Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

Ordinarily Captain Aubrey could quell his steward with a firm glance, but now Killick's moral superiority was so great that Jack only muttered something about 'putting his nose out for a moment, no more,' and walked into the cabin with its unnecessary hanging stove, heated cherry-red. 'Who is come into the fleet?' he asked.

'What the Doctor would say, was he here, I do not know,' said Killick. 'He would carry on something cruel about folk risking the pulmony: he would say you ought to be in your cot."

'Give me a glass of hot lemon shrub, will you, Killick?' said Jack. 'Who is come into the fleet? Bear a hand.'

'I got to hang the wipes out first, ain't I?' said Killick. 'Only Niobe from off of Alex - spoke to the Admiral off of Sicily - sent on here.'

Jack was sipping his hot lemon shrub and reflecting upon moral superiority, its enormous strength in all human relationships but even more so between husband and wife - the contest for it in even quite loving couples - the acknowledgement of defeat in even the least candid - when he heard a boat hailed from the quarterdeck. The answer 'Aye aye' made it clear that an officer was coming aboard and it occurred to Jack that it might be Mr Pitt, the Niobe's surgeon, a great friend of Stephen's perhaps coming over to see him, not knowing he was gone - a man he would be happy to see: but as he passed through the door to the quarterdeck he gathered from Pullings' expression that it was not Mr Pitt, nor anything agreeable at all.

'It is Davis again, sir,' said Pullings.

'That's right, sir,' cried a huge dark seaman in a hairy coat. 'Old Davis again. Faithful and true. Merry and bright. Always up to the mark.' He stepped forward in a blundering, lurching movement, thrusting the cheerful young lieutenant from the Niobe aside, clapping his clenched left hand to his forehead and holding out the other. It was not usual in the Navy for anyone much under flag-rank to initiate conversation with a captain on his quarterdeck, still less to grasp his hand; but Captain Aubrey, a powerful swimmer, had had the misfortune to rescue Davis from the sea, perhaps from sharks, certainly from drowning, many years before. Davis had at no time expressed any particular gratitude, but the fact of the rescue had given him a kind of lien upon his rescuer. Having rescued him, Jack was obliged to provide for him: this seemed to be tacitly admitted by all hands and even Jack felt that there was some obscure justice in the claim. He regretted it, however: Davis was no seaman although he had spent his whole life afloat, a dull-witted, clumsy fellow, very strong and very dangerous when vexed or drunk, easily vexed and easily intoxicated; and he either volunteered for Jack's various ships or managed to get transferred to them, his other captains being happy to see the last of a troublesome, ignorant, untameable man.

'Well, Davis,' said Jack, taking the hand and bracing his own to resist the bone-crushing grasp, 'I am happy to see you.' Less he could not say, the relationship being what it was, but in the faint hope of evading the gift he was telling the Niobe's lieutenant that the Worcester was so short of men that he could not possibly spare a single one in exchange, no, not even a one-legged boy, when the Dryad repeated the signal Worcester : captain repair aboard flag.

'My barge, if you please, Mr Pullings,' said Jack, and as he stayed to have a civil word with the Niobe's officer and to ask after Mr Pitt, he saw Davis plunge in among the hands who were preparing to hoist the boat out and then thrust one of its crew aside by brute force, passionately asserting his right to be one of the captain's bargemen again. Jack left Bonden and Pullings to deal with this by themselves and stepped aft for a last draught of hot lemon. How they did so without a scene he did not know, but as he sat in the barge, wrapped in his boat-cloak, with a supply of warm dry handkerchiefs in his lap and a ludicrous woollen comforter round his neck, he noticed that Davis was rowing number three, pulling with his usual very powerful, jerky, inaccurate stroke and wearing a look of surly triumph on his ill-natured and even sinister face. Whether he was staring straight at his captain Jack could not decide, seeing that one of Davis's eyes had a wicked cast in it.

Captain Aubrey repaired aboard the flag with all possible dispatch, pulling for three-quarters of a mile through a cold and choppy sea against the wind; but the flag was not ready to receive him. The Flag-Captain was a hospitable soul, however, and at once took him, together with the Captain of the Fleet, into his cabin, where he called for drinks. 'Though now I come to think of it, Aubrey,' he said, examining Jack's face, his red, bottle-shaped nose, with narrowed eyes, 'you seem to have a cold coming on. You want to take care of these things, you know. Baker,' he called to his steward, 'mix a couple of glasses of my fearnought draught, and bring 'em hot and hot.'

'I saw you swimming the other day,' said the Captain of the Fleet. 'Swimming in the sea. And I said to myself, This is madness, stark, staring madness; the fellow will catch cold directly and then go wandering about the squadron like a mad lunatic, spreading infection far and wide, like a plague-cart. Swimming, for God's sake! In a sheltered cove, under proper supervision, on a warm calm day with the sun veiled and on an empty stomach but not too empty neither, I have nothing against it; but in the open sea, why, it is just asking for a cold. The only cure is a raw onion.'

The first glass of the fearnought draught came in. 'Drink it while it is hot,' said the Flag-Captain.

'Oh, oh,' cried Jack the moment it had gone down. 'God help us.'

'I learnt it in Finland,' said the Flag-Captain. 'Quick, the second glass, or the first is mortal.'

'It is all great nonsense,' said the Captain of the Fleet. 'Nothing could be worse for you than boiling alcohol, pepper, and Spanish fly. An invalid should never touch alcohol: nor Spanish fly, neither. What you want is a raw onion.

'Captain Aubrey, sir, if you please,' said a deferential young man.

Admiral Harte was sitting with his secretary and a clerk. In an impressive tone he said, 'Captain Aubrey, there is a service of great importance to be performed, and it is therefore to be confided to a reliable, discreet officer.' Jack sneezed. 'If you have a cold, Aubrey,' said Harte in a more natural voice, 'I will thank you to sit farther off. Mr Paul, open the scuttle. A service of great importance ... you will take the Dryad under your orders and proceed to Palermo, where you will find the armed transport Polyphemus with presents for the Pasha of Barka and a new envoy aboard, Mr Consul Hamilton. You will carry this gentleman and the presents to Barka with the utmost dispatch. As you are no doubt aware, the benevolent neutrality of the rulers of the Barbary States is of the first importance to us, and nothing whatsoever must be done to offend the Pasha: on the other hand, you are not to yield to any improper demands nor sink the dignity of this country in the least degree, and you are to insist upon satisfaction in the matter of the Christian slaves. You will also carry these dispatches for our consul at Medina. They will be put aboard the Dryad when you are a day's sail from Medina: Captain Babbington will stand in, deliver them to the consul, and rejoin you and the transport on your passage east. It is clear, is it not, that Dryad is to part company a full day's sail from Medina?'

'I believe so, sir, but in any case I shall read my orders over and over again, until I have them by rote.' Like many other captains, Jack knew that in dealing with Admiral Harte it was as well to have everything in writing, and since this was one of the few points on which a captain was entitled to run counter to a flag-officer's wishes he carried the day, though not without wrangling. Harte was badly placed, since he had an audience perfectly well acquainted with the rules of the service, and after some remarks about unnecessary delay and waste of a fair breeze, urgent service and foolish punctilio, the clerk was told to draw up a summary of Captain Aubrey's orders as quickly as he could. While it was being written out Harte said, 'Was you to be bled, it would help your cold. Even twelve or fourteen ounces would do a great deal, and more would really set you up: cure you for good and all." The notion pleased him. 'Cure you for good and all,' he repeated in a low, inward voice.