Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

'Why, sir,' said Pullings, laughing. 'We were all very much at sea, our notions all ahoo. When the shipwrights had her clear, all we found was a stretch of copper clean gone, not much bigger than that table - a whale, no doubt. But the worm had been at it quite amazingly. It still kept the water out, more or less, but all the members around it worked something horrid in anything of a sea. They cut the whole piece back to sound wood, replaced it as pretty as ever Pompey could have done, and clapped on new copper twice as thick as ours. There were those few knees that we knew about and some we did not; but the wrights were honest fellows - they made little of it - and now we are as stiff as ever you could wish.'

'Just where..." began Jack, but on deck the cry 'The boat ahoy. What boat is that?' interrupted him.

'I dare say that will be Father Panda,' said Pullings. 'He usually comes about this time, asking for news of you.'

'Does he, Tom?' cried Jack, flushing. 'Let him be brought below at once. And Tom, keep the after part of the quarterdeck clear, will you?"

'Of course, sir,' said Pullings: and inclined his head to catch the deep, resonant answer to the frigate's hail; he said, 'That's him, all right. Perhaps he may be able to tell us how to get hold of Dutourd.' During the inexpert thumping and rattling of the boat along the side and the cries of 'Ship your oar, sir - clap on to the painter, Bill - here's t'other man-rope, Father: hold tight' he said, 'Oh sir, I forgot to tell you Franklin is in the offing with what looks like a prize. I will go and bring the Reverend below.'

Sam was even taller and more massive than when he and his father had last met. Jack rose with a double effort, put his hands on those broad shoulders, and said, 'Sam, how very glad I am to see you.'

Sam's great flashing smile lit up his face and he, clasping Jack, cried, 'Oh sir..." Then his expression changed to one of the utmost concern as he saw the bandage and he went on, 'But you are wounded - you are ill - let you sit down." He guided Jack to his chair, lowered him gently into it, and sat under the hanging lamp gazing at him, drawn, lined and ravaged as he was, with such troubled affection that Jack said, 'Never take on so, dear Sam. My eye is all right, I believe - I can see pretty well. And for the rest, we had a rough time of it on a lee shore in the Alastor's launch during the easterly blow - she was stove, dismasted - lost our food and water - nothing to eat but a raw sea-lion. We had been forced back past the sea-lion island seven times and I said, "Shipmates, if we don't get round and run clear on this tack we shall have a dirty night of it." Well, we did get round, but we did not run clear. There was a reef on the far side and in avoiding it we became embayed - a lee-shore in a strong gale - heavy seas, tide and current all setting us in - grapnel coming home. We had our dirty night, true enough, but it lasted four mortal days. However, we patched her up more or less - brought her in - it is all over now - and we have earned a thundering good supper.' He pulled the bell and called for the best supper the ship and his cook could produce. But to his distress he saw tears running down that ebony face, and to change the current of Sam's thoughts he said, 'Have you seen the Doctor? I had hoped he would be aboard, but he has not yet returned.'

'Sure I have seen him, sir. I am after leaving him in the mountain.'

'He is quite well? I am so happy. I was anxious for him.'

The first part of the supper came in, cold things the Captain's cook had under his hand with the ship lying off a plentiful market: roast beef yielded up by the gunroom with barely a sigh, chickens, capons, ducks, ham, quantities of vegetables and a great bowl of mayonnaise, decanters of Peruvian wine, a jug of barley-water that Jack emptied without thinking of it. He ate voraciously, swallowing as fast as a wolf; but he both talked at quick intervals between bites and listened. 'We had a prisoner called Dutourd,' he said, spreading butter on his soft-tack. 'We took him out of the Franklin, a privateer under American colours. He was a Frenchman with enthusiastic visionary notions about an ideal community in a Polynesian island - no Church, no King, no laws, no money, everything held in common, perfect peace and justice: all to be accomplished, as far as I could make out, by the wholesale slaughter of the islanders. He was a wealthy man, the Doctor told me, and I think he owned the Franklin, but that was not clear: at all events he had no letter of marque though he or his skipper had preyed on our whalers and strictly I should have carried him back to England, where they would have hanged him for piracy. I did not like him at all, neither his ideas nor his manners - a confident scrub, very much the foreigner. But he did have some qualities; he was courageous and he was good to his people; and it seemed to me - Sam, the bottle stands by you - that piracy where he was concerned was too much like a lawyer's quibble, so I meant to put him ashore here and let him go on parole. He was what is ordinarily called a gentleman: an educated man with money, at all events.' He set about the cold roast beef, and when he had filled their plates he went on, 'An educated man: he knew Greek-you know Greek, Sam, I am sure?'

'A little, sir. We are obliged to, you know, the New Testament being written in Greek.'

'In Greek?' cried Jack, his fork poised in the air. 'I had no idea. I thought it would naturally be written in - what did those wicked Jews speak?'

'Hebrew, sir.'

'Just so. But, however, they wrote it in Greek, the clever dogs? I am amazed.'

'Only the New Testament, sir. And it was not quite the same as Homer or Hesiod.'

'Oh, indeed? Well, I dined in the gunroom one day when he was also invited, and he told the company about those Olympic games.' He gazed round the almost empty table, filled Sam's glass, and said, 'I wonder what comes next.'

Beef steak and mutton chops came next, hot and hot, and a dish of true potatoes, fresh from their native Andes.

"... Olympic games and how they valued the prizes. There was one of these Seven Sages, you know, a cove by the name of Chilon, whose son gained one, and the old gentleman, the Sage, I mean, died of joy. I remembered him and his mates - one of my very few pieces of classical learning - because when I was a little chap they gave me a book with a blue cover and a cut of the Seven Sages in it all looking very much alike, that I had to learn out of; and it began First Solon, who made the Athenian laws; Then Chilon, in Sparta, renowned for his saws. But surely, Sam, dropping down dead shows a very wrong set of ideas in a sage?'

'Very wrong indeed, sir,' said Sam looking at his father with great affection.

'To be sure, he was only a sort of ironmonger, but even so... I once had a splendid filly that I hoped might win the Oaks; but if she had, I hope I should not have dropped down dead. In fact she never ran, and now I come to think of it the Doctor suspected that her lack of barrel betrayed a want of bottom. Yes. But in my pleasure at being in your company, and eating and drinking at last, I talk too much, almost like that French scrub Dutourd; and when you are fagged the wine goes to your head, so I wander from the point.'

'Not at all, sir. Not at all, at all. Will I help you to a chop?'

'By all means. Well, the point is this: when we were lying off Callao I happened to tell the Doctor that I was sending some French prisoners in. "Not Dutourd?" cried he, and then in a low voice, "That might be impolitic." Now this is rather delicate and I am puzzled quite how to put it. Let us eat our pudding, if we are allowed any pudding on such short notice, and when we reach port perhaps my intellects will shine out afresh."

They were allowed pudding, but only apologetical fancies such as sago, summer's pudding made with what Peru could afford, and mere rice, rather than those true puddings based on suet, which called for hours and hours in the copper.