Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘Cut along to the Goat and tell them to have a chaise here at eleven. Pack my valise for a couple of nights: no, a week.’

‘Jack,’ said Stephen urgently, when the servant had left the room, ‘do not speak of this to anyone yet, I beg you.’

‘You are looking terribly pale, Captain Aubrey,’ said Sophia. ‘I do hope you have not had another fall? Come in; please come in and sit down on a chair. Oh dear, I am sure you ought to sit down.’

‘No, no, I promise you I have not fallen off my horse this last week,’ said Jack, laughing. ‘Let us make the most of this burst of sun; we shall get a ducking if we wait. Look at the clouds in the south-​west. What a fine habit you are wearing.’

‘Do you like it? It is the first time I have put it on. But,’ she said, still looking anxiously into his face, which was now an unhealthy red, ‘are you sure you would not like a cup of tea? It could be made in a moment.’

‘Yes, yes, do step in and have a cup of tea,’ cried Mrs Williams from the window, clutching a yellow garment to her throat. ‘It will be ready directly, and there is a fire in the small sitting-​room. You can drink it together - so cosy. I am sure Sophie is dying for a cup of tea. She would love a cup of tea with you, Captain Aubrey, would you not, Sophie?’

Jack smiled and bowed and kissed her hand, but his iron determination not to stay prevailed, and in time they rode off along the Foxdene road to the edge of the downs.

‘Are you quite sure you did not have a fall?’ asked Sophie again, not so much from the idea that he had not noticed it and might recall it with application, as from a desire to express her real concern.

‘No,’ said Jack, looking at that lovely, usually remote face now gazing at him with such tenderness, such a worried and as it were proprietorial tenderness. ‘But I did have a knock-​down blow just now. A damned unlooked-​for blow. Sophie - I may call you Sophie, mayn’t I? I always think of you so - when I was in my Sophie, my sloop, I took a couple of neutrals sailing into Marseilles. Their papers said they were from Sicily for Copenhagen, laden with brimstone. But they were in the very act of running into Marseilles: I was within reach of that battery on the height. And the brimstone was meant for France.’

For Sophia brimstone was something to be mixed with treacle and given to children on Fridays: she could still feel the odious lumps between her teeth. This showed in her face, and Jack added, ‘They have to have it to make gunpowder. So I sent both these ships into Port Mahon, where they were condemned as lawful prize out of hand, a glaring breach of neutrality; but now at length the owners have appealed, and the court has decided they were not lawful prize at all, that their masters’ tale of merely taking shelter from the weather was true. Weather! There was no weather. Scarcely a riffle on the sea, and we stood in under our royals, stuns’ls either side, and the thirty-​six-​pounders up on the hill making rings in the still water a quarter of a mile wide.’

‘Oh, how unjust!’ cried Sophie in extreme indignation. ‘What wicked men, to tell such lies! You must have risked your life to bring those ships out from under the battery. Of course the brimstone was meant for France. I am sure they will be punished. What can be done? Oh, what can be done?’

‘As for the verdict, nothing at all. It is final, I am afraid. But I must go up and see what other measures -what I can wring out of the Admiralty. I must go today, and I may be away for some time. That is why I bore you with my affairs, to make it plain that I do not go away from Sussex of my own free will, nor with a light heart.’

‘Oh, you do not bore - you could not bore me -everything to do with the Navy is - but did you say today? Surely you cannot go today. You must lie down and rest.’

‘Today it must be, alas.’

‘Then you must not ride. You must take a chaise and post up.’

‘Yes. That is just what Stephen said. I will do it: I have ordered one from the Goat.’

‘What a dear good man he is: he must be such a comfort to you. Such a good friend. But we must turn back at once, this minute. You must have all the rest you can before your journey.’

When they parted she gave him her hand and said, with an insistent pressure, ‘I do pray you have the best of fortune, everything you deserve. I suppose there is nothing an ignorant girl in the country can do, but -’

‘Why there you are, you two,’ cried Mrs Williams.

‘Chatting away like a couple of inseparables. Whatever can you be talking about all this time? But hush, I am indiscreet. La! And have you brought her back safe and sound, quite intact?’

Two secretaries, one sure if another failed, wrote as fast as their pens would drive.

‘To the Marquis Cornwallis My Lord,

With every disposition to pay the most prompt attention to your Lordship’s wishes in favour of Captain Bull, I have greatly to lament that it is not at present in my powers to comply with them.

I have the honour to be, etc.

are you there, Bates

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘To Mrs Paulett

Madam,

Although I cannot admit the force of your argument in favour of Captain Mainwaring, there is something so amiable and laudable in a sister contending for the promotion of her brother, that no apology was needed for your letter of the twenty-​fourth, which I lose no time in acknowledging. -

I am, Madam, etc.

‘To Sir Charles Grey, KB.

My dear Sir Charles,

Lieutenant Beresford has been playing a game to get to Ireland, which has lowered him much in my opinion. He is grave and enterprising, but, like the rest of the aristocracy, he thinks he has, from that circumstance, a right to promotion, in prejudice of men of better service and superior merit; which I will never submit to.

Having refused the Prince of Wales, Duke of Clarence, Duke of Kent, and Duke of Cumberland, you will not be surprised that I repeat the impossibility of departing from my principle, which would let in such an inundation upon me as would tend to complete the ruin of the Navy.

Yours very sincerely

‘To the Duchess of Kingston, Madam,

Your Grace is largely correct in the character of Captain Hallows of the Frolic; he has zeal and conduct, and were it not for a certain independence and want of willing submission to his superiors that may be cured by the passage of time, as well as certain blemishes of a family nature, I should, exclusive of the interest your Grace has taken in his fortunes, be very glad to do justice to his merit, were I not precluded from doing so by the incredible number of meritorious commanders senior to him, upon half pay, who have prior claims to any of the very few ships that offer.

I beg leave to assure your Grace that I shall be happy in an occasion to mark the respect with which I have the honour to be, Madam,

Your most obedient, humble servant

So much for the letters. Who is upon the list?’

‘Captains Saul, Cunningham, Aubrey and Small. Lieutenants Roche, Hampole. . .’

‘I shall have time for the first three.

‘Yes, my Lord.’

Jack heard the stentorian laughter as the First Lord and his old shipmate Cunningham parted with a gun-​room joke, and he hoped he might find St Vincent in a good mood.

Lord St Vincent, deep in his attempts to reform the dockyards, hamstrung by politics, politicians, and his party’s uncertain majority in the House, was not much given to good moods however, and he looked up with an unwelcoming, cold and piercing eye. ‘Captain Aubrey, I saw you here last week. I have very little time. General Aubrey has written forty letters to me and other members of the Board and he has been told that it is not in

contemplation to promote you for the action with the Cacafuego.’