Woolhampton well before the Trug get’s Hatch smith had fitted and fastened the shoe, so that when Jack’s chaise reached Woolhampton both sides of the street were lined with cheering villagers, many of whom wished to shake his hand, while others told him they had already known it would end like this; but most were content with bawling, ‘Good old Captain Jack’ or ‘Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay’. And when it reached Woolcombe House, there was his entire family, the entire household, arranged on the broad steps, like the tableau closing a Drury Lane play with a happy ending, except that no legitimate theatre would ever have countenanced so squalid a pair of children as Brigid and George – the little girl had inherited her parents’ fearless attitude towards horses and she had been showing her cousin how to muck out the stable in which the splendid borrowed team spent what time they could spare from carrying Mrs Maturin about the countryside. Having kissed the women all round Jack shook Bonden’s bandaged hand and in a low voice fit for one so battered he said, ‘Well, Bonden, I hope I see you tolerably comfortable? I scarcely thought to find you on your feet so soon, after that cruel foul play.’