Patrick O'Brian - The Commodore

'Well, Stephen, you were in luck, upon my word,' said Jack, as they walked down to the boat. 'The only pretty woman of the party, and you completely monopolized her. And in the drawing-room she came and sat at your knee and talked to no one else for hours on end.'

'We had a great deal to talk about. She knows more on the subject of bones and their variations from species to species than any woman I am acquainted with; much more, indeed, than most men, and they professed anatomists. She is sister to Edward Heatherleigh, whom you may have seen at the Royal. A fine young woman.'

'What a pleasure. I love talking to women like that. Caroline Herschel and I used to prattle away about Pomeranian sludge and the last stages of a telescope's mirror half way through the night. But knowing and beautiful too - what bliss. Yet how she ever came to marry James Wood I cannot tell. A fair practical seaman and an excellent fellow, but never an idea in his head; and he is at least twice her age.'

'Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement,' said Stephen.

They walked on, rejecting first the offer of a sedan-chair and then that of a hammock slung on a pole and carried by two men, a usual conveyance in those parts.

'You too seemed to be enjoying yourselves very heartily at your end of the table,' said Stephen, after a while.

'So we were. There were some people from the viceadmiralty court, and the civil secretary, and they were telling us how well we had done, how very much better than anyone else, how much wealthier we should be when everything was settled up, above all if none of the alleged Americans or Spaniards won an appeal against their decisions, which was most improbable, and how well our hands would do with their undisputed share, which was ready in canvas bags in the treasury - ready to be paid out. And Stephen, now it is the dry season, you will not keep them aboard all night?'

'I will not: though you know very well what the result will be. But, brother, there is a glee radiating from you that was never aroused by prize-money, dearly though you love it. You would never have heard from the Admiralty, at all?'

'Oh no. I should not expect anything yet, if ever: we saved a wonderful amount of time on that last leg. No. I have letters from home' tapping his bosom - 'and so have you, but from Spain.'

Stephen's letter was from Avila. Clarissa reported a quiet, agreeable life, a healthy, affectionate and biddable child, now garrulous and tolerably correct in English, with some Spanish, but preferring the Irish she spoke with Padeen. She was learning her letters quite well, but was puzzled about which hand to write them with. Stephen's Aunt Petronilla was very kind to Brigid - to them both. Some of the ladies who lived in the convent had carriages and took them for drives, wrapped in furs: it was a severe winter, and two of Stephen's cousins, one coming from Segovia and the other from Madrid, had heard wolves close to the road at noon. She herself was well, mildly happy, reading as she had not read for years, and she liked the nuns' singing: sometimes she went with Padeen (who sent his duty) to the Benedictine church for the plainchant.

Enclosed was a small square piece of paper, not over-clean, with a drawing of a wolf with teeth and some words that Stephen could not make out until he realized that they were Irish written phonetically: 0 my father fare well Brigid.

He sat in the cabin savouring this and drinking thin lime. juice for some considerable time before Jack came in from the stern-gallery, looking equally happy. He said 'I have had such delightful letters from Sophie, who sends you her dear love, and I mean to answer them this minute - there is a merchantman on the wing for Southampton. Stephen, how do you spell peccavi?'

Christine Heatherleigh had quite charmed Dr Maturin: he lay in his cot that night, swinging to the long Atlantic swell and thinking about his afternoon, and he had a startlingly clear visual image of her speaking earnestly about clavicles in primates, her eyes particularly wide open. 'Can it be that her physical presence has stirred long-dormant emotions in my let us say bosom?' he wondered. The answer 'No. My motives are entirely pure' came at almost the same moment that another part of his mind was considering the gentle pressure of her hand: kindness? her brother's friendship? a certain inclination? 'No,' he replied again, 'my motives being entirely pure she feels perfectly safe with me, middle-aged, ill-formed, wizened from the yellow jack, and can be as free as with her grandfather; or at least an uncle. Yet out of respect for her, and for Government House, I shall desire Killick to unpack, curl and powder my best wig against tomorrow's visit.'

In the morning he rose early, saying 'I shall not shave until after my rounds and breakfast, when I shall have light enough to shave extremely close.' But when his rounds were over - and they were quite long, with several new cases of an intractable rash that he had never seen elsewhere - the light was still extremely poor. On his way up he met Killick, and speaking loud over the curious circumambient noise he asked him both to attend to the wig and to lay out his good satin breeches and a clean shirt, adding that he was about to ask the first lieutenant for a boat in the forenoon.

'No forenoon, no, nor no afternoon today, sir. Which there's a smoke on, and you can't hardly breathe on deck: nor no boat could swim. Harmattan, some say, a right Guinea smoke. You won't want no wig.'

No. And had he worn one he would have lost it. The moment he put his head above the level of the quarterdeck his meagre locks were whipped away to the south-west and he understood that the noise he heard was that of a very curious, very furious, north-east wind, hot, extraordinarily parching dry, and so loaded with red-brown dust that at times one could scarcely see twenty yards beyond the side. But those twenty yards of visible sea were whipped to a continuous chopping froth against the swell.

'Smoke, sir,' said Square at his side. 'But only a little one, over tomorrow or the next day.'

'How I hope you are right,' said Stephen. 'I particularly wish to see Mr Houmouzios,' and as he spoke he felt the red dust gritting between his teeth.

A disappointing day, and quite extraordinarily thirsty: yet it did have some wonders of its own. Jack, who as usual was making what observations were possible - observations of temperature atvarious depths, salinity, humidity of the air and so on for his friend Humboldt - showed Stephen his sea-chest, which had been brought up on to the half-deck so that the joiner might add an additional till or tray, a very stout chest indeed, that had seen and survived almost every kind of weather the world could offer: but the harmattan had split its lid - a broad cleft from one end to the other. 'We are playing the fire-hose on the boats to keep them whole' he observed in a cheerful roar.

Square was right about the duration, however, and Thursday saw a world which, though ravaged, covered with rufous dust feet deep in sheltered places, and generally flattened, was at least quite calm, and a close-shaven Stephen Maturin, neatly dressed, pulled ashore over a filthy, gently heaving sea. Since he was carrying a gift of sun-birds, or rather their skins arranged with the feathers outwards, as beautiful as any bouquet and far more lasting, he took a sedan-chair to Government House, where he would have sent in his name if Mrs Wood had not thrown up a window with a little shriek and called out to ask him how he did.

She would be down in a minute, she said; and so she was, having paused only to change her shoes and put on a singularly becoming cashmere shawl. 'I am so sorry about this odious harmattan,' she said. 'It has utterly destroyed my garden. But perhaps, when we have had some coffee, you might like to look at some dried specimens, and the bones.'