Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

'Sir Joe will hoist the red at his mizen. He will like that: I shall drink him joy of it at dinner. I should like it too. Lord, if I were ever to hoist my own flag, I should keep it to be buried in.' He carried on, picking out friends in the squadrons red white and blue; but just before he reached the really interesting part, the dividing-line, the crucial boundary between the top of the post-captains' list and the rear-admirals of the blue, Sophie, still much put out by that unfortunate reference to a shroud, said, 'I am glad about dear Sir Joe, and Lady Le Poer will be delighted: yet after all, surely it is no surprise, any more than moving up the dance? And what do you mean, if you were ever to hoist your flag? You are quite near the top of the list, and no one can deny you the right to one.' She spoke with the particular emphasis, even vehemence, of those who wish to establish the truth of their words; although as a sailor's wife she knew perfectly well that the Navy List contained twenty-eight superannuated rear-admirals and (even worse) thirty-two superannuated post-captains.

'Of course,' said Jack. 'That is the usual way: you go up and up, like Jacob on his ladder. But with something so important it would be courting ill-luck to speak of any certainty about it. You must not tempt fate. If I were Stephen, I should cross myself whenever I had to mention flag-rank. God bless us all. No. They do not usually superannuate post-captains unless they are very old and sick, or very mad and froward, or unless they have often refused service: though I have known it done. No. On the whole, and speaking quite impersonally, you understand, it could be said that men at the head of the post-captains' list may assert a right to a flag at the next promotion of admirals. But that don't mean they have a right to hoist it, let alone to any employment. What happens if they do not like the cut of your jib is that they make you a rear-admiral "without distinction of squadron". You have a rear-admiral's half-pay: you have the nominal rank. But you are neither red, white nor blue; neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring; and when sailors call you admiral the decent ones look away - the others smile. In the cant phrase you have been yellowed.'

'But that could never happen to you, Jack,' she cried. 'Not with your fighting record. And you have never refused any service, however disagreeable.'

'I hope you are right, my dear,' said Jack, searching down the column. 'Yet I am afraid it has happened to Captain Willis. John Thornton is not here either, but I think he has accepted a place as commissioner, which puts him out of the running. Craddock is missing too.'

She came and looked over his shoulder. 'So he is, poor soul: though I never liked him. But there is no mention of "without distinction of squadron": and I have never seen it either, in any Gazette.'

'No. They do not make it public. You just get a letter saying that Their Lordships do not have it in contemplation and so on. And I am afraid more and more people are going to get that damned uncomfortable letter. Unless Napoleon wins yet another of those shattering unexpected victories by land all over again, it looks as though this war was pretty nearly over, with the French cleared right out of Spain and Wellington already well into France.'

'Oh, how I hope so,' said Sophie.

'So do I, of course, a very good thing, to be sure. No more carnage. But can you imagine the cut-throat struggle for commands in a Navy reduced to three wherries and a gig? Armageddon would be nothing to it. No, no. Rather than make things even worse and overcrowd the flag-officers' list they will superannuate right, left and centre, and the Devil take the...'

They both turned their heads, listening: hoofs again, far off, and sea-going cries: 'Give way, there. Luff and touch her. Thus, thus, very well thus. Easy, as she goes. Easy. Easy, God damn and blast your eyes. This ain't the fucking Derby stakes.'

Whenever Captain Aubrey was ashore for any length of time, as for that part of the parliamentary session devoted to the naval estimates, he naturally brought his coxswain, his steward and one or two followers with him. The first, Barrett Bonden, was a tough, powerful, very able seaman; the virtues of the second, Preserved Killick, were less evident - he was a passable seaman and a brilliant silver-polisher, but as a personal servant he left much to be desired: indeed almost everything. Jack brought them because it was customary for a post-captain to have a minimum of retinue, and Captain Aubrey had the greatest respect for naval customs; yet they were beings so wholly nautical that they were of very little use to him by land. In the present instance, for example, they were barely capable of inducing a staid old mare, well past mark of mouth and thoroughly accustomed to the road, to carry them and the gig to the post-office for the Woolcombe letters without overturning into a ditch or two, or even, in her agitation of mind, losing the way.

The voice died away as the mare, quickening her pace, headed for the familiar stables behind the house. Jack and Sophie sat waiting. The post had been a matter of dreadful importance ever since the first action for wrongful seizure opened with a broadside of writs, each more injuriously phrased and menacing than the last.

In a properly-run household it was the butler's duty, indeed his privilege, to carry in the family's letters, taking them out of the leather bag in which the postmaster at Woolhampton had placed them, considering them back and front, and arranging them on a salver. Woolcombe was still a properly-run house, though terribly threatened and managing on the strictest minimum; but its due order was shaken every time the Captain's coxswain appeared. He had an unshakable view of his own prerogatives; and since Manson, the regular, hereditary butler, knew that the broken-nosed coxswain had knocked out or otherwise disabled all challengers for the championship of the Mediterranean fleet, he confined himself to verbal complaints and Bonden carried the salver in, smoothing his hair and buttoning his jacket to do so in style.

Jack Aubrey had certain rules, somewhat tainted with superstition, and one of these obliged him to take the nearest letter. Sophie knew no such laws and she instantly reached over for a cover addressed in a well-known hand and bearing an Ulster post-mark: it was from her sister Frances, a young, pretty and more or less penniless widow who had turned her big house into a girls' school, where, with the help of their former governess she was educating the Aubrey twins, Charlotte and Fanny, among a score or so of others. She enclosed two fairly creditable letters from them, written on hot-pressed pink paper. Sophie, a deeply affectionate soul, read them twice, and with such pleasure that a tear dimmed her eye. She then put them in her lap and picked another from the array, a singularly wretched choice that brought tears of quite another kind: or almost brought them, for by now she had had a good deal of practice at mastering the actual flow.

Each put down a letter. Each looked at the other. 'What news, my dear?' asked Jack. Her back was to the light and he did not see how distressed she was. 'Good news from Frankie and the girls,' she said, and he heard the tremble, 'but Cluttons say that with the times so bad and the cost of removing all the inscriptions so high, they are afraid they cannot offer more than the melting-pot price for the Jamaica service.' Jack nodded, but said nothing. 'What was yours?' she went on, for they dealt with these things on an equal footing, with no concealment on either side, almost no concessions.

'It was from Lawrence,' he said. 'Leave to appeal has been refused.'

She digested this. It was the wreck of all their cherished, accumulated hopes as far as that particular case was concerned. 'We shall have to sell Ashgrove,' she said after a pause. 'The creditors will not wait.'