Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘Evens on the speckled pie! Evens on the speckled pie!’ cried a tall gipsy with a red scarf round his neck.

‘Done with you,’ said Jack. ‘Five guineas at even odds on the speckled pie.’

‘Done and done,’ said the gipsy looking round. His eyes narrowed, and in a jocular, wheedling voice he went on, ‘Five guineas, gentleman? Oh, such a purse for a poor travelling man and a half-​pay captain! I lays my money down, éh?’ He placed the five bright coins on the rim of the pit. Jack thrust out his jaw and matched the guineas one by one. The owners of the birds set them to the ring, clasping them just so and whispering close to their proud close-​cropped heads. The cocks stalked out on their toes, darting glances sideways, circling before they closed. Both flew up at the same moment, the steel spurs flashing as they struck; up and up again, a whirlwind in the middle of the pit and a savage roaring all round it.

The speckled pie, staggering, one eye gone and the other streaming blood, stood his ground, peering through the mist for his enemy: saw his shadow and lurched in to get his death-​wound. Still he would not die; he stood with the spurs labouring his back until the mere weight of his exhausted opponent bore him down - an opponent too cruelly lacerated to rise and crow.

‘Let us go and sit outside,’ said Stephen. ‘Pot-​boy, there, bring us a pint of sherry-​wine on the bench outside. Do you mind me, now?’

‘Sherry, for all love!’ he said. ‘The pretentious young whore is wicked enough to call this sherry-​wine. Here are letters for you, Jack.’

‘The speckled pie did not really want to fight,’ said Jack.

‘He did not. Though he was a game bird, to be sure. Why did you bet on him?’

‘I liked him; he had a rolling walk like a sailor. He was not what you would call a wicked bloody cock, but once he was in the ring, once he was challenged, he would fight. He was a rare plucked ‘un, and he went on even when there was no hope at all. I am not sorry I backed him: should do it again. Did you say there were letters?’

‘Two letters. Use no ceremony, I beg.’

‘Thank you, Stephen. The Admiralty acknowledges Mr Aubrey’s communication of the seventh ultimo. This is from Bath: I will just see what Queenie has to say.

Oh my God.’

‘What’s amiss?’

‘My God,’ said Jack again, beating his clenched fist on his knee. ‘Come, let’s get out of this place. Sophie’s to be married.’

They rode for a mile, Jack muttering broken sentences, ejaculations to himself, and then he said, ‘Queenie writes from Bath. A fellow by the name of Adams - big estate in Dorset - has made Sophia an offer. Pretty brisk work, upon my soul. I should never have believed it of her.’

‘Is this gossip Lady Keith has picked up?’

‘No, no, no! She called on Mother Williams for my sake - my idea was she could not refuse to see me when I went down. Queenie knows everybody.’

‘Certainly. Mrs Williams would be flattered by the acquaintance.’

‘Yes. So she went, and Mrs Williams, tittering with joy, told her the whole thing, every last detail of the estate. Would you have believed it of Sophia, Stephen?’

‘No. And I doubt the truth of the report, in so far as it assumes that the offer has been made directly and not through the mother, as a mere proposition.’

‘By God, I wish I were in Bath,’ said Jack in a low voice, his face dark with anger. ‘Who would have believed it of her? That pure face - I should have sworn . . . Those sweet, kindest words so short a while ago; and now already things have gone as far as an offer of marriage! Think of the hand-​holding, paddling. . . By God, and such a pure, pure face.’

Stephen said that this was no evidence, that Mrs Williams was capable of any invention; he was intelligent, comforting and wise, and he knew that he might as well have been talking to his mule. Jack’s face had closed in a particular hard, determined set; he said he had thought for once he had found a perfectly straightforward girl - nothing hole-​in-​the-​corner, nothing uneasy and complicated - but he would say no more about it; and when they came to the Newton Priors crossroads he said, ‘Stephen, I know you mean very, very kindly, but I think I shall ride over the Downs to Wivenhoe. I’m not fit company for man or beast. You will not be wanting the cob? And don’t wait supper - I shall get a bite somewhere on the road.’

‘Killick,’ said Stephen, ‘put the ham and a pot of beer in the Captain’s room. He may come home late. I am going out.’

He walked slowly at first, his heart and breathing quite undisturbed, but when the familiar miles had passed under him and he started to climb Polcary, the stronger rhythm had returned, increasing as all his resolution fell away, and by the time he reached the top of the hill his heart was keeping time with his brisk busy watch. ‘Thump, thump, thump, you fool,’ he said smiling as he timed it. ‘It is true, of course, that I have never climbed the hill so fast - my legs are in training, ha, ha, ha. A pretty sight I should look. Kind night that covers me.’

More slowly now, his senses keen for the least movement in the wood, in Gole’s Hanger or the lane beyond: far on his right hand the barking of a roe-​buck in search of a doe, and on his left the distant screaming of a rabbit with a stoat at work upon it. An owl. Dim, fast asleep among its trees, the vague shape of the house, and at its far end the one square eye in the tower, shining out.

Down to the elms, silent and thick-​leaved now: the house full-​view. And under the elms his own cob tethered to a hazel-​bush. He recognized the animal before it whinnied, and he stood stock-​still. Creeping forward at its second neigh he stroked its velvet muzzle and its neck, patted it for a while, still staring over its withers at the light, and then turned. After perhaps a hundred yards, with the tower sunk in the trees behind him, he stopped dead and put his hand to his heart. Walked on: a heavy, lumpish pace, stumbling in the ruts, driving himself forward by brute force.

‘Jack,’ he said at breakfast next morning, ‘I think I must leave you: I shall see whether I can find a place on the mail.’

‘Leave me!’ cried Jack, perfectly aghast. ‘Oh, surely not?’

‘I am not entirely well, and conceive that my native air might set me up.’

‘You do look miserably hipped,’ said Jack, gazing at him now with attention and deep concern. ‘I have been so wrapped up in my own damned unhappy business -and now this - that I have not been watching you. I am so sorry, Stephen. You must be damned uncomfortable here, with only Killick, and no company. How I hope you are not really ill. Now I recollect, you have been low, out of spirits, these last weeks - no heart for a jig. Should you like to advise with Dr Vining? He might see your case from the outside, if you understand me. I am sure he is not so clever as you, but he might see it from the outside. Pray let me call him in. I shall step over at once, before he starts on his rounds.’

It took Stephen the interval between breakfast and the coming of the post to quiet his friend - -he knew his disease perfectly - had suffered from it before - it was nothing a man could die of - he knew the cure -the malady was called solis deprivatio.’

‘The taking away of the sun?’ cried Jack. ‘Are you making game of me, Stephen? You cannot be thinking of going to Ireland for the sun.’

‘It was a kind of dismal little joke,’ said Stephen. ‘But I had meant Spain rather than Ireland. You know I have a house in the mountains behind Figueras: part of its roof has fallen in, the part where the sheep live - I must attend to it. Bats there are, free-​tailed bats, that I have watched for generations. Here is the post,’ he said, going to the window and reaching out. ‘You have one letter. I have none.’