Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘What of the other officers?’

‘Why, sir, I have not rightly had time to come to know ‘em, not with all this day-​of-​judgment hell and shindy of fitting-​out - purser in the Victualling Yard, gunner at the Ordnance, master in the hold, or where the hold would be if there was a hold, which there ain’t.’

‘She is constructed on new principles, I find?’

‘Well, sir, I hope she’s constructed to swim, that’s all. I would not say it to any but a shipmate, sir, but I never seen anything like her, Pearl River, Hugh or Guinea coast. You can’t tell whether she’s coming or going. Not but what she’s a gallows deal more handsome than the common run,’ he added, as though taking himself up for disloyalty. ‘Mr Parker seen to that - gold-​leaf, bright-​work galore, special patent blacking for the bends and yards, blocks stropped with red leather. Was you ever at a fitting-​out, sir?’

‘Not I.’

‘It’s a right old Bedlam,’ said Pullings, shaking his head and laughing. ‘Dockyard mateys underfoot, stores all over the deck, new drafts milling about like lost souls, nobody knowing who anyone is or where to go - a right old Bedlam, and the Port Admiral sending down every five minutes to know why you’re not ready for sea - is everybody observing the Sabbath aboard the Polychrest, ha, ha, ha!’ In the gaiety of his heart Tom Pullings sang

‘We’ll give you a bit of our mind, old hound:

Port Admiral, you be damned.

‘I haven’t had my clothes off since we commissioned her,’ he observed. ‘Captain Aubrey turns up at crack of dawn - posted all the way - reads himself in to me and Parker and the Marines and half a dozen loobies which was all we had then, and up goes his pennant. And before his last words are rightly out - fail not as you will answer the contrary at your peril - “Mr Pullings, that topsail-​sheet block needs a dog-​bitch thimble, if you please,” in his own voice exactly. But Lord, you should have heard him carrying on at the riggers when he found they had been giving us twice-​laid stuff; they had to call the Master-​Attendant to soothe his horrid passion. Then “Lose not a minute,” says he, driving us all though fit to drop, merry as a grig and laughing when half the people run to the stern thinking it is the bows, and t’other way about. Why, sir, he’ll be glad of his dinner, I’m sure: he’s not had above a bit of bread and cold beef in his hand since I been aboard, And now I must take my leave. He would give his eye-​teeth for a boat-​load of thorough-​paced seamen.’

Stephen returned to his window, watched the lithe young form of Thomas Pullings weave through the traffic, cross to the far side and hurry away with that easy, loose-​limbed rolling gait of his kind towards the Point and his long night’s wait in an open boat far out in the Channel. ‘Devotion is a fine thing, a moving thing to see,’ he reflected. ‘But who is going to pay for that amiable young man’s zeal? What blows, oaths, moral violence, brutalities?’

The scene had changed: church-​going was over, and the respectable part of the town had vanished behind doors, into an odour of mutton; now groups of sailors straggled up and down, walking wide, like countrymen in London, and among them small greasy tradesmen, routs, hucksters, and the thick local girls and women called brutes. A confused bellowing, something between merriment and a riot turning ugly, and the Impregnable’s liberty-​men, in shore-​going rig and a prize divided in their pockets, came staggering by with a troop of whores, a fiddler walking backwards in front of them and small boys skirmishing on every side, like sheepdogs. Some of the whores were old, some had torn dresses with yellow flesh beneath, all had dyed and frizzled hair, and all looked pinched with cold.

The warmth and happiness of young Pullings’ joy receded. ‘All ports I have seen are much the same,’ he reflected. ‘All the places where sailors congregate: I do not believe that this reflects their nature, however, but rather the nature of the land.’ He sank into a train of thought -man’s nature how defined? Where the constant factors of identity? What allows the statement ‘I am I’ from which he was aroused by the sight of Jack, walking along with the fine easy freedom of Sunday - no bowed head, no anxious looks over his shoulder. There were many other people in the street, but two, some fifty yards behind Jack and keeping pace with him, caught Stephen’s eye:

burly fellows, of no obvious trade or calling, and there was something odd about them, some intentness, some want of casual staring about, that made him look harder, withdrawing from the window and fixing them until they came abreast of the George.

‘Jack,’ he said, ‘there are two men following you. Come over here and look out discreetly. There they are, standing on the Port Admiral’s steps.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘I know the one with the broken nose. He tried to come aboard the other day - no go, however; I smoked him at once. I dare say he is putting the other on to my line, the pragmatical bastard. Oh, be damned to them,’ he said, hurrying to the fire. ‘Stephen, what do you say to a drink? I spent the whole morning in the foretop, starved with cold.’

‘A little brandy will answer the case, I think; a glass of right Nantes. Indeed, you look quite destroyed. Drink this up, and we will go straight to the dining-​room. I have ordered a halibut with anchovy sauce, mutton, and a venison pasty - simple island fare.’

The worn lines eased out of Jack Aubrey’s face, a rosy glow replaced the unhealthy grey; he seemed to fill his uniform again. ‘How much better a man feels when he is mixed with halibut and leg of mutton and roebuck,’ he said, toying with a piece of Stilton cheese. ‘You are a much better host than I am, Stephen,’ he observed. ‘All the things I stood most in need of but hardly name. I remember a wretched dinner I invited you to in Mahon, the first we ever ate together, and they got it all wrong, being ignorant of Spanish, my sort of Spanish.’

‘It was a very good meal, a very welcome meal,’ said Stephen. ‘I remember it perfectly. Shall we take our tea upstairs? I wish to hear about the Polychrest.’ The big room was an almost unbroken spread of blue, with here and there a Royal Marine, and conversation was little more private than signals on the open sea.

‘We shall make a go of her, once we get used to her ways, I make no doubt,’ said Jack. ‘She may be a little odd to look at, to the prejudiced eye; but she floats, and that is the essential, do you see? She floats; and as a floating battery - why, I have rarely seen the like! We only have to get her there, and then we have four and twenty thirty-​two pounders to bring into play. Carronades, you may say; but thirty-​two pounder carronades! We can take on any French sloop afloat, for these are your genuine smashers - we could tackle a thirty-​six-​gun frigate, if only we could get close enough.’

‘By this same argument of proximation you could also set about a three-​decker, a first-​rate, at six inches; or two, indeed, if you could wedge yourself between them and fire both sides. But believe me, my dear, it is a fallacious argument, God forbid. How far do these carronades of yours fling their vast prodigious missiles?’

‘Why, you must engage within pistol shot if you want to hit what you point them at; but at yard-​arm to yard-​arm, oh, how they smash through the oak!’

‘And what is your enemy doing with his long guns, while you labour to approach him? But I am not to teach you your own trade, however.’

‘Approach him . . . ’said Jack. ‘There’s the rub. I must have hands to work the ship. We are thirty-​two men short of our complement - no hope of another draft - and I dare say you will reject some of the cripples and Abraham-​men the receiving-​ship has sent us: sad thievish little creatures. Men I must have, and the glass is running out . . . tell me, did you bring Scriven with you?’