Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

'No, no, never in life,' said Raffles. 'Such a thing would never occur to him: he is wholly methodical, utterly humourless; a classifier who has nothing to say to values.'

'Lord, Raffles,' cried his wife, coming in, 'what is this very ill smell? Has something died behind the wainscot?'

'My dear,' said the Governor, 'it is this new plant, which is to be named after Dr Maturin.'

'Well,' said Mrs Raffles, 'it is much better to have a flower named after one than a disease or a fracture, I am sure. Think of poor Dr Ward and his dropsy. And certainly this is a prodigious curious plant: but perhaps I might ask Abdul to take it to the potting-shed. Dear Doctor, they tell me your clothes will be quite dry in half an hour; so we shall have an early dinner. You must be starving.'

'The naming of creatures after one's friends or colleagues is a very pretty custom,' observed the Governor, when she had gone. 'And no one ever did it more handsomely than you with Testudo aubreii, that glorious reptile. And speaking of Aubrey reminds me that I have not seen him for days. How does he do?'

'He does very well, I thank you, running about day and night to get his ship to sea with even more than the usual mad naval haste - running about with such zeal that he has scarcely time for meals and none for over-eating, I am happy to say.'

'Does he need any more hands?'

'I think not. There are about 130 of us left, and seeing the Nutmeg will need only small gun-crews - no more than three or four to a carronade, if I do not mistake - he feels that she is quite well-manned. And he is happy with the notion of promoting his carpenter's mate to poor Mr Hadley's place. But as you know he is still short of a purser, a clerk and two or three young gentlemen.'

'As for the purser, my enquiries have not led me to any man I could recommend, but I have an excellent clerk - he was wounded in the leg when we took this place, but he is recovered now and he gets about quite nimbly - and two young gentlemen, who may or may not suit. Do you think Aubrey could dine on Thursday? I could produce my candidates before or after, just as he chooses. And I could ask him, in a general way, about his immediate plans. I think I could do so without indiscretion, because quite apart from my intense curiosity about whether he means to risk an encounter with the Corn�e or to outrun her, I could, by stretching my authority a little, detach a sloop, the Kestrel, to accompany him as far as the Passage, if he wishes. She should be in by the end of the week.'

Stephen said 'Speaking without the least authority - what is that at the window?'

'A tangalung, a Java civet,' said Raffles, opening the casement. 'Come, Tabitha.' And after a pause the pretty creature, striped and spotted, came and sat in his lap, looking at Stephen with a frown.

Stephen lowered his voice respectfully and went on, 'Without the least authority, I think I may assert that no offer could be more unwelcome.'

'Oh, indeed?'

'My impression - and this is only my impression: I betray no confidence, still less any consultation - is that Aubrey means to attempt the Corn�e if he can find her. The presence of the Kestrel could make no difference to the physical outcome of the engagement, since she carries only fourteen pop-guns and is no more capable of setting about a frigate than a frigate is capable of setting about a ship of the line; but it would have a disastrous effect upon the metaphysical result. If Aubrey's attempt should fail, then the Kestrel must be sunk or taken too: the Corn�e would beat two opponents and cover herself with laurels. But if Aubrey's attempt is successful, as God send, then the Corn�e is defeated by the overwhelming odds of two to one, she suffers no disgrace and Aubrey wins no glory For you are to consider that newspapers and the public take very little notice of the relative strength of opposing ships.

Aubrey is much attached to glory?

'Certainly he fairly worships Nelson But I do not think there is any taint of vanity about him, as perhaps there was in his hero. Aubrey's personal triumph however, is a matter of no importance in this hypothetical encounter: the essential aim, which he recognizes with perfect clarity, is to lower French self-esteem, particularly French naval self-esteem. It is, I do assure you, a matter of such importance that I should go to - have been to - surprising lengths...

The nature of these lengths was never revealed: the door opened and the English butler, once a fine plump rosy specimen of his kind but now yellowed and shrunken with Javan ague, announced that His Excellency was served.

'Heavens, Mr Richardson, my dear, what a hullabalboo!' cried Stephen, going aboard the Nutmeg. 'What are all these people about?'

'Good morning, sir,' said Richardson. 'They are rattling down the shrouds.'

'Well, God be between them and evil,' said Stephen. 'It looks horribly dangerous to me. Would himself be in the ship?'

He was in the cabin, taking his ease with a pot of coffee after an exceedingly hard morning that had begun in the darkness: he looked pale, worn, but contented.

'I should never have believed that so much could be done in three days,' said Stephen, looking around, 'for it is absolutely no more since I was here. The cabin is almost the same as our old one - clean, trim, comfortable; and these neat little carronades leave one so much more room, what joy. Raffles asks us to dine on Thursday, here in Batavia: he has a clerk for you whom he guarantees and two midshipmen whom he does not. No honest purser, I am afraid.'

'Thursday?' said Jack, his face falling. 'I had reckoned on warping out for the powder-hoy tomorrow forenoon, getting our livestock in during slack water. and sailing on the evening tide.'

'I know that tomorrow he has a council-meeting and then a great dinner for a score of potentates at Buitenzorg.'

'Of course he is very much taken up,' said Jack; and having reflected he went on, 'Thursday means the loss of a couple of days. Yet it would make me most uneasy not to do the civil thing by the Governor; he has been so uncommon obliging. But I tell you what it is, Stephen: was you to see him before Thursday and beg him not to trouble with his clerk and the reefers, but just tell a secretary to give them a note for me, how very much better that would be. He and Mrs Raffles would not have a couple of awkward louts on their hands and I could get a much better notion of their capabilities. Do you know why they were discharged?'

'Drunkenness, fornication and sloth were their undoing; and they were not so much discharged as abandoned. They left their disorderly house at about noon, made their staggering, crapulous way to the strand, and found that the squadron had sailed at dawn. They have been living in squalor ever since; for although the Governor has taken some little indirect notice of them, it does not appear that their friends have relieved them in any way, possibly for want of time rather than of inclination. It does after all take an eternity for an Indiaman to come and go.'

Jack gazed at the South China Sea for a while - brilliant sun and countless small craft moving busily under it, but a greenish tinge to the water, with a rain-charged cloudbank rising a handsbreadth from the horizon in the south - and then pouring Stephen another cup he said 'As for the purser, I can do without. Poor Blyth had an intelligent, reasonably honest steward and a knowing Jack-in-the-dust: and in any case Captain Cook was his own purser. I should most cordially welcome a good clerk however; it would wound my heart to lose all our records as you suggested - my observations for Humboldt were to some extent combined with them - and a clever man used to ship's books could perhaps disentangle the confusion Besides, there was the awful case of Macintosh - you remember Macintosh took the Sibylle 36 in a running fight right down the Channel - who tried the same solution when he went ashore in the Cyclades and lost half his papers. He took the remaining half, wrapped it up in a sheet of lead on which he wrote S - the Navy Board, f - the Admiralty, b - the Sick and hurt" and dropped it overboard A week later a Greek sponge-diver brought it to the flagship in perfect condition and asked for a reward.'