Patrick O'Brian - The Truelove

Stephen usually went to the taffrail to lean over it and either contemplate the birds that followed, particularly in the high southern latitudes, or to lose himself in the hypnotic wake; he had rarely sat looking forward and now the sight of the tall pale topsails reaching up and up into the night sky absorbed him for several minutes. The ship heaved and sighed upon the swell, the voices of seamen talking quietly under the break of the quarterdeck came aft, and an attentive ear could easily catch the sound of Captain Aubrey's sleep.

'I hope, Dr Maturin,' said Clarissa, 'that when I spoke in that intemperate way about children on Monday you did not feel I was making the slightest reflexion on Sarah and Emily? They are very, very good little girls, and I love them dearly.'

'Lord no,' said Stephen. 'It never occurred to me that you would put a slight on them. I am no great advocate for children in general, but if my own daughter - for I have a daughter, ma'am - grows up as kind, affectionate, clever and spirited as those two I shall bless my fate.'

'I am sure she will,' said Clarissa. 'No. I was talking about children that have not been properly house-trained. Left to their own impulses and indulged by doting or careless parents almost all children are yahoos. Loud, selfish, cruel, unaffectionate, jealous, perpetually striving for attention, empty-headed, for ever prating or if words fail them simply bawling, their voices grown huge from daily practice: the very worst company in the world. But what I dislike even more than the natural child is the affected child, the hulking oaf of seven or eight that skips heavily about with her hands dangling in front of her - a little squirrel or a little bunny-rabbit - and prattling away in a baby's voice. All the children I saw in New South Wales were yahoos.'

In their slow progress, with declining winds, towards Fiji there were several of these night-conversations, for more and more Stephen avoided the gunroom, where the ill-feeling seemed to have spread; but few were as decided as the first, Mrs Oakes being usually as complaisant and anxious to please as could be, agreeing with the views expressed and amplifying them. Occasionally this led to awkwardness, as when she found herself wholly committed to both sides in a disagreement between Stephen and Davidge - for other officers often appeared, sometimes forestalling him - on the relative merits of classical and romantic music, poetry, architecture, painting.

Yet there were times when Stephen happened to be alone with her and she spoke in her earlier manner. From some context that he could not recall Stephen had mentioned his dislike of being questioned: 'Question and answer is not a civilized form of conversation.'

'Oh how I agree,' she cried. 'A convict is no doubt more sensitive on the point but quite apart from that I always used to find that perpetual inquisition quite odious: even casual acquaintances expect you to account for yourself.'

'It is extremely ill-bred, extremely usual, and extremely difficult to turn aside gracefully or indeed without offence.' Stephen spoke with more than common feeling, for since he was an intelligence-agent even quite idle questions, either answered or evaded, might start a mortal train of suspicion.

'I have always disliked it,' said Clarissa after a pause in which six bells sounded and clean round the ship look-outs called 'All's well'. 'When I was young I formed the opinion that impertinent questions, arising from a desire to be talking or from vulgar curiosity, did not deserve true answers, so I used to say whatever came into my head. But I can't tell you how difficult it is to maintain a lie for any length of time with any countenance, if it has assumed any importance and if you are bound to it. You skip from emergency to emergency, trying to remember what you said before, running along the roof-top at full speed: sadly wearing. So now I just say it is a subject I prefer not to discuss. What is that steadily repeated noise? Surely they cannot be pumping the ship at this time of night?'

'It may be mutiny to reply, but in your private ear I will tell you that it is Captain Aubrey, alas.'

'Oh dear. Cannot he be turned over? He must be lying on his back.'

'He always lies on his back. His cot is so constructed that he cannot lie on anything else. Many a time have I begged him to have it made longer, wider, deeper; but as regularly as a clock he replies that man and boy he has slept in that cot, and he likes what he is used to. In vain do I point out that with the years he has grown taller, broader, even more portly - that in the course of nature he has changed to larger boots, larger small-clothes ..." He sighed and fell silent: a long, companionable silence.

From well forward came Davidge's voice - he had the watch. 'Mr Oakes, there. Jump up to the foretop with a couple of hands and look to the windward laniards.' After they had gone aloft Davidge turned, paused a while to write on the log-board and then came right aft. 'Are you still here, Doctor?' he cried. 'Don't you ever go to bed?'

This was said in a tone that Stephen had never heard from Davidge, drunk or sober: he made no reply, but Mrs Oakes said 'For shame, Davidge. Doctor, pray give me your arm down those stairs. I am going to my cabin.'

On the companion-ladder they met Captain Aubrey hurrying on deck to see what was amiss in the foretop, the heaving on the first purchase having pierced through his sleep, whereas the thunderous holystoning of the decks some hours later left him quite unmoved, wheezing gently now and smiling as though some particularly agreeable dream were going on behind his closed eyelids.

Morning after morning, now that the sweetening-cocks were left in peace, did their remote commander too sleep at his ease, making up for countless hours on deck at night - for though of course he kept no particular watch, a commander of Jack Aubrey's kind might be said to keep the whole round of them, above all in dirty weather - and laying in stores of resistance for the hurricanes, lee-shores and uncharted reefs that must surely lie ahead, if past experience were anything to go by.

He slept, quite undisturbed by all the ordinary routine noises that accompanied the ship's warm, calm, slow, un-adventurous progress towards Tonga, not rising up for his morning swim until the sun was well above the horizon and sometimes even missing his first breakfast. He slept a great deal these days, often stretching on the stern-window locker after dinner as well as keeping to his cot most of the night; and he dreamt a great deal. Many of his dreams were erotic, some most specifically so, for New South Wales had proved cruelly frustrating; and he found that Clarissa entered not only his dreams, which he could not prevent, but also his waking mind to an unsuitable degree, which he could, and should. He was no more a rigid moralist than most full-blooded sanguine men of his age and service, but this was not a question of morals: it concerned discipline and the proper running of a man-of-war. No captain could make a cuckold of a subordinate and retain his full authority.

Jack knew this very well: he had seen the effects of the contrary behaviour on a whole ship's company, that delicately-balanced, complex society. In any event, on principle he regarded naval wives as sacred, except in the rare event of one giving unmistakable signs that she did not wish so to be regarded: and Mrs Oakes had certainly never done anything of the kind. She was therefore doubly sacrosanct, never to be thought of in a carnal light; yet again and again licentious images, words and gestures would come into his mind, to say nothing of the far more licentious dreams.

He tended therefore to avoid the quarterdeck when she was there, sitting by the taffrail, sometimes tatting in an inexpert fashion but much more often talking to the officers who came aft to ask her how she did. He consequently missed several developments such as the beginning of Pullings' and West's intimacy with Mrs Oakes. They were both of them much disfigured, Pullings by a great sword-slash right across his face, and West by the loss of his nose, frost-bitten south of the Horn; they were diffident where women were concerned and for hundreds of miles they said nothing more than 'Good day, ma'am' or 'Ain't it warm?' when they could not avoid it; but her open, candid friendliness and her simplicity had encouraged them, and in time they took to joining Dr Maturin, who quite often combined sitting with her and watching for Latham's albatross (reported from these latitudes) now that his laborious deciphering was done and now that the sick-berth had returned to its usual fine-weather blue-water somnolence, all ordinary sources of infection left far astern.