Patrick O'Brian - The fortune of war

'We were very nearly late,' said Jack. 'I absolutely burst a stocking, pulling it on, the yarn completely rotted - those that you brought out could not have come at a better moment - and the Doctor was having a devil of a time stowing his philosophical creatures and their eggs.'

'J'ai failli attendre, as Lewis XIV put it,' said Yorke with a smile. 'How deeply shocking. I dare say you have noticed, Dr Maturin, that sea-captains assume a kind of regal state; it may at times seem rather comic. But I am sorry to hear that your creatures were giving difficulty; and even sorrier when I reflect that perhaps my invitation was ill-timed. Can my people be of any use? Our Jemmy Ducks was a sow-gelder on shore, and he is a great hand with both bird and beast.'

'You are very good, sir, but my living specimens are perfectly well behaved; they are sitting in my cabin in rows, staring at one another. No, it is the inanimate objects that caused me some anxiety, as they tossed about.'

'But that is all in hand now,' said Jack. 'My coxswain is in the forepeak, seeing to the stowage; it will be perfectly safe now. And most fortunately the Doctor did not trust all his eggs in one basket, ha, ha, ha! Oh no, there are dozens of 'em, each with a different kind - albatrosses', petrels', penguins' ...' Captain Aubrey could not finish: his mirth choked him. 'All his eggs in one basket' was not perhaps the very highest point of wit; but it was pretty lofty for him, and it was his own; and he drew so much honest merriment from it that his face, already mahogany-red from the sun and the wind, turned purple. His eyes vanished, and he laughed his deep, intensely amused laugh until the glasses rattled. Yorke watched him affectionately, and Stephen, noticing this, warmed to the Captain of La Fl�e.

'You have not changed much since the old Reso, Aubrey,' said Yorke at last. 'I hope you still play your fiddle?'

'Yes, I do,' said Jack, wiping his eyes. 'All in one basket, ha, ha, ha! Lord, I must remember to tell Sophie that, when I write. Yes, I do: and I see you have risen to a pianoforte. How do you keep it in tune?'

'I don't,' said Yorke. 'I have a key, and I make my attempts; but it is a sad jingling little box, after all. How I wish I could press a piano-tuner. Yet I could not do without it; I could not do without some sort of music, all these months at sea.'

'I am entirely to your way of thinking. The Doctor and I scrape away, although his 'cello and my fiddle have suffered cruelly - glue and varnish almost gone, and our bows obliged to be replenished from the longest pigtails the crew could provide.'

'You play the 'cello, sir?'

Stephen bowed. 'I am delighted to hear it, and I very much hope we may have some music together. I am sick of the sound of my own voice; and a captain, you know, hears little other.'

The dinner wound its comfortable course - Captain Yorke had a far better cook than most - and while the sailors sat with their port Stephen wandered among the books.

'Where do you stow them all when you clear for action?' asked Jack, following him with his eye.

'They are in interlocking boxes, you see,' said Yorke. 'It is my own invention! You only have to turn the toggle behind Richardson, and they are all free. The bar in front of each keeps the books from falling out, and the boxes can be struck down into the hold in a moment. Well, in a couple of moments. Though to tell you the truth, I do not make a clean sweep fore and aft quite as often as I ought. Certainly not as often as my first lieutenant would like. If he had his way, we should be as bare as a barn every time the drum beat for quarters - not a cabin, not a bulkhead standing - everything in fighting-trim.'

'Is he a great fire-eater, then?'

'Oh, he longs for action, of course. He would give an arm and a leg to be made, like all of us before we reached post rank, and an action is his only chance. He had no interest at all, poor man, and the years are going by.'

'You spoke of Richardson, sir,' said Stephen, who had taken down the first volume of the Histoire G�rale and who was looking at the Abb�r�st's round, cheerful face. 'Some months ago I learnt that the Abb�r�st translated him into French. I was astonished. It was a lady who told me this,' he added, nodding to Jack.

'I am astonished too,' said Yorke. 'I should never have thought he could find the time, with his own splendid works and all those voyages too; Richardson is thousands and thousands of pages long - a travail de B�dictin. Yet If I remember right, Pr�st actually was a Benedictine, though perhaps somewhat irregular at times; but in any case, who more suitable than the author of Manon Lescaut for Clarissa Harlowe? Such penetration, such awareness of the mind that is not aware of itself. You have read Richardson, sir, I make no doubt?'

'I have not, sir. The lady of whom I spoke urged me to do so, and I did indeed look into the first volume of Pamela; but the ship was sinking, the Captain in a state of wild alarm, continually turning to me for advice; and it did not seem to me that the time was quite propitious for such an enterprise.'

'Certainly Richardson calls for a long period of calm; he is not lightly to be embarked upon. But now you have it, my dear sir! Months of calm before you - I touch upon wood: absit omen - months of mental calm, with only your few Leopards to look after, since for ourselves we have an excellent surgeon in young Mr McLean. Let me entreat you to launch into Pamela again, and then Clarissa. Grandison I cannot quite so heartily recommend. But I believe that even Dr Maturin's understanding of human nature might be increased by the first two. Pray take the first volume of Pamela with you now - it is just above your head - and come back for the others when it is done.'

'I never was a great reader,' said Jack. His friends looked down at their wine and smiled. 'I mean I never could get along with your novels and tales. Admiral Burney - Captain Burney then - lent me one wrote by his sister when we were coming back with a slow convoy from the West Indies; but I could not get through with it - sad stuff, I thought. Though I dare say the fault was in me, just as some people cannot relish music; for Burney thought the world of it, and he was as fine a seaman as any in the service. He sailed with Cook, and you cannot say fairer than that.'

'That is the best qualification for a literary critic I ever heard of,' said Yorke. 'What was the name of the book?'

'There you have me,' said Jack. 'But it was a small book, in three volumes, I think; and it was all about love. Every novel I have ever looked into is all about love; and I have looked into a good many, because Sophie loves them, and I read aloud to her while she knits, in the evening. All about love.'

'Of course they are,' said Yorke. 'What else raises your blood, your spirits, your whole being, to the highest pitch, so that life is triumphant, or tragic, as the case may be, and so that every day is worth a year of common life? When you sit trembling for a letter? When the whole of life is filled with meaning, double-shotted? To be sure, when you actually come to what some have called the right true end, you may find the position ridiculous, and the pleasure momentary; but novels, upon the whole, are concerned with getting there. And for that matter, what else makes the world go round?'

'Why, as to that,' said Jack, 'I have nothing against the world's going round: indeed, I am rather in favour of it. But as for raising your spirits to the highest pitch, what do you say about hunting, or playing for high stakes? What do you say about war, about going into action?'

'Come, Aubrey, you must have observed that love is a kind of war; you must have seen the analogy. As for hunting and deep play, what is more obvious? You pursue in love, and if the game is worth engaging in at all, you play for very high stakes indeed. Do you not agree, Doctor?'