Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

We just managed to claw off, though we shoaled water terribly at one point and though our people were so utterly exhausted they could scarcely haul the mainsheet aft We lay off for a while, putting the ship into some sort of order, while the surgeon and his mates looked after our wounded and the cook got at least something for the hands to eat And although the sea remained very high, the sky soon cleared over the Penmarks and the land inshore It was that which made me think of the Droits de l'Homme in the first place, this same very curious greenish light over the reef and land, all along from the cape itself to St Gu�l�do you see? It is always taken to foretell heavy weather; and we certainly had a cruel time of it for the next week or ten days.'

'Mr Harding spoke of a week or ten days, did he not?' asked Stephen.

'I believe so,' said Jack. 'May I trouble you for the marmalade?'

'Oh, I beg pardon,' cried Stephen as the ship gave a furious lee-lurch and the jar flew from his hand.

'Killick. Killick, there. Swab and a damp cloth. And then another pot of marmalade.'

'Not again?' said Killick. 'Not a... again? The same yesterday, the same on Thursday and that was with the poor bloody milk-jug too. All the forenoon watch on my poor bloody knees... floor cloth never be itself again.' This in a mutter: in a louder voice from beneath the table, 'Which there ain't no more orange marmalade neither.'

When at last he had gone away, Jack said, 'Fortunately it was only a common old pot, not that splendid Irish cut-glass affair you so kindly gave us. Yes, he did mention ten days; but only in a manner of speaking, you know. These blows never go by the calendar.'

'When this present tempest slackens, perhaps we shall have a post. I quite long to hear from Woolcombe: and indeed from London and Ballinasloe. I had been led to believe that one of the very few advantages of the Brest blockade was that it allowed the sufferers frequent supplies of fresh food and mail.'

'To be sure it is better in that line than say the New Holland station, but only in summer. Your informant, the man who led you into this high state of indignation, must have been thinking of the summer, not the season of equinoctial gales or the even more dreadful turning winter storms. But do not despair. The glass is rising quite evenly: so is the humidity. Tomorrow night, or the next, which is the dark of the moon, we may have one of the fogs this bay is so famous for, particularly as the wind is sure to fall indeed, it is less already. Steady rain, like this, often deadens both wind and sea. When you have finished breakfast, will you not put on a Magellan jacket and take a turn on deck?'

'I will not. In the first place because I dislike getting wet, and in the second because I must complete my account of our sick-berth, which Dr Rutherford wished to recommend for universal adoption: and of course there are my medical notes.'

'Yes, indeed. When you reach any height at all, you spend more time scratching paper than anything else. When I have done with the reefers, Mr Edwards and I must attend to the fair-writing of the log; and I have a score of returns to look over and sign. But after dinner if it calms enough for you to sit to your 'cello, let us work our way through the new Benda piece.'

'By all means. Is there any more coffee in that pot?'

There was, and having poured it Stephen said, 'I was talking to that boy Geoghegan, and I find that I know some of his relations in the Spanish service - his grandmother was a FitzGerald. Will I tell you why he finds it so difficult to coil down a rope in a way that pleases his mentors?'

'Is it not just natural inborn vice?'

'It is not. Like many of his nation he is a ciotog, a lefthanded man; and left to himself he will always coil a rope against the way of the sun.'

'Then clearly he cannot be left to himself...' Jack prosed on about the need for exact uniformity in the service - for all ropes to run smooth - on the dreadful results, in an emergency, of the contrary practice - and when he paused for a piece of toast Stephen said, 'And there are degrees of left-handedness, some quite insuperable, others to be corrected if that is the right term, though usually at a cost, sometimes very great, to the soul. The harp of Brian of the Tributes, High King of Ireland and an unpersuadable man, carries the melody in the left hand; and this boy's oboe, made by his father, a skilful gentleman from a length of bog-oak, is the mirror image of the usual instrument. Would it be improper, do you think, to ask him to play with us? He blows the purest note.'

'Indeed I love an oboe: it has nothing of the clarinet's cloying sweetness. But as for your boy... He seems a modest, well-bred young fellow, to be sure ... Yet I knew a reefer in the West Indies who was amazingly good at chess- could beat anyone. The Admiral, a pretty good player, invited him, and was beat time and again. He laughed; but it did not end happy. The boy got above himself, talked too much, gave himself airs, made himself so unpopular in the cockpit and was kicked so very often that he had to be transferred. But I will take particular notice of young Geoghegan at nine o'clock; and if it can properly be done, we might try.,

At nine o'clock the Bellona's young gentlemen who were not on duty attended in the Captain's fore-cabin washed pink, brushed smooth, and properly dressed, together with Mr Walkinshaw, the schoolmaster. 'Good morning, sir,' they cried, leaping up at the Captain's entrance, 'Good morning, sir,' some gruff, some still shrill, some wavering horribly a full octave. Jack desired them to sit down. Ordinarily, each by order of seniority, would have shown up his workings, that is to say his estimate of the ship's position, determined by observation of the sun's height at noon or by double altitudes, by dead reckoning, and on occasion by a certain amount of copying from their more gifted mess-mates. But the weather of the last days had been such that no observation was possible and Jack only required Mr Walkinshaw to lead them through Pythagoras once again, calling upon each in turn to rehearse the theorems upon which this most elegant, satisfying and wholly convincing argument was based. In his youth Jack had been wretchedly taught -mere rule of thumb at the best - and it was only quite late that the beauty of Pythagoras and Napier's Bones had been revealed to him, lighting a love of the mathematics that had burned steadily ever since; and he hoped that repeated exposure to them both might do the same for his youngsters. Generally speaking it had answered for one or two boys in each commission, which would probably not have happened if he had relied on ship's schoolmasters.

The man he had at present, Mr Walkinshaw, was better than most; he knew a fair amount about mathematics and navigation, and he was generally sober; but like most of his kind he had very little authority. He messed with the midshipmen in the cockpit, he was little better paid than they, the regulations gave him no status in the ship, and he would have had to be an exceptional man to acquire one by force of character. Mr Walkinshaw had not managed to do so, and his lessons were far quieter, more orderly and useful when the Almighty was present, listening most of the time, interposing on occasion, learning a great deal about the boys.

Today his eyes rested more often on Geoghegan than the others: again he noticed his awkward, cramped left-handed manner of writing, his modest way of answering a question, his smile when he was told that the answer was right - a smile that would have been enchanting if he had been a girl. 'He is too pretty for his own good, too pretty by far,' Jack reflected. 'He would be an odious little beast was he aware of it. Fortunately he ain't. Mr Dormer,' he said to a young gentleman whose attention seemed to be wandering, 'pray define a logarithm.'