The Yellow Admiral (30 page)

Lord Stranraer came nimbly up the side, followed by his flag-lieutenant and a much duller figure in a blue coat with no gold lace, the Queen Charlotte's surgeon, Mr Sherman. The Admiral saluted the quarterdeck, and acknowledged the Marines' flashing presentation of arms and Jack's salute by touching his hat, and saying 'Captain Aubrey, I hope you and all the other captains of the inshore squadron, will dine with me this afternoon: but for the moment Mr Sherman and I should like to see Dr Maturin.'

'Certainly, my lord,' said Jack. 'If you choose to walk into the cabin, I will desire him to join you. In the meantime, may I offer you a glass of madeira?'

Jack, Harding and all those who had any pride in the ship's beauty and her seamanlike appearance had done virtually everything in human power to make it impossible for any candid eye, however severe, to find fault with her: they knew that the Admiral could not honestly say that her yards were not exactly squared, nor could he complain that the hens had flung their litter about the deck (a not unusual grievance when there was nothing else to Blaine) because no poultry whatsoever had survived the dearth. But they had never thought of Stephen. No one had washed, brushed or dusted Dr Maturin, and he came up in more than his usual squalor, unshaved, fresh - if such a word can be used - from his greasy, malodorous task of dissecting the inedible parts of yet another porpoise.

None of this disturbed the Admiral, stickler though he was for precision in uniform. 'My dear Dr Maturin,' he cried, leaping, leaping from his chair and coming forward with outstretched hand. 'I could not miss this opportunity of coming across to express my sense of your - of your great goodness in prescribing for me. I knew it would answer, your physic, but I had no idea it would answer so prodigious well - I was in the maintop this morning, sir: I ran up to the top! I had hoped to be allowed to consult you, but Mr Sherman here assured me it would never do - would be quite impossible - that he had a lien upon me - and that no physical gentleman of your eminence would consent to examine one of his patients without he was there.'

'Sure, Mr Sherman was in the right of it entirely,' said Stephen. 'In the medical world we too have our conventions, perhaps as rigid as those of the service. Some of them are puzzling to patients who in the wild licentiousness of their imaginations supposed that they can wander from physician to surgeon to quacksalver and back again just as the whim bites; and some are, on occasion, thought offensive, such as our rule of using Latin when we discuss the sufferer's case in his presence. This has its advantages, such as extreme accuracy of definition and from the nature of the language an admirable concision. But if my colleague agrees, I should be perfectly happy if we were both to examine you.'

Bows all round, and Captain Aubrey withdrew. The examination was thorough and although Killick, on the other side of the door, was of a contrary opinion ('Once they start talking foreign, mate, it is all up: you can send for the sexton as soon as you like - here lieth Arthur Grimble, died of the marthambles, Brest bearing west by north ten leagues 18'14') profoundly satisfactory. Stephen's only advice was extreme caution with the digitalis - dose to be steadily diminished -patient not to be told the name of the drug, still less allowed access to it. 'More men, particularly sailors, have died from self-administered doses than ever the enemy killed in action,' he observed; and turning to the Admiral, 'My lord, you are the most gratifying of patients. The anomalies that we noticed before have virtually disappeared, and if you will run up to the maintop every morning, half an hour after a light breakfast, and observe Mr Sherman's precepts, I see no reason why you should not rival Methusalem, and succeed officers as yet unborn as Admiral of the Fleet.'

'Ha, ha, ha! How well you speak, dear Doctor,' said the Admiral. 'I am infinitely obliged to you - to you both (a bow to Sherman) - for your advice and care.' He put on his clothes, and with a certain embarrassment asked Stephen to dine aboard the Charlotte with Aubrey and the other captains.

Lord Stranraer's dinner was as splendid, as far as the food was concerned, as anyone would expect from a flagship; but for the captains of the inshore squadron, deprived of almost everything for so long, it was far, far beyond even the most fervent expectations and they ate with a steady intensity of greed from the first course to the last. There was almost no conversation apart from 'Just another leg, if you please,' or 'Well, perhaps another couple of slices,' or 'May I trouble you for the bread-barge?'

The Captain of the Fleet, however, who sat next to Stephen at the foot of the table, entertained him in a low confidential voice to a very highly-detailed account of his digestive processes - his very complicated and prolonged digestive processes - and a catalogue of the substances he could not eat: on the subject his usually pale, phlegmatic face grew pink and assumed a look almost of enthusiasm. He was dealing with the effect of cardamon in all its varieties when he became aware of a silence all along the table and of the Admiral at its head, clearly poised to make an announcement.

'Gentlemen,' he said, 'before we drink the loyal toast, I think I should give you some news that may perhaps incline you to drink it with even greater fervour. But first, since contrary winds and foul weather have cut most of you off from the world for so long - not for nothing do we call certain parts of this station Siberia - I may be allowed to give you a short account of recent events on the Continent. It may well be imperfect: there are many land-borne officials who do not always understand the seaman's hunger for news. But in the main I think it accurate enough. I dare say you are all aware that Napoleon suffered a severe defeat before Leipzig some months ago, but that even so he beat the Germans and Austrians again and again - he was doing so even a week or two ago. But that was his undoing. His forces are all away in the north-east, his left flank is open and the Allies are marching upon an almost undefended Paris. Wellington, as you know, has taken Toulouse. He has now crossed the Adour and he is moving north at a great pace. At present there is some kind of a congress meeting at Ch�llon; but since Napoleon was offered reasonable terms three times even after Leipzig and refused them all, he will gain nothing from this congress, now that he has no organized army at all. The ships that sailed from Brest and those we met with west of Ushant had intended to join by way of a final fling; but they never met; the gallant Captain Fanshawe here, and Beveridge offshore put an end to their capers.' Many hands beat discreetly on the table, many officers raised their glasses, bowing to Fanshawe and Beveridge; and the Admiral went on, 'It is usually considered unlucky to predict a fortunate outcome of anything whatsoever: but on this occasion I shall be so bold as to foretell a sensible end to this congress at Ch�llon, the downfall of Napoleon, the end of this war, and our return to England, home and beauty. Gentleman, the King.'

Something of this speech reached the ships of the inshore squadron, but without much force. The end of the war had been foretold so very often, and as Killick (who stood behind Jack's chair) had found Lord Stranraer's manner of speaking difficult to follow, all that the lower deck gathered at first was that there was to be a new king of France called Ch�llon, or something like that, probably related to Wellington. And in any case all public and private attention was taken up by the store-ship, crammed with food, drinks, slops, spars, cordage, sailcloth, everything they had been lacking for so long: and even more, there was an abundant post. In the dog watches very little of the ship's ordinary work was done, and once the precious stores were stowed, little groups formed round the more literate, and while his friends stood at a discreet distance, a man would listen while his letter was read out.

For once no cruel tidings reached the Bellona, which for a ship's company of more than six hundred men and boys, nearly all with close and mortal relatives, and a long absence of mail, was very far from common.

The mild domestic news from Woolcombe was charmingly uneventful, though Sophie's bantam had brought off a clutch of minute chicks. Diana and Clarissa were settling into their wing, furnishing the dining-room with walnut objects of the last age, which they found at auctions, sometimes travelling up to fifty miles for a handsome piece. And it was rumoured that Captain Griffiths meant to sell and move to London.

Yet in spite of this deep and abiding contentment Jack was low in his spirits. 'Do you think the Admiral's account was reasonably sound?' he asked.

'It certainly coincides with what I have heard,' said Stephen.

'A sad booby I must have looked, prating away to you about the French navy and my fear of a long war, with them building away at a great pace.'

'I thought it perfectly reasonable from a naval point of view; and you could not tell that on land Buonaparte had completely lost his wits: it was almost unbelievable how he threw away his chances, and countless lives, in these last few months.'

Jack shook his head; and after a while he said, 'I do not mean to say a single syllable against William Fanshawe, but upon my word I think the Admiral might have mentioned Bellona. He will not do so in his dispatch, either. Yet our people worked like demons - all hands watch upon watch -to get her up there in time, and it would have been a bloody disaster if she had not arrived... From a purely selfish point of view, I am so glad you told me about your scheme for Chile. There is to be no distinction for me, this side of the ocean. I do not mean to top it the tragedy queen, Stephen, and I should not say this to anyone else, but I feel the yellow rising about my gills. Come in,' he cried.

Harding came in, bringing the sun with him. 'Forgive me for bursting upon you like this, sir, but I have had such a pleasing letter - my wife has just inherited a little estate in Dorset from a distant cousin: it lies between Plush and Folly. I am to be squire of Plush!'

'Give you joy with all my heart,' said Jack, shaking his hand. 'We shall be neighbours - my son is at school there, Mr Randall's school. How happy my wife and I will be. But I am afraid that I must warn you that Plush often leads to Folly.'

'Why, yes, sir...' began Harding, somewhat staggered: but then he caught the nature of Captain Aubrey's witticism (perhaps the best thing Jack had ever said) which depended on a knowledge of the fact that when grog was served out the ordinary members of each mess of seamen received slightly less than the regular measure: by ancient custom, the amount of grog left, which was called plush, belonged to the cook of the mess; and unless he had a good head for rum, this often led him to commit a foolish action.

Jack's gravity had not lasted quite as long as Harding's, and his whole-hearted mirth continued for some moments after Harding had recovered himself: but he received the wardroom's invitation with a decent complaisance.

'That is certainly the best thing I have ever heard, in the naval line,' said Harding, 'and I shall write it down - how Eleanor will roar. But my errand is really to beg for the honour of your company to dinner in the wardroom tomorrow. We have been shocking remiss these many, many weeks, but now that the store-ship has found out where we lie at last, we hope to make up at least some of our leeway.'

When he was speaking to Stephen about the Admiral, Jack had not made a good many of the unkind reflections that had naturally occurred to him: he had not, to take a very small example, said that Lord Stranraer's claret was meagre in quantity and execrable in quality (his lordship had no taste whatsoever for wine - never drank it for pleasure himself -was convinced that others judged only by label and price and that if they saw neither they would never know the difference) because he had seen the Admiral's evident esteem for Stephen and he did not know whether the liking might be returned.

In any event, the wardroom's dinner to their Captain could not possibly have led to such a reproach, uttered or suppressed. Dr Maturin was of course a wardroom officer: he usually looked after the wine, and for occasions such as this, when the claret brought out by the store-ship in casks had neither been bottled nor given a moment of rest after a violent tossing about, he had provided a fine old very full bodied Priorato.

It went down extremely well, but it was of course considerably stronger than most Bordeaux, and the conversation up and down the table was somewhat louder, more general and less restrained than usual. The table itself was a fine sight, with a dozen officers sitting there, mostly blue and gold, with the Marines' scarlet coats setting them off pleasantly, and their servants standing behind their chairs: but the general mood was one of anxious uncertainty, repressed out of consideration for their guest, but evident enough for one who had been so long at sea. He looked down the table, considering the many faces he knew: and in a momentary silence he heard a hand on deck call out 'Mark of the forebrace down, sir,' and the officer of the watch reply 'Belay, oh.'

'Belay, oh,' said Jack to the table in general. 'From all I see in the papers Queen Charlotte brought us, and from what I heard aboard the flag, it seems to me that all of us will

have to belay very soon. Tie up, belay and pay off.' A pause while he finished his glass of wine. 'War of course is a bad thing,' he went on. 'But it is our way of life - has been these twenty years and more - and for most of us it is our only hope of a ship, let alone of promotion: and I well remember how my heart sank in the year two, the year of the peace of Amiens. But let me offer this reflection by way of comfort: in the year two my spirits were so low that if I could have afforded a piece of rope I should have hanged myself. Well, as everyone knows that peace did not last, and in the year four I was made post, jobbing captain of Lively, and a lively time we had of it too. I throw this out, because if one peace with an untrustworthy enemy can be broke, another peace with the same fellow can be broke too; and our country will certainly need defending, above all by sea. So' - filling his glass again - 'let us drink to the paying-off, and may it be a peaceful, orderly and cheerful occasion, followed by a short, I repeat very short run ashore.'