Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

‘Turbulence. Aye, turbulence,’ said Mr Wright, shaking his head. ‘Any man that means to build a lighthouse, or a bridge, or a jetty, must think long and hard upon turbulence, and the enormous force exerted by water in violent motion. But oh the wearisome calculations, the uncertainty! On the face of it, sir, your suppositions seem reasonable: surface corrugation does often increase resistance to certain forms of stress; and conceivably your tori might have a favourable effect in directing a spiral flow past the advancing body and in counteracting the rotary force - for your animal is propelled by his tail, is he not?’

‘Just so. A horizontal tail, of course, like the rest of his kind.’

‘It is an interesting problem: but any suggestion that I might put forward, based solely on a verbal description, however well-informed, would scarcely be worth the air expended. If I could see the horn, measure the depth and angle of the spiral and of the larger processes, my opinion might possibly have some slight value.’

‘Sir,’ said Dr Maturin, ‘if you would honour me with your company at dinner, let us say tomorrow, I should be delighted to show you my tusk, a small but perfect specimen.’

Jack and Stephen met again, almost on the very steps of the Crown. ‘Well met, brother,’ cried Jack from a little distance. Stephen considered the Commodore’s face and his gait: was he sober? ‘You look uncommon cheerful, my dear,’ he said, leading him in the direction of the Pigtail Steps. ‘I wish you may not have met with some compliant young person, overwhelmed with all the gold lace upon your person.’

‘Never in life,’ said Jack. ‘Aubrey the Chaste is what I am called throughout the service. I did indeed meet a young person, but one that shaves, when he can afford it. Stephen, you may remember that I have told you about our grievous lack of master’s mates, and how I yearned to replace poor Wantage?’

‘I do not suppose you have mentioned it much above ten times a day.’

‘It is not a question of those midshipmen who are promoted master’s mate merely so that they may pass for lieutenants at the end of their servitude - you know of course that they have to show certificates proving that they have served in that rating for two years - no, no, it is your true master’s mate, the mate to the master of the ship, if you follow me, whose only ambition is to become a master himself, an expert navigator and ship-handler, but as an officer with a warrant from the Navy Board rather than the King’s commission. Admittedly we have Salmon, but how I longed for another, if only to second poor tired old Woodbine! Our mids are good young fellows, but they are not mathematicians, and their navigation is brutish, brutish.’

A vigilant eye aboard Surprise had caught the Commodore’s broad gestures, designed to illustrate the brutishness of the ordinary midshipman’s navigation, and his boat set off across the harbour at once. It took some time to thread its way through the crowded shipping and smallcraft - the whole squadron was refitting at the utmost speed - and Jack went on, ‘Well, the young person I met was John Daniel.’ He looked into Stephen’s face for some gleam of intelligence, recognition of the name: no gleam of any kind whatsoever. ‘John Daniel,’ repeated Jack, ‘we were shipmates for a short while in Worcester. And he was in Agamemnon: Woodbine knows him well, and many other officers. He was paid off at the peace and joined a privateer...’

‘Sir, sir, oh sir, if you please,’ called a shrill boy, purple in the face from running, ‘the Admiral’s compliments and desires you will hand this to Dr Maturin.’

‘My compliments and duty to the Admiral,’ said Jack, taking the letter and passing it to Stephen, ‘and you may tell him that his orders have been carried out.’

They walked down the steps to the waiting boat, and as they walked Stephen turned the letter over and over, looking thoughtful. ‘Do not mind me, I beg,’ said Jack; but already bow-oar, an old seaman who knew Stephen well, was at hand to ensure that he cleared the gunwale with one firm stride.

Bonden shoved off the moment the Commodore was settled, cried ‘Give way,’ and the launch weaved through the mêlée with never a bump until he brought it alongside with his usual perfection.

In the cabin Stephen said, ‘Jack, I fear I have been so indiscreet as to ask Mr Wright to dine aboard without consulting you. I particularly wish to hear his view on the action of water flowing the whole length of the horn you so very kindly gave me long ago, upon the nature of the turbulence set up by the whorls or convolutions, and upon the effect of the more delicate ascending spirals.’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Jack. ‘I should very much like to hear him: no man more. Although I have been waterborne most of my days, I am sadly ignorant of hydrostatics except in a pragmatic, rule-of-thumb kind of fashion. We could invite Jacob too, and have some music. I know that Mr Wright, like some of the other mathematical Fellows, delights in a fugue. Oh, and Stephen, let me go back to John Daniel, Wantage’s replacement: he is so prodigiously shabby it would be cruel to introduce him to the berth. He is a poor, short, bent, meagre, ill-looking little creature, very like...that is to say, you are the only grown person aboard whose clothes would fit him. You shall have them back of course, as soon as he can whip up something to appear on the quarterdeck in.’

‘Killick,’ called Stephen, barely raising his voice, since he knew that their valuable common servant was listening behind the door - Killick had something of a cold in his

chest and his heavy breathing could have been heard at a far greater distance. ‘Killick, be so good as to bring a respectable white shirt, the blue coat whose button you were replacing, a neck-cloth, a pair of duck trousers, stockings, shoes - buckled shoes - and a handkerchief.’

Killick opened his mouth: but to Captain Aubrey’s astonishment he shut it again, paused, said, ‘Aye-aye, sir: respectable white shirt it is, the blue coat, neck-cloth, ducks, stockings, buckled shoes, wipe,’ and hurried away. Stephen was not surprised: it was but another example of that singular deference that attended not only his state but also that of men condemned to death. ‘Jack, pray tell me about your master’s mate,’ he said.

‘His name is John Daniel, and he comes from Leominster, where his father was a bookseller in a small way of business: he had a fair amount of education in his father’s shop and at the town school. But Mr Woodbine, whose family lived there, tells me that it was not a reading town at all, and with trade declining, the customers did not pay their bills. The shop was in a sad way, getting worse and worse, and to preserve his father from being carried off to the debtors’ prison, young Daniel took the bounty and went aboard the receiving ship at Pompey. He was drafted with such a hopeless set of quota-men to Arethusa that he was the only one who could write his name. Nicholls, Edward Nicholls, who was first of Arethusa, looked at him without much love- no seaman, too feeble to haul, no handicraft, and he was about to rate him landman and waister when he happened to ask him what he thought he could do that might be useful aboard a ship. Daniel said he had studied the mathematics and that he could cast accounts. Nicholls set him a few questions, saw that he was telling the truth, and said that if Daniel wrote a neat hand, he could be of some help to the purser or the captain’s clerk and perhaps the master. This he did to their satisfaction, but once they were clear of the Channel purser and clerk had little employment for him and he spent most of his time with the master, Oakhurst. You remember Oakhurst, Stephen? He was in Euryalus off Brest, a great lunarian. He dined with us once, and cried out against those ignorant idle swabs who would depend on chronometers.’