Patrick O'Brian - The Letter of Marque

'I believe,' said Maturin, 'that to the mariner paths are stretched across the ocean according to wind and weather: these he follows with as little thought or concern as a Christian might walk down Sackville Street, cross Carlisle Bridge, pass Trinity College and so come to Stephen's Green, that haunt of dryads, each more elegant than the last. Captain Aubrey, on the other hand, has taken care to avoid these paths; as do, indeed, the smugglers whom that disagreeable cutter was looking for. I have little doubt that the vessel over there, the schooner, is one of them.'

In this Dr Maturin was mistaken: certainly the schooner was built for speed, and she might very well have carried contraband; but an even more discerning eye would have seen that while even now her small crew was furiously labouring with backstays and a maintopsail yard, another body of men and three women were clustered at the taffrail, waving and calling out - the very picture of a retaken prize, or rather a prize about to be retaken.

The Surprise swept closer and ranged alongside, taking the wind out of the schooner's sails: she fired a gun to windward and the schooner struck her colours.

'Shipmates,' said Jack Aubrey in a strong voice. 'You all know the terms of our agreement: if any man should so far forget himself as to rob any prisoner or ill-use him, or pillage the schooner, he will be turned out of the ship. Lower down the blue cutter.'

Yet the schooner, the Merlin, proved not to be a retaken prize at all; nor, whatever her captain - a French-speaking American from Louisiana - might say, was she an independent privateer: from the enormously prolix yet concordant testimony of the released prisoners it became apparent that she was the consort of a much more formidable ship, the Spartan, fitted out by a Franco-American consortium to prey on the West Indian trade of the Allies.

Jack knew the Spartan very well indeed, having chased her for two days and two nights through fair weather and foul, very foul. He had the highest opinion of her captain as a seaman, yet even so he was astonished to learn that he had taken no less than five prizes this voyage - two Port Royal sugar ships whose slowness had separated them from their convoy in the night, and three other West Indiamen with even more valuable cargoes of indigo, coffee, logwood, ebony, old fustic and hides that, being fast sailers, had chanced it on their own - and still more astonished to learn that they had all five been moored in the harbour of Horta, on Fayal, while their captains, the wives of those that sailed in married comfort, and the merchants of their factors had been packed off to France in the schooner, there to make what arrangements they could to ransom themselves, their ships and their cargoes.

'Why in Heaven's name did he not make for home as fast as ever he could pelt, with such a prodigious haul?' asked Jack. 'I have never heard of a private ship doing so amazing well in one short cruise: nor in a long one, neither.'

The answer was obvious enough, but nobody found it out until that evening. The schooner's captain gave nothing away, and his small crew was incapable of doing so, being totally ignorant of the general design; while Jack's and Pullings' minds were too much occupied with the former prisoners, the present prisoners and the refitting of the prize.

The American captain, the merchants and their wives had come aboard at once, and ordinarily, out of common decency, Jack would have invited them to dinner - the officers' hour was fast approaching. But at present he had no cabin in which to feed them; nor had he anything that he could put on the table if a cabin had existed.

'Mr Dupont, sir,' he said to the American captain, who was brought aft in reasonable privacy to show the Merlin's papers, 'you could oblige me extremely, were you so inclined.'

'I should be happy to do anything in my power, sir,' replied Dupont, looking doubtfully at the figure before him: privateer captains had a solid reputation for brutal rapacity, and Jack Aubrey, tall, gaunt, unwashed, with yellow bristles glinting on his unshaved face, his bloody bandage bloodier still from recent activity and his blood-stiffened hair still hanging about him like a horribly dyed female wig - a figure from which the merchants' wives had recoiled with silent horror, though accustomed to the sea. 'Anything within my trifling means.'

'The fact of the matter is, we are short of provisions. For the ship's sake and for my own I should be distressed if I were obliged to offer you and these ladies a dinner consisting of salt beef, dried peas, and beer so small as to be scarcely drinkable.'

'Command me, sir, I beg,' cried Dupont, who had foreseen something more disagreeable by far. 'My stores are not inconsiderable, though the tea is almost gone; and though my cook is black he is not without skill - I bought him from a man who fairly worshipped his belly."

This was an erroneous form of worship, sure, but after such a blow and after so many days with little more than ship's bread, the captain and the officers of the Surprise felt that there might be something in it. Even their guests were agreeably surprised, for although the black man had always done them well, he now burst out with an extraordinary profusion: his vol-au-vent made the ladies stretch their eyes, and his apple tart was worthy of Fladong's.

The Surprises attributed this to his happiness and gratitude, for as soon as he came across, Killick, who as captain's steward was naturally in charge of these things, took him by the arm and called out slowly into his perhaps uncomprehending ear, 'You Free Man Now. Huzzay,' making the gesture of one released from his manacles, and thus signifying that the moment the black set foot on a British ship he was no longer a slave. 'You' - touching his breast - 'Free Man.'

'Farm me, sir,' said the black, 'my name is Smith.' But he spoke so gently for fear of giving offence, that, in the midst of the cheerful hullaballoo, his words had no influence whatsoever upon public opinion.

The feast took place in the gunroom, with Jack Aubrey, now smoothed and presentable, at one end of the long table and Pullings at the other; and when it was over at last Stephen and the man who had sat on his right walked on the leeward side of the quarterdeck, smoking little paper cigars in the Spanish manner. They conversed in Spanish too, for his companion, Jaime Guzman, was a Spaniard, originally from Avila in Old Castile, a partner in the Cadiz firm that had bought the greater part of the old fustic in the captured William and Mary: he could speak a certain amount of commercial English, but he had not been on speaking-terms with any of his fellow-captives for a great while. He was naturally a communicative man, yet for weeks and weeks he had been deprived of the power of speech, and now he talked with an almost alarming volubility.

'Those women, those odious, odious women,' he said, smoke issuing from his mouth and nose, 'would never allow me this indulgence even on the outward voyage. Voluptuous civets. But quite apart from that I found them all profoundly disagreeable. At one time I thought of helping them to improve; but then I reflected that whoever washes an ass's head loses both his time and soap. None of those people would ever have been received in Avila: your godfather's grandmother would never have consented to receive them.' An account of the Avila of Guzman's youth led to observations on the town of Almaden, where Guzman's brother supervised the business side of the quicksilver mines, and upon Cadiz, where Guzman now had his being, a sadly depraved and abandoned city. 'Like yourself, don Esteban,' he said, 'I am an old and mellow Christian, and I am very fond of ham; but there is as who should say no ham to be had in Cadiz. And why is this? It is because under the pretence of being new Christians the people are all half-Moors or half-Jews. There is no dealing with them, as my poor brother finds. They are shockingly dishonest, two-faced, grasping, and, like most Andalusians, inhumanly eager for the gain.'