Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

Jack was not always very quick in taking the point of Stephen's longer, more elaborate and even wholly mythical anecdotes, but he knew his friend intimately well - he could interpret a certain fixity of look better than most men - he had a vague recollection of Mr Judd as one of the deeper old files of Whitehall, and without hesitation he replied, 'Hell and death: I must go at once.' And to Clarissa, 'Thank you so much for coming. Please give my dear love to Sophie and tell her I am very sorry if the blunder was my fault, as I dare say it was.'

'I will see you a furlong on your way,' said Stephen. 'No more, because of my patient.'

In the course of this furlong he told his news and Jack cried, 'God bless Diana and Mrs Oakes, that fine woman I am sure Sophie would have thought of it in time - she don't want spirit, no, nor yet bottom - but perhaps not quite quick enough. It had to be taken on the half-volley. Bless them I would not have missed that committee for the world, and as for the blockade during three or four days, why at this stage of the war, my withers are unwrung' A pause 'Yet I do wish to God I were going up without this damned unlucky omen. It really does cast a prodigious damp on a man's spirit. The keeper was dead beat: there was not another round in him. And even if he had come up to the mark Bonden only had to give him a shove to floor him for good.'

Stephen knew of old that it was useless to call out against the weakness of mere superstition: no sailor he had ever known, even the most eminent, even a full admiral in all the glory of gold lace, had ever been moved an inch by reason, however eloquent. He therefore came to a halt, said, 'Fare thee well, dear Jack, and may all the luck in the world go with thee. I must follow my patient.'

'You do not fear for him, Stephen?' asked Jack, looking earnestly into his face.

'I do not. God bless, now.'

'One last thing. Do you suppose they meant to nobble me?'

'That is an expression I do not know.'

'Of course not. I beg pardon. It is a cant word I first heard when I was breeding horses at Ashgrove: the riff-raff hanging about racing-stables and Newmarket and so on use it to mean interfering with a horse so he don't run well, and you can safely bet on him losing. There was a nobbler called Dawson hanged for it not long since. What I should have said was: do you think Griffiths and his uncle, our commanding officer, worked out this order to rejoin so as to prevent me from attending the committee?'

'It would not surprise me in Griffiths; but since I have never set eyes on Lord Stranraer I cannot form any opinion of him at all.'

'To be sure. It was a foolish question. But I hope you will see him on Sunday. I mean to come back on Friday, post down to Torbay on Saturday, and there we are sure to find some vessel belonging to the squadron that will carry us out, perhaps by Sunday. They always put in to Torbay, you know.'

'Until Friday, then: and God and St Patrick go with you.'

There are few more versatile saints than Patrick, and he managed the parliamentary business and the return journey supremely well until the very last lap, when one of the horses lost a shoe just outside Trugget's Hatch, a village that would have been in clear sight of Woolcombe had a hill not stood between them. There they waited at the King's Head and Eight Bells, and while the smith was blowing up his forge Jack sat in the bar, where he called for a pot of ale.

'Well, squire,' said the landlord, setting it down and wiping the table, 'might I be so bold...' He knew Jack well; he had a sister married to a commoner on Simmon's Lea; he was by only one remove an interested party; yet he hesitated until he saw Captain Aubrey's beaming face emerge from the tankard, with an unmistakable look of satisfied desire... so bold as to ask whether everything was to your liking?'

'Mr Andrews, I could not have wished for better. The petition for inclosure was rejected both for inadequate majority and above all for the lord of the manor's direct and firmly-stated opposition. So the common is safe and we can go on in the way we are used to.'

The landlord laughed aloud with pleasure, and having dried his hand on his breeches he held it out. 'Give you joy of your victory, sir. That will wipe Black Whiskers' eye: the lads went through his pheasant coverts the night after that dirty God-damned match, and I dare say that when they hear of this they will stir up his deer. Oh, sir, may I tell Tom, my sister Hawkins's son? She will be so relieved. She was cruel anxious - worn thin and pale - not a scrap of paper to show the place is theirs, though there are Hawkinses in the churchyard by the score.' His voice could be heard moving towards the back of the house: 'Tom! Tom! Tom! Get on your nag and tell your mam she's safe at last. The Captain did the buggers in the eye.'

Tom's nag was np Flying Childers, but running in its own curious nameless pace, belly very near to the ground, feet twinkling, it did reach Woolhampton well before the Trug get's Hatch smith had fitted and fastened the shoe, so that when Jack's chaise reached Woolhampton both sides of the street were lined with cheering villagers, many of whom wished to shake his hand, while others told him they had already known it would end like this; but most were content with bawling, 'Good old Captain Jack' or 'Huzzay, huzzay, huzzay'. And when it reached Woolcombe House, there was his entire family, the entire household, arranged on the broad steps, like the tableau closing a Drury Lane play with a happy ending, except that no legitimate theatre would ever have countenanced so squalid a pair of children as Brigid and George - the little girl had inherited her parents' fearless attitude towards horses and she had been showing her cousin how to muck out the stable in which the splendid borrowed team spent what time they could spare from carrying Mrs Maturin about the countryside. Having kissed the women all round Jack shook Bonden's bandaged hand and in a low voice fit for one so battered he said, 'Well, Bonden, I hope I see you tolerably comfortable? I scarcely thought to find you on your feet so soon, after that cruel foul play.'

'Which the Captain says he trusts you are pretty well,' said Killick in a tone that he judged suitable for one so recently comatose. 'And no pain.'

With so much notice Bonden hung his head and muttered something that Killick translated as, 'He says the other sod - the other party - copped it worse, and is despaired of.'

They all moved into the hail, and from the hail to the front morning room, where Padeen detached the children and led them away towards the pump; yet even so Jack's account of his triumph in London was not as open and candid as it would have been with fewer people present. Nor was Sophie's production of the orders to rejoin his ship 'which came after you had left,' as she put it, blushing as she did so.

Yet bridled as his words were obliged to be, Jack spoke pretty freely, and with growing relish. The orders he dismissed with, 'Yes, my dear, I heard about them. I shall post down to Torbay with Stephen tomorrow, if he can manage it, or the day after.'

'Never mind about posting,' said Diana. 'I will drive you down in Cholmondeley's machine: and if General Harte is as good as his word, with his extra pair, I shall drive you down in a coach and six. There's glory for you! I have always wanted to drive a coach and six on an English turnpike.'

'Have you not driven one before?' cried Sophie in alarm.

'Certainly I have: but in India. And once or twice in Ireland - Ned Taaffe's machine,' she added, nodding to Stephen.

'We should be very happy,' said Jack, bowing. 'But now let me tell you about the committee. First, as you know, Captain Griffiths is a newcomer in these parts. He has no great acquaintance in the neighbourhood; he does not know the connexions between the older families or the longstanding friendships, intermarriages and so on, and both he and the parliamentary lawyer he employed were unaware of the fact that Harry Turnbull is my cousin - indeed, my cousin twice over, since he married Lucy Brett. And then he is not a member of any decent club and he don't know the importance of that connexion either.' Both Jack and Stephen were members of the Royal Society Club, which did their heads great credit; but they were also members of Black's, which spoke well for their power of discernment, for although the place was not quite so learned, it was somehow more companionable and, incidentally, much more to the point in the worldly line. 'I met Frank Crawshay in the coffee-room, the member for Westport: he said he was sitting on the committee - I gather the members had been chosen for their propensity to vote blindfold for the Ministry, and it was known that I had abstained when the naval estimates came up - a black mark - and he let me know in a very tactful and what you might call alluvial fashion that his boy was down for election and he should be very grateful for my name in the candidates' book. And he told me there were some other Blackses on the committee as well as Cousin Harry. Just as well, thought I, for Harry was in a horrid rage, having lost more money than he cared for to Colonel Waley - was barely civil - would not lend me a shirt - should be damned if he would lend me a shirt - scarcely had a shirt to his name - barely a single shirt to his back. You know how cross Harry Turnbull can be: he must have fought more often than any man in the country - a very dangerous shot and very apt to take offence. So when I walked into the committee-room and saw him still looking furious and contrary and bloody-minded, I felt quite uneasy: and though smiles from Crawshay and two other Blackses comforted me a little I did not really have much hope until the lawyer started proceedings. His low soapy tone did not suit Harry, who kept telling him to speak up, to speak like a Christian for God's sake, and not mumble. When he was young, people never mumbled, he said: you could hear every word. If anyone had mumbled, he would have been kicked out of the room. Then came the petition itself: it was handed to the chairman - Harry, of course - and he began to read out the names of the petitioners and their station: Griffiths, some of his friends, some of the richer farmers. Then he cried, "But where's the parson? Where's the patron?"