Patrick O'Brian - The Hundred Days

‘Lord Barmouth, sir?’

‘Why, yes: he has superseded Lord Keith, and it is to him that you will have to address your report.’

‘Lord Barmouth,’ cried Stephen, startled out of his usual equanimity. ‘Oh yes. I remember Lady Keith telling Captain Aubrey that her husband did not wish for a long tenure, but that they should retire to a house near the Governor’s cottage until the weather in England grew more tolerable. But I had not expected it so soon. Nor had I expected Lord Barmouth.’

‘You are displeased, Dr Maturin?’ asked the Admiral, smiling.

‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said Stephen. ‘I have not the slightest right to an opinion on the matter: but I did know that Lord and Lady Keith had a long-standing friendship for Captain Aubrey, and I had hoped that the Admiral would do everything possible and impossible to reinforce his scattered squadron, to make the capture of the Arzila galley more probable.’

‘Oh, I am sure that Lord Barmouth will do his utmost,’ said Admiral Fanshawe. ‘But as you know, the forces at his disposal are precious thin on the ground. Still,’ he said, rising after a pause, ‘I do wish you the best of success; and at least you have a fair wind for your voyage.’

Chapter Nine

This was the kind of sailing that Stephen liked: with a gentle breeze a little north of east the Surprise, with her tender under her lee, made a steady four and a heif knots under all plain sail or a trifle less, with a pitch and roll that he scarcely noticed. At first he had wondered at the absence of kites - of royals, studdingsails in all their interesting variety - and the frigate’s placid advance had vexed him to the soul, until reflection told him that Jack Aubrey understood his profession as well as any man afloat, that he was perfectly well acquainted with the relative positions of Arzila and Gibraltar, and that his plans must take the moon into consideration- no corsair commanding a galley ballasted with gold was going to attempt the passage of the Strait when she was full or anything like it Yet still it grieved his unreasoning part (no inconsiderable part of the man) when topgallants were taken in at the setting of the watch.

This evening he had come on deck for a breath of fresh air, leaving the sick-bay (rather fuller than usual with the diseases often produced by so much shore-leave and by some cases of military fever) in Jacob’s care, and he sat on a coil of rope right forward He could hear the children hooting and screeching in the maintop, for the midshipmen and the hands indulged them extremely: they were picking up an extraordinary amount of English, and so far they had done themselves no serious injury Yet as he sat there pondering his mind was very much less concerned with them than with the new Commander-in-Chief at Gibraltar. Admiral Lord Barmouth - his family name was Richardson - had been a famous frigate-captain, with several brilliant actions to his credit. Jack Aubrey was now a famous frigate-captain, and one or two of his actions were perhaps even more brilliant. Early in his career Jack had served under Captain Richardson as a master’s mate in the Sybille: they had disagreed from time to time, never seriously but enough for Captain Richardson not to ask Jack to follow him when he moved to his next command, a heavy frigate in which, with a consort of almost equal force, he destroyed a French ship of the line on the coast of Brittany. Jack was sorry not to have been present at the battle, but that did not prevent him from taking young Arklow Richardson aboard a command of his own and even rating him, in his turn, master’s mate - a senior midshipman. Yet in young Arklow all the sides of his father (now Lord Barmouth) that Jack had disliked were reproduced on a larger and more offensive scale; in the severe naval discipline of the time even a master’s mate could be rude, cruel and tyrannical, and Arklow made full use of his opportunities. To some extent a captain is obliged to support his officer, and reluctantly Jack reproved, stopped grog or imposed some other small punishment.

But presently it became obvious that Arklow had no intention of attending to his captain’s often strongly-worded advice: more than that, there was not a single able seaman aboard who did not see that Arklow differed from his father in being no sailor. When this was established beyond a doubt Jack got rid of him; but he did so in such a tactful manner that the youth, the very well-connected youth, was very soon a lieutenant. Then he was given command of a vessel of his own, where he could flog as much as he chose: not unnaturally his people mutinied, and the case against the young man was so flagrantly obvious that he was never employed again.

Barmouth did not openly hold this against Jack Aubrey- they were members of the same club in London and they exchanged civil words when they met; but the powers of a

Commander-in-Chief were very wide indeed, and if Surprise reached Gibraltar in anything but perfect condition, Barmouth might very well order another, wholly undamaged frigate to undertake the interception of the galley.

Indeed, Surprise had not been wholly surveyed and passed at Mahon: how this had come about Stephen could not tell for certain, but he supposed that Admiral Fanshawe, who was aware of the urgency and who was very fond of Jack, had taken his word for the frigate’s perfect health. This supposition was much reinforced by the quite unusual activity of the carpenter, his mates and crew, who were busy all day and even after lights-out in the filling-room, right forward and far down, and in the forepeak, hammering, sawing, fitting and driving great wedges. Stephen had pointed out that this was not all that could be wished for, so near the sick-berth; but observing Jack’s embarrassment, his uneasy and probably false assertion ‘that it was nothing, and anyway it would soon be over’, he had not pressed the subject, the more so since Jacob happened to be with them at the time, tuning a fiddle he had bought in Mahon, so that they might attempt Haydn in D major.

The carpenter too was oddly reticent, as though there were something improper or even illegal about the work in the forepeak and its neighbourhood, a near-furtiveness that took refuge in technicalities - ‘We’m just setting the hawsepieces and bollard-timbers to rights’ - and Stephen was wondering how far down in the carpenter’s chain of command this attitude reached when a small pair of calico drawers were flung dowh at his feet and Poll cried, ‘No, sir: no for shame. There is that heathen Mona running about mother-naked but for her Algiers shirt: and she has thrown down her drawers - I have tried to teach her shame and so has Mrs Cheal; but it is no good. She just says “No English, ha, ha,” lays aloft and throws her drawers to the wind.’

‘I am very sorry for your trouble, Poll, my dear,’ said Stephen. ‘But I will tell you what I shall do. Barret Bonden is a good creature, and a capital hand with needle and thread. I shall beg him to make her a pair - two pair - of a number eight sailcloth trousers, tight at the top, broad down below and the seams piped with green. Once she has them on, she will never throw them off, I warrant you. The same for her brother Kevin too.’

Poll shook her head. ‘When I think of all that good calico, the cutting, the measuring and the fine stitching - look at these flounces! I could find it in my heart to have her whipped and put in the black hole with biscuit and water.’

The trousers were indeed successful: in both cases they were a cause of sinful pride and they never came off, but hid the children’s shameful parts day and night, except when they went to the head; furthermore they promoted such a degree of agility and daring that on any idle day, with light airs coming from all points of the compass - a make-and-mend day too, with most of the hands busy with thimbles and shears on the forecastle or in the waist of the ship - Kevin, on his way to the mainmasthead, discerned a sail in the west, bringing up a little breeze of its own. Partly out of mother-wit and partly because he could not remember the English for west, he climbed the remaining few feet and told Geoghegan, the lookout, who had been watching a couple of tunny-boats far astern, but who now hailed the deck. ‘On deck, there. On deck. A sail three points on the starboard bow.’ Then some time later, ‘Frigate, sir, I believe.’ Pause. ‘Yes. Hamadryad; and she is making sail.’