In the great cabin the Admiral half-rose from his desk, gave Jack a hand and said, ‘Well, Aubrey, here you are at last. Good morning to you.’
‘Good morning to you, my lord. I trust I see you well?’
‘Oh, as for that.. .’ said the Admiral. ‘Sit down, Aubrey, and tell me how you come to be so infernally late.’
‘Why, sir, I regret it extremely, but by the time your orders reached Woolcombe I had already left on my way to
* London. I did not receive them until I came back, when I set out directly, boarding the tender in Torbay.’
The Admiral gave him a long, considering look. ‘You was going to the House, I collect?’
‘Yes, sir. I had to attend a committee deciding on a petition for the inclosure of a common.’
‘Simmon’s Lea? The common in which my nephew Griffiths is interested? It seems to me very suitable for inclosure. I told him so. I advised him to proceed.’
‘So I understand, my lord: but I am afraid there was a great deal of opposition on the part of the commoners and
* with all respects to you, sir – on my part as lord of the manor. In short, the petitioners’
majority was considered insufficient and the petition was dismissed.’
‘I see, I see,’ said the Admiral, looking wicked. He made
two abortive starts, but then in a controlled voçe he said, ‘To return to service matters, I must tell you that your frequent absences on parliamentary leave has had a most injurious effect upon Bellona’s discipline and general efficiency. She was never, at the best of times a particularly well disciplined or efficient ship; but when I was drilling the squadron in the mouth of Douarnenez Bay on Friday, while you were amusing yourself in town, she very nearly fell aboard of me in a very simple manoeuvre – had to be fended off, with half a dozen voices on her fo’csle and quarterdeck bawling out contradictory orders. You know as well as I do that Captain Jenkins is no more of a seaman than his grandmother, even when he is sober, but I had expected more of your officers. After all, you chose many of them -they were your personal choice, having served under you as reefers or the like. No one would ever call you much of a seaman yourself, Aubrey; but hitherto you have been uncommonly fortunate in picking the men who actually sail
the ship. Now, I regret to say, your luck seems to be running out. If on returning to the Bellona you will take the trouble to glance aloft I think that even you will be startled by the
number of Irish pennants everywhere to be seen, to say nothing of the great streaks of filth oozing from her head:
though perhaps you prefer it that way.’ A pause. ‘I intend
posting you to the inshore squadron. The navigation in the
bay is extremely difficult and arduous; the innumerable reefs have not all been accurately charted – very far from it, indeed
and some months of beating to and fro, up and down, will
teach you and your people more in the way of seamanship than countless lazy miles rolling down the trades with a
flowing sheet. Furthermore, when the French in Brest see the kind of opposition that is waiting for them inshore, they may well be tempted to come out, and then the ships in better order may be able to deal with them.’ The Admiral moved his lips for a few moments after this, but silently; then, visibly recovering himself, he said, ‘I believe your surgeon is called Maturin, Dr Maturin. Be so good as to tell him that I should like to see him.’
‘Dr Maturin,’ said the Admiral as Stephen came in, much delayed by a visit to the sick-berth, ‘I am very happy to see you again, sir. When I heard your name I hoped that you might be the same gentleman that I met in Bath, with Prince William, and now I find that I was right. How do you do, sir? Pray take a seat.’
‘How do you do, my lord?’ said Stephen in a noncommittal voice. ‘I did not at once recall.
..’
‘No, I am sure you did not,’ said the Admiral. ‘I was plain Koop in those days, Captain Hanbury Koop: I did not inherit until some years later. My name is now Stranraer.’
‘So I have heard, my lord. May I offer my belated but hearty congratulations? Sure, it is a glorious thing to be a peer.’
‘Well,’ said Stranraer, laughing, ‘it may not be quite what people expect, but it has its advantages. On occasion it gives one a certain amount of extra power, like a double-purchase block. But my purpose – one of my purposes, I may say -for troubling you is this: when we were sitting by his Highness’ bed I was seized with a very violent very sudden pain here’ – laying his hand on his waistcoat – ‘and for a moment I thought it was the heart-pang, that I was going to die. But after a couple of words you whipped something out of your bag and in two minutes – no, not so much – the pain was gone. I was deeply impressed. So was the Duke, my old shipmate. He said, “There’s Dr Maturin for you. He can cure anybody, so long as the tide is not on the ebb, and so long as he likes the patient.”‘
‘I am afraid that is quite a widespread superstition,’ said Stephen. ‘In point of fact I can do nothing that any other ordinary medical man cannot do: the tide nor my liking is neither here nor there.’
Stranraer smiled, shaking a sceptical head. ‘So my first purpose,’ he went on, ‘is to beg you will tell my surgeon Sherman the name of your elixir: the pain comes back from time to time, but the ignorant dog cannot find out the remedy.’
‘No, my lord: there I must protest. Mr Sherman is a
very eminent physician. He has also made some surprising advances in surgery and the treatment of wounds; and no man knows more about the seafaring mind – or the minds of landsmen, for that matter. He was consulted in the King’s malady.’
‘Yes. I have heard that he was much cried up as a mad-doctor by land, and I wonder at his taking to the sea: but if he cannot cure an infernal burning physical pain, what good is he to me? My mind is as sound as a bell. I have no call for a mad-doctor, nor have my people. But I am wondering…’ He rang for his steward. ‘Light along some madeira, there; and bear a hand, bear a hand.’
‘Now I understand it, sir,’ he began when the wine was poured, ‘you and Captain Aubrey have been shipmates for many a commission, and you often mess together. From this
* I believe it may be presumed that you are – how shall I put it? – well assorted, which does Aubrey much honour I am sure: but it must also be presumed that a man of your superior education and shining parts will have acquired a great influence over him.’
‘There again, my lord, I must beg leave to disagree. Cap-tam Aubrey’s intelligence and learning are in many ways far
superior to mine. He has read papers on nutation to the
Royal Society, and upon Jovian satellites, that soared far beyond my reach, but which were much applauded by the mathematical and astronomical fellows.’
If Lord Stranraer was impressed by these words he did not show it but carried straight on,
‘Another reason that I have for supposing this is my very clear recollection of what might properly be called your ascendancy over your illustrious patient – very much the sea-officer, in spite of everything
– at your next visit, when you explained the Spartan system to him and he listened intently, never interrupting though his mouth often opened – explained it with such clarity and at some length: and when you left he said, “Now there’s a head for you, Koop: there’s a head, by God!” And this brings me, in a roundabout way, to my point: to the inclosure. I know that many people, including your friend, look upon
as self-seeking hard-hearted wretches; and it is not impossible that my nephew Griffiths, who lacks the graces, and some of his associates may have strengthened this impression: but please allow me to assure you that there is another side to the question an entirely different side, indeed. Mr Arthur Young cannot be described as anything but a benevolent and very knowledgeable writer on agriculture, and he is in favour of inclosures: the president of your eminently respectable Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, has inclosed thousands of acres, to the great benefit of his tenants and the country; and it must be added, himself. The produce from his estates has increased immensely, because rational cultivation is possible on a large scale: just how great the increase is I naturally cannot tell, but the yield in corn alone from my two manors in Essex has grown by twenty-seven per cent in less than three years since the miserable little scraps were thrown into large fields, properly hedged and ditched: while the harvest from my land in the Fens has increased no less than cent per cent, though to be sure it has taken ten years to do so and the drainage was a great burden, calling for a capital that the villagers could not possibly command.