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

children here are encumbered with them, and clank as they go. How old is she? Nine? Ten? The menarche is not far off - a hint of a bosom, poor child. I am tempted to purchase her: above all I should wish to preserve her in this present state, not sexless, but unaware of her sex, free of her person and of all the gutters and bazaars of Bombay, wholly and immediately human: wise, too. But only Joshua could halt the sun. In a year’s time or less she will be in a brothel. Would a European house be better? A servant, washed and confined? Could I keep her as a pet? For how long? Endow her? It is hard to think of her lively young spirit sinking, vanishing in the common lot. I shall advise with Diana: I have a groping notion of some unidentified common quality.

‘This city has immense piety, but old Adam walks about; bodies I have seen, some starved to death, some clubbed, stabbed, or strangled; and in any mercantile city one man’s evil is another’s good. Yet a materialism that would excite no comment in Dublin or Barcelona shocks the stranger in Bombay. I was sitting under the towers of silence on Malabar hill, watching the vultures - such a view! I had taken Jack’s glass, but I did not need it, they were so very tame, even the yellow-​billed Pharaoh’s hen, which, Mr Norton tells me, is most uncommon west of Hyderabad - and collecting some anomalous bones when Khowasjee Undertaker spoke to me, a Parsee in a plum-​coloured hat. Having come from Mr Stanhope, I was in European clothes, and he addressed me in English - did not I know it was forbidden to take up bones? I replied that I was ignorant of the customs of his country, but that I understood the bodies of the dead were exposed upon these towers to be devoured, or taken away piecemeal, by vultures - that the bodies thus became bonus nullius - that if property in the flesh could be conceived, then it was vested in the vulture; and that the vulture, relinquishing its title, surely in natural justice gave me a right to this femur, this curiously distorted hyoid? But that I was unwilling to offend any man’s opinions, and that I should content myself with contemplating the remains rather than taking them away: my interest was not that of a ghoul, still less that of a glue-​merchant; but of a natural philosopher.

‘He, too, was a philosopher, he said: the philosophy of number. Should I like to hear him extract a cube root? I might name any figure I pleased. A surprising performance: the answers came as quick as my piece of rib could write them in the dust. He was enchanted, and he would have gone on for ever, if I had not mentioned Napier’s bones, Gunter’s scales - the applied mathematics of navigation - lunars - the necessary tables. Here I ventured out of my depth; was unable to satisfy him as to their nature, and therefore proposed carrying him to the ship. His curiosity overcame his evident alarm: he was gratified by the attention, pleased with the instrument; and on returning to land he invited me to drink tea at his counting-​house - he is a considerable merchant. Here, at my request, he gave mc a succinct account of his life; and I was disappointed but not surprised to find him a complacent pragmatical worldly fellow. Little do I know of the mathematics or the law; but the few mathematicians and lawyers I have met seem to me to partake of this sterility in direct proportion to their eminence: it may be that they are satisfied with an insufficient or in the case of lawyers almost wholly factitious order. However that may be, this man appears to have turned his benevolent ancient creed into an arid system of mechanical observances: so many hours devoted to stated ceremonies, so much of acknowledged income set aside for alms (no question of charity here, I believe), and a rancorous hatred for the Khadmees, who disagree with his sect, the Shenshahees, not on any point of doctrine, out over the dating of their era. I might have been in Seething Lane. I do not imagine he is a typical Parsee, however, in anything but his alert, painstaking attention to business. Among other things, he is an insurer, a maritime insurer, and he spoke of the rise in premiums, plotting them against the movements, or the rumoured movements, of Linois’s squadron, an armament that fills not only the Company with alarm, but also all the country ships: premiums are now higher than they were in Suffren’s time. His family has innumerable commercial interests: Tibetan borax, Bencoolen nutmeg, Tuticorin pearls’ my memory retains. A cousin’s banking-​house is closely connected with the office of the Commissioners for the former French Settlements. He could have told me a great deal about them, if it had not been for his sense of caution; even so, he spoke with some freedom of Richard Canning, for whom he expressed respect and esteem. He told me little I did not already know, but he did confirm that their return is set for the seventeenth.

‘He could tell me nothing about the Hindu ceremony on the shores of the bay this coming moon: neither cared nor knew. For this I must turn once again to Dil; though indeed her notions of religion are so eclectic as to lead her into confusion. God will not be merciful to him who through vanity wears long trousers, she tells me (a Muslim teaching); and at the same time she takes it for an acknowledged truth that I am a were-​bear, a decayed were-​bear out of a place, an inept rustic demon that has strayed into the city; and that I can certainly fly if I choose, but with a blundering flight, neither efficient nor in the right direction - a belief she must have taken from the Tibetans. She is right in supposing that I need guidance, however.

‘The seventeenth. If Jack is accurate in his calculations (and in these matters I have never known him fail) I should have three weeks before the ship is ready. I am impatient for their arrival now, although when we came in I more than half dreaded it. What a wonderful interlude this has been, a piece of my life lifted quite out -,

‘Why, there you are, Stephen,’ cried Jack. ‘You are come home, I find.’

‘That is true,’ said Stephen with an affectionate look: he prized statements of this kind in Jack-“So are you, joy; and earlier than usual. You look perturbed. Do you find the heat affect you? Take off some of these splendid garments.’

‘Why, no; not more than common,’ said Jack, unbuckling his sword. ‘Though it is hellfire hot and close and damp. No. I looked in on the off-​Chance . . . I had to dine with the Admiral, as you know, and there I heard something that made my blood run cold; and I thought I ought to tell you. Diana Villiers is here, and that man Canning. By God, I wish the ship were ready for sea. I could not stand the meeting. Ain’t you amazed - shocked?’

‘No. No, truly I am not. And for my part I must tell you, Jack, I look forward to the meeting extremely. They are not in fact in Bombay, but they are expected on the seventeenth.’

‘You knew she was here?’ cried Jack, Stephen nodded.

‘You are a close one, Stephen,’ said Jack, looking at him sideways.

Stephen shrugged: he said, ‘Yes, I suppose I am. I have to be, you know. That is why I am alive. And one’s mind takes the bent. . . but I beg your pardon if I have not been as free and open with you as I should have been. This is delicate ground, however.’

There was a time when they were rivals, when Jack felt so strongly about Diana that this was very dangerous ground indeed. Jack had nearly wrecked his career because of her, and his chance of marrying Sophia. In retrospect he resented it bitterly, just as he resented her unfaithfulness, although she owed him no fidelity. He hated her, in a way; he thought her dangerous, if not evil; and he dreaded an encounter - dreaded it for Stephen more than for himself.

‘No, no, my dear fellow, not at all,’ he said, shaking Stephen by the hand. ‘No. I am sure you are right. In keeping your counsel, I mean.’