Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘I think so,’ said Stephen. ‘If not, I will call on you.’

‘Goodbye, then,’ said Dundas, shaking his hand. ‘I must go back to my ship. If I do not see you before, then at the time we agreed.’

Stephen settled in at the Rose and Crown, called for a horse, and rode slowly towards Dover, reflecting upon the nature of dunes; upon the extraordinary loneliness surrounding each man; and on the inadequacy of language - a thought that he would have developed to Jack if he had been given time. ‘And yet for all its inadequacy, how marvellously well it allows them to deal with material things,’ he said, looking at the ships in the roadstead, the unbelievable complexity of named ropes, blocks, sails that would carry the crowd of isolated individuals to the Bosphorus, the West Indies, Sumatra, or the South Sea whaling grounds. And as he looked, his eyes running along the odd cocked-​hat form of the Polychrest he saw her captain’s gig pull away from the side, set its lugsail, and head for Dover.

‘Knowing them both, as I do,’ he observed, ‘I should be surprised if there were much liking between them. It is a perverse relationship. That, indeed, may be the source of its violence.’

Reaching Dover, he went directly to the hospital and examined his patients: his lunatic was motionless, crouched in a ball, sunk even below tears; but Macdonald’s stump was healing well. The flaps were as neat as a parcel, and he noted with pleasure that the hair on them continued to grow in its former direction.

‘You will soon be quite well,’ he said, pointing this out to the Marine. ‘I congratulate you upon an excellent healthy constitution. In a few weeks’ time you will rival Nelson, spring one-​handed from ship to ship - happier than the Admiral in that you have your sword-​arm still.’

‘How you relieve my mind,’ said Macdonald. ‘I had been mortally afraid of gangrene. I owe you a great deal, Doctor: believe me, I am sensible of it.’ Stephen protested that any butcher, any butcher’s boy, could have done as much - a simple operation - a real pleasure to cut into such healthy flesh - and their conversation drifted away to the likelihood of a French invasion, of a breach with Spain, and to the odd rumours of St Vincent impeaching Lord Melville for malversation, before it returned to Nelson.

‘He is a hero of yours, I believe?’ said Macdonald.

‘Oh, I hardly know anything of the gentleman,’ said Stephen. ‘I have never even seen him. But from what I understand, he seems quite an active, zealous, enterprising officer. He is much loved in the service, surely? Captain Aubrey thinks the world of him.’

‘Maybe,’ said Macdonald. ‘But he is no hero of mine. Caracciolo sticks in my gullet. And then there is his example.’

‘Could there be a better example, for a sea-​officer?’

‘I have been thinking, as I lie here in bed,’ said Macdonald. ‘I have been thinking of justification.’ Stephen’s heart sank: he knew the reputation of the Scots for theological discussion, and he dreaded an outpouring of Calvinistical views, flavoured, perhaps, with some doctrines peculiar to the Royal Marines. ‘Men, particularly Lowlanders, are never content with taking their sins upon their own heads, or with making their own law; a young fellow will play the blackguard, not because he is satisfied that his other parts will outweigh the fact, but because Tom Jones was paid for lying with a woman - and since Tom Jones was a hero, it is quite in order for him to do the same. It might have been better for the Navy if Nelson had been put to a stable bucket when he was a wee bairn. If the justification that a fellow in a play or a tale can provide, is enough to confirm a blackguard, think what a live hero can do! Whoremongering - lingering in port - hanging officers who surrender on terms. A pretty example!’ Stephen looked at him attentively for signs of fever; they were certainly there, but to no dangerous degree at present. Macdonald stared out of the window, and whatever he may have seen there, apart from the blank wall, prompted him to say, ‘I hate women. They are entirely destructive. They drain a man, sap him, take away all his good: and none the better for it themselves.’ After a pause, ‘Nasty, nasty queans.’

Stephen said, ‘I have a service to beg of you, Mr Macdonald.’

‘Name it, sir, I beg: nothing could give me greater pleasure.’

‘The loan of your pistols, if you please.’

‘For any purpose but to shoot a Marine officer, they are yours and welcome. In my canteen there, under the window, if you would be so good.’

‘Thank you, I will bring them back, or cause them to be brought, as soon as they have served their purpose.’

The evening, as he rode back, was as sweet as an early autumn evening could be, still, intensely humid, a royal blue sea on the right hand, pure dunes on the left, and a benign warmth rising from the ground. The mild horse, a good-​natured creature, had a comfortable walk; it knew its way, but it seemed to be in no hurry to reach its stable

- indeed, it paused from time to time to take leaves from a shrub that he could not identify; and Stephen sank into an agreeable languor, almost separated from his body: a pair of eyes, no more, floating above the white road, looking from left to right. ‘There are days - good evening to you, sir’ - a parson went by, walking with his cat, the smoke from his pipe keeping him company as he walked - ‘there are days,’ he reflected, ‘when one sees as though one had been blind the rest of one’s life. Such clarity - perfection in everything, not merely in the extraordinary. One lives in the very present moment; lives intently. There is no urge to be doing: being is the highest good. However,’ he said, guiding the horse left-​handed into the dunes, ‘doing of some kind there must be.’ He slid from the saddle and said to the horse, ‘Now how can I be sure of your company, my dear?’ The horse gazed at him with glistening, intelligent eyes, and brought its ears to bear. ‘Yes, yes, you are an honest fellow, no doubt. But you may not like the bangs; and I may be longer than you choose to wait. Come, let me hobble you with this small convenient strap. [how little I know about dunes,’ he said, pacing out his distance and placing a folded handkerchief at the proper height on a sandy slope. ‘A most curious study - a flora and a fauna entirely of its own, no doubt.’ He spread his coat to preserve the pistols from the sand and loaded them carefully. ‘What one is bound to do, one usually does with little acknowledged feeling; a vague desperation, no more,’ he said, taking up his stance. Yet as he did so his face assumed a cold, dangerous aspect and his body moved with the easy precision of a machine. The sand spat up from the edge of the handkerchief; the smoke lay hardly stirring; the horse was little affected by the noise, but it watched idly for the first dozen shots or so.

‘I have never known such consistently accurate weapons,’ he said aloud. ‘I wonder, can I still do Dillon’s old trick?’ He took a coin from his pocket, tossed it high, and shot it fair and square on the top of its rise, between climbing and falling. ‘Charming instruments indeed: I must cover them from the dew.’ The sun had set; the light had so far diminished that the red tongue of flame lit up the misty hollow at each discharge; the handkerchief was long ago reduced to its component threads. ‘Lord, I shall sleep tonight. Oh, what a prodigious dew.’

In Dover, sheltered by the western heights, the darkness fell earlier. Jack Aubrey, having done what little business he had to do, and having called in vain at New Place - ‘Mr Lowndes was indisposed: Mrs Villiers was not at home’ -sat drinking beer in an ale-​house near the Castle. It was a sad, dirty, squalid little booth - a knocking-​shop for the soldiers upstairs - but it had two ways out, and with Bonden and Lakey in the front room he felt reasonably safe from surprise. He was as low as he had ever been in his life, a dull, savage lowness; and the stupidity that came from the two pots he had drunk did nothing to raise it. Anger and indignation were his only refuge, and although they were foreign to his nature, he was steadily angry and indignant.