Patrick O'Brian - The Letter of Marque

Dr Maturin had rarely made a better forecast. In the forenoon of the thirteenth Jack Aubrey was carried up on to his quarterdeck in an elbow-chair, and there he sat in the mild sunshine, contemplating the string of prizes and receiving congratulations. 'By God, sir,' said Babbington, 'this matches the Cacafuego. You could not have succeeded more fully. But I do hope that you have not paid too high.'

'No, no, the Doctor himself says it is quite trifling.'

'Well, if he calls that trifling,' said Babbington, nodding at the slung arm and the heavily bandaged leg and the waxen face, 'God help us if ever he tells us we are seriously hurt.'

'Amen,' said Jack. 'William, have you considered the Diane?

'Yes, sir, and a very pretty ship she is - a fine narrow entry and the most elegant lines, though she is so low in the water she don't appear to advantage.'

'Why, she has twelve or even eighteen months stores aboard: she was going foreign, far foreign. But what I meant was, all those young women walking about her deck. Have you considered them?'

'Oh yes, sir,' said Babbington, a lubricious creature who had been considering them through a telescope at close range ever since they began to appear. 'There is a particularly handsome one in green just abaft the hances.'

'You always was an infernal whoremonger, William,' said Jack, though without any moral superiority: moral superiority he could not afford, since it was pretty well known in the service that in his youth he had been turned before the mast for keeping a black girl in the cable-tiers of HMS Resolution off the Cape; while as lieutenant, commander and post-captain he had never really shone as a model of chastity. 'I remember your sailing with a whole harem of Greek wenches in the Ionian, when you had the Dryad. But my intention was rather to suggest that you should pack them off home in a flag of truce, together with the wounded.'

'Certainly, sir,' said Babbington, reluctantly taking his eye from the girl in green. 'A brilliant idea. No doubt the Doctor will tell me which of the wounded can be moved; but now I come to think of it, I have not seen him this morning.'

'Nor I don't suppose you shall, not until about noon. Poor soul: he fought like a hero in the cutting-out - pistolled the French captain as neatly as you could wish - and then spent most of the rest of the night sewing up the Frenchmen he had punctured, as well as our own people. It was a French quartermaster he operated on after me - blood bubbling out of his lungs.'

'What did he do to you, sir?'

'Well, I am ashamed to say he took a pistol-ball out of the small of my back. It must have been when I turned to hail for more hands - thank God I did not. At the time I thought it was one of those vile screws that were capering about abaft the wheel.'

'Oh, sir, surely a horse would never have fired off a pistol?'

'Yet fired it was: and the Doctor said it was lodged hard up against the sciatic nerve.'

'What is the sciatic nerve?'

'I have no idea. But once it had recovered from being as I take it stunned, and once I had given the ball an unhandy twist, sending it closer still, the whole thing - I shall not attempt to describe how disagreeable it was, until the Doctor took it out.'

Babbington shook his head, looking very grave; and after a while he said, 'The Americans speak of a sciatic stay, leading from the main to the foremast head.'

'So I recall. No doubt shipping it causes them the utmost agony. But there is Mr Martin: he will tell you which of the French wounded can be moved.'

Half an hour later the whole force and its prizes, an imposing body of ten sail covering a fine stretch of sea some two miles off Cape Bowhead, was standing south-west on the west-north-west breeze with the larboard tacks aboard, moving just fast enough to have steerage-way. The boats plied to and fro, lowering the wounded with great care into the Tartarus's launch under the care of her surgeon, while the girls, together with a disagreeable old woman, understood to be a procuress, were handed down, with a much greater degree of merriment, into the Surprise's pinnace. The boats stepped their masts, set sail, and bowled away for St Martin's with a flag of truce.

The squadron had worn twice, and it was crossing the harbour mouth again - the returning boats could be seen near the breakwater - when Dr Maturin came on deck, a cup of coffee in his hand. Having bade his shipmates good morning and having asked Jack how he did - 'Amazingly well, I thank you, so long as I sit still; and am infinitely obliged to you for your care of me. Will you just cast a glance at that beautiful Diane astern?' - Stephen turned and said 'Captain Pullings, my dear, may I have a boat to go and see my prisoner in the Diane^ I desired Bonden to put him in the hold with the rest, so that he should not be in the way during the towing.'

'Bonden will pull you across himself, sir. Pass the word for Bonden.'

Once again Stephen Maturin took a chair from the Grapes to Shepherd Market; once again Sir Joseph opened the door to welcome him; but this time they both had to carry the files and bundles of paper into the library.

'Sit down, my dear Maturin, and let us drink a glass of madeira while we recover our breath. But first let me congratulate you and Aubrey on your famous victory. I have seen no more than the very brief report transmitted to the Admiralty, but reading between the lines I see that it must have been one of those brilliant dashing expeditions in which our friend excels; and of course I have heard the roar of public applause. Yet from your reserved and indeed - forgive me - melancholy air, I am afraid that although the affair has certainly answered Aubrey's ends it has not done the same for you. Perhaps the Diane was not all I represented her to be?'

'Not at all. She was indeed intended for the very same mission to the Spanish colonies, forestalling us; and these papers show the names of all those with whom the French agents might profitably enter into contact, together with a quantity of other information, such as the sums already disbursed to various officers and so on. There is also a plethora of other folders that I have not decoded, probably appreciations of the local situation by resident correspondents.'

'Well, my angelic Doctor, what more could you ask?' cried Sir Joseph, caressing the files with a voluptuous hand and running quickly through the headings. 'Here is all our work done for us - their agents are all betrayed, their schemes laid open. How can you look so sad?'

'Because I should have brought the Red Admiral too, the author of half these notes.' The Red Admiral was a French sea-officer called Segura who had distinguished himself in the massacres after the Allied evacuation of Toulon and who had joined one of the intelligence services. He was not in fact an admiral but he was a singularly cruel and bloody-minded man and now he was one of the most important members of his organization. 'I had him, bound hand and foot, in the bottom of the launch in the first few minutes of the attack: then, when the Diane had to be towed out, I had him placed in the hold with the other prisoners. There, with criminal levity, I left him until the next day: and by then the wicked dog, wearing a skirt and with a bloody clout round his head, had gone ashore with the women and the lightly wounded. We searched, we searched, and we found his breeches, with the waistband marked Segura, Paul.'

'How you must have cursed, dear Maturin. It must have vexed you to the very heart. I believe I should have gone near to cutting my throat, or hiring someone to hang me. But when you had time to reflect, you cannot have failed to perceive that apart from the personal satisfaction, his presence was of no real consequence and that his absence in no way diminished your triumph. Even under very great pressure, he could not have told us more than is set out in these papers; for unless I am very much mistaken they lay out the whole of his department's reflexion on the matter, together with the agents' instructions.'