Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

Yet even so the awkward buggers made the last days unpleasant, and they prolonged the necessarily painful end: they included all the Bellona's sea-lawyers, and when the Commissioner and his clerks came aboard, together with the ship's pay-books and some heavily-guarded sacks of money, they produced such a series of quibbles about dates of entry, first rating, dates of being turned over, deductions for slops, venereal medicines and the like that the process had to be carried over to the first hours of another morning.

'Even so, it ended happy,' said Stephen.

'I suppose so, if you call this happiness,' said Jack, turning his eyes from the dock where the Bellona lay waiting to go into ordinary, deserted and looking doubly so, since some facetious hands had loosened lifts and braces, causing her yards to hang all ahoo, like a sea-scarecrow - turning them to the left-hand side of the carriage, where a gang of local women had gathered to receive those Bellonas who were still capable of walking as they emerged from the doors of the Old Cock and Bull, where the prize-agent's clerk had met them.

'I do love a jolly sailor,' sang the women.

'Blithe and merry might he be...' A brewer's dray interrupted them and stopped the carriage, but when they had done with screaming and making gestures at the brewer's men, they sang on

'Sailors they get all the money,

Soldiers they get none but brass.

I do love a jolly sailor,

Soldiers they may kiss my arse.

Oh my little rolling sailor,

Oh my little rolling he,

I do love a jolly sailor,

Soldiers may be damned for me.'

Most of the women might have looked tolerable by lamplight, though there were many old hacks fit only for darkness, but the strong unforgiving sun on their raddled faces, dyed hair, flimsy, tawdry and dirty clothes, was a melancholy sight. Jack had taken leave of many old companions as they left the ship, and just now he had given his officers a farewell dinner, officers who did their best to disguise their extreme anxiety about another ship: it was a superficially cheerful occasion that left deep sadness behind it; and now Jack found the whores' antics more depressing than he might have done at another time.

They drove on in silence.Yet presently they were out of the town, into the country and the spring, with rare white clouds sailing very slowly across a pure blue sky on a breeze just strong enough to stir the bright new leaves, and this had a soothing effect on bosoms that had been blockading Brest through one of the roughest winters ever known, particularly as the post-chaise, at Stephen's request, had taken side-roads through charming cultivated country - springing crops on either hand - a stretch of country much favoured by migrants. Stephen knew that Jack did not feel passionate about birds that did not offer a legitimate shot, so he did not trouble him with a rare warbler near Dartford, nor with a probable Montagu's harrier, a cock bird, away on the right; but when they were walking up and down outside the half-way inn while the horses were being changed he said, 'While you were attending to ship-affairs and the people's pay, the Commissioner's secretary gave me some letters that had come down from London. They confirm my arrangements. Will I tell you about then?'

'If you please.'

'I thought we should take a holiday for a couple of days at Black's, doing nothing whatsoever apart from attending the Royal Society on the second day. Then on the third you will have to meet the Chileans, and I think that would be better done in my room at the Grapes - we could hardly talk about such matters at Black's, and in any case it would be more discreet. On Saturday and Sunday we can take our ease again - we might listen to some music. And then, always providing that you and the Chileans do not dislike one another, we must go and be interviewed by the Committee; and if that goes well, to the Admiralty for the necessary formalities.'

'That will remove me from the List?'

'Suspend might be the better word. An essential step to allow you to command a hired ship: a private vessel with a private person as her master.'

'Well: I am glad it is not to be on a Friday.'

'Jack, it does not require great discernment to see that the idea of being removed from the List scarcely fills you with delight.'

'No. It don't.'

'My dear, if you have any reluctance at all, let us forget the scheme entirely.'

'No, no. Of course not. Forgive me, Stephen. I am foolishly hipped... these last days, seeing the ship and her company falling to pieces, herself for the knacker's yard, all my mids thrown on the world, aghast, without a penny -no half-pay for them, you know - and with very, very little chance of a ship... it makes one low and I am afraid damned ungratefully inclined to cling to having one's name on the List, any kind of List. But it is great nonsense - with half or even more of the Navy being laid up, and with Stranraer's dispatches and his influence against me I have not the faintest chance of a command. And without a command now I have scarcely the faintest chance of not being passed over when the time comes. To avoid that I should happily take a duck-punt to Spitzbergen, let alone dear Surprise round the Horn again. No, no, my dear Stephen. Please forgive me: it was only a weak, foolish burst of superstition... lycanthropy might be a better word, perhaps.'

'Perhaps it would... but tell me, Jack, you have not forgot the promise of reinstatement, have you?'

'Oh dear me, no. I cling to it day and night, like a bull in a china-shop. But promises are made of pie-crust, you know. First Lords can die and be replaced by wicked Goddamned Whigs - oh, I beg pardon, brother - and by people belonging to another party, who know not Abraham: whereas one's name, printed in that beautiful List, is as solid as anything can be in this shifting world - here today, gone tomorrow.'

'That is one of the things I like about this place,' said Jack, the post-chaise having brought them to the open, welcoming door of Black's. 'There are no wild, enthusiastic changes here. Good evening, Joe.'

'Good evening, Captain Aubrey, sir,' said the porter. 'Good evening, Doctor. I have given you seventeen and eighteen: Killick took your bags up this afternoon.'

Jack nodded with pleasure, and waving towards the cheerful fire at the far end of the hall he cried, 'There. I will lay a guinea that fire was burning in just the same way when my grandfather used to arrive from Woolcombe; and I hope it will be burning when George walks in as a member.'

They hurried upstairs, put on the town clothes that Killick (always efficient in the abstract, and even kind) had laid out for them, and met again on the landing.

'I am going straight to the library to read the history of our missing weeks. Nay months, for all love,' said Stephen.

'So shall I,' said Jack. 'But perhaps a bite first would be a clever idea. Then one could sit reading one's Morning Post or Naval Chronicle without one's belly rumbling and distracting one's mind. I had almost no dinner, you understand - could not relish my victuals.'

'If men did not vanquish the brute within, there would be no learning,' said Stephen. 'Besides, it is too early for supper: you would only get the broken meats from dinner, faintly warmed. Come, James will bring you a sandwich, I dare say, and a can of beer.'

For some time they read silently, avidly; and with an extraordinary degree of self-command they started at about the equinoctial gales of last autumn which cut them off from anything like regular communication, so that only isolated, almost meaningless victories or defeats, almost all by land, came through the cloud of unknowing. But presently Jack, forging ahead in the concentrated sea-water of the Naval Chronicle rather than the turgid pages of The Times, which paid far too much attention to campaigns in Silesia and such places, as well as home politics, cried out, 'So they have given Boney Elba, the island of Elba: ain't you amazed? And he is gone aboard Undaunted, 38, young Tom Ussher's ship. Do you know him at all? He is an Irishman.'