Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

'My dearest Soul,' he wrote, continuing an unfinished sheet, 'I have just ferried Nathaniel Martin back, and I am afraid he regrets his return. He was happier messing along with Tom Pullings in the prize, and on the few occasions when he had come back to help me or to attend a particular dinner I have noticed that he has seemed more ill at ease in the gunroom than he was before. We now have added to our company one of the ransomer mates, recently discharged from the sick-berth, and the loud-voiced confident mirth of the supercargo, the merchant and this mate oppresses him; nor can it be said that the conversation of our two acting-lieutenants is enlivening: both are eminently respectable men, but neither has enough experience of this kind of mess to keep the ransomers in order, so that in Tom's absence the place is more like the ordinary of an inferior Portsmouth tavern than the gunroom of a man-of-war. The officers quite often invite Dutourd, and he does impose a certain respect; but unhappily he is a great talker and in spite of some tolerably emphatic checks he will drift towards philosophic considerations bordering upon politics and religion, the politics being of the Utopian pantisocratic kind and the religion a sort of misty Deism, both of which distress Martin. The poor fellow regrets Dutourd's absence and dreads his presence. I hope that our meals (and it is wonderful how long one spends at table, cooped up with the other members of the mess: it seems longer when some members belch, fart and scratch themselves) will become more tolerable when Tom returns, for I imagine the prize will be sold on the coast, and when Jack regularly dines with us.

'Yet even in that case I do not think Martin's is likely to be an enviable lot. In this ship there was always a prejudice against him as a cleric, an unlucky man to have aboard; and now that it is known he is a parson in fact, the rector of two of Jack's livings, the prejudice has grown. Then again, as a man of some learning, acquainted with Hebrew, Greek and Latin, he is awkward company for our sectaries: in the event of a theological disagreement, a differing interpretation of the original, they carry no guns at all. And of course by definition he is opposed to Dissent and favourable to episcopacy and tithes; as well as to infant baptism, abhorrent to many of our shipmates. At the same time, being a quiet, introspective man, he completely lacks the ebullient bonhomie that comes so naturally to Dutourd. It is acknowledged aboard that he is a good man, kind as a surgeon's mate, and in former commissions as a letter- or petition-writer (now there is little occasion for either and our few illiterates usually go to Mr Adams). But he is not cordially liked. He has been poor, miserably and visibly poor; now he is by lower-deck standards rich; and some suspect him of being over-elevated. But more than this it is known - in a ship everything is known after the first few thousand miles - that the Captain is not very fond of him; and at sea a captain's opinion is as important to his crew as that of an absolute monarch to his court. It is not that Jack has ever treated him with the least disrespect, but Martin's presence is a constraint upon him; they have little to say to one another; and in short Martin has not accomplished the feat of making a friend of his friend's closest associate. The attempt is rarely successful, I believe, and perhaps Martin never even ventured upon it. However that may be, they are not friends, and this means that he is looked upon by the people with less consideration than I think he deserves. It surprises me: I must say that I thought they would have used him better. Perhaps, as far as many of the ship's present crew are concerned, it is to some degree a question of these wretched tithes, which so many of them resent: and he is now one of those who receive or who will receive the hated impost.

'In any event, I am afraid he is losing his taste for life. His pleasure in birds and marine creatures has deserted him; and an educated man who takes no delight in natural philosophy has no place in a ship, unless he is a sailor.

'Yet I remember him in earlier commissions, in much the same circumstances, rejoicing in the distant whale, the stink-pot petrel, his face aglow and his one eye sparkling with satisfaction. He was quite penniless then, apart from his miserable pay; and at those times when cause and effect seem childishly evident I am inclined to blame his prosperity. He now possesses, but has never enjoyed, two livings and what might be called a fair provision in prize-money: from a worldly point of view he is a much more considerable man than he ever has been before; although this makes no difference to his importance aboard it will do so by land, and I think it likely that he exaggerates the happiness which ease and consequence may bring- that he pines for the shore - and its compensation for the disappointments he has suffered at sea. I have disappointed him, I am afraid, and...'Stephen held his pen in the air, reflecting upon Clarissa Oakes, a young woman to whom he was much attached, a convict transported for murder, who, escaping, had sailed in the frigate from Sydney Cove to Moahu. He reflected upon her, smiling, and then upon Martin's ambiguous relations with her, which might also have had a deep influence on the people's attitude. If a parson sinned (and Stephen was by no means convinced of it), his sin was multiplied by every sermon he preached.'... so have other people, including no doubt himself. Yet like so many poor men he almost certainly mistakes the effect of wealth upon happiness in anything but the first fine flush of possession: he speaks of money very much more often than he did, more often than is quite agreeable; and the other day, referring to his marriage, which is as nearly ideal as can be, he was so thoughtless as to say that it would be even happier with his share of our current prize.' Stephen paused again, and in the silence of the ship he heard Martin playing his viola in his cabin opening off the gunroom: an ascending scale, true enough, then coming down, slower, more hesitant and ending in a prolonged, slightly false, B flat, infinitely sad.

'I do not have to tell you, my dear,' he went on, 'that although I speak in this high ascetic way about money, I do not, never have, despise a competence: it is the relation of superfluity to happiness that is my text, and I am holier than thou only after two hundred pounds a year.'

The viola had stopped, and Stephen, locking away his paper, walked into the great cabin, stretched out on the cushioned stern-window locker, gazed for a while at the reflected sunlight dancing overhead, and went to sleep.

He was woken, as long use had told him he would be woken, by a trampling as of wild beasts as the Surprise's boats were hoisted in: hoarse cries - Oh you impotent booby - the shrilling of the bosun's call - the clash of tackles run up chock-a-block -Handsomely, handsomely now, our William (Grainger to an impetuous young nephew) - but then instead of the usual cries of avast and belay an unexpected unanimous good-natured cheer, accompanied by laughter. 'What can this signify?' he asked himself, and while he was searching for a plausible sea-going answer he became aware of a presence in the cabin, a suppressed giggle. It was Emily and Sarah, standing neatly side by side in white pinafores. 'We have been standing here a great while, sir,' said Sarah, 'whilst you was a-contemplating. The Captain says, should you like to see a marble?'

'Wonder,' said Emily.

'Marble,' said Sarah, adding, 'You impotent booby' in a whisper.

'There you are, Doctor,' cried the Captain as Stephen came on deck, still looking rather stupid. 'Have you been asleep?'

'Not at all,' said Stephen, 'I very rarely sleep.'

'Well, if you had been asleep, here is a sight that would wake you even if you were a Letter to the Ephesians. Look over the leeward quarter. The leeward quarter.'