Patrick O'Brian - H.M.S. Surprise

Lazaretto Island left astern; the signal lanterns swaying up, answered from the battery with the regulation hoist and a last derisive cry of ‘Cochons’. And the blessed realisation that the dawn was bringing its usual slackening of the tramontane - and that the sail down to leeward was the lively.

‘God knows I should do the same again,’ said Jack, leaning on the helm to close her, the keen spray stinging his tired, reddened eyes. ‘But I feel I need the whole sea

to clean me.’ -

‘Will the invalid gentleman take a little posset before he goes?’ asked the landlady of the Crown. ‘It is a nasty raw day - Portsmouth is not Gibraltar - and he looks but palely.’ She was on the point of appropriating the chambermaid’s ‘more fit for a hearse than a shay’ when it occurred to her that this might cast a reflection upon the Crown’s best post-​chaise, now standing at the door.

‘Certainly, Mrs Moss; a capital idea. I will carry it up. you put a warming-​pan in the chaise, I am sure?’

‘Two, sir, fresh and fresh this last half-​hour. But if it was two hundred, I would not have him travel on an empty stomach. Could you not persuade him to stay dinner, sir? He should have a goose-​pie; and there is nothing more fortifying than goose-​pie, as the world in general knows.’

‘I will try, Mrs Moss; but he is as obstinate as a bee in a bull’s foot.’

‘Invalids, sir,’ said Mrs Moss, shaking her head, ‘is all the same. When I nursed Moss on his death-​bed, he was that cross and fractious! No goose-​pie, no mandragore, no posset, not if it was ever so.’

‘Stephen,’ he cried, with a meretricious affectation of gaiety, ‘just toss this off, will you, and we will get under way. Is your great-​coat warming?’

‘I will not,’ said Stephen. ‘It is another of your damned possets. Am I in childbed, for all love, that I should be plagued, smothered, destroyed with caudle?’

‘Just a sip,’ said Jack. ‘It will set you up for the journey. Mrs Moss does not quite like your travelling; and I must say I agree with her. However, I have bought you a bottle of Dr Mead’s Instant Invigorator; it contains iron. Now just a drop, mixed with the posset.’

‘Mrs Moss - Mrs Moss - Dr Mead - iron, forsooth,’ cried Stephen. ‘There is a very vicious inclination in the present age, to -,

‘Great-​coat, sir,’ said Killick. ‘Warm as toast. Now step into it before it gets cold.’

They buttoned him up, tweaked him into shape, and carried him downstairs, one at each elbow, so that his feet skimmed the steps, to where Bonden was waiting by the chaise. They packed him into the stifling warmth with understanding smiles over his head as he cried out that they were stifling him with their God-​damned rugs and sheepskins - did they mean to bury him alive? Enough damned straw underfoot for a regiment of horse. Killick and Bonden were cramming in the few last wisps and Jack was at the other door, about to get in, when he felt a touch upon his shoulder. Turning he saw a man with a battered face and a crowned staff in his hand - a quick glance showed two others at the horses’ heads and a reinforcement of burly sheriff’s officers with clubs. ‘Captain Aubrey, sir?’ said the man. ‘In the name of the law, I must ask you to come along with me - little matter of Parkin and Clapp -judgment summons. No trouble, sir? We will walk along quietly, no scandal? I’ll come behind, if you prefer it, and Joe will lead the way.’

‘Very well,’ said Jack, and leaning in at the window he said, ‘Stephen, I am nabbed - Parkin and Clapp -a caption. Please see Fanshaw. I’ll write to you at the Grapes, maybe join you there. Killick, get my valise out. Bonden, you go along with the Doctor: look after him, eh?’

‘Which sponging-​house?’ asked Stephen.

‘Bolter’s. Vulture Lane,’ said the tipstaff. ‘Every luxury, every consideration, all conweniencies.’

‘Drive on,’ said Jack.

‘Maturin, Maturin, my dear Maturin,’ cried Sir Joseph, ‘how extremely shocked I am, how concerned, how deeply moved.’

‘Ay, ay,’ said Stephen testily, ‘it is showy enough to look at, no doubt, but these are only the superficial sequelae. There is no essential lesion. I shall do very well. But for the moment I was obliged to beg you to visit me here; I could not manage the stairs. It was benevolent of you to come; I wish I could receive you better.’

‘No, no, no,’ cried Sir Joseph. ‘I like your quarters excessively - another age - most picturesque - Rembrandt. What a splendid fire! I trust they make you comfortable?’

‘Yes, I thank you. They are used to my ways here. Perfect, if only the woman of the house did not take it upon herself to play the physician, merely because I keep my bed some hours every day. “No, ma’am,” I say to her, “I will not drink Godfrey’s Cordial, nor try Ward’s drop. I do not tell you how to dress this salmagundy, for you are a cook; pray do not tell me how to order my regimen, for as you know, I am a medical man.” “No sir,” says she, “but our Sarah, which she was in just the same case as you, having been overset at the bear-​baiting when six months gone, took great adwantage from Godfrey; so pray, sir, do try this spoonful.”

Jack Aubrey was just the same. “I do not pretend to teach you to sail your sloop or poop or whatever you call the damned machine; do not therefore pretend -” But it is all one. Nostrums from the fairground quack, old wives’ remedies - bah! If rage could reunite my sinews, I should be as compact as a lithosperm.’

Sir Joseph had intended to suggest the waters of Bath, but now he said, ‘I hope your friend is well? I am infinitely obliged to him; it was a most heroic stroke. The more I reflect upon it, the more I honour him.’

‘Yes. Yes, it was. It appears to me that these coups can be brought off only by enormous pains, forethought, preparation, or by taking them on the volley; and for that a very particular quality is required, a virtue I hardly know how to name. Baraka, say the Moors. He possesses it in a high degree; and what would be criminal temerity in

another man is right conduct in him. Yet I left him in a sponging-​house at Portsmouth.’

Amazement; concern.

‘Yes. his virtue seems to apply only at sea; or in his maritime character. He was arrested for debt at the instance of a coven of attorneys. Fanshaw, his agent, tells me it was for a sum of seven hundred pounds. Captain Aubrey was aware that the Spanish treasure was not to be regarded as prize, but he had no notion that the news had spread in England; nor, I must confess, had I, since there has been no official announcement. However, I must not importune you with private discontents.’

‘My dear sir, my dear Maturin - I beg you will always speak to me as a personal friend, a friend who has a great esteem for you, quite apart from all official considerations.’

‘That is kind, Sir Joseph; it is very kind. Then I will tell you, that I fear his other creditors may get wind of his renewed difficulties and so load him with processes that he will be hopelessly involved. My means do not allow me to extricate him; and although the ex gratia payment you were good enough to mention may eventually extinguish the greater part of his debt, it will leave a considerable sum. And a man may rot in prison as thoroughly for a few hundred as for ten thousand pounds.’

‘Has it not been paid?’

‘No, sir. And I detect a certain reluctance in Fanshaw to make an advance upon it - these things are so unusual, says he, the event dubious, the delay unknown, and his capital was so very much engaged.’

‘It is not my province, of course: the sluggish Transport Board and the still more sluggish Ticket Office have to pass the vouchers. But I think I can promise something like despatch. In the meantime Mr Carling will speak a private word to Fanshaw, and I am sure you will be able to draw on him for the sum you mention. Mention.’