‘Never in life. I should be very happy to breakfast on
these gentlemen’s catch, in the company of their friends, whom I met on the stairs. They seemed good-natured young ladies – and they were singing, oh so sweetly.’
It was a successful breakfast. The young ladies, finding that Diana gave herself neither airs nor graces, soon got over their shyness; the trout were excellent; the conversation free and cheerful; and at the end Nelly, having run upstairs for a small guitar, gave them a song, cheered to the echo by many people in other parts of the inn, and by a beaming, barely recognizable Killick at the window, while Dolby begged Diana and her party to stay to dinner – there would be a famous hare soup, and blackcock from Somerset.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she replied. ‘I would with all my heart, but I have promised to deliver these gentlemen to Torbay, and deliver them I shall, in spite of a certain timidity on the part of some of the crew.’
Chapter Four 82This she did quite early the next morning, they having spent the night at a coaching-inn some way inland, for the fishingvillages on the coast itself were somewhat barbarous, and she brought them over the northern hills at the turn of the forenoon tide.The present blockade of Brest was being carried out by a much smaller squadron than that commanded by Cornwallis in the heroic days of 1803, yet even so Torbay was filled with shipping – sloops, cutters, liberty-boats and victuallers inshore and several larger men-of-war, ships of the line and frigates in the offing, the whole diversified by ships on passage and the scores of red-sailed Brixham trawlers coming round Berry Head, close-hauled on the freshening northeast breeze, for the south-wester had died in the course of the night.Diana reined in on the brow of the hill, and as they sat there, gazing down through the cool clear air, smiling as they did so, an elderly two-decker lying beyond the Thatcher rock hoisted the Blue Peter and fired a gun, galvanizing the three of her boats that were ashore.’That must be the old Mars,’ said Dundas. ‘Woolton has her now.”What a glorious moment to get under way: breeze and tide just as they might have been prayed for,’ said Jack. ‘Harry Woolton is a fine brisk fellow, and if he can pick his boats off the Berry he will be in with Ushant by breakfast tomorrow. Oh Lord, how I hope I may catch one of her people. Dear Diana, Cousin Diana, pray be a good creature for once and run us down into the village – don’t spare the
horses and never mind our necks, so I get alongside that yawl before they shove off.’
‘Do, my dear, if you please,’ said Stephen. ‘It is our certain duty to be aboard without the loss of a minute.’
But the road down wound intolerably, and even the most skilful, most intrepid whip could not clear a passage through the dense, sullen regiment of dull-red bullocks that flowed slowly but steadily from a small side-lane, stopping and staring, deaf to cries, entreaties and threats. By the time the sweating, exasperated horses had brought the coach to the strand at last all Mars’ boats were skimming over the main towards the headland, there to intercept their ship in her course; and no amount of hailing, however passionate, would
bring them back. Nor was there any report of another ship going for Ushant before Thursday, if that.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Stephen, taking off his hat to a grave elderly man in black who had a solen shell in one hand and who was watching an immature gannet with close attention, unconscious of the loud and often ribald conversation of the liberty-men and their shipmates. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I am a stranger in this place, and should be extremely grateful for the direction of a respectable inn that would shelter my wife and horses while my friends and I, sea-officers, seek for some vessel outward-bound.’
The grave gentleman did not at once apprehend the ques tion, but when it had been repeated he said, ‘Why, sir, I am
sorry to say that as far as I know there is no such place in this village, if village it may be called. At the Feathers, to be sure, she would not be insulted with the company of – of trollops; yet the Feathers has no stable-yard, no coachhouse, being little more than an eating-house, or tavern: a genteel tavern, however, capable of providing a lady with a pot of chocolate. But,’ he went on after a slight hesitation, ‘have I not the pleasure of speaking to Dr Maturin?’
‘Indeed, sir, that is my name,’ said Stephen, not quite pleased at being recognized so easily; and through his mind darted the reflection ‘Intelligence-agents should have turnip faces, indistinguishable one from another; their height should be the common height; their complexion sallow; their conversation prosy, commonplace, unmemorable.’
‘I had the happiness of hearing your discourse on Ornithorhynchus paradoxus at the Royal Society – such eloquence, such pregnant reflections! I was taken by my cousin Courteney.’
Stephen bowed. He was acquainted with Hardwicke Courteney, who though only a mathematician when he was elected had come to a reasonably intimate acquaintance with bats, with west-European bats.
‘My name is Hope, sir,’ said the other, loud enough to be heard over the strong voices of Jack and Dundas asking a young officer in a gig some two hundred yards offshore
‘whether Acasta were going to sail tomorrow or not till Bloody Thursday?’ ‘And’ (more gently, with a distinct shade of embarrassment), ‘perhaps I may propose a solution my cousin Courteney has a large decayed house not a furlong from here. It has no furniture – indeed it is almost entirely empty apart from the bats in the upper chambers –
but it has noble stabling and a most spacious yard. May I suggest that while Mrs Maturin sits in the decent comfort of the Feathers, the coach and horses should take their ease in Cousin Coürteney’s inclosure? I have a rustic youth who looks after me while I count and register the bats – I camp in any odd corner – and he will certainly find hay, water, oats, whatever is necessary.’
‘You are very good indeed, sir,’ cried Stephen, shaking Mr Hope by the hand, ‘and I should be most uncommon happy to accept your generous offer. Allow me to introduce you to my wife.’ They made their way slowly through the throng towards the coach, and as they went Stephen said, ‘If my friends do not find a suitable conveyance today, perhaps we might Count bats together.’
With the horses cared for and Diana installed with Stephen in the Feathers’ St Vincent parlour (the Feathers himself had served in the glorious action, losing a leg below 85the knee) and Bonden in the snug with the sea-chests, Jack and Dundas set off again, with Killick in tow to question his innumerable acquaintance among the seamen, thick along the highwater mark or lying in the dunes behind.
The seamen, upon the whole, were a very decent set of men and Jack felt happy among them and at home – many he had served with and barely once did he forget a name – yet once again it surprised, even astonished him that such a decent set, with so much hard-won knowledge, should have so primitive a notion of what was fun, and that they should attract such an obviously false set of hangers-on, such a forbidding crew of doxies, so very often short, thick and swarthy, sometimes so obviously diseased.
Still, both he and Heneage had known this long before their voices broke, when they were mere first-class volunteers, not even midshipmen, and they were not much moved by the spectacle, repeated again and again as they went along from respectable taverns to boozing-kens to billiard rooms to places that were not quite open brothels so early in the day. They were looking primarily for a captain who might
* be on the wing for Ushant and the squadron; but any officer, commissioned, warrant or petty who could give news was welcome – or of course old shipmates now serving out there. It was a homely quest, variegated and pleasant in its way, thrusting land-borne cares into the background; and they learnt a great deal about the present way of life, the most recent news, out there off the Black Rocks and what was called Siberia.
Yet familiar and congenial though this was – a kind of inverted homecoming, with the smell of sea and tide-wrack in their nostrils – it seemed as though their quest, so hopefully, so confidently begun, must end in disappointment and a dreary search for lodgings. A wider, much wider stretch of sand was showing now: the breeze was still steady in the true northeast, but the lovely tide alas was at half ebb as they reached the last place of all, a more reputable eatinghouse than most.