Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

Tipped on the post,' cried the Admiral. 'Poor Aubrey, beat by half a nose. But never mind; you did very well for a cove of your uncommon size. And it has clawed some of the jam off your back, hey? Given you an appetite, hey, hey? Come and drink some of your champagne. I will lend you a case until you can pay me back.'

They drank Jack's champagne, the dozen between eight of them; they drank port and something that the Admiral described as rare old Egyptian brandy; they told stories, and in a pause Jack produced the only decent one he could remember. 'I do not set up for a wit,' he began.

'I should think not,' said the Captain of the San Josef, laughing heartily.

'I cannot hear you, sir," said Jack, with a vague recollection of legal proceedings; 'But I have the most amazingly witty surgeon: learned, too. And he once said the best thing I ever heard in my life. Lord, how we laughed! It was when I had Lively, keeping her warm for William Hamond. There was a parson dining with us, that knew nothing of the sea, but someone had just told him that the dog-watches were shorter than the rest.' He paused amid the general smiling expectancy. 'By God, I must get it right this time,' he said inwardly, and he concentrated his gaze on the broad-bottomed decanter. 'Not so long, if you understand me, sir,' he went on, turning to the Admiral.

'I believe I follow you, Aubrey,' said the Admiral.

' "So the dog-watches are shorter than the rest," says the parson, "very well. But why dog, if you please?" As you may imagine, we looked pretty blank: and then in the silence the Doctor pipes up. "Why, sir," says he, "do you not perceive that it is because they are cur-tailed?" '

Infinite mirth, far greater than on the first occasion long ago, when it had had to be explained. Now the company had known that something droll was coming; they were prepared, primed, and they exploded into a roar of honest delight. Tears ran down the Admiral's scarlet face: he drank to Jack when he could draw breath at last, he repeated the whole thing twice, he drank to Dr Maturin's health with three times three and a heave-ho rumbelow; and Bonden, who had regained the gig with his crew half an hour before, having been kindly entertained by the Admiral's coxswain, said to his mates, 'It will be the gallery-ladder this tide. Mark my words.'

The gallery-ladder it was, a humane device discreetly let down so that captains who did not choose to face .the ceremony of piping the side might come aboard unseen, giving no evil example to those they might have to flog for drunkenness tomorrow, and it was by the gallery-ladder that Captain Aubrey regained his cabin, sometimes smiling, sometimes looking stern, rigid and official. But he had always had a good head for wine, and although he had lost some weight there was still a fine bulk in which wine might disperse: after a nap he woke in time for quarters, perfectly sober. Sober, but grave, rather melancholy; his head ached; his hearing seemed unnaturally acute.

The great-gun exercise was not what it had been: a ship on blockade, sailing in formation, could hardly blaze away as the Worcester had done in the lonely ocean. But Jack and the gunner had devised a framework of laths with a mark hung in the middle by a network of lines whose meshes were just smaller than a twelve-pound ball, so that the exact flight of the shot could be traced and the angle corrected; this was boomed out from the fore yardarm and different crews Bred at it from the quarterdeck twelve-pounders every evening. They still used Jack's curious private powder, which excited a good deal of ribald comment in the squadron - laborious signals about Guy Fawkes, and was the Worcester in serious distress? - but he persisted, and by now it was rare that any crew failed to cut the lines near the mark, while often they struck the bull's eye itself, to the sound of general cheering.

'I suppose, sir, that we may dispense with the firing today,' said Pullings in a quiet, considerate voice.

'I cannot imagine why you should suppose any such thing, Mr Pullings,' said Jack. 'This evening we shall fire six supplementary rounds.'

By an unhappy chance it so happened that the powder filled for this evening's practice was the kind that gave a blinding white flash and an extraordinarily loud high-pitched bang. At the first discharge Jack clapped his hands tight behind his back to prevent himself from putting them to his head; and long before the last of the additional rounds he regretted his petulance with all his heart. He also regretted clasping his hands so tight, since his childish sliding on the flagship's backstay had scorched them cruelly, and in his sleep the right-hand palm had swelled in a red and angry weal. However, the marksmanship had been unusually good; everybody looked pleased; and with a haggard, artificial grin he said 'A creditable exercise, Mr Pullings. You may beat the retreat.'

After a barely decent interval while his cabin was being put to rights - for the Worcester was one of the few ships that stripped every evening, a clear sweep fore and aft - he retreated himself.

The first thing that met his cross-grained nose was the smell of coffee, his favourite drink. 'What is that pot doing here?' he asked in a harsh, suspicious voice. 'You do not imagine that I am in need of coffee at this time of day, do you?'

'Which the Doctor is coming to look to your hand,' said Killick with the surly, aggressive, brazen look that always accompanied his lies. 'We got to give him something to whet his whistle, ain't we?

Sir,' he added, as an afterthought.

'How did you make it? The galley fire has been out this half hour and more.'

'Spirit-stove, in course. Here he is, sir.'

Stephen's ointment soothed Jack's hand, the coffee soothed his jangling soul, and presently the normal sweetness of his nature made a veiled appearance, though he still remained unusually grave. 'Your Mr Martin carries on about the harshness of the service,' he observed after the fourth cup, 'and although I must confess that a flogging round the fleet is not a pretty sight, I feel that perhaps he may carry it a trifle high. He may exaggerate.

It is unpleasant, to be sure, but it is not necessarily death and damnation.'

'For my part I should prefer hanging,' said Stephen. 'You and Martin may say what you like,' said Jack, but there are two ends to every pudding.'

'I should be the last to deny it,' said Stephen. 'If a pudding starts, clearly it must end; the human mind is incapable of grasping infinity, and an endless pudding passes our conception.'

'For example, I dined today with a man who was flogged round the fleet; and yet he flies his flag.'

'Admiral Mitchell? You astonish me: I am amazed. It is rare, perhaps all too rare, that an admiral is flogged round the fleet. I cannot recall an instance in all my time at sea, though the Dear knows I have seen a terrible lot of punishment.'

'He was not an admiral at the time. Of course he was not, Stephen: what a fellow you are. No. It was a great while ago, in Rodney's day I believe, when he was a young foremast-jack. He was pressed. I do not know the details, but I have heard he had a sweetheart on shore and so he deserted again and again. The last time he refused his captain's punishment and applied for a court-martial, just at the wrong moment. There had been a great deal of trouble with men running and the court decided to make an example of poor Mitchell - five hundred lashes. But, however, he survived it; and he survived the yellow jack when his ship was ordered to the Spanish Main, when her captain and half the people died of it in less than a month. The new captain took a liking to him, and being precious short of petty-officers rated him midshipman. Well, not to be tedious, he minded his book, passed for lieutenant, was appointed to the Blanche right away, and was acting second when she took the Pique, her captain being killed. That gave him his step, and he had not commanded his sloop half a year before he ran into a French corvette at dawn, boarded her and carried her into Plymouth: he was made post for that, about twelve years before I was; and having the luck not to be yellowed he hoisted his flag not long ago. Luck was with him all the time. He is an excellent seaman, of course, and those were the days when you did not need to pass for a gentleman, as they say now; but he needed luck too. I have noticed,' said Jack, draining the pot into Stephen's cup, 'that luck seems to play fair, on the whole. It gave Mitchell a damned ugly swipe early on, and then made it up to him: but, do you see, I had amazing good luck when I was young, taking the Cacafuego and the Fanciulla and marrying Sophie, to say nothing of prizes; and sometimes I wonder ... Mitchell began by being flogged round the fleet: perhaps that is how I shall end.'