Post Captain (Aubrey & Maturin, #2)

by Patrick O'Brian

‘So I hear that you have a marble bath, Dr Maturin? That must be a great comfort to you, in such a climate.’ ‘Certainly, ma’am. I conceive it to be Visigothic.’ ‘Not marble?’ ‘Visigothic marble, my dear madam, from a baptistery destroyed by the Moors.’ ‘And you have a castle?’ ‘Oh, it is only a small place. I keep one wing in order, to go up there from time to time.’ ‘For the porcupine-hunting, no doubt?’ Stephen bowed. ‘And for my rents, ma’am. In some ways Spain is a more direct country than England, and when we say rack-rent in those parts, rack-rent is what we mean – why, we make them pay for the use of the instrument.’

It was clear that the Magdalene had not yet repented: she was standing on a quay with blue ruins in the background – a blue that swept with varying intensities through her robe to the sea – with gold plates, ewers and basins heaped up on a crimson cloth, and an expression of mild complacency on her face. Her blue dress had blown off – a fresh double-reef topsail breeze – and so had a filmy white garment, exposing handsome limbs and a firm, though opulent bosom. Jack had been a long time at sea, and this drew his attention; however, he shifted his gaze after a moment, surveyed the rest of the picture and sought for something appropriate, perhaps even witty, to say. He longed to produce a subtle and ingenious remark, but he longed in vain – perhaps the day had been too full – and he was obliged to fall back on ‘Very fine – such a blue.’ Then a small vessel in the lower left-hand corner caught his eye, something in the nature of a pink; she was beating up for the harbour, but it was obvious from the direction of the lady’s clothes that the pink would be taken aback the moment she rounded the headland. ‘As soon as she catches the land-breeze she will be in trouble,’ he said. ‘She will never stay, not with those unhandy lateens, and there is no room to wear; so there she is on a lee-shore. Poor fellows. I am afraid there is no hope for them.’ ‘That is exactly what Maturin told me you would say,’ cried Diana, squeezing his arm. ‘How well he knows you, Aubrey.’ ‘Well, a man don’t...

‘She does not look so mighty strange to me, except that she seems to have both ends sharp, and no beak-head, in the sense of that dip, that anfractuosity, to which we are accustomed; but after all, the same remarks apply to the curragh in which Saint Brendan made his voyage. I do not understand what all the coil is about.’ ‘His curragh stayed well? She sailed against wind and tide?’ ‘Certainly. Did he not reach the Islands of the Blessed?’

‘Mr Pullings, press those men, if you please,’ cried Jack from the boat. ‘And that fellow in the mud. Two more? Capital. All aboard? Where’s the Doctor? Pass the word for the Doctor. Ah, there you are. Shove off. Altogether, now, give way. Give way cheerly. What a prime hand he will make, to be sure,’ he added in an aside, ‘once he’s used to our ways – a proper bulldog of a man.’

Throughout the night the wind backed until it was blowing hard from the north; there it stayed, north-east, north, or north-west, never allowing more than close-reefed topsails, if that, for nine days on end, nine days of rain, snow, steep wicked seas, and a perpetual fighting for their lives; nine days in which Jack rarely left the deck and young Parslow never once took off his clothes; nine days of wearing, lying to, scudding under bare poles, and never a sight of the sun – no notion of their position within fifty miles and more. And when at last a strong south-wester allowed them to make up their enormous leeway, their noonday observation showed that they were where they had started from.

‘Another roll like that, and we shall have no masts,’ said Pullings, as the remaining crockery, the glasses and the inhabitants of the gun-room all shot over to the lee. ‘We’ll lose the mizzen first, Doctor,’ – picking Stephen tenderly out of the wreckage – ‘and so we’ll be a brig; then we’ll lose the foremast, so we’ll be a right little old sloop; then we’ll lose the main, and we’ll be a raft, which is what we ought to have begun as.’

‘Smell is of all senses by far the most evocative: perhaps because we have no vocabulary for it – nothing but a few poverty-stricken approximations to describe the whole vast complexity of odour – and therefore the scent, unnamed and unnamable, remains pure of association; it cannot be called upon again and again, and blunted, by the use of a word; and so it strikes afresh every time, bringing with it all the circumstances of its first perception. This is particularly true when a considerable period of time has elapsed.

‘No, Doctor,’ said he, leaning back from the board, ‘you may struggle and wruggle as you please, but I have him pinned. It is mate in three.’ ‘It is muchwhat like,’ said Stephen. ‘Must I resign?’ ‘I think you must. Though I like a man that fights, to be sure. Doctor,’ he said, ‘have you reflected upon the phoenix?’ ‘Not, perhaps, as often as I should have done. As I remember, she makes her nest in Arabia Felix, using cinnamon for the purpose; and with cinnamon at six and eight-pence, surely this is a thoughtless thing to do?’

Quick’s the word and sharp’s the action.

‘Volunteers, volunteers to come along with me and cut out that corvette. Richards, serve out cutlasses, pistols, axes. Mr Parker, you will stay in the ship.’ – The men would not follow Parker: how many would follow him? ‘Mr Smithers, the red cutter: you and your Marines board over her starboard bow. Mr Pullings, blue cutter to her larboard quarter, and the moment you are aboard cut her cables. Take axes. Then lay aloft and let fall her tops’ls. Attend to nothing else at all. Pick your men: quick. The rest come along with me and look alive, now. There’s not a moment to be lost.’ Killick handed him his pistols and he dropped into his gig, never looking behind him. The Polychrests poured over the side, thump thump thump down into the boats. The clash of arms, a voice bawling in his ear ‘Squeeze up, George. Make room, can’t you?’ How many men in the boats? Seventy? Eighty? Even more. A magnificent rise in his heart, all the blackness falling clear away.

‘Gentlemen,’ said Stephen, turning back his cuffs, ‘you will observe that I take my point of departure from the iliac crest; I traverse thus, and so find my point of incision.’ So, in the fore-cabin, Jack held the point of his carver over a dimple in the venison pasty and said, ‘Allow me to cut you a little of this pasty, ma’am. It is one of the few things I can carve. When we have a joint, I usually call upon my friend Dr Maturin, whom I hope to introduce to you this afternoon. He is such a hand at carving.’ ‘If you please, sir,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘It looks so very good. But I cannot quite believe what you say about carving. You cut out the Fanciulla only the other day, and surely that was a very pretty piece of carving.’