Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

The necessary ten minutes passed; the Sophie's cutter approached the flag-ship; and in answer to the hail of Boat ahoy the coxswain answered Sophie, meaning that her captain was aboard. Jack went up the side in due form, saluted the quarter-deck, shook hands with Captain Louis and was shown to the admiral's cabin.

He had every reason to be pleased with himself he had taken his convoy to Cagliari without loss; he had brought up another to Leghorn; and he was here at exactly the appointed time, in spite of calms off Monte Cristo – but for all that he was remarkably nervous, and his mind was so full of Lord Keith that when he saw no admiral in that beautiful great light-filled cabin but only a well-rounded young woman with her back to thз window, he gaped like any carp.

'Jacky, dear,' said the young woman, 'how beautiful you are, all dressed up. Let me put your neck-cloth straight, La, Jackie, you look as frightened as if I -were a Frenchman.'

'Queeney! Old Queeney!' cried Jack, squeezing her and giving her a most affectionate smacking kiss.

'God damn and blast – a luggit corpis sweenie,' cried a furious Scotch voice, and the admiral walked in from the quarter-gallery. Lord Keith was a tall grey man with a fine leonine head, and his eyes shot blazing sparks of rage.

'This is the young man I told you about, Admiral,' said Queeney, patting poor pale Jack's black stock into place and waving a ring at him. 'I used to give him his bath and take him into my bed when he had bad dreams.'

This might not have been thought the very best possible recommendation to a newly-married admiral of close on sixty, but it seemed to answer. 'Oh,' said the admiral. 'Yes. I was forgetting. Forgive me. I have such a power of captains, and some of them are very mere rakes…

'"And some of them are very mere rakes," says he, piercing me through and through with that damned cold eye of his,' said Jack, filling Stephen's glass and spreading himself comfortably along the locker. 'And I was morally certain that he recognized me from the only three times we were in company – and each time worse than the last. The first was at the Cape, in the old Reso, when I was a midshipman: he was Captain Elphinstone then. He came aboard just two minutes after Captain Douglas had turned me before the mast and said, "What's yon wee snotty bairn a-greeting at?"

And Captain Douglas said, "That wretched boy is a perfect young whoremonger; I have turned him before the mast, to learn him his duty."'

'Is that a more convenient place to learn it?' said Stephen.

'Well, it is easier for them to teach you deference,' said Jack, smiling, 'for they can seize you to a grating at the gangway and flog the liver and lights out of you with the cat. It means disrating a midshipman – degrading him, so that he is no longer what we call a young gentleman but a common sailor. He becomes a common sailor; he berths and messes with them; and he can be knocked about by anyone with a cane or a starter in his hand, as well as being flogged. I never thought he would really do it, although he had threatened me with it often enough; for he was a friend of my father's and I thought he had a kindness for me -which indeed he did. But, however, he carried it out, and there I was, turned before the mast: and he kept me there six months before rating me midshipman again. I was grateful to him in the end, because I came to understand the lower deck through and through – they were wonderfully kind to me, on the whole. But at the time I bawled like a calf – wept like any girl, ha, ha, ha.'

'What made him take so decided a step?'

'Oh, it was over a girl, a likely black girl called Sally,' said Jack. 'She came off in a bum-boat and I hid her in the cable-tier. But Captain Douglas and I had disagreed about a good many other things – obedience, mostly, and getting out of bed in the morning, and respect for the schoolmaster (we had a schoolmaster aboard, a drunken sot named Pitt) and a dish of tripe. Then the second time Lord Keith saw me was when I was fifth of the Hannibal and our first lieutenant was that damned fool Carrol – if there's one thing I hate more than being on shore it's being under the orders of a damned fool that is no seaman. He was so offensive, so designedly offensive, over a trivial little point of discipline that I was obliged to ask him whether he would like to meet me elsewhere. That was exactly what he wanted: he ran to the captain and said I had called him out. Captain Newman said it was nonsense, but I must apologize. But I could not do that, for there was nothing to apologize about – I was in the right, you see. So there I was, hauled up in front of half a dozen post-captains and two admirals: Lord Keith was one of the admirals.'

'What happened?'

'Petulance – I was officially reprimanded for petulance. Then the third time – but I will not go into details,' said Jack. 'It is a very curious thing, you know,' he went on, gazing out of the stern window with a look of mild, ingenuous wonder, 'a prodigious curious thing, but there cannot be many men who are both damned fools and no seamen, who reach post rank in the Royal Navy – men with no interest, I mean, of course – and yet it so happens that I have served under no less than two of them. I really thought I was dished that time – career finished, cut down, alas poor Borwick. I spent eight months on shore, as melancholy as that chap in the play, going up to town whenever I could afford it, which was not often, and hanging about that damned waiting-room in the Admiralty. I really thought I should never get to sea again – a half-pay lieutenant for the rest of my life. If it had. not been for my fiddle, and fox-hunting when I could get a horse, I think I should have hanged myself. That Christmas was the last time I saw Queeney, I believe, apart from just once in London.'

'Is she an aunt, a cousin?'

'No, no. No connexion at all. But we were almost brought up together – or rather, she almost brought me up. I always remember her as a great girl, not a child at all, though to be sure there can't be ten years between uS. Such a dear, kind creature. They had Damplow, the next house to ours – they were almost in our park – and after my mother died I dare say I spent as much time there as I did at home. More,' he said reflectively, gazing up at the tell-tale compass overhead. 'You know Dr Johnson – Dictionary Johnson?'

'Certainly,' cried Stephen, looking strange. 'The most respectable, the most amiable of the moderns. I disagree with all he says, except when he speaks of Ireland, yet I honour him; and for his life of Savage I love him. What is more, he occupied the most vivid dream I ever had in my life, not a week ago. How strange that you should mention him today.'

'Yes, ain't it? He was a great friend of theirs, until their mother ran off and married an Italian, a Papist. Queeney was wonderfully upset at having a Papist to her father-in-law, as you may imagine. Not that she ever saw him, however. "Anything but a Papist," says she. "I should rather have had Black Frank a thousand times, I declare." So we burnt thirteen guys in a row that year – it must have been '83 or '84 – not long after the Battle of the Saints. After that they settled at Damplow more or less for good -the girls, I mean, and their old she-cousin. Dear Queeney. I believe I spoke of her before, did I not? She taught me mathematics.'

'I believe you did: a Hebrew scholar, if I do not mistake?'

'Exactly so. Conic sections and the Pentateuch came as easy as kiss my hand to her. Dear Queeney. I thought she was to be an old maid, though she was so pretty; for how could any man make up to a girl that knows Hebrew? It seemed a sad pity: anyone so sweet-tempered should have a prodigious great family of children. But, however, here she is married to the admiral, so it all ends happy… yet, you know, he is amazingly ancient – grey-haired, rising sixty, I dare say. Do you think, as a physician – I mean, is it possible… ?'