Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

'I do hope Diana don't savage Heneage on the way back,' said Jack. 'You might not think it, but he is a very sensitive cove, and he feels harsh words extremely. I remember when his father called him a vile concupiscent waste-thrift whoremonger, he brooded over it a whole evening.'

'She is not much given to moral judgment,' said Stephen. 'What she really dislikes is a bore, man or woman; and a want of style.'

'No. I mean if he were to criticize her driving, or to suggest even in a very round-about and subtle diplomatic manner, you know - that he might do better.'

'Oh, he is wiser than that, sure. After all he knows she can put a dog-cart through the eye of a needle.'

'I hope you are right,' said Jack. 'But she gave me a cruel bite when I happened, just happened, to throw out a remark about the bridge.'

'I heard the remark. It was artificial, composed, tactful, and it would have vexed an angel, let alone a woman with four spirited horses between her fingers, and the sun hot on the back of her neck. And in any event, Dundas cannot claim a cousin's freedom of speech. Jack, I wish I had a memory for verse. If I had I should tell you a poem out of that dear man Geoffrey Chaucer, the way women in general have one consuming desire, the desire for command. A very true reflection, you are to observe. And he made some tolerably severe remarks on marriage, the sorrow and woe there is in marriage.' He paused for some kind of response: all that could be made out through the all-pervading ship-sounds and the run of water along the side was the steady breathing of a man lying on his back, a breathing that would presently take on flesh and become a great reverberating snore. With scarcely a thought Stephen reached for his balls of wax, kneaded them for a short while, thrust them into his ears with a prayer for the night and sank easily into a recollection of his late voyage in this vessel, with Brigid in the bows, entranced by the scent of the sea. He did not wake with the change of the watch nor barely with the coming of the light, when he lay perfectly relaxed, perfectly comfortable, until the cabin door gently opened and a midshipman came in. He tiptoed to Jack's cot and said, 'Mr Whewell's compliments, sir, and the squadron is in sight.'

Jack growled and turned on his side. 'Mr Whewell's compliments, sir,' said the boy rather louder, smiling at Stephen, 'and the squadron is in sight. Topsails-up in the eastsouth-east.'

'Thank you, Mr Wetherby,' said Jack, now broad awake. 'Have the idlers been called?'

'Not yet, sir: perhaps five minutes to go.'

'Thank you, Mr Wetherby,' said Jack again, dismissing him. 'I thought as much,' he observed with satisfaction. 'I rarely miss the reluctant creeping about of those poor unfortunate creatures.'

After a pause Stephen said, 'Jack, I have heard the term idlers for ever; but in your private ear alone I will confess that I do not know its exact signification.'

A penetrating glance showed Jack Aubrey that however wildly improbable it might seem he was not in fact being made game of and he replied, 'Why, do you see, it means those who are not required to make part of a night-watch unless all hands are called. Another word for them is daymen, because they are on duty all day. But for fear they should grow proud, and give themselves airs, they are roused out rather before the sun and made to help clean the decks. Your loblolly-boy is an idler: so is the butcher, and the cooper and a whole lot of people like that... tell me, Stephen, what will you do for a loblolly-boy now that you have left Padeen behind?'

'The Dear knows. I shall look through the new draught in case we now have a paragon aboard the Bellona, a wholly reliable man that will give exact doses as regularly as my watch strikes the hour.' He held it up, waited for the few moments until it uttered its little silvery note: six o'clock, and as though by magic a clash of buckets broke out overhead, a splash of water, the creak of pumps and the steady grinding of holystones, together with the usual orders, cries, and even oaths as the decks were restored to a barely-lost perfection. Stephen knew that even in a vessel as small as the Ringle the hullabaloo would go on for the best part of an hour, and rising on his elbow he spoke somewhat louder,'... a man that will not cod the hands with dog-Latin or half-understood medical terms, a kind modest truthful creature. Where is such a treasure to be found, for all love?'

'Could you not call Padeen back?'

'I could not. As you know very well, he became addicted to one of my tinctures - it is worse than the drink, so it is, far worse - and I dare not leave him a daily temptation. And then again I promised him a few acres in the County Clare, enough for a small but decent living, if he would look after Brigid and Clarissa in Spain. But will he go there? Sure he is with child to go there. He knows just how the few fields lie, and the little small house - but a slate-roofed house, Jack, which is a very near approach to glory with us. Yet will he go there? He will not. What if there should be owls? Or good people under the hill where he has the right to cut turf? Or if he should find himself alone and frightened? I tell him the priest would find him a decent wife or any of the countless go-betweens, so busy in Gort or Kilmacduagh. Indeed, the whole thing is very like marriage: he would and he would not. Two men have I known that conducted a proper, regular courtship, urging their suit: both killed themselves the day they were to go to church. And no doubt there are and have been many like them.'

'Do you know of any young women who have done the same?'

'I do not. But I do know of three and have heard of more that ran away on their wedding night.'

'So have I.'

'There is a great deal to be said for a country education, where a girl may see a cow led to the bull as a matter of course, the filly to the stallion, and where a phallus is an acknowledged object - a matter of some curiosity perhaps but certainly nothing wholly unexpected, possibly wholly unexpected and even apprehended as a horrid malformation, an unnatural growth.'

'I scarcely think a country education always...' began Captain Aubrey, but he was cut short by a singularly violent and reverberating crash as two idlers, carrying a large matted block of stone, loaded with shot and intended for the perfect cleansing of the planks just overhead, dropped the entirety. This was followed by a great deal of howling, agonized howling, and Stephen ran up on deck in his nightshirt - a crushed foot for sure.

By the time he had dressed the mangled limb and administered his usual thirty-five drops of laudanum the sun was up, Jack was washed and shaved, his fine clubbed queue of yellow hair was new-tied behind his nape and himself seated before the breakfast-table in a small cabin smelling gloriously of toast, coffee and kippered herring.

'Forgive me, Stephen,' he cried, 'I am afraid I did not wait. Greed overcame me.'

'You say that almost every morning, brother; and I am afraid it is true,' said Stephen. 'But I pray that you may yet be saved from gule, that most brutish and most unamiable of the seven deadly sins. But come, Jack' - looking at him attentively - 'you are fresh-trimmed, neat as a bridegroom, almost handsome, in your fine coat and golden epaulettes. What's afoot?'

'You have not been on deck, I find. The squadron is hull-up already, and pretty soon Bellona's number will break at the admiral's mizen topmast together with the signal captain repair aboard flag.'

'Be so good as to pass what is left of the toast; and naturally the coffee-pot.'

'And,' went on Jack in a low voice, 'if I know anything of your doings on a foreign shore, he or at least his secretary will ask to see you. Stephen, would it not be prudent to shave, and shift your coat and breeches?'