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decency in doing so, in spite of her extreme silliness. He felt no particular guilt except for this foolishness: by his code a man who was directly challenged must in honesty engage -anything else would be intolerably insulting. Yet had he known of this miserable old woman’s prying and her malice
he would certainly have played the scrub in Canada. He reflected on Sophie’s general attitude towards these matters
– her extreme disapproval of any irregularity, any levity in speaking of even a looseness that reached nowhere near as far as criminal conversation – for her looseness in conversation was criminal, almost in the lawyer’s sense of the term.
‘Sir,’ said his first lieutenant, ‘forgive me for bursting in on you, but your barge is lowering down. And sir, may I tell you Eleanor and I have a daughter, healthy, pink and cheerful?’
‘Give you joy of her with all my heart, William,’ said Jack, crushing his hand. ‘And Mrs Harding too, of course. I am sure that she will turn out to be a good ‘un.’
The ceremony of the side, and the Captain of the Bellona, preceded by a midshipman, stepped into the boat. Bonden shoved off: the bargemen gave way, pulling a fine even stroke across the fifty yards to the Ramillies. The ceremony of the side again, Captain Aubrey piped aboard and kindly greeted by Captain Fanshawe, his senior by a short neck,
who led him into the cabin, placed a glass of brandy in his hand and with a curiously embarrassed air said, ‘Well, Jack, I hope you had an agreeable post?’
‘Not quite what I could have wished, as far as I have looked,’ said Jack. ‘But perhaps something better may appear. How was yours?’
‘A charming letter from Dolly, and quite good news of the children: the rest was mostly bills. But Jack, I am truly sorry to say the cutter also brought me an order from the flag. I am required to acquaint you that on the night you received a pilot from Ramillies and shaped a course for the Raz de Sein two French frigates sailed from Brest with the wind at north-east and are now attacking British and allied merchantmen with great success. This cannot but be attributed to your negligence in not keeping a good lookout since from all appearance the Frenchmen must have crossed your wake. I am therefore to reprimand you severely: and you are hereby severely reprimanded.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jack, without expression. ‘Is that all?’
‘No,’ replied Fanshawe with more expression than he intended and with his eyes on the paper in front of him. ‘I am also under orders to require you to proceed off Ushant without the loss of a moment and to report to the flag: there you will be attached to the offshore squadron where it is hoped that other and perhaps sharper eyes will diminish the very grave consequences of such unseamanly negligence.’
A silence. Neither intended to comment on the Admiral’s prose.
‘Will you dine with me, Jack?’ asked Fanshawe in an attempt at an ordinary conversational tone.
‘Thank you very much, Billy,’ said Jack, ‘but without the loss of a moment stands in the way. And between ourselves, my post acquainted me that I have been taken in adultery without a goddamn leg to stand on and that there is the Devil to pay. It destroys a man’s appetite, you know.’
‘Oh, my dear Jack, I know, I know,’ cried Fanshawe with great feeling. ‘I know only too well. Come, drink up your brandy and I will see you over the side.’
Coming aboard the Bellona again Jack returned the many salutes, walked into his cabin, where the letters were still strewn over a medley of unopened covers, and sent for the master. ‘Mr Woodbine,’ he said, ‘pray shape a course for Ushant, for wherever the offshore squadron is most likely to be lying at this state of the tide and in the particular wind. Or whatever wind we find out there.’
Indeed, the winds the offshore squadron experienced were generally very much harder than those that blew eastward of Ushant, especially the great south-westers, from whose full force and from whose prodigious seas the inshore ships were protected to some degree by the chain of the Saints, which acted as a not very efficient but still appreciable breakwater; and this was even more evident in the Chenal de la Helle, which Woodbine took that afternoon.
They made good progress, and although the topsails had to be double-reefed on reaching the wholly unprotected
Passage de Fromveur it was clear that the wind was diminishing. On the other hand, the monstrous sea it had worked up on the far side of the island was if anything greater still, in spite of the heavy rain, by the time they reached the squadron, lying-to off the Stiff Bay in the north-east; and when Jack, in response to the flagship’s Captain repair aboard, made his way down into his wildly heaving barge he missed his footing for once and with his boat-cloak flying about his ears he fell plump into the water swirling about the boat’s bottom. Much more water joined it on the way across, and it was a damp Jack Aubrey that stood waiting for his interview with the Admiral aboard the Charlotte. A long wait; and although Charles Morton, her captain, was civil enough Jack knew perfectly well that a man who was very much out of favour, who had just received a reprimand, a severe reprimand, was a dangerously infectious leper, above all in a ship governed by Stranraer; and he inflicted neither his remarks nor his presence on any of the officers about him.
When he was taken into the Admiral’s cabin he found that the Captain of the Fleet was also present, sitting at Stranraer’s side behind a long table set athwartship, with the Admiral’s secretary and a clerk at the larboard end. ‘Good evening, my lord,’ he said.
‘Good evening, sir.’
‘Good evening, Captain Aubrey,’ said the Admiral. ‘Sit down. Now what have you to say about these French frigates you allowed to slip past you?’
‘I have only to say that I very much regret any Frenchman should have got out of Brest.’
‘Then you admit they went by?’
‘I must have expressed myself badly, my lord. I expressed nothing but regret at what is said to have taken place: I acknowledged no sort of responsibility.’
‘Where was your ship at sunset on the twenty-seventh?’
‘Two cables north of the Men Glas, my lord, waiting for the tide.’
‘Then how do you explain the fact that two frigates could leave the Goulet de Brest, run out by the Iroise and be seen
a league north of the Ile de Sein three quarters of an hour later without they passed astern of you, almost within hail, certainly in sight?’
‘I do not explain it at all, my lord. But I will assert that there was a lookout at each masthead and of course on the fo’c’sle, able seamen of known reliability.’
‘So you deny the possibility of the Frenchman’s getting past unseen?’
‘I do not deny it. The weather was uncommon thick at times that afternoon and night – the pilot had to feel his way along past the Basse Vieille by the flash of surf – and it is not impossible that she passed unseen. What I do deny is the possibility of her doing so through the fault or negligence of any of my people.’
‘So you blame it all on the weather, do you?’
‘If blame there should be, I should certainly lay it on the fog, my lord.’
The Admiral looked at Calvert, the Captain of the Fleet and the officer principally concerned with discipline. ‘What do you say?’
Calvert, a cold, withdrawn man, tall for a sailor and thin, looked dispassionately at Jack for a moment and said, ‘In cases of this kind there is much to be said for gathering all the available objective evidence. Not only does the ship in question keep a logbook with remarks on the weather but there are also the officers’ and midshipmen’s journals. If this should ever become an important disciplinary matter -if there should be the least question of anyone asking for a court martial – they would certainly have to be looked at.’
Stranraer considered. The clerk mended his pen. ‘Oh, I do not think it will come to that,’
said the Admiral at last.
‘If Captain Aubrey will solemnly declare that his ship was
in a state of full preparedness on the twenty-seventh I shall rest content.’
Jack made the declaration. Stranraer stood up, saying, ‘Then let us leave it at that.’
‘Certainly, my lord. But if you will allow me, I have a request to make: a request for leave.’
‘Leave?’ cried Stranraer. ‘Not more leave, for God’s sake? Parliamentary leave again?’
‘No, my lord, for urgent private affairs.’