Patrick O'Brian - The fortune of war

'Why alone? Surely two would keep the Chesapeake in far better than one.'

'That is the whole point,' cried Jack. 'He don't want to keep her in, of that I am very sure. He wants her to come out. She cannot be expected to come out against two frigates. That is why he sent Tenedos away the moment he saw that President and Congress was gone. There! She lays her foretopsail to the mast and brails up her driver, makes a sternboard, fills again; and she is round: prettily done...'

Jack kept up a steady commentary on the Shannon's progress as she made her way in through the winding fairway, and while he did so Stephen wondered in himself, 'What shall I tell him?' Jack's physical state was fairly sound, but Stephen did not wish to interrupt his convalescence with any unnecessary agitation of mind; then there was the long-engrained habit of secrecy: and then again there was the uncertainty with regard to Dubreuil On this occasion was he anything more than a property that Johnson moved on to the stage for his own purposes? As for Johnson, he was reasonably confident of being able to deal with him, although no doubt he was a dangerous man: Dubreuil, however, was quite another pair of sleeves, and he had suffered very, very much more from Stephen's activities.

He still had not made up his mind by the time the frigate reached the extreme range of the American batteries.

'She lies to,' said Jack 'Just so And there is Philip Broke at the masthead with his glass, staring at the Chesapeake. I was almost sure of him this morning, and now, with the sun in the west, I am quite certain. Should you like to have a look?'

Stephen aimed the telescope, found the distant figure, and said, 'I can make nothing of him, at all. But perhaps you know him well - can distinguish him at a great distance?'

'In course I do,' said Jack. 'Man and boy, I have known Philip Broke these twenty years and more. Surely I must have told you of Philip Broke a score of times?'

'Never,' said Stephen. 'Nor have I met the gentleman. I trust he is an able mariner?'

'Oh yes, yes, a capital seaman. To think that I should never have told you about him in all these years. Lord!'

'Pray tell me about him now. There is an hour to go before our supper.' Stephen did not very much wish to know about Captain Broke, but he did want the steady background of Jack's deep, kindly voice while his mind revolved upon itself, waiting for the sudden flash that would tell him how to act.

'Well,' said Jack, 'Philip Broke and I are kind of cousins, and when my mother died I was packed off to stay at Broke Hall for a while, a fine old place in Suffolk. Their land runs down to the Orwell, the estuary of the Orwell, before it joins the Stour by Harwich, and Philip and I used to spend hours there in the mud, watching the shipping pass up to Ipswich, or fall down with the tide; a lot of those east-country craft, you know, that manage so amazingly well with short tacks in a tricky fairway, and colliers, barges from London river, and Dutchmen from across the way with their leeboards and fat arses, doggers, schuyts, and busses. We were both wild to run away to sea, and we tried once; but old Mr Broke came after us in a dog-cart, took us back, and whipped us till we cried like puppies - he was quite impartial. But still, we did have a misshapen sort of punt of our own, with a lugsail we were hardly strong enough to hoist: it was the most crossgrained brute that ever swam, and although it was so monstrous heavy, it would overset for a nothing. I used to save Philip's life three or four times a day, and once I said he should give me a halfpenny for each rescue. But he said no, if I could swim and he could not, it was clear duty as a Christian and a cousin to pull him out, particularly as I was already wet myself: still, he did say he would pray for me. Oh, those were happy days: you would have liked it, Stephen - there were all sorts of long-legged birds on the mud - we called 'em tukes - and bitterns booming away in the reeds, and those what-d'ye-call-'em big white birds with odd-shaped beaks - spoonbills - and the other kind whose bills turn upwards, and there was a dry place on the bank crammed with ruffs all fighting one another or pretending to, spreading out their neck-feathers like studdingsails. And we used to gather plovers' eggs by the bucketful. God knows how long it lasted, but it seemed like a small eternity, and it was always summer. But then he went off to school and I went off to sea.

'We wrote three or four times, which is a good deal for boys; but I am no great fist at a letter, as you know, and we rather lost touch with one another until I came back from the West Indies when Andromeda paid off. Then I found that he had been unable to bear his school, though he was quick at his book, and had persuaded them to send him to the Academy at Portsmouth. Well, of course, I did not like to be seen walking about with an Academite -,

'Were they a very wicked set?'

'Oh, I dare say they were as wicked as their means allowed, at twelve or thirteen or so, but it was not that: they were low. We looked upon them as a miserable crew of sneaking upstart lubbers, learning seamanship and gunnery out of books and pretending to set themselves on a level with us, who had learnt them at sea. Still, we were cousins, so I took him to the Blue Posts and gave him a decent dinner: I had seven guineas of prize-money in my pocket, and he had not a stiver -old Mr Broke was generous in big things, but he was precarious near with his ha'pence. And we went to the play, to see "Venice Preserved", and to a raree-show, where there was Cleopatra's asp, and some fleas that drew a coach, and for twopence more the genuine living Venus, without a stitch. I offered to treat him, but he said no, it was immoral.

'Then he joined Bulldog, Captain Hope: he must have been fifteen or sixteen then, very old to go to sea for the first time. But he was lucky in his captain, a first-rate seaman and a friend of Nelson's; he followed him into L'Eclair, and I saw something of him in the Mediterranean. Then he followed him into Romulus, and we were shipmates for a while, when I took passage home in her. In those days I could not hold a candle to him in navigation; mine was all rule of thumb, until I came to love my conic sections quite late in life and to work out the theories for myself. His navigation did not surprise me, because he had always been good at mathematics as well as hic haec hoc; but I was amazed to find how he had come on in seamanship. We both passed for lieutenant at about the same time, but I did not see him again until St Vincent, when he was third of Southampton, and we waved as we passed, forming the line. After that we did not meet for years, though we heard about one another, of course, from common friends: he was in the Channel most of the while, and the German Ocean, made commander into that rotten old Shark, a miserable slug, only good for convoy-duty. He was posted well before I was, his father being a great friend of Billy Pitt's, but even so he could not get a ship and he was on the shore for years and years. He wrote me a very handsome letter after we took the Cacafuego, and he told me he was drilling the peasantry. He had married by that time, not very well, I am afraid.'

'Was the lady unsuitable? So many sailors take the strangest trollops to wife. Even drabogues.'

'No, no, she was perfectly suitable, in that sort of way: a gentlewoman, a connection, and a thumping dowry too-ten thousand, I believe. But she had the vapours, you know, a poor doer, weakly, always in need of repair; but above all she is always ill-used, always sorry for herself.

I knew her as a little girl, and she was sorry for herself then, gasping and turning up her eyes. I am afraid it weighs upon him. I am sure he would have been better off with a jolly, good-natured wench without a farthing; a woman that takes herself seriously, and cannot laugh -Lord, it must weigh on him. I am sure it would weigh on me. I went down to Broke Hall soon after their first boy was born, and I wondered that he could bear it; but he did, just like one of your old Stoics; or a patient on the Monument, as they say. Still, he did get afloat as soon as ever he could after the peace, although he had inherited by then, a neat estate with some prime farming-land and the best partridge-shooting in the country: they gave him the dear old Druid, patched, wet, uncomfortable, cramped, and so weak she had to be doubled with fir, but how she could fly! I have absolutely seen her making fourteen knots with the wind on her quarter, under topgallants, three reefs out of her topsails, and studdingsails aloft and alow. But he never had a chance of distinguishing himself in her, never met a Frenchman who was his match, which was a pity, because there never was a man who longed for glory more, or who worked harder for it - even Old Jarvie praised the order Druid was kept in, although the Brokes are Tories, and always have been. Then they gave him the new Shannon, built at Brindley's yard to replace the one Leveson Gower ran aground near La Hogue. That was in the year six, and I went aboard her at the Nore. You was in Ireland at the time, I believe. He had only just commissioned her and he had not had time to work her up, but she looked promising, and I hear she is in fine trim: certainly he always had the right ideas about gunnery and discipline.