Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

pleased to call the abominable superstition of the Mass, but as far as my experience goes, they are primarily concerned with ethics: mysticism and the ancient pieties seem alien to them and to their respectable and sometimes splendid modern buildings. I low, then, would one of their more rigid members perceive Fr Gomes?

"I cannot tell. Nor can I tell what the next few days in the convicts' sickbay will show me: the prodrormi are such that I should be clear in my mind - only too clear alas - If it were not for this period of latency, contrary to all my authorities from the ancients until today.

"After so much that I do not know, it is pleasant to record that I have plumbed the unhappy Herapath. He stowed away for love of Mrs Wogan. And when I consider his latibule, the minute space between two casks in which he held out for a week, and the fate to which he has condemned himself, I know not which I most admire, his devotion, his fortitude, or his temerity; and it would be indecent in me to condemn his fatal obstination, although I may deplore it. Herself is by no means unmoved by this strong evidence of attachment, which explains the curious scene when first I led her to the poop, a scene that for long I could not reconcile with reason.

"The answer was beginning to form in my mind when I perceived him in the half darkness of the corridor that runs by Mrs Wogan's cabin; he was kneeling and (a second Pyramus) conversing with her through the hole by which her necessaries pass. I stepped behind a bulkhead, or temporary wall, to make sure of my man: others have attempted to enter into illicit communication with her, and the midshipmen of the after-cockpit have bored eyelets to survey her charms; but this was Herapath. On his side the conversation consisted of endearments for the most part, none particularly original, but quite touching in their evident sincerity, and of ejaculations; on her side I distinguished little apart from that absurd purling laugh - exceptional happiness in the mirth this time - but it was

clear that their acquaintance was of long standing, their relationship close, and that she was happy to have a friend in this desolation. They were so deeply engaged - hands clasped in the aperture - that he did not hear a midshipman come hurrying from the cockpit. I coughed to give him warning, but in vain. He was discovered. Asked what he was doing there, replied in sad confusion that he had meant to wash his hands downstairs, and had lost his way. The midshipman, young Byron, was not unkind: he told him he must mind his duty: did he not know the watch was set, and that even if he ran, he must surely miss the muster?

"Mrs Wogan's conscious looks when I visited her directly after were full confirmation, if confirmation had been called for. She disguised her exultation moderately well, but her pulse betrayed her: yet even without her ungovernable pulse, she is but an indifferent agent, I find. Gifted, no doubt, for the obtaining of information from certain sources; determined and resolute; but pitifully at a stand when deprived of a directing intelligence. No one has taught her the immense value of silence; she will be prattling (partly from good manners), and sometimes her invention is little better than poor Herapath's.

"Our acquaintance comes along quite well. She knows that I am an Irishman, who would wish to see my country independent; and that I abhor all domination, all planting of colonies. And when I spoke of my indignation at the act of this very Leopard in attacking the neutral American frigate Chesapeake in the year seven, killing some of her people, and taking American seamen of Irish origin out of her - an act that very nearly brought about what I should have termed a Justifiable declaration of war - I believe she was on the point of breaking out into an indiscretion. Her eye flashed; she threw up her head; but I moved on to banalities. Festino lento, as dear Jack would say. I doubt whether she can tell me any more than the name of her chief, her directing intelligence, but that is well worth

waiting for. Even if there is no French connection, the gentleman and his friends must be watched. And if the British government, by its inept, inimical, treatment of the Americans, stifling their trade, stopping their ships, and pressing their men, forces them into a war, so that this connection almost necessarily comes into being, then this chief must certainly be laid by the heels. Slowly, slowly: and it may well be that I can make good use of Herapath. Mine is an odious trade, at times. And at times I am obliged to reflect upon the monstrous, inhuman tyranny by which Buonaparte is destroying Europe, to keep myself in countenance, and to Justify myself to the ingenuous young man I was.

"Louisa Wogan: I was made aware (so little do I know myself) of a certain tenderness shall I say, or warmth, that had grown up in our relationship, by its extinction after the appearance of her lover. Nothing harsh, oh not at all; only an absence of something that is hardly to be defined. When she had no ally whatsoever in this grim floating self-contained and noisome world, she naturally clung to what offered, and tried by very pretty ways to improve her hold. The extinction is only temporary, I believe, since she can see but little of her lover, little of anyone except her maid (and Mrs Wogan has no more use for women's company than had Diana Villiers): I must therefore pay attention. There are intolerably fatuous coxcombs who protest that women pursue them: they meet with nothing but deserved contempt and disbelief. Yet something not wholly dissimilar may occur and for some time past I have been aware that an advance on my part would not be too cruelly resented. Furthermore, deep stirrings within my own person are by no means absent: a consequence of my abstention, opium in all its forms being an antaphrodisiac, counteracting venereal desire. Does not duty require that I should resume? In moderation of course and by no means as an indulgence, but rather as part of a process of inquiry, in which a clear, chaste mind is essential. A very devilish suggestion.

"In these cases, we read, a man causes mortal offence by refusing. It may be so, but it is outs, de my experience; and I am bound to remember that all tales of this nature are told by men, who love to impute a masculine appetite and urgency to the other sex. Myself I doubt it: did the dark-haired Sappho hate her Phaon' In any event, none of this can apply to me. I am no Phaon, no golden youth, but a potentially useful ally, a source of present material comfort, some slight guarantee for the future; at the highest, a not disagreeable companion where no other can be found. Yet there is, I flatter myself, a certain real liking: of no vast magnitude, to be sure, but enough for me to feel that she would not have to put too much constraint upon herself, would not betray her principles, in admitting me to her bed. For it seems to me that she is a woman to whom these sports are of no great consequence, but may be indulged in for pleasure, for friendship or kindness, and even, where a minimum of liking is present, for interest. With such women sexual fidelity has as little meaning as the act has significance: one might as well require them to drink wine with one man alone. This attitude is much condemned, I know; they are called whores, and other ill-sounding names; in this case I do not find it affects my liking.' lie paused, looking at the folder Sir Joseph had sent after him, and continued: 'She has had three principal liaisons, I see: one with G. Hammond, the member for Halton, a friend of Horne Tooke and himself a literary man; one with the wealthy Burdett; and another with the even wealthier Breadalbane, apart from that with the lay lord of the Admiralty which led to the present situation. At one point a certain Michael is mentioned as a secretary: presumably Herapath. The liaisons tolerably well known, but her reputation preserved, at least to the extent of her continuing to frequent Lady Conynghame and Lady Jersey, to whom she no doubt owed her acquaintance with Diana. At one time there was a somewhat nebulous Mr Wogan, of Baltimore, attached first to