The next morning the blackboard was present, fixed by thumbscrews within easy reach of the Captain’s hand, and from it the boys were taught, with words and diagrams, the nature of sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant, the relations between them, and their value in helping to find your position in a prodigious ocean, no shore, no landmark for ten thousand miles. All these things were to be found in Robinson’s Elements of Navigation which, together with the Requisite Tables and Nautical Almanac, lay in their sea-chests, a necessary part of their equipment; and Mr Walkinshaw had tried to lead the youngsters through them. But nothing came anywhere near the concentrated forceful instructions of Jove himself; and after what seemed an anxious eternity to the midshipmen’s berth but which in fact lasted no more than a few of the Bellona’s usual patrols from Douarnenez Bay to the Black Rocks in hazy, sometimes foggy weather in which they saw nothing at all and sometimes with such light airs that on occasion they lacked even
steerage-way and the Captain had all the time in the world for trigonometry.
Yet Thursday came at last, a blessed Thursday, a make-and-mend day when the mist cleared, a decent breeze blew from the north-east and the youngsters sat in the sun on the forecastle with their sea-daddies showing them how to darn their stockings or mend torn clothes or tie the simple knots and learn the elements of splicing – a Thursday on which the lookout at the masthead hailed ‘On deck, there. A ship’s topsails right to leeward.’
Presently most of those who felt they could be spared below were aloft with telescopes and after a while it was found that she was the Ramillies, now lying to and presumably watching some suspect sail northwards along the Passage du Four, out of sight from the Bellona. No sooner was this agreed to by all than a second vessel was seen, a cutter coming from the direction of Ushant, beyond the Black Rocks; and then even a third, the heavy frigate Doris. After such loneliness the bay seemed positively crowded. The Ramillies was a right welcome sight to all hands and particularly to Jack: her captain, Billy Fanshawe, was an old friend of his. So indeed was the Doris; but what really delighted every man aboard, including those who could neither read nor write, was the identification of the cutter as one belonging to the flagship and employed for distribution of the mail throughout the squadron under Admiral Stranraer’s command.
The Doris, out in the offing, had altered course to intercept the cutter well before the Bellona and she had her letters first, although Harding, who had left his wife expecting her first child, spread an unreasonable amount of canvas. Yet quite soon the Bellonas’ grim, discontented looks gave way to tense and happy anticipation: the cutter came neatly alongside, seized the net dangling from a whip to the mainyard, put a fine round mailsack into it and sped off towards the distant Ramillies.
The sack was carried hotfoot to the great cabin, where Jack, the first lieutenant and the clerk sorted it: from the
cabin it filtered down, first to the wardroom, then by way of the clerk to the warrant-officers and petty officers and then by way of the midshipmen to the ratings of their particular divisions.
Jack’s mail obviously stayed where it was, and as soon as the cabin-door had closed behind Harding and the clerk he seized the first on the pile, a letter addressed, and badly addressed, in that most familiar of hands. They had parted on indifferent terms and he opened it with the liveliest expectation of all their affection being fully restored, smiling as he did so. The letter was dated from Woolcombe on the fourteenth: with these northerly winds it had taken no more than five days.
Mr Aubrey,
It is with a deepest, the very deepest concern, that I must tell you I have been shown unanswerable proof of your infidelity, In open contempt of your promise before God’s altar
you lay with a woman called Amanda Smith in Canada and got her with child. Deny it if you can. I have the proofs and I mean to take advice. In the mean time I shall give the Admiral notice to leave my house at Ashgrove and return there with the children.
Then came some tear-blotted and scratched-out lines. The obviously composed and recopied letter now abandoned
its original and improvised, grew far less coherent, far less
legible. He had just made out the words ‘you left her bed and came into mine’ when he was called on deck.
‘Sir,’ said Harding, ‘you asked me to tell you if Ramillies gave any sign of life. This last minute she has thrown out
our number and Captain repair aboard. I have acknowledged and given word to ready your barge.’
‘Thank you, Mr Harding,’ said Jack. ‘Make all suitable sail, if you please.’
He returned to the cabin and having sat for a while he reached out for the other letter from Sophie and opened it with a hesitant, almost trembling hand.
The date was a week before that which he had just read, the writing more wholly familiar.
My dearest Jack,
How sorry I am to have sent you off so shabbily, and for a great while I have been meaning to beg pardon for my bad temper – trying to tell you how even a most loving heart
– a female heart – can be affected by the ill-humoured Moon: but these things are very hard for a sadly ignorant creature to set down on paper so that the words give any real picture of her feelings, and before I had written anything but odd headings such as Love and Kisses and Forgiveness a letter came from Bath with the most frightful news.
You will certainly remember that Mama lived with a friend called Mrs Morris – the Honourable Mrs Morris
– who helped her with the business, and that they had a manservant, a worthless fellow we all disliked when they lived here, particularly your seamen; but he was useful in the business because he understood horse-racing and the laying of odds.
Well, Mrs Morris has run off with him, apparently taking all the money and anything else they could carry and when Mama heard they were married, legally married in a church, she fell down senseless and had to be bled, and she has had fits ever since, laughing and crying. With dear Diana’s help I brought her back here -she had almost destroyed their apartment in Pulteney Street and anyhow she was not fit to live there alone -the servants, apart from old Molly, had all left – and I am afraid she behaved dreadfully in the coach –
and since the girls are back from school bringing friends with them, the little Nugent children, I have had to put her in your study, so near the necessary room: but do not fear –
we have put a bed in the left-hand corner with a wardrobe and a chest of drawers behind it (I cannot tell you how kind dear Mrs Oakes has been) and she will never come near your precious ship-models or surveying instruments.
When you come on leave (and oh may it be soon, my love) and when the holiday girls and their friends are gone, we will move her upstairs; or possibly back to Bath, with a much more suitable companion. She says there is a clergyman who was on the brink of making her an offer.
Dear Jack, please do not worry about having money sent to me for housekeeping; we are very well with what comes from the farm, the dairy, the kitchen-garden and my poultry-yard, but even if it were not for them, Diana absolutely insists on giving us a very handsome rent for her wing of the house and the stabling – such stabling now! Such horses! With the help of the gentleman who lent her the coach she took you and Stephen down in
– she has it yet – she pawned that enormous great blue diamond she brought back with her from America – ‘Be damned to living on £200 a year,’ she cried – and is launching into breeding Arabs again. And although that sad place at Barham is not yet sold, she has taken all Meares’ pasture for them. She said it was absurd to keep the Blue Peter as they call it hidden away in a jeweller’s case – she could not wear it at our Dorchester assemblies, only in London or Paris – and in any case she would soon have it again, once Stephen’s affairs were in order. She looks forward extremely to a coach and six…
Jack laid the paper down, and in a dull, heavy way he wondered how he had come to be so deeply foolish as to leave Amanda’s letters in a square cardboard box among his official and business correspondence; a certain liking, a certain gratitude had prevented him from balling them up and throwing them away. There would have been an in