Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘it has done me no good. This afternoon I was savaged by a midshipman, and now I am harassed by my own surgeon. Come, Stephen, drink up, and let us have some music.’ But instead of tuning his fiddle he reached beyond it, saying, ‘Here is something that will interest you. Have you ever heard of robber-​bolts?’

‘I have not.’

‘This is one.’ He held out a short solid copper cylinder with a great nut on the end of it. ‘As you know, bolts are to hold the hull together, going right through her timbers; and the best are copper, against the corrosion. They are expensive - I believe two pounds of copper, a short piece of bolt, will pay a shipwright’s wages for a day. But if you are a damned villain, you cut off the middle, drive each end home and pocket the money for the length of copper in between. Nobody is any the wiser until the frame opens; and that may not happen until the ship is on the other side of the world. And even then she may founder, leaving no witnesses.’

‘When did you know this?’

‘I suspected it from the start. I knew she would be a damned job, coming from Hickman’s; and then the fellows at the yard were so fulsome, so free with their hampers. But I was certain only the other day. Now that she has worked a little, it is easier to be certain. I pulled this one out with my fingers.’

‘Could you not have made representations in the proper quarters?’

‘Yes. I could have asked for a survey and waited for a month or six weeks: and then where should I have been? It is a dockyard matter, and you hear very rum tales of ships being passed whatever their state, and small clerks setting up their carriages. No. I preferred to take her out; and indeed, she has withstood quite a blow. I shall have her hove down if ever I can - if ever I can find the right moment, or if she will not float without it.’

They remained silent for a while, and all the time the steady throb of the pumps sounded through the cabin, and, almost keeping time, the barking of the lunatic.

‘I must give that man some more of my laudanum,’ said Stephen, half to himself.

Jack’s mind was still on bolts, timbers, and the other powers that held his ship together. ‘What do you say to Parker’s shoulder?’ he asked. ‘He will not be fit for duty for a great while, I dare say? Should lay up ashore, no doubt, and take the waters?’

‘Not at all,’ said Stephen. ‘He is coming along admirably- Dr Ramis’s thin water gruel has answered admirably, and the low diet. Properly slung, he may come on deck tomorrow.’

‘Oh,’ said Jack. ‘No sick ticket? No long leave? You do not feel that the waters might help his deafness, too?’ He looked wistfully into Stephen’s face, but without much hope: in what he conceived to be his duty as a medical man, Stephen Maturin would not budge for man, God or beast. In such matters he was beyond the reach of reason or even of friendship. They never discussed the officers with whom Stephen messed, but Jack’s desire to be shot of his first lieutenant, his opinion of Mr Parker, was clear enough to anyone who knew him well: yet Stephen merely looked dogged, reached for the fiddle and ran up and down the scale. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

‘I picked it up in a pawnshop near the Sally-​Port. It cost twelve and six.’

‘You were not cheated, my dear. I like its tone extremely warm, mellow. You are a great judge of a fiddle, to be sure. Come, come, there is not a moment to lose; I make my rounds at seven bells. One, two, three,’ he cried, tapping his foot, and the cabin was filled with the opening movement of Boccherini’s Corelli sonata, a glorious texture of sound, the violin sending up brilliant jets through the ‘cello’s involutions, and they soared up and away from the grind of pumps, the tireless barking, the problems of command, up, the one answering the other, joining, separating, twining, rising into their native air.

A keen, pale, wintry morning in the Downs: the hands at breakfast, Jack walking up and down.

‘The admiral is making our number, sir,’ said the signal midshipman.

‘Very well,’ said Jack. ‘Man the gig.’ He had been expecting this since before dawn, when he reported his presence; the gig was already alongside and his best coat was lying spread out on his cot. He reappeared, wearing it, and went over the side to the twittering of the bosun’s pipes.

The sea was as calm as a sea can well be; the tide was at the full, and the whole grey surface under the frozen sky had the air of waiting- not a ripple, scarcely a hint of living swell. Behind him, beyond the dwindling Polychrest, lay the town of Deal, and away beyond it, the North Fore-​land. Ahead of him, the massive bulk of the Cumberland, 74, with the blue ensign at the mizen; then two cables’ lengths away, the Melpomène, a lovely frigate, then two sloops and a cutter; and beyond them again, between the squadron and the Goodwin sands, the whole of the West Indies, Turkey, Guinea and India trade, a hundred and forty sail of merchantmen lying there in the road, a wood of masts, waiting for a wind and a convoy, every yard and spar distinct in this cold air - almost no colour, only line, but that line unbelievably sharp and clear.

However, Jack had been gazing at this scene ever since the pale disc of the sun had made it visible, and during the pull to the flagship his mind was taken up with other things: his expression was grave and contained as he went up the side, saluted the quarterdeck, greeted the Cumberland’s captain, and was shown into the great cabin.

Admiral Harte was eating kippers and drinking tea, his secretary and a mass of papers on the other side of the table. He had aged shockingly since Jack had last seen him; his shallow eyes seemed to have moved even closer together and his look of falsity to have grown even more pronounced.

‘So here you are at last,’ he cried - with a smile, however, and reaching up an unctuous hand. ‘You must have come dawdling up the Channel; I expected you three tides ago, upon my honour.’ Admiral Harte’s honour and Jack’s dawdling were much on a par, and Jack only bowed. The remark was not intended to be answered, in any case - a mere automatic unpleasantness - and Harte went on, with an awkward assumption of familiarity and good fellowship. ‘Sit down. What have you been doing with yourself? You look ten years older. The girls at the back of Portsmouth Point, I dare say. Do you want a cup of tea?’

Money was Harte’s nearest approach to joy, his ruling passion: in the Mediterranean, where they had served together, Jack had been remarkably successful in the article of prizes; he had been given cruise after cruise, and he had put more than ten thousand pounds into his admiral’s pocket. Captain Harte, as commandant of Port Mahon, hd come in for no share of this, of course, and his dislike for Jack had remained unaffected; but now the case was altered; now he stood to gain by Jack’s exertions, and he meant to conciliate his good will.

Jack was rowed back again, still over this silent water, but with something less of gravity in his look. He could not understand Harte’s drift; it made him uneasy, and the lukewarm tea was disagreeable in his stomach; but he had met with no open hostility, and his immediate future was clear - the Polychrest was not to go with this convoy, but was to spend some time in the Downs, seeing to the manning of the squadron and the harassing of the invasion flotilla over the way.

Aboard the Polychrest his officers stood waiting for him; the hammocks were up, as neat as art could make them, the decks were clean, the ropes flemished, the Marines geometrically exact as they presented arms and all the officers saluted; yet something was out of tune. The odd flush on Parker’s face, the lowering obstinacy on Stephen’s, the concern on Pullings’, Goodridge’s and Macdonald’s, gave him a notion of what was afoot; and this notion was confirmed five minutes later, when the first lieutenant came into his cabin and said, ‘I am very much concerned to have to report a serious breach of discipline, sir.’