Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

'Why, yes, sir. They are much the same as ours, only their best cylinder large grain has a white ring round the red : and their halves weigh but thirty-five pound.'

'How much have you room for, Mr Day?'

The gunner considered. 'Squeezing my bottom tier up tight, I might stow thirty-five or six, sir.'

'Make it so, then, Mr Day. There is a lot of damaged stuff aboard that sloop – I can see it from here – that we shall have to take away to prevent further spoiling. So you had better go across and set your hand upon the best. And we can do with her launch, too. Mr Dillon, we cannot entrust this floating magazine to a midshipman; you will have to take her into Mahon as soon as the powder is across. Take what men you think fit, and be so good as to send Dr Maturin back in her launch – we need one badly. God love us, what a terrible cry! I am truly sorry to inflict this upon you, Dillon, but you see how it is.'

'Just so, sir. I am to take the master of the sloop along with me, I presume? It would be inhuman to move him.'

'Oh, by all means, by all means. The poor fellow. What a – what a pretty kettle of fish.'

The little deadly barrels travelled across the intervening sea, rose up and vanished into the Sophie's maw; so did half a dozen melancholy Frenchmen, with their bags or sea-chests; but the usual festive atmosphere was lacking -the Sophies, even the family men, looked guilty, concerned, apprehensive; the dreadful unremitting shrieks went on and on; and when Stephen appeared at the rail to call out that he must stay aboard, Jack bowed to the obscure justice of this deprivation.

The Citoyen Durand ran smoothly through the darkness down towards Minorca, a steady breeze behind her; now that the screaming had stopped Dillon posted a reliable man at the helm, visited the little watch below in the galley and came down into the cabin. Stephen was washing, and the husband, shattered and destroyed, held the towel in his drooping hands.

'I hope… 'said James.

'Oh, yes: yes,' said Stephen deliberately, looking round at him. 'A perfectly straightforward delivery: just a little long, perhaps; but nothing out of the way. Now, my friend' – to the captain – 'these buckets would be best over the side; and then I recommend you to lie down for a while. Monsieur has a son,' he added.

'My best congratulations, sir,' said James. 'And my best wishes for Madame's prompt recovery.'

'Thank you, sir, thank you,' said the captain, his eyes brimming over again. 'I beg you to take a little something – to make yourselves quite at home.'

This they did, sitting each in a comfortable chair and eating away at the hill of cakes laid up against young hasty's christening in Agde next week; they sat there easily enough, and next door the poor young woman slept at last, her husband holding her hand and her crinkled pink baby snorting at her bosom. It was quiet below, wonderfully quiet and peaceful now; and it was quiet on deck with the following wind easing the sloop along at a steady six knots, and with the rigorous barking precision of a man-of-war reduced to an occasional mild 'How does she lie, Joe?' It was quiet; and in that dimly-lighted box they travelled through the night, cradled by the even swell: after a little while of this silence and this uninterrupted slow rhythmic heave they might have been anywhere on earth – alone in the world – in another world altogether. In the cabin their thoughts were far away, and Stephen for one no longer had any sense of movement to or from any particular point – little sense of motion, still less of the immediate present.

'It is only now,' he said in a low voice, 'that we have the opportunity of speaking to one another. I looked forward to this time with great impatience; and now that it is come, I find that in fact there is little to be said.'

'Perhaps nothing at all,' said James. 'I believe we understand each other perfectly.'

This was quite true; it was quite true as far as the heart of the matter was concerned; but nevertheless they talked all through their remaining hours of harboured privacy.

'I believe the last time I saw you was at Dr Emmet's,' said James, after a long, reflective pause.

'No. It was at Rathfarnham, with Edward Fitzgerald. I was going out by the summerhouse as you and Kenmare came in.'

'Rathfarnham? Yes: yes, of course. I remember now. It was just after the meeting of the Committee. I remember

You were intimate with Lord Edward, I believe?'

'We knew one another very well in Spain. In Ireland I saw less and less of him as time went on; he had friends I neither liked nor trusted, and I was always too moderate – far too moderate – for him. Though the dear knows I was full enough of zeal for humanity at large, full enough of republicanism in those days. Do you remember the test?'

'Which one?'

'The test that begins Are you straight?'

'lam.'

'How straight?'

'As straight as a rush.'

'Go on then .'

'In truth, in trust, in unity and liberty.'

'What have you got in your hand?'

'A green bough.'

'Where did it first grow?' 'In America.'

'Where did it bud?'

'In France.'

'Where are you going to plant it?'

'Nay, I forget what follows. It was not the test I took, you know. Far from it.'

'No, I am sure it was not. I did, however: the word liberty seemed to me to glow with meaning, in those days. But even then I was sceptical about unity – our society made such very strange bedfellows. Priests, deists, atheists and Presbyterians; visionary republicans, Utopists and men who merely disliked the Beresfords. You and your friends were all primarily for emancipation, as I recall.'

'Emancipation and reform. I for one had no notion of any republic; nor had my friends of the Committee, of course. With Ireland in her present state a republic would quickly become something little better than a democracy.

The genius of the country is quite opposed to a republic. A Catholic republic! How ludicrous.'

'Is it brandy in that case-bottle?'

'It is.'

'The answer to that last part of the test was In the crown of Great Britain, by the way. The glasses are just behind you. I know it was at Rathfarnham,' Stephen went on, 'for I had spent the whole of that afternoon trying to persuade him not to go on with his shatter-brained plans for the rising: I told him I was opposed to violence – always had been – and that even if I were not I should withdraw, were he to persist with such wild, visionary schemes – that they would be his own ruin, Pamela's ruin, the ruin of his cause and the ruin of God knows how many brave, devoted men. He looked at me with that sweet, troubled look, as though he were sorry for me, and he said he had to meet you and Kenmare. He had not understood me at all.'

'Have you any news of Lady Edward – of Pamela?'

'Only that she is in Hamburg and that the family looks after her.'

'She was the most beautiful woman that ever I saw, and the kindest. None so brave.'

'Aye,' thought Stephen, and stared into his brandy. 'That afternoon,' he said, 'I spent more spirit than ever I spent in my life. Even then I no longer cared for any cause or any theory of government on earth; I would not have lifted a finger for any nation's independence, fancied or real; and yet I had to reason with as much ardour as though I were filled with the same enthusiasm as in the first days of the Revolution, when we were all overflowing with virtue and love.'

'Why? Why did you have to speak so?'

'Because I had to convince him that his plans were disastrously foolish, that they were known to the Castle and that he was surrounded by traitors and informers. I reasoned as closely and cogently as ever I could – better than ever I thought I could – and he did not follow me at all. His attention wandered. "Look," says he, "there's a redbreast in that yew by the path." All he knew was that I was opposed to him, so he closed his mind; if, indeed, he was capable of following me, which perhaps he was not. Poor Edward! Straight as a rush; and so many of them around him were as crooked as men can well be – Reynolds, Corrigan, Davis