Patrick O'Brian: The Truelove

The parade, such as it was, dissolved and the hands moved aft, lining the quarterdeck as far as the companion hatchway and sitting on benches or stools or capstan-bars poised between two match-tubs, or on the belaying-bitts round the mainmast: chairs were placed for the Captain and the officers on the windward side, for the midshipmen and the warrant-officers to the lee.

A sword-rack covered with an ensign and holding the Articles of War stood in front of Captain Aubrey; and all this time the sun shone from a clear sky, the warm air breathed across the deck, slanting from forward with just enough strength to fill her great array of canvas: there was very little sound from the breeze, the rigging or the blocks, and the water only whispered down the side. Norfolk Island, rising and falling on the long even swell beyond the larboard bow, was perceptibly nearer. Nobody spoke.

'Silence fore and aft,' called Pullings; and after a moment Jack stood up, opened the thin boards that held the Articles and began: there were thirty-six of them, and nineteen of the offences named carried the death sentence, sometimes qualified by the words 'or such other punishment as the nature and degree of the offence shall deserve, and the court-martial shall impose'. He read them deliberately, with a powerful voice; and the Articles, already inimical, took on a darker, more threatening tone. When he had finished the silence was still quite as profound, and now there was a greater uneasiness in it.

He closed the boards, looked coldly fore and aft, and said 'Captain Pullings, we will take in the royals and haul down the flying jib. When they are stowed, hands may be piped to dinner.'

It was a quiet meal, with little or none of the shouting and banging of mess-kids that usually greeted the Sunday plum-duff and the grog; and while it was being eaten Jack walked his quarterdeck as he had so very often walked it before: seventeen paces forward, seventeen paces aft, turning on a ring-bolt long since polished silver by his shoe.

Now of course the half-heard jokes, the covert allusions to Mr Oakes's weariness, his need for a sustaining diet and so on, were perfectly clear. He turned the situation over and over in his mind; flushes of pure exasperation interrupted his judgment from time to time, but he felt in perfect command of his temper when he went below and sent for the midshipman.

'Well, Mr Oakes,' he said, 'what have you to say?'

'I have nothing to say, sir,' replied Oakes, turning his oddly mottled face aside. 'Nothing at all, and I throw myself on your mercy. Only we hoped - I hoped - you would carry us away from that horrible place. She was so very unhappy.'

'I am to take it she was a convict?'

'Yes, sir; but unjustly condemned, I am sure.'

'You know perfectly well that I have turned away dozens, scores of others.'

'Yet you let Padeen come aboard, sir,' said Oakes, and then clasped his hands in a hopeless, stupid attempt at unsaying the words, doing utterly away with them.

'Get away forward,' said Jack. 'I shall take no action, make no decision today, this being Sunday: but you had better pack your chest.'

When he had gone Jack rang for his steward and asked whether the gunroom had finished their dinner. 'No, sir,' said Killick. 'I doubt they are even at their pudding yet.'

'Then when they have finished - when they have quite finished, mind - I should like to see Captain Pullings. My compliments, and I should like to see Captain Pullings.'

He looked doggedly through the sheets of physical observations he had made for Humboldt, temperature and salinity of the sea at various depths, barometric pressure, temperature of the air by wet and dry bulb thermometer, a chain of observations more than half way round the world, and he derived a certain satisfaction from them. Eventually he heard Pullings' steps.

'Sit down, Tom,' he said, waving to a chair. 'I have seen Oakes, and the only explanation he could bring out was that she was very unhappy: then the damn fool threw Padeen in my teeth.'

'You did not know, sir?'

'Of course I did not. Did you?'

'I believe it was common knowledge in the ship, but I had no certainty. Nor did I enquire. My impression was that the situation being so delicate you did not choose to have it brought to your attention or for there to be any question of returning to Botany Bay.'

'Was it not your duty as first lieutenant to let me know?'

'Perhaps it was, sir; and if I have done wrong I am very sorry for it. In a regular King's ship with a pennant, a party of Marines, a master-at-arms and ship's corporals I could not have avoided knowing it officially, and then in duty bound I should have been obliged to inform you. But here, with no Marines, no master-at-arms and no snip's corporals I should have had to listen at doors to be certain. No, sir: nobody wanted to tell either me or you, so that you, officially in the dark until it was too late, could not be blamed - could sail on for Easter Island with an easy conscience.'

'You think it is too late now, do you?'

'Wittles is up, sir, if you please,' said Killick at the door of the dining-cabin.

'Tom,' said Jack, 'we left that odious wench in the starboard cable-tier. I dare say Oakes has fed her, but she cannot stay there watch after watch: she had better be stowed forward with the little girls until I have made up my mind what to do with her.'

This was one of the few Sundays when no guests had been invited to the cabin, the Captain feeling so out of sorts, one of the few Sundays when Dr Maturin dined in the gunroom, and Aubrey sat in the solitary splendour usual in some captains but rare in him - he liked seeing his officers and midshipmen at his table and particularly his surgeon. Not that Stephen could in any way be called a guest, since they had shared the cabin these many years, and until recently he had actually owned the ship.

He might have been expected for coffee, but in fact Jack saw nothing of him until the evening, when he walked in with a dose and a clyster: he and Martin had spent the intervening hours describing the more perishable specimens from their tour in the bush, and writing to their wives.

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish,' cried Jack. 'An elegant Goddamned kettle, upon my word.' Solitude and a heavy afternoon sleep had increased his ill-humour, and Stephen did not at all like the colour of his face. 'What's afoot?' he asked.

'What's afoot? Why, the ship is turned into a bawdy-house - Oakes has had a girl in the cable-tier ever since we left Sydney Cove - everybody knew, and I have been made a fool of in my own command.'

'Oh, that? It is of no great consequence, brother. And as for being made a fool of, it is no such matter but rather a mark of the people's affection, since they wished to avoid your being placed in a disagreeable posture.'

'You knew, and you did not tell me?'

'Of course I did not. I could not tell my friend Jack without at the same time telling Captain Aubrey, authority incarnate; and you are to observe that I am not and never have been an informer.'

'Everyone knows how I hate a woman aboard. They are worse than cats or parsons for bad luck. But quite apart from that, quite rationally, no good ever came of women aboard -perpetual trouble, as you saw yourself at Juan Fernandez. She is an odious wench, and he is an ungrateful scrub.'

'Have you seen her, at all?'

'I caught a glimpse of her in the cable-tier just after leaving you this morning. Have you?'

'I have, too. I went along to ask the little girls how they did and to hear them their piece of catechism and there I found a midshipman with them, a young midshipman I did not know, a handsome youth: then I perceived that he was a young woman and I begged her to sit down. We exchanged a few words - her name is Clarissa Harvill - and she spoke with a becoming modesty. She is clearly a woman of some family and education: what is ordinarily called a gentlewoman.'