Patrick O'Brian: Master & Commander

'Emotion,' said Dr Ramis.

'Yes,' said Stephen. 'Emotion, and the expression of emotion. Now, in your fifth book, and in part of the sixth, you treat of emotion as it is shown by the cat, for example, the bull, the spider – I, too, have remarked the singular intermittent brilliance in the eyes of lycosida: have you ever detected a glow in those of the mantis?'

'Never, my dear colleague: though Busbequius speaks of it,' replied Dr Ramis with great complacency.

'But it seems to me that emotion and its expression are almost the same thing. Let us take your cat: now suppose we shave her tail, so that it cannot shall I say perscopate or bristle; suppose we attach a board to her back, so that it cannot arch; suppose we then exhibit a displeasing sight – a sportive dog, for instance. Now, she cannot express her emotions fully: Quaere: will she feel them fully? She will feel them, to be sure, since we have suppressed only the grossest manifestations; but will she feel them fully? Is not the arch, the bottle-brush, an integral part and not merely a potent reinforcement – though it is that too?'

Dr Ramis inclined his head to one side, narrowed his eyes and lips, and said, 'How can it be measured? It cannot be measured. It is a notion; a most valuable notion, I am sure; but, my dear sir, where is your measurement? It cannot be measured. Science is measurement – no knowledge without measurement.'

'Indeed it can,' cried Stephen eagerly. 'Come, let us take our pulses.' Dr Ramis pulled out his watch, a beautiful Breguet with a centre seconds hand, and they both sat gravely counting. 'Now, dear colleague, pray be so good as to imagine – to imagine vehemently – that I have taken up your watch and wantonly flung it down; and I for my part will imagine that you are a very wicked fellow. Come, let us simulate the gestures, the expressions of extreme and violent rage.'

Dr Ramis' face took on a tetanic look; his eyes almost vanished; his head reached forward, quivering. Stephen's lips writhed back; he shook his fist and gibbered a little. A servant came in with a jug of hot water (no second bowls of cocoa were allowed).

'Now,' said Stephen Maturin, 'let us take our pulses again.'

'That pilgrim from the English sloop is mad,' the surgeon's servant told the second cook. 'Mad, twisted, tormented. And ours is not much better.'

'I will not say it is conclusive,' said Dr Ramis. 'But it is wonderfully interesting. We must try the addition of harsh reproachful words, cruel flings and bitter taunts, but without any physical motion, which could account for part of the increase. You intend it as a proof per contra of what you advance, I take it? Reversed, inverted, or arsy-versy, as you say in English. Most interesting.'

'Is it not?' said Stephen. 'My mind was led into this train of thought by the spectacle of our surrender, and of some others that I have seen. With your far greater experience of naval life, sir, no doubt you have been present at many more of these interesting occasions than I.'

'I imagine so,' said Dr Ramis. 'For example, I myself have had the honour of being your prisoner no less than four times. That,' he said with a smile, 'is one of the reasons why we are so very happy to have you with us. It does not happen quite as often as we could wish. Allow me to help you to another piece of bread – half a piece, with a very little garlic? Just a scrape of this wholesome, antiphiogistical garlic?'

'You are too good, dear colleague. And you have no doubt taken notice of the impassive faces of the captured men? It is always so, I believe?'

'Invariably. Zeno, followed by all his school.'

'And does it not seem to you that this suppression, this denial of the outward signs, and as I believe reinforcers if not actually ingredients of the distress – does it not seem to you that this stoical appearance of indifference in fact diminishes the pain?'

'It may well be so: yes.'

'I believe it is so. There were men aboard whom I knew intimately well, and I am morally certain that without this what one might call ceremony of diminution, it would have broken their .

'Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur,' cried Dr Ramis' servant. 'The English are filling the bay!'

'On the poop they found Captain Palliиre and his officers watching the manoeuvres of the Pompйe, the Venerable, the Audacious and, farther off, the Caesar, the Hannibal and the Spencer as they worked in on the light, uncertain westerly airs, through the strong, shifting currents running between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean: they were all of them seventy-fours except for Sir James' flagship, the Caesar, and she carried eighty guns. Jack stood at some distance, with a detached look on his face; and at the farther rail there were the other quarter-deck Sophies, all making a similar attempt at decency.

'Do you think they will attack?' asked Captain Palliиre, turning to Jack. 'Or do you think they will anchor off Gibraltar?'

'To tell you the truth, sir,' said Jack, looking over the sea at the towering Rock, 'I am quite sure they will attack. And you will forgive me for saying, that when you reckon up the forces in presence, it seems clear that we shall all be in Gibraltar tonight. I confess I am heartily glad of it, for it will allow me to repay a little of the great kindness I have met with here.'

Thee had been kindness, great kindness, from the moment they exchanged formal salutes on the quarter-deck of the Desaix and Jack stepped forward to give up his sword:

Captain Palliиre had refused to take it, and with the most obliging expressions about The Sophie's resistance, had insisted upon his wearing it still.

'Well,' said Captain Palliиre, 'let it not spoil our breakfast, at all events.'

'Signal from the Admiral, sir,' said a lieutenant. 'Warp in as close as possible to the batteries.'

'Acknowledge and make it so, Dumanoir,' said the cap- tam. 'Come, sir: gather we rose-pods while we may.'

It was a gallant effort, and they both of them talked away with a fine perseverance, their voices rising as the batteries on Green Island and the mainland began to roar and the thundering broadsides filled the bay; but Jack found that presently he was spreading marmalade upon his turbot and answering somewhat at random. With a high-pitched shattering crash the stern-windows of the Desaix fell in ruin; the padded locker beneath, Captain Palliиre's best wine-bin, shot half across the cabin, projecting a flood of champagne, Madeira and broken glass before it; and in the midst of the wreckage trundled a spent ball from HMS Pompйe.

'Perhaps we had better go on deck,' said Captain Palliиre.

It was a curious position. The wind had almost entirely dropped. The Pompйe had glided on past the Desaix to anchor very close to the Fonnidable's starboard bow, and she was pounding her furiously as the French flagship warped farther in through the treacherous shoals by means of cables on shore. The Venerable, for want of wind, had anchored about half a mile from the Formidable and the Desaix and was plying them briskly with her larboard broadside, while the Audacwus, as far as he could see through clouds of smoke, was abreast of the Indomptable, some three or four hundred yards out. The Caesar and the Hannibal and the Spencer were doing their utmost to come up through the calms and the patchy gusts of west-north-west breeze: the French ships were firing steadily; and all the time the Spanish batteries, from the Torre del Almirante in the north right down to Green Island in the south, thundered in the background, while the big Spanish gunboats, invaluable in this calm, with their mobility and their expert knowledge of the reefs and the strong turning currents, swept out to rake the anchored enemy.

The rolling smoke drifted off the land, wafting now this way and now that, often hiding the Rock at the far end of the bay and the three ships out to sea; but at last a steadier breeze sprang up and the Caesar's royals and topgallants appeared above the obscurity. She was wearing Admiral Saumarez' flag and she was flying the signal anchor for mutual support. Jack saw her pass the Audacious and swing broadside on to the Desaix within hailing distance: the cloud around her closed, hiding everything: there was a great stab as of lightning within the murk, a ball at head-height reaped a file of marines on the Desaix's poop and the whole frame of the powerful ship shuddered with the force of the impact – at least half the broadside striking home.