Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

Pending Lord Stranraer's recovery - and as Craddock said, they longed for the return of Dr Maturin, in whom the Admiral had so much confidence - Jack was returned to the inshore squadron. Even at this late stage of the war, with Wellington well north of the Pyrenees, established on the Garonne and ready to push north, there was always the possibility of the French fleet, seizing the opportunity of a brisk north-east wind, breaking out of Brest, conceivably defeating Stranraer's divided force in two separate battles, and, if this coincided with one of Buonaparte's astonishing recoveries by land, reversing the whole course of the war: or at any rate of ending it for themselves in a blaze of glory. In the meanwhile Captain Aubrey was to resume his patrolling under Captain Fanshawe's orders, but at the same time he was to pay particular attention to the surveying of stated parts of the coast and above all to the fixing of the position and depth of a number of submerged rocks, such as that upon which the Magnificent was lost, totally lost, in 1804.

A man could scarcely have been much lower in the spirits than Jack Aubrey: yet it was striking to see how he plunged back mto life at sea, a hard life particularly at this season and in Brest Bay, but one with a set pattern he had known from boyhood, and one in which he had a task that gave him deep satisfaction. He had always liked surveying, and now he gave himself up to his submarine rocks with a conviction that settling their bearings was an absolute good. 'Perhaps Stranraer feels the same about inclosure,' he reflected, squaring himself in the boat and peering through the rain-misted sights of his azimuth compass at the buoys tossing five fathoms above the top of that cruel rock the Buffalo. 'Mr Mannering, note 137�E.'

In most commissions the midshipmen's berth yielded a boy or two who really liked navigation, sea-mathematics, and who began, with unconcealed delight, to seize the underlying principles: Mannering was the most recent, with the same zeal, earnestness and growing enthusiasm.

He was a comfort to Jack: so, on a very different scale, was the appearance of the Ringle, beating steadily into the usual sou'wester. Very soon a telescope made it apparent that Stephen was not on board - Jack had hardly expected him - but he did take pleasure in Reade's account of their splendid run up to the Downs: eight or nine knots most of the time, with points of an estimated fourteen when the tide was with them - never a dull moment - the Doctor in his highest form.

The splendid run had brought the Doctor ashore so soon, and the mail-coach had whirled him up to London at such a pace that there was time to leave a note for Sir Joseph at the Admiralty begging that they might sup together at their club that evening: and this a full two days and a half before he had thought it possible.

He took a room at the club, the only one available, a little cheese-shaped affair from which, if one chose to stand up very straight and peer over the parapet, one could look down into Mrs Abbott's well-known bawdy-house; but Stephen was really more concerned with coping with his shabby clothes as well as he could do with a nail-brush, while his dirty shirt was concealed by a black neckcloth carefully spread over all. A couple of stitches of surgical neatness fixed it in place and he went down into the hall, with its fine hospitable fire.

Sir Joseph hardly kept him waiting at all. 'How very glad I am to see you, Stephen,' he cried. 'By Warren's computation you were already a thousand miles from here, with the distance growing every day.'

'So I should have been, by our arrangements. But I learnt something of real consequence, and since I had no carrier pigeon at hand, I thought I should bring it myself. What a heavenly smell!'

'It is frying onions. The kitchen door is being repaired.'

'Frying onions, frying bacon, sardines grilling over vinecuttings, the scent of coffee - these things oh how they stir my animal desires! I had no dinner.'

'Then let us sup at once - my dear Golding, how do you do?' - this to a passing member in court dress - 'What shall you eat?'

'Steak and kidney pudding, without the shadow of a doubt: I slaver at the very words. And you?'

'My usual boiled fowl and oyster-sauce, with a pint of claret: and I do not mind how soon I have it. The sight of your hunger has excited mine.'

They moved on to the already well-filled supper-room, and for some time they ate seriously, with few more words than 'How is your bird?' 'Capital, I thank you: and your pudding?' 'A fine honest piece of work,' said Stephen, taking a little wishbone from his mouth. The recipe for Black's steak and kidney pudding called for larks. 'And this, for example, is the true skylark, Alauda arvensis, not one of the miserable sparrows you find in certain establishments.'

When the cutting-edge of appetite was somewhat blunted, they talked of their most recent captures - moths, butterflies, beetles. Then pudding in the ordinary sense made its appearance: apple tart for Stephen, sillabub for Sir Joseph.

'I had a most gratifying journey,' said Stephen, lashing on the cream. 'Apart from the fact that a vessel which bounds, fairly bounds, over the main fills all aboard with joy,

I grudged every hour away from London. There are many things I must tell you, and I have real hopes of making your flesh creep.'

'Have you, though?' said Blaine, looking at him with a considering eye. 'Perhaps coffee at my house might be better.'

They walked up a foggy St James's Street and so to Shepherd's Market and the familiar book-lined room far from the sound of traffic.

'Have you ever met an amateur intelligence-agent?' asked Stephen, when they were installed with their coffee and petits fours.

'You would not mean Diego Diaz, would you?'

'Well, yes,' said Stephen, somewhat dashed.

'Oh, one sees him everywhere - Almack's, White's, the big dinners. He is very well with most of the women who entertain in London, and he knows a great many people. The embassy people fight rather shy of him, however, in spite of his grand connexions.'

'Yes, he is a little conspicuous. I will come back to him presently, if you will allow me. For the moment, may I talk about some Chileans I met in France?'

'Please do.'

'Met again, I should have said, since I was introduced to them first in Peru. They are warranted by O'Higgins, Mendoza, and Guzman; and with their friends they are interested in a renewal of our alliance, our understanding, with the Peruvians, but this time an alliance directed at Chilean independence. I have drawn up an account of our conversations, of their needs and their hopes, of their resources and of their undertaking with regard to slavery: and since, unlike the Peruvian enterprise, theirs depends to a considerable degree on a naval or quasi-naval presence, I think it proper to submit these papers to you in the first place, together with their credentials and letters from our friends in those parts, in the hope that you will talk the matter over.'

'I shall most certainly do so,' said Blaine, receiving the packet; and looking intently at Stephen he added, 'How eager, how deeply committed do you think they are, compared with the Peruvians?'

'On the basis of my contacts with them in America and of my long, long interviews during the last week, I should say that our prospects of success are greater by perhaps a third. And as you will find when you read my pages they rely much more on attack and defence by sea - on the mobility conferred by even a froward ocean, as compared with the mountains and intolerable deserts of the lower western part of South America.'

'I look forward with the utmost eagerness to reading your account many of the people here who supported us last time will be enchanted'.

'Dear Joseph, how kind of you to say so. You will put it into the proper Whitehall prose, scabrous, flat-footed, with much use of the passive, will you not? I may have allowed something approaching enthusiasm to creep in.'