Patrick O'Brian - The Thirteen Gun Salute

They looked at one another, and Martin said, 'Poor man, I am afraid he has made himself much disliked aboard. He was not at all like this at Oxford. I believe it was loneliness after the university and all that wretched schoolmastering.'

'On some it acts like a poison, making them unfit for the society of grown men.'

'That was what he felt. He was afraid he was no longer good company. He bought a jest-book: "it is my ambition to set the table in a roar," he said. But upon my honour I think the seasickness is the true causa causans, though it is possible that some sharp reflexion in the gunroom may have precipitated his decision.'

'In any event, it is honourable in him to feel so bound to Captain Aubrey that he will not leave without permission.'

'Oh yes, he has always been perfectly honourable.' There was a long pause, and Martin said, 'Do you know when the post office will open in the morning? We spent so long in the Irish Sea that the packet is sure to have come before us: perhaps two packets. I long to hear from home.'

'It opens at eight o'clock. I shall he there as the bell strikes.'

'So shall I.'

So they were, and little good did it do them. There was nothing whatsoever for Martin and only two letters for Dr Maturin. Jack had a couple from Hampshire, and according to their usual habit they read them at breakfast, exchanging pieces of family news. Stephen had scarcely broken the seal of his first before he cried, with a passion rare in him, 'Upon my word, Jack, that woman is as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile.'

Jack was not always quick, but this time he instantly grasped that Stephen was talking about his wife and he said, 'Has she taken Barham Down?'

'She has not only taken it, she has bought it.' And in an undertone 'The animal.'

'Sophie always said she was very much set upon the place.'

Stephen read on, and then said, 'But she means to live with Sophie until we come home, however. She is only sending Hitchcock and a few horses.'

'So much the better. Stephen, did she tell you the kitchen boiler at Ashgrove blew up on Tuesday?'

'She is doing so at this minute - the words are before me. Brother, there is much to be said for living in a monastery.'

The next letter did nothing to reconcile him with his lot. It was written in that curiously ungracious business style which his bankers had brought to a state of high perfection: the person who signed it asserted that he was, with great respect, Stephen's humble obedient servant, but he either ignored questions or gave irrelevant answers, and where quite pressing matters were concerned he had a way of saying 'these instructions will be carried out in due course'. The nearest he could bring himself to an apology for the loss of a paper or certificate was 'it is regretted that if the document in question ever reached our hands, it has temporarily been mislaid; any inconvenience that may possibly have been caused is deplored'; the general tone was contentious, the advice on financial matters was so hedged with reservations as to be valueless, the language was both inflated and incorrect. 'Oh for a Fugger, oh for a literate Fugger,' he said.

'Two letters for the Doctor, sir, if you please,' said Killick, coming in with a sneer on his naturally rather disapproving face. 'This here delivered upside down, at the starboard gangway, by a parcel of lobsters. T'other by a genteel Lisbon craft with a violet awning and handed up decent.'

Killick had studied the seals with some care; the first he recognized, the English royal arms impressed in black wax, the second, a violet affair, he could not make out at all. But they were both important seals and naturally he was concerned to find out what the letters contained. Lingering at a suitable distance he heard Stephen cry, 'Give you joy, Jack! Sam is made: he is to be ordained by his own bishop on the twenty-third.'

For Jack the word 'made' was ringed with haloes. In the service it had two meanings, the first (a very great happiness) being commissioned, the second (supreme happiness) being appointed post-captain. Yet the world in which he had been brought up and which still clung about him most tenaciously looked upon Papists with disfavour - their loyalty was uncertain, their practices foreign, and Gunpowder Plot and the Jesuits had given them a bad name - and although he could without much difficulty accept Sam as some kind of an acting monk or monk's assistant, Sam as a full-blown Popish priest was quite different. But he was extremely fond of Sam, and if the promotion gave Sam joy... 'Well I'm damned,' he exclaimed, all these emotions finding expression in the words. 'What is it, Mr West?'

'I beg pardon, sir,' said West, 'but the port-captain is coming alongside.'

Jack being gone, Stephen opened his second letter. It was from the embassy and it asked him to call at his very earliest convenience.

'Here is your second-best coat, sir,' said Killick. 'I have made a tolerable good job of t'other, but it is not dry yet, and this will serve in a dark old church. The launch is going over the side this minute.'

So it was too, to judge by the rhythmic cries and the time-honoured oaths and crashes; and when Stephen, neat and brushed, with a fresh-curled wig and a clean handkerchief, came on deck, the Irish, Polish and north-country English Catholic members of the ship's company who were going to Padeen's Mass had already taken their places. They were in shore-going rig - wide-brimmed white sennit hats, Watchetblue jackets with brass buttons, black silk neckerchiefs, white duck trousers and very small shoes - but with no ribbons in the seams or coloured streamers: a sober finery. Maturin bowed to the port-captain, took his leave of Aubrey, and went down the side scarcely thinking of steps or entering-ropes, his mind being so far away. They pulled across to the shore, and leaving the launch with two boat-keepers they moved off in no sort of formation, gazing at the strangely-dressed Portuguese until they came to the Benedictine church; here, once they had passed the holy water, they might all have been at home, hearing the same words, the same plainchant, seeing the same formal hieratic motions and smelling the same incense they had always known.

The Mass over, they lit candles for Padeen and walked out of the cool, gently-lit timeless familiar world into the brilliant sunshine of Lisbon, a very recent city and to many of them quite foreign.

'Good day to you, now, shipmates,' said Stephen. 'You will never forget the way to the boat, I am sure; it is right down the hill.'

He walked up it towards the embassy, his mind turning back more and more rapidly to worldly things.

The porter looked a little doubtfully at his second-best coat - somewhat rusty and threadbare in the full light of the sun - but he sent in his card and the first secretary came hurrying. 'I am so sorry that His Excellency is not in the way this morning,' he said, taking Dr Maturin into his office, '- pray take a seat - but I am to say that the invitation to Monserrate may be accepted with perfect confidence, and that an escort will be provided if it is desired. A coach too, of course.'

'I should be most grateful for a carriage of some kind; yet perhaps a well-paced horse would be quicker and less conspicuous, if one can be spared.'

'Certainly.'

'And may I beg you to have a message carried down to the ship?'

'Alas, my dear Maturin,' cried Sir Joseph from the steps of the Quinta, 'I am afraid you have had a terribly hot ride.' Stephen dismounted; the horse was led away; and Sir Joseph went on, 'Can you ever forgive me? I was so confused, so weary, so muddle-headed by the time I arrived that I sent Carrick off empty-handed. My letter to you is still in my pocket. I will show it to you. Come, walk in, walk in out of the sun and drink some lemonade or East India ale or barley-water - anything you can think of. Tea, perhaps?'