Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

'Oh yes, I thank you,' cried Martin. 'It was very agreeable indeed. I was trying to make my way out of this dispiriting, sadly dirty - what shall I call it? - settlement, perhaps. And I was approaching the windmill when I heard someone call my name, and there was Paulton! You have heard me speak of John.Paulton, I am sure?'

'The gentleman who played the violin so well, and who wrote of love in such feeling verse?'

'Yes, yes. Anguish Paulton we used to call him; and alas it proved all too true. We were great friends at school, and we were on the same staircase at the university. We should never have lost touch but for his wretched marriage and of course my wanderings. I knew he had a cousin in New South Wales and I intended to find him out, in case he could give me news of John. And there he was! I mean there was John. We were so happy. He had had a sad time of it, poor fellow, for having become a Catholic as I think I told you he could have no fellowship, though he was a capital scholar and very well liked in the college, nor any military employment; and once this woman and her lover had squandered his fortune, such as it was, he was reduced, as I was reduced, to journalism, translation, correcting the press.'

'I hope he is happier in New South Wales?'

'He has enough to eat and an assured roof over his head, but I am afraid he is ungrateful enough to pine for more. His cousin has a considerable tract of land, some hundreds or even thousands of acres, I believe, along the coast to the north, at the mouth of a stream whose name escapes me: each looks after it in turn; and John finds the loneliness very trying. He had thought silence and solitude would be ideal for writing; but no such thing - melancholy rises on every hand.'

'Are the flora and fauna no solace, and they the strangest in the world?'

'None whatsoever. He has never been able to tell one bird from another nor lad's love from heart's-ease, and he does not care. His only delight is books and good company and this country for him is a desert.'

'But his time away from it?'

'For John Sydney too is a desert, with the addition of cruelty, squalor and crime. There are political divisions here, and John's cousin belongs to the minority. John knows few people, and the talk of those few is all of wethers and tegs. A scholarly man, who drinks little wine, who dislikes hunting, for whom books and music are all-important, has little to say to them. How his face lit up when I spoke of you! He desires his best compliments, and begs you will allow me to take you to his house this evening. He pins all his hopes of a return to the land of the living on a novel, of which he has completed three volumes, and he feels that even a very little civilised conversation will enable him to bring the fourth to an end, which at present he is quite unable to do.'

'I should be very happy,' said Stephen, and turning he called

'Killick, pray stop scrabbling at the door in that uneasy manner. Come right in or go clean away, will you now?'

Killick came right in and said 'Which it is Slade, sir: begs the favour of a word when you are at liberty.'

Stephen was at liberty, but Slade, the Sethian elder, found it extremely difficult to bring his word out. After a discourse on the long-established and universally-practised custom of free trading in Shelmerston and the wanton brutality of the preventive men, it appeared that a Sethian, Harry Fell, had been sent to Botany Bay for beating a Customs officer. And not only Harry, but also William, George, Mordecai and Aunt Smailes, the last for harbouring uncustomed goods. The Seth lads would like to visit their friends if they could, but they did not know where to find them or how to set about getting permission: they hoped the Doctor might be so good .

'Certainly,' said Stephen. 'I am going to the government offices in any case.' He wrote down the names and dates of conviction, and listened to an account of the preventive men's criminal ways of obtaining a conviction, their violence to prisoners and perjury in court.

Bonden, who came when Slade had gone away at last, had a simpler approach: the names in his list were relations of shipmates, of Surprises; and if the Doctor was going to see about poor Padeen they would take it very kindly if he enquired after them too. No moral justification; the word shipmates was enough - shipmates' friends were to be enquired after whether they had committed murder, rape or riotous assembly.

'I must be away,' said Stephen. 'I hope not to be late for dinner, but if I am, pray ask the Captain to pay no attention and never to wait in compliment to me.'

He was late, and the Captain had waited; though scarcely, it seemed, by way of compliment. 'Well, Stephen,' he said with an angry glare, 'here's a pretty cock you have made of things, upon my honour. In one short afternoon you have contrived to guarantee official and unofficial ill-will - ill-will from all quarters. I felt the effect of it at every visit I made. God knows when we shall get the ship cleaned and ready for sea.'

'So did I. The penal secretary's smiles were all gone. He put me off with one miserable excuse after another - enquiries had to be made on stamped paper and backed by a commissioned officer or a justice of the peace - there was no stamped paper available at present.'

'Firkins is cousin to Lowe and he is connected with the whole Macarthur tribe. What in Heaven's name possessed you to run the fellow through the body?'

'I did not run him through the body. I pierced his sword-arm, little more; which was moderate enough I believe. After all he had knocked my wig off.'

'But surely he did not just walk up to you and do so without there had been some words beforehand, some quarrel?'

'I only told him during the course of that dismal feast that Banks did not choose to be acquainted with a man like Macarthur. He brooded over that for the rest of the meal and attacked me as I walked down the steps.'

'It was most irregular. If you had killed him without calling him out in due form, without seconds, there would have been the devil to pay.'

'If it had been a regular encounter I could scarcely have closed and dashed my hilt in his face, which brought him up with a round hitch. Besides a formal meeting would have made much more noise - would have done the lout too much honour. But I do admit that it was a sorry performance: I am very sorry for it, Jack, and I ask your pardon.'

Dinner had been on the table in the dining-cabin for some time, but Killick was too eager to hear what was said to announce it: his long acquaintance with Captain Aubrey told him that it was now useless to expect furious reproaches or foul oaths, so he opened the door and said 'Wittles is up at last sir, if you please.'

'This is an uncommon good fish, though luke-warm,' said Jack after a while.

'A kind of snapper, I believe; the best I have ever eaten. Several things are at their most charming when tepid: new potatoes, for example; dried cod beaten up with cream.'

It was indeed an excellent dish; so was the capon that followed it, and the short, thick pudding; but even when dinner was over and they were sitting in the great cabin again Stephen was aware that Jack was not entirely mollified: far from it. This official obstruction (so difficult to deal with under a comparatively new and unknown Governor) was deeply frustrating, and he felt that Stephen had brought it about.

Nevertheless, when they had drunk their brandy Jack stood up and took a packet from the rack that held his telescopes, and before opening it he said 'Since Firkins chooses to be disobliging about your enquiries I shall go and speak to the Governor's deputy in my character as a senior naval officer and member for Milport. That will produce the information. They do so hate a question in Parliament or a letter to the ministry.'