Patrick O'Brian - The Mauritius Command

"What I mean is the broad pendant." Stephen looked stupid. "The broad pendant, Stephen, that shows you are a commodore: and what comes with it is high command. For the first time you are as who should say a flag, an admiral; and you have an admiral's responsibilities of command."

"What of it, my dear? To my certain knowledge you have always exercised command efficiently: I doubt I could have done much better myself. You say belay, and he belayeth. What more can you desire, for all love?" Stephen spoke with only a small part of his attention: all the rest was concentrated upon the cephalopod, though indeed he did murmur something about commodores--he remembered them perfectly--the chief Indiaman of the fleet that had succoured them so providentially after their affray with Monsieur de Linois had been called the commodore.

"Why, don't you see," cried Jack, his mind fixed upon this question of command, "it has always been the command of a single ship. You are bred up to it--it comes natural. But high command is something you come to suddenly, with no experience. There are captains under you; and handling the captains of a squadron, each one of them God the Father of his own quarterdeck, is a very different matter from handling a ship's company under your own eye. You can rarely choose them and you can rarely get rid of them; and if you do not handle them right, then the squadron is inefficient, and there's the devil to pay with tar. A good understanding is more important than I can tell you. Nelson could do it as easy as kiss my hand . . . the band of brothers, you know . . . "His voice trailed away, and as he watched Stephen grubbing among the weed he thought of cases where admirals or commodores had lacked the Nelson touch: a melancholy list--bitter ill-feeling, indecisive actions, golden opportunities thrown away for lack of support, strict obedience to the letter of the Fighting Instructions, courts-martial, and above all the enemy roaming about , the sea unchecked. "Corbett's reputation is sound enough, so is Pym's," he said almost to himself, and then louder, "But now I come to think of it, Stephen, you should know all about Clonfert. He is a countryman of yours, an eminent chap, I dare say, in Ireland."

"Sure, it Is an Irish title," said Stephen, "but Clonfert is as much an Englishman as you are yourself. The family name is Scroggs. They have some acres of bog and what they call a castle near Jenkinsville in the bleak north--I know it well; anthea foetidissima grows there--and a demesne south of the Curragh of Kildare, forfeited Desmond land; but I doubt he has ever set foot on it. A Scotch agent looks after what rents he can rack out of the tenants."

"But he is a peer, is he not? A man of some real consequence?"

"Bless your innocence, Jack: an Irish peer is not necessarily a man of any consequence at all. I do not wish to make any uncivil reflection on your country--many of my best friends are Englishmen--but you must know that this last hundred years and more it has been the practice of the English ministry to reward their less presentable followers with Irish titles; and your second-rate jobbing backstairs politician, given a coronet of sorts and transplanted into a country where he is a stranger, is a pitiful spectacle, so he is; a flash Brummagern imitation of the real thing. I should be sorry if the Irish peers, for the most part of them, were Irishmen. Apart from certain naval lords, that the ministry dare not have in the English House, they are a shabby crew, upon the whole, out of place in Ireland and ill at ease in England. I do not speak of your Fitzgeralds or Butlers, you understand, still less of the few native families that have survived, but of what is commonly called an Irish peer. Clonfert's grandfather, now, was a mere--Jack, what are you about?"

"I am taking off my shirt."

"To swim so soon after dinner, and such a dinner? I cannot advise it. You are very corpulent; full of gross, viscous humours after these weeks and months of Poirier's cooking. And now we are come to the point, my dear, it is my clear duty to warn you against gule, against ungoverned appetite . . . a brutish vice, inductive mainly to the sin of Eve . . . bulimy, bulimy . . . dinners have killed more men than ever Avicenna healed . . . " he prosed away while Jack took off his trousers. "So you are determined on your bathe?" he said, looking at his naked companion. "Will you let me see your back, now?" He ran his fingers over the dull-blue scar and asked, "Do you feel it, these days?"

"Just a trifle, this morning," said Jack. "But otherwise, from the time we cleared the Channel until yesterday, never a twinge. A swim," he said, slipping over the side and plunging deep into the pure blue water with his long yellow hair streaming out behind him, "is the very thing for it," he continued, rising to the surface and blowing hard. "God, it is so refreshing, even though it is as warm as milk. Come on, Stephen, bathe while you may. For tomorrow we reach the cold current setting north, the green water and the westerlies, I trust; you will have your mollymawks, and your pintadoes and maybe your albatrosses, but there will be no more swimming till the Cape."

CHAPTER THREE

Ever since the Boadicea had made her landfall all hands had been in a state of feverish activity, putting the last touches to her beauty: now It was almost over, and she stood into False Bay with a fair breeze rounding her studdingsails and wafting the reek of fresh paint along with her. The only stage still to obscure her spotless black and white Nelson checker was that occupied by the carpenters" mates, applying carmine with anxious care to the lips, cheeks and bosom of the opulent though insipid British queen.

Jack, already fine in his best uniform, stood by the starboard rail of the quarterdeck with Mr Farquhar beside him. A little farther forward the gunner blew on his slow-match by the brass nine-pounder: all the other guns were housed, ranged with the perfection of the Guards on parade, their breeching pipeclayed. Seymour was a conscientious first lieutenant, and the deck was a pleasure to behold--the gleaming pallor of the wood, the ebony of the seams new-paid with pitch, the falls precisely flemished, a series of exact helices that no man dared disturb, the few pieces of brass the captain would permit blazing in the sun, no speck of dust to be seen from stem to stern, the hen coops, the surviving swine struck down into the hold together with the goat, which, in the general silence, could be heard bleating angrily for its long overdue tobacco. The general silence, for all hands were on deck in their Sunday frocks, and they gazed earnestly, mutely at the shore, upon which people could now be seen walking about--walking about on dry land, among trees!--most of them perceptibly black: the only sounds to be heard, apart from the goat, were the bark of the master conning the ship from the forecastle, the ritual answers of the timoneer, the chant of the leadsman in the chains: "By the mark, fifteen: by the mark, fifteen: and a half, fifteen: by the deep, sixteen: and a half, fifteen', and the conversational voice of the Captain as he pointed out various objects to his guest.

"That flat rock is what we call Noah's Ark, and far over there is Seal Island- the Doctor will like that. And beyond the Ark where you see the white water is the Roman Rock: we shall pass between the two. Indeed, we shall open Simon's Bay at any minute now. Mr Richardson, pray see if the Doctor has finished--whether he can come on deck--he would be sorry to miss all this. Yes, there we are," he went on, with his telescope to his eye as the inner harbour came into full view. "Raisonable, do you see? The two-decker. Then Sirius: Neriede laying inside her, a very pretty berth: then a brig I cannot make out at all. Mr Seymour, what do you make of the brig with her topmasts on deck?" At this point Stephen appeared, blinking in the strong light, wiping his bloody hands on a woollen nightcap and looking squalid. "Ah, there you are, Doctor," cried Jack. "Have you finished sawing up poor young Francis? How is he coming along? Prime, I dare say?" Francis, until today the most popular topman in the ship, endeavouring to gild the Boadicea� maintopgallant truck, had lost his hold, making a most spectacular fall from that giddy eminence, missing the deck (and certain death) by the grace of the frigate's roll, but grazing her number twelve portlid with such force as to play havoc with his thoracic cage and above all to smear the bleeding paintwork, the grass-combing bugger.