Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Stephen, taking off his hat to a grave elderly man in black who had a solen shell in one hand and who was watching an immature gannet with close attention, unconscious of the loud and often ribald conversation of the liberty-men and their shipmates. 'I beg your pardon, sir, but I am a stranger in this place, and should be extremely grateful for the direction of a respectable inn that would shelter my wife and horses while my friends and I, sea-officers, seek for some vessel outward-bound.'

The grave gentleman did not at once apprehend the question, but when it had been repeated he said, 'Why, sir, I am sorry to say that as far as I know there is no such place in this village, if village it may be called. At the Feathers, to be sure, she would not be insulted with the company of - of trollops; yet the Feathers has no stable-yard, no coachhouse, being little more than an eating-house, or tavern: a genteel tavern, however, capable of providing a lady with a pot of chocolate. But,' he went on after a slight hesitation, 'have I not the pleasure of speaking to Dr Maturin?'

'Indeed, sir, that is my name,' said Stephen, not quite pleased at being recognized so easily; and through his mind darted the reflection 'Intelligence-agents should have turnip faces, indistinguishable one from another; their height should be the common height; their complexion sallow; their conversation prosy, commonplace, unmemorable.'

'I had the happiness of hearing your discourse on Ornithorhynchus paradoxus at the Royal Society - such eloquence, such pregnant reflections! I was taken by my cousin Courteney.'

Stephen bowed. He was acquainted with Hardwicke Courteney, who though only a mathematician when he was elected had come to a reasonably intimate acquaintance with bats, with west-European bats.

'My name is Hope, sir,' said the other, loud enough to be heard over the strong voices of Jack and Dundas asking a young officer in a gig some two hundred yards offshore 'whether Acasta were going to sail tomorrow or not till Bloody Thursday?' 'And' (more gently, with a distinct shade of embarrassment), 'perhaps I may propose a solution- my cousin Courteney has a large decayed house not a furlong from here. It has no furniture - indeed it is almost entirely empty apart from the bats in the upper chambers - but it has noble stabling and a most spacious yard. May I suggest that while Mrs Maturin sits in the decent comfort of the Feathers, the coach and horses should take their ease in Cousin Co�y's inclosure? I have a rustic youth who looks after me while I count and register the bats - I camp in any odd corner - and he will certainly find hay, water, oats, whatever is necessary.'

'You are very good indeed, sir,' cried Stephen, shaking Mr Hope by the hand, 'and I should be most uncommon happy to accept your generous offer. Allow me to introduce you to my wife.' They made their way slowly through the throng towards the coach, and as they went Stephen said, 'If my friends do not find a suitable conveyance today, perhaps we might count bats together.'

With the horses cared for and Diana installed with Stephen in the Feathers' St Vincent parlour (the Feathers himself had served in the glorious action, losing a leg below the knee) and Bonden in the snug with the sea-chests, Jack and Dundas set off again, with Killick in tow to question his innumerable acquaintance among the seamen, thick along the highwater mark or lying in the dunes behind.

The seamen, upon the whole, were a very decent set of men and Jack felt happy among them and at home - many he had served with and barely once did he forget a name - yet once again it surprised, even astonished him that such a decent set, with so much hard-won knowledge, should have so primitive a notion of what was fun, and that they should attract such an obviously false set of hangers-on, such a forbidding crew of doxies, so very often short, thick and swarthy, sometimes so obviously diseased.

Still, both he and Heneage had known this long before their voices broke, when they were mere first-class volunteers, not even midshipmen, and they were not much moved by the spectacle, repeated again and again as they went along from respectable taverns to boozing-kens to billiard rooms to places that were not quite open brothels so early in the day. They were looking primarily for a captain who might be on the wing for Ushant and the squadron; but any officer, commissioned, warrant or petty who could give news was welcome - or of course old shipmates now serving out there. It was a homely quest, variegated and pleasant in its way, thrusting land-borne cares into the background; and they learnt a great deal about the present way of life, the most recent news, out there off the Black Rocks and what was called Siberia.

Yet familiar and congenial though this was - a kind of inverted homecoming, with the smell of sea and tide-wrack in their nostrils - it seemed as though their quest, so hopefully, so confidently begun, must end in disappointment and a dreary search for lodgings. A wider, much wider stretch of sand was showing now: the breeze was still steady in the true north-east, but the lovely tide alas was at half ebb as they reached the last place of all, a more reputable eatinghouse than most.

'It is scarcely worth going in,' said Dundas. 'We have seen all the serving officers ashore, and this is no place for the penniless mid.'

Yet there was a penniless mid, or at least a master's mate: young James Callaghan, laughing and talking, his large red face crimson with mirth, and he was entertaining a young person as cheerful as himself but of a more reasonable colour - a fresh, pretty, well-rounded girl, not a trollop at all.

Captain Aubrey's tall shadow fell over them; they looked up; and in a moment their colours changed, the young woman's to an elegant rosy pink, Callaghan's to that of purser's cheese.

Jack was a humane creature, upon the whole, and he checked the question 'What are you doing here?' - the only possible answer being 'Neglecting my duty, sir; and disobeying orders in order to lead out a wench (or some more civil equivalent)' and substituted 'Mr Callaghan, where is the tender?' Callaghan had of course leapt up, upsetting his chair, and he was almost launched into an explanation of his being here because Miss Webber could not be asked out in her home town when a glimmer of sense returned to him and he said, 'Brixham, sir: all hands aboard under Mr Despencer, at single anchor in the fairway.'

'Then when you and your guest have finished your meal,' said Jack, with a bow to Miss Webber, 'be so good as to bring the tender round. We are at the Feathers. You need not press yourself unduly, so we catch the tail of the tide.'

The tail of the tide swept Captain Aubrey, his surgeon, steward and coxswain round Berry Head, and they shaped their course for Ushant, all the Ringle's hands attentive and zealous, as meek as mice, they being to some degree implicated in Callaghan's crime. In spite of their zeal the Ringle could not show her best pace with the breeze so very far aft; yet even so, by the time Jack and Stephen turned in she was making rather better than thirteen knots.

The sea-change was already working strongly. Stephen was no greater mariner, but even his mind and person found the long easy yielding of a hanging cot more natural than a motionless bed by land; and although neither had more than a nine-inch plank between him and eternity (indeed, not so much) while at the same time both were exposed to the perils of the sea and the violence of the enemy, a kind of blessed relief came over them, as though the intricacies of conducting first a tender and then a large and crowded manof-war to a rock-strewn and hostile coast, notorious for its foul weather, perpetual south-western gales and wicked tides, were little or nothing compared with those of life on shore, of domestic life on shore.