Patrick O'Brian - The fortune of war

Then, in a milder tone, 'Well, Jonathan, have you any lobsters aboard? Paul, pass him a line.'

With the line firm in his hand and ease flooding through his heart, Jack could be facetious now.

'I must ask you to moderate your language, sir; we have a lady in the boat. Pray tell Captain Broke that I should like a word with him. And take your hands out of your pockets when you speak to me, Mr Falkiner.'

Blank consternation on the broad honest weather-beaten face above, the dawn of wrath, shocked silence, fore and aft, then a huge grin, and Falkiner cried, 'By -dear me, 'tis Captain Aubrey. I beg your pardon, sir. I will jump to the cabin directly. Will you come aboard, sir?'

Running feet on deck, orders, urgent cries, the rumble of Marines' boots, side-boys running down with baize covered ropes, and Jack, poised on the roll, stepped across the gap and came up the side, piped aboard in style. The Marines presented arms, Jack took off his hat, and there was Broke, napkin in hand, egg dribbling down his chin. 'Why, Jack!' he cried. 'How glad I am to see you. How come you here? How do you do - your arm?'

'Philip,' said Jack, 'how d'ye do? I came in this boat, I do assure you. Might I beg for a bosun's chair? We have a lady aboard, somewhat indisposed, Sophie's cousin Diana Villiers. And perhaps my surgeon might use it too: he is a prodigious doctor, but no great seaman.'

Diana was hoisted up, limp, past caring, a dripping dead rat, a dripping dead female rat, and carried into the absent master's cabin. Stephen came up after her and, bending low to his ear as he struggled out of the bosun's chair, Jack murmured, 'I can say it now: we have escaped - give you joy of your freedom, brother.' He then presented him, 'Doctor Maturin, my particular friend - Captain Broke. I say, Philip, you don't happen to be breakfasting, do you?

Poor Maturin here is fairly clemmed, quite wasting away and fractious for want of food.'

It was extraordinary how naval routine took them in once more: they had not been aboard a few hours before they were entirely at home - they might have been in the Shannon these last weeks or even months, with all the familiar smells and sounds around them, and the familiar motion, unusually pronounced today. Not only had they several former shipmates before the mast, in the gunroom, and in the cabin, but almost every detail of the Shannon's closely ordered life was the same as it had been in their other ships; and when the drum beat Roast Beef of Old England for the officers' dinner Stephen found that he salivated, in spite of his late and copious breakfast. Boston might have been a thousand miles away, but for the fact that it could still be seen, down there at the bottom of its great bay, as the frigate stood out to sea again, her morning's inspection done, to resume her long blockade.

She was nothing much to look at, just an ordinary thirty-eight-gun eighteen-pounder frigate of about a thousand tons that had been shabbily treated by the dockyard in the article of paint and that had been on the North American station for close on two years in all weathers, most of them unpleasant, with ice forming thick on the yards, rigging, and deck, playing Old Harry with what very little she possessed in the way of ornament or gingerbread work or graces. But she was a happy ship: her people had been together, with few changes for a man-of-war, ever since Broke commissioned her; they were thoroughly used to one another, to their officers, and to their work; and they worked well, a willing, efficient crew of seamen.

Yet this happiness, at least as far as the gunroom was concerned, was overlaid by a heavy consciousness of defeat, a feeling that with the capture of three Royal Navy frigates in succession the service had fallen far, far below itself, and a most eager restless desire to avenge Guerri�, Macedonian and Java. Stephen became aware of this when Watt, the first lieutenant, led him into the gunroom. Several officers were already there, and they made him very welcome. But once the introductions and the ordinary civilities were over he might have been in the Java again; the atmosphere was much the same - indeed, the officers were even more concerned about the American war. It was even more immediate to them, far more immediate, and they had been on the verge of action ever since it had been declared. From service gossip and the proceedings of the court-martial that acquitted Chads and the surviving officers of the Java they knew far more about the battle with the Constitution than did Stephen, but there were gaps in their knowledge and they plied him with questions: had the Americans used bar-shot? What effect did it have? Were there in fact many British deserters in the Constitution? At what range did she open fire? What did Dr Maturin think of their standard of gunnery? Did her round-shot break to pieces on impact? Was it true that the Americans used sheet-lead for their cartridges?

'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I was below throughout the battle. I regret my ignorance, but -,

'But surely,' said Mr Jack, the Shannon's surgeon, 'surely you must have heard when the vangs parted? Surely some casualty must have spoken to you of the vangs?'

'The Captain's compliments to Doctor Maturin,' said a tall master's mate, hurrying in, 'and he begs the pleasure of his company at dinner.'

'Mr Cosnahan,' said Stephen, shaking his hand, 'I am delighted to see you again, evidently healthy, apparently sober. My compliments to Captain Broke, and I shall be happy to wait upon him.'

The higher the rank, the later the dinner. Cosnahan was already greasy from his pudding in the midshipmen's berth before the gunroom had sat down to their boiled cod, and the cabin's meal was still no more than a remote, though not unpleasing, smell in the galley: Stephen had salivated in vain. He quietly slipped a biscuit from the bread-barge into his pocket and returned to Diana.

She was more prostrate than ever, now that the Shannon was out in her natural habitat, the full Atlantic swell: a cold, glaucous, apathetic figure, racked from time to time by a spasm but otherwise mute and apparently insensible. He had already undressed and sponged her, and there was nothing more that his art could do, apart from warm blankets. He tidied her a little, gazed thoughtfully a while, gnawing on his biscuit, and then went below to the cabin that his old shipmate Falkiner had vacated for him. He checked his papers, now wrapped in sailcloth, and remembering that he had spoken a little sharply in the night, he did what he could to make himself presentable, to do Jack credit in the cabin: clean and trimmed at last, he sat on Falkiner's cot, his newly-acquired watch in his hand, reflecting on Diana.

He had so very much to reflect upon, so very many aspects of a complex relationship, as well as marriage itself, that unknown state, that his thoughts had not run far beyond a long digression on the singular effects, physical and spiritual, of pregnancy, sometimes admirable, sometimes disastrous, before the elegant hands of the watch and a minute chime within told him that it was time to go. His night's sleep, short though it was, had been extraordinarily profound and restorative: his head still ached, he still found it hard to focus his eyes well enough to read, and his cracked ribs hurt abominably on the least false movement, but he was his own master for immediate purposes; he no longer had to struggle with a vacillating, uncertain, exhausted mind, incapable of decision; and although he could not see clearly as far as Diana was concerned, he was able to thrust his grief and sense of bereavement to one side.

On the way he met Cosnahan again, sent to fetch him, for Captain Aubrey placed no reliance on his surgeon's punctuality; but blameless for once and even commendable, he walked in with quiet triumph.

It was a good dinner - oysters, halibut, lobster, turkeypoult, and a massive roly-poly that gave the sailors at least a good deal of unaffected pleasure - and since most of the talk ran on nautical affairs Stephen had plenty of time to consider Captain Broke. He liked what he saw: a slight, dark man, reserved, quiet, grave, and even melancholy, not half Jack's weight but of much the same size in natural authority and determination. They were obviously close friends and at first glance this seemed paradoxical, their styles being so very different, the extremes of what was to be found in the service, as different as the centuries- Jack belonging more to the heartier, more flamboyant, hard-drinking eighteenth, Broke in the more discreet modern age that was spreading so fast, even in the conservative Navy. Yet they were both sailors, and on this plane they were as one; their ideas and their aims were both the same. Jack Aubrey was a fighting captain, made for the sea and violent action; so, in his different way, was Broke, and perhaps his sense of the Royal Navy's defeat was even stronger, if that were possible. He was a man of strong feelings, and although they rarely appeared the occasional gleam left Stephen in no doubt. This was particularly apparent when he and Jack talked about the Chesapeake, now the sole object of the Shannon's long blockade, the sole object of Broke's ambition and passionate desire. They had gone over every detail of her equipment before Stephen joined them, and Jack had been able to tell a great deal, from the exact nature of her carronades to a very close estimate of her crew, which he set at a little under four hundred. And now, when they discussed her commander Jack said, 'Lawrence is a very fine fellow, and I am sure that if his orders do not compel him to sit still, he will give you a meeting with all the pleasure in the world.'