Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

They were standing on the quarterdeck amidst a crowd of wondering, staring attaches, secretaries, members of the suite, who staggered and lurched, clinging to ropes and to one another as the frigate began to feel the roll and the brisk cross-​sea and Dover cliffs vanished in a swathe of summer rain. ‘Yes,’ said Stephen, ‘I too have been walking a tightrope with no particular skill. I have the same sense of enlargement. A little while ago I should have welcomed it without reservation.’

Toulon. The mistral had died away at last, and there was scarcely a fleck of white left on the sea; but the brilliant clarity of the air was still undimmed, so that a telescope from the hills behind the town could pick out even the names of the seven line-​of-​battle ships in the Petite Rade: the Formidable and Indomptable, both of eighty guns, and the Atlas, Scipion, Intrépide, Mont-​Blanc and Berwick of seventy-​four apiece. English pride might have been hurt at the sight of the last, for she belonged to the Royal Navy until some years before: and had English pride been able to look into the jealously guarded Arsenal it would have been mortified again by seeing two more British seventy-​fours, the Hannibal, captured during Sir James Saumarez’s action in the Gut of Gibraltar in 1801, and the Swiftsure, taken in the Mediterranean a few weeks earlier, both of them under active repair.

Indeed activity, extreme activity, was the word for Toulon. The silent, still-​green hills, the great headlands, the enormous sweep of the Mediterranean beyond them and the islands, blue and motionless beyond expression, the flood of hot, oppressive light, and then in the middle this noisy little stirring concentrated town, filled with tiny figures - white shirts, blue trousers, the gleam of red sashes - all of them intensely busy. Even under this noonday sun they were toiling like ants - boats pulling from the Arsenal to the Petite Rade, from the Petite Rade to the Grande Rade, from the ships to the quays and back again, men swarming over the fine great ships on the stocks, plying their adzes, caulking-​hammers, augers, beetles, harring-​poles; gangs of convicts unloading oak from Ragusa, Stockholm tar, Hamburg tow, Riga spars and cordage, all in the din and the innumerable smells of a great port, the reek of open drains, old stagnant water, hot stone, frying garlic, grilling fish that wafted above the whole.

‘Dinner,’ said Captain Christy-​Pallière, closing the file of Death Sentences, F-L. I shall start with a glass of Banyuls and some anchovies, a handful of olives, black olives; then I believe I may look at Hébert’s fish soup, and follow it with a simple langouste in court-​bouillon. Possibly his gigot en croüte: the lamb is exquisite now that the thyme is in flower. Then no more than cheese, strawberries, and some trifle with our coffee - a saucer of my English jam, for example. None of your architectural meals, Penhoet; my liver will not stand it in this heat, and we have a great deal of work to do if the Annibale is to be ready for sea by next week. There are all Dumanoir’s dossiers to deal with - how I wish he would come back. I should have interrogated the Maltese this morning, if we have a good dinner they risk to escape unshot.

‘Let us drink Tavel with the. lamb;’ said Captain Penhoet, who knew that for his part he risked philosophical remarks about digestion - guilt - Pontius Pilate - the odious side of interrogating suspected spies, quite unfit for officers - if he did not interrupt. ‘It is -,

‘Two roast-​beefs to see you, sir,’ said an orderly.

‘Oh no!’ cried Captain Christy-​Pallière, ‘not at this hour, holy name. Tell them I am not here, Jeannot. I may be back at five. Who are they?’

‘The first is Aubrey, Jacques. He claims to be a captain in their navy,’ said the orderly, narrowing his eyes and scanning the official slip in his hand. ‘Born 1 April 1066, at Bedlam, London. Father’s profession, monk: mother’s, nun. Mother’s maiden name, Borgia, Lucrèce. The other pilgrim is Maturin, Etienne -’

‘Quick, quick,’ cried Captain Christy-​Pallière. ‘My breeches, Jeannot, my cravat -’ for ease and commodity he had been sitting in his drawers. ‘Son of a whore, my shirt. Penhoet, we must have a real dinner today - find a clothes-​brush, Jeannot - this is the English prisoner I was telling you about. Excellent seaman, charming company. You will not mind speaking English, of course. How do I look?’

‘So pimping as possible,’ said Captain Penhoet in that language. ‘Camber the torso, and you will impose yourself of their attention.’

‘Show them in, Jeannot,’ said Christy-​Pallière. ‘My dear Aubrey,’ he cried, folding Jack in his arms and kissing him on both cheeks, ‘how very happy I am to see you! Dear Dr Maturin, be the very welcome. Allow me to present Captain of frigate Penhoet - Captain of frigate Aubrey, and Dr Maturin, at one time my guests aboard the Desaix.’

‘Your servant, sir,’ said Captain Penhoët.

‘Domestique, monsieur,’ said Jack, still blushing as far as his shirt. ‘Penhoët? Je preserve - je ai - le plus vivid remembrance de vos combatte a Ushant, a bord le Pong, en vingt-​quatre neuf.’ A second of attentive, polite but total blankness followed this, and turning to Christy-​Pallière he said, ‘How do you say I have the liveliest recollection of Captain Penhoët’s gallant action off Ushant in ‘99?’

Captain Christy-​Pallière said this in another kind of French - renewed, far warmer smiles, another British shake-​hand - and observed, ‘But we may all speak English. My colleague is one of our best translators. Come, let us go and have dinner in a trice - you are tired, dusty, quite fagged up - how far have you come today? How do you stand the heat? Extraordinary for the month of May. Have you seen my cousins in Bath? May we hope for your company for some time? How happy I am to see you!’

‘We had hoped you would dine with us,’ cried Jack. ‘We have livre une table - booked it.’

‘You are in my country,’ said Christy-​Pallière in a tone that allowed of no reply. ‘After you, dear friends, I beg. A simple meal - a little inn just outside the town. But it has

a muscat trellis - fresh air - and the man does the cooking himself.’ Turning to Stephen as he shepherded them along the corridor he said, ‘Dr Ramis is with us again! He came back from leave on Tuesday. I will ask him to come and sit with us after dinner - he could not bear to see us eat - and he will tell you all the news of our cholera outburst and the new Egyptian pox.’

‘Captain Aubrey led us such a chase,’ he said to Captain Penhoët, setting pieces of bread to represent the ships of Admiral Linois’s squadron. ‘He commanded that little quarter-​decked brig the Sophie -’

‘I remember myself of him.’

‘And at first he had the weather-​gage of us. But he was embayed - here is the headland, and the wind was so, a caprice wind.’ He fought the battle over again, stage by stage. ‘And then he put up his helm in a flash, set his studding-​sails like a conjuring trick and ran through our line, close to the Admiral. The fox, he knew I dared not risk hitting the flagship! And he knew the Desaix’s broadside would come rather slow! He ran through, and with a little luck -,

‘What is luck?’

‘Chance. He might have escaped. But the Admiral made my signal to chase, and the Desaix was only a week out of dock quite clean, and she loves a light breeze on the quarter: and in short. . . I should have blown you out of the sea with my last broadside, dear friend, if you had not jugged like an hare.’

‘How well I remember it,’ said Jack. ‘My heart was in my boots as I saw you beginning to luff up. But it had gone down there much earlier, when I saw that you sailed two miles to my one, without troubling to set your stuns’ls.’