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

‘Why, as to that, Jack, you undervalue Sophie: to love her is a liberal education in itself. Of course you are an educated man, in that sense. Besides, lawyers make notoriously bad husbands, from their habit of incessant prating; whereas your sailor has been schooled to mute obedience,’ said Stephen; and to divert the sad current of Jack’s mind he added, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis asserts, that the inhabitants of Ossory can change into wolves at their pleasure.’

Back with his cryptogams his conscience troubled him: he had been so steadily fixed upon his own pursuit - the hope of Madeira, the certainty of London - that he had paid little attention to Jack’s anxiety, an anxiety that, like his own, had been growing as the vague charming future became more sharply defined, more nearly the decisive present. He, too, was oppressed by a feeling that this great happiness of travelling month after month towards a splendid end was soon to be broken: a sense not indeed of impending disaster but rather of some uneasiness that he could not well define.

‘That was the unluckiest stroke,’ he said, thinking of Jack’s they many parsons. ‘Absit, o absit omen,’ for the deepest of his private superstitions, or ancestral pieties, was naming calls.

He found the chaplain alone in the gunroom, setting up a problem on the chess-​board, ‘Pray, Mr White,’ he said, ‘among the gentlemen of your cloth, have you ever met a Mr Hincksey?’

‘Mr Charles Hincksey?’ asked the chaplain, with a civil inclination of his head.

‘Just so. Mr Charles Hincksey.’

‘Yes. I know Charles Hincksey well. We were at Magdalen together: we used to play fives, and walk great distances. A delightful companion - no striving, no competition - and he was very well liked in the university: I was proud to know him. An excellent Grecian, too, and well-​connected; so well-​connected that he has two livings now, both of them in Kent, the one as fat as any in the county and the other capable of improvement. And yet, you know, I do not believe any of us grudged or envied him, even the men without benefices. He is a good, sound preacher, in the plain, unenthusiastic way: I dare say he will be a bishop soon; and so much the better for our church.’

‘Has the gentleman no faults?’

‘I dare say he has,’ said Mr White, ‘though upon my honour I cannot call any to mind. But even if he were another Chartres I am sure people would still like him. He is one of your tall, handsome fellows, not at all witty or alarming, but always good company. How he has escaped marriage until now I cannot tell: the number of caps set in his direction would furnish a warehouse. He is not at all averse to the state, I know; but I dare say he is hard to please.’

Now the days flew by: each was long in itself, but how quickly they formed a week, a fortnight! The baffling winds and calms of the outward voyage restored the average by sweeping the ship northwards across the line and up into the trades with hardly a pause, and presently the peak of Tenerife lay there on the starboard beam, a gleaming triangle under its private cloud, nearly a hundred miles away.

The first consuming eagerness to reach Madeira was in no way diminished; never for a moment did Jack cease driving the fragile ship with a spread of sail just this side

of recklessness; but in both Aubrey and Maturin there was this increasing tension, dread of the event combining with the delight.

The island loomed up in the north against a menacing sky; before sunset it vanished in rain, a steady downpour from low cloud that washed runnels in the new paint on the frigate’s sides; and in the morning there was Funchal road, filled with shipping, and the white town brilliant behind it in the sparkling air. A frigate, the Amphion; the Badger sloop of war; several Portuguese; an American; innumerable tenders, fishermen and small craft; and at the far end, three Indiamen with their super yards on deck. The Lushington was not among them.

‘Carry on, Mr Hales,’ said Jack; the guns saluted the castle, and the castle thundered back, the smoke rolling wide over the bay.

‘For’ard there. Let go.’ The anchor splashed into the sea and the cable raced after it; but before the anchor could bite and swing the ship, there was the boom of guns again. Jack looked for a newcomer, staring seawards, before he realised that the Indiamen were saluting the Surprise. The Lushington must have told them of the brush with Linois, and they were pleased.

‘Give them seven, Mr Hales,’ he said. ‘Lower down the barge.’

Stephen was to go down the side first. He hesitated in the gangway, and Bonden, taking it for a physical uncertainty, whispered, ‘Easy does it, sir. Give me your foot.’

Jack followed him to the sound of bosun’s pipes, and they rowed ashore, sitting side by side in their best uniforms, facing the bargemen, all shaved, all in white frocks, wearing broad white hats with long ribbons bearing the name Surprise. The only words Jack spoke were ‘Stretch out.’

They went straight to their agent’s correspondent, a Madeira Englishman. ‘Welcome, sir,’ cried he. ‘As soon as I heard the Indiamen I know it must be you. Mr Muffit was in last week, and he told us about your noble action. Allow mc to wish you joy, sir, and to shake you by the hand.’

‘Thank you, Mr Henderson. Tell me, is there any young lady in the island for me, brought either by a King’s ship or an Indiaman?’

‘Young lady, sir? No, not that I know of. Certainly not in any King’s ship. But the Indiamen only got in on Monday, cruelly mauled in the Bay, she might still be in one of them. Here are their passenger-​lists.’

Jack’s eyes raced down the names, and instantly they fixed on Mrs Villiers. ‘Two lines farther down Mr John-​stone. ‘But this is the Lushington’s,’ he cried.

‘So it is,’ said the agent. ‘The others are overleaf -Mornington, Bombay Castle and Clive.’

Twice Jack ran through them, and a third time slowly: there was no Miss Williams.

‘Is there any mail?’ he asked in a flat voice.

‘Oh no, sir. Nobody would have looked for Surprise at the Island these many months yet. They would not even know you had sailed, at home. I dare say your mail is aboard Bellerophon, with the last convoy down. But now I come to think on it, there was a message left in the office for a Dr Maturin, belonging to the Surprise; left by a lady from the Lushington. Here it is.’

‘My name is Maturin,’ said Stephen. He recognised the hand, of course, and through the envelope he felt the ring. He said, ‘Jack, I shall take a turn. Good day to you, sir.’

He walked steadily uphill wherever the path mounted, and in time he climbed through the small fields of sugar-​cane, through the orchards, through the terraced vineyards, and to the chestnut forest. Up through the trees until they died away to scrub and the scrub to a parched meagre vegetation; and so, beyond all paths now, to the naked volcanic scree lying in falls beneath the central ridge of the island. There was a little sleety snow lying in the shadows up here, and he scooped handfuls of it to eat; he had wept and sweated all the water out of his body; his mouth and throat were as dry and cracked as the barren rock he sat on.

He had walked himself into a dull apathy of mind, and although his cheeks were still wet - the wind blew cold upon them - he was beyond the immediate pain. Below there stretched a tormented landscape, sterile for a great way, then wooded; minute fields beyond, a few villages, and then the whole south sea-​line of the island, with Funchal under his right hand; the shipping like white flecks; and beyond, the ocean rising to meet the sky. He looked at it all with a certain residual interest. Behind the great headland westwards lay the Camara de Lobos: seals were said to breed there.