Patrick O'Brian: The Thirteen Gun Salute

'Oh, Stephen, if you please,' cried Jack, for both Edward and Henry Smith, the sons of an Evangelical parson they much admired, were spoken of as Blue Lights in the Navy (prayers every day aboard and twice on Sunday), and although their fighting qualities took away from any sanctimonious implication the words might possess, it was known that they were very strict about coarse words, oaths and impropriety. Both brothers, Blue Lights or not, had been steadily kind and attentive to him in his recent disgrace, at considerable risk to their naval careers, and he did not wish his guest to be offended.

'I refer to the Fuggers, Mr Aubrey,' said Stephen, looking coldly at him. 'The Fuggers, I repeat, an eminent High Dutch family of bankers, the very type of those who understood their business, particularly in the time of Charles V.'

'Oh? I was not aware - perhaps I mistook your pronunciation. I beg pardon. But in any case Captain Smith is brother to the gentleman I told you about, the gentleman who is setting up a bank just at hand. That is to say another bank, for they have offices all over the county, and one in town of course. You know his other brother too, Henry Smith, who commands Revenge and who married Admiral Piggot's daughter: a thoroughly naval family. Poor Tom would have been a sailor too, but for his game leg. A most capital bank, I am sure; I am making some pretty considerable transfers, Tom Smith being so conveniently near. But as for your people, Stephen, I did not like to see young Robin lose fifteen thousand guineas in one session at Brooks's.'

'I am not to cry up my own family's bank,' said Captain Edward Smith, 'but at least I think I can assert that there is no chaos in Tom's concern, or as little as can be imagined in sublunar affairs. Letters that come in are answered the same day, fourpences do not pass unnoticed, and Tom's notes are honoured all over the country, even in Scotland, as readily as those of the Bank of England.'

'He plays a fine game of cricket, too, in spite of his poor leg,' said Jack. 'He has a man to run for him when he bats, and he bowls a most diabolical twister. I have known him since I was a boy.'

'I beg your pardon, sir, for not recognizing you before,' said Stephen. 'I have had the pleasure of seeing your brother quite often on board the Revenge, and if I had not been so bemused I should have made out the likeness directly.'

It was indeed very marked; and in the drawing-room Stephen contemplated upon the possible extent of family likeness: in this case the two brothers were both typical naval officers of the kind Stephen liked best - men with weather-beaten faces, good-looking, capable faces, whose open, friendly expressions quite lacked the self-consciousness,

self-satisfaction and morgue sometimes to be seen in soldiers; they were both physically very much alike, and Edward Smith had exactly the same rueful, kindly laugh and movement of his head as Henry.

Mrs Williams had turned to him for support. 'Surely you, sir, who have known Mr Aubrey so long, can make him understand how wrong it is to fly off in this wild manner, with the girls' birthday so near at hand and Parliament about to be summoned any day?'

'Why, ma'am,' said Captain Smith, with this same chuckle and inclination of the head, 'with the best will in the world to serve you, I am afraid that is more than I can undertake to do.'

And it was more than any of the others could undertake to do. When Jack Aubrey spoke in his service tone of voice, Sophie, Diana and Stephen knew perfectly well that he could and would fly off in that wild manner: Stephen in particular had often seen him do so. When there was some naval advantage to be gained by losing not a minute, where weather-gage, chase, engagement or escape were concerned, vessels under Aubrey's command were liable to slip their cables and fly off beyond recall, leaving liberty-men, comforts, and even the Captain's sacred coffee behind, to say nothing of unfulfilled social obligations. Stephen was aware that nothing could change this state of affairs; he had been aware of it all along; and that was why he was now standing on the quarterdeck of the Surprise, staring morosely into the offing, a victim of his own over-emphatic persuasion.

Another five or six days would have made things so much easier. Yet on the other hand Jack was in fact much safer afloat: with the opening of parliament just at hand he might have made another blunder, or what was far more likely, this obscure adverse influence might easily have fixed one upon him, either by provocation through a third party or by pure invention. No. Upon the whole Stephen was glad to be at sea. His affairs might still be in some disorder, but Jack had arranged for the purser to put off from Plymouth and join the ship off the Eddystone:Standish would bring many things, including letters, and the pilot-cutter that brought him out would carry letters back again. And then there was always their pause in Lisbon. With all its disadvantages - vexing to an already exacerbated spirit deprived of its habitual balm but trifling in sum - the great voyage that he and Martin had so looked forward to as natural philosophers had actually begun, a voyage that had an even greater importance far Maturin from the point of view of political intelligence. There was a considerable pro-French party in the South American possessions, and this party was also much in favour of slavery: Stephen was as strongly opposed to the French, in the sense of the imperialist, Bonapartist French, as he was to slavery, which he hated with all his being, just as he hated other forms of tyranny, such as that of the Castilians in Catalonia.

Jack Aubrey's other shipmates, above all those who had been with him since his early commands, were also quite used to his abrupt departures. Yet although they were not spiritually disconcerted by the frigate's leaving Shelmerston with a large variety of ropes dangling disgracefully, open pots of paint lying about on deck, part of her starboard blackstrake scraped bare and part tarred and lamp-blacked, while all the officers' washing was still ashore, they were physically much affected, since all this horrible, unseamanlike confusion must be reduced to order without the loss of a moment. They were all on deck, and now that Penlee Head was well astern they, and virtually the whole of the ship's company with them, were exceedingly busy. Exceedingly busy, but not in the least put out or surprised: all the more knowing old hands knew that Jack Aubrey rarely or never put to sea in this tearing hurry unless he had had private intelligence ('And who off of, mate? Who off of?' would ask the oldest and most knowing of them all, tapping the sides of their noses) of an attackable enemy or a glorious prize within the next few hundred miles of sea; and for this reason they flew about their duties with an even greater zeal than unqualified devotion would have required.

Tom Pullings, a captain by courtesy but in fact only a commander in the Royal Navy, and a commander who, like so many of his rank, had no ship to command, was sailing once again as a volunteer, and at present he occupied the quarterdeck with the Captain. Davidge was in the waist with the carpenter and a large number of powerful hands, stowing the frigate's many boats; West and the bosun were on the forecastle apparently playing cat's cradle with an improbable amount of cordage, while hands crept round them, above them, outboard of them, each a thorough-going seaman intent upon his business.

All these officers had been aboard the Surprise in her last spectacularly successful cruise, which had been intended as a mere trial run in home waters, a preparation for this present long voyage, and all had done well out of it; Davidge and West were present chiefly because they felt committed to Aubrey, but partly because they would like to do even better (both had had very heavy debts to pay out of their prize-money) and because, it being generally understood in the service that Aubrey would sooner or later be reinstated, they rather hoped they might regain the Navy List in his wake. Pullings' prime motion was plain devotion to Jack, helped a little by a certain developing shrewishness in Mrs Pullings (unimaginable to those who had only seen her as a timid country-mouse several years and four stout children ago), who more and more frequently asked him why he had no ship when scrubs like Willis and Caley were provided for and who had written a letter, neither very wise nor very well spelt, to the Admiralty, pressing his claims.