The Yellow Admiral

  At two bells the idlers were called; the sentinels all round the ship cried 'All's well'; the mate of the watch, having heaved the log, reported to Miller, third lieutenant and officer of the watch, 'Four knots exactly, sir, if you please,' and this he wrote on the log-board, together with the Bellona's present course of south-south-west; the hoarser of the carpenter's mates whispered, 'Four and half inches in the well, sir,' into Miller's ear; and Miller, turning to the Captain and taking off his hat, repeated all this to him in a voice calculated to be heard above the din of hand-pumps, buckets, swabs and holystones of various sizes that were preparing to clean the deck in the first half-lights of the coming day. But before they could begin Jack called, 'Belay, there,' and more gently, 'Mr Miller, we will wear ship, if you please, and stand east-south-east and a half east. The watch will suffice.'

  Jack rarely tacked a line-of-battle ship when he had sea-room to wear her, letting her head fall off from the wind and come right round to the desired bearing: it was slower and less spectacular than coming up into the wind's eye, crossing through and steadying on the new course, but it called for fewer hands and it preserved both spars and rigging. He now watched the manoeuvre attentively. It was carried out smoothly; not very fast, but smoothly, with no bellowing or damning of eyes, and when the quartermaster at the con, seeing the compass dead on the true bearing, called to the helmsman 'Thus, thus: very well thus,' Jack went below, reasonably satisfied, but still low in his spirits: he hated to think of Stephen wandering about there on a hostile shore, among so many more or less trustworthy foreigners.

  He sat there, reflecting, while the series of bells that had accompanied his life at sea for so many years continued their unchanging pace, bringing up hammocks with a fine rush of feet at the seventh set of strokes and news of breakfast at the eighth.

  Almost the only advantage of being on the Brest blockade was that the victuals were usually fresh and plentiful; and breakfast, perhaps Jack's favourite meal apart from dinner, was fairly sure of being able to provide capital sausages and bacon, while the hens (and the Bellona was unusually well-found in poultry) being still in something like their native air, gave almost a superfluity of eggs.

  Yet this was a lonely breakfast. Obviously, in the nature of things, the captain of a man-of-war, above all one who could not afford to keep a table (and this was Jack's case at present) must eat many and many a solitary meal; but for a great while Jack Aubrey had sailed with Stephen Maturin, and now he missed his companion quite severely—a wholly human and often contradictory companion, essentially different from the only other guests he could invite, lieutenants, master's mates or midshipmen, who were all debarred by custom, and by common prudence, from disagreeing with the skipper on any point whatsoever: and who in any case were not to speak until they had been spoken to.

  'Come in,' he called.

  'Sir,' said a midshipman, opening the cabin door, 'Mr Somers' compliments and duty, and the Alexandria is in sight.'

  'Thank you, Mr Wetherby. Is she within signalling distance?'

  'Oh, sir, I am sure I cannot tell,' said Wetherby, aghast—he was a first voyager—'Shall I run up and ask?'

  'Never trouble. I shall be on deck directly.'

  'She might conceivably be bringing us our post,' reflected Jack. 'How I should love a fat parcel of letters—news of the girls—word of the village and that reptile Griffiths—and perhaps the Proceedings will be out.' He had combined his last visit to London but one to criticizing the naval estimates in the Commons as member for Milport and to reading a second paper on the precession of the equinoxes to the Royal Society as a fellow of that august and learned body: for he was a late-blooming but quite highly esteemed mathematician, specializing in the problems of celestial navigation. Uncommon mathematical and musical abilities are quite often to be found in men wholly ignorant of the laws of prosody and barely capable of assembling two score words of prose in a passably elegant, coherent and grammatical form. 'And there might even be an encouraging letter from Lawrence,' he went on: but the word letter reminded him of the shockingly painful one to the Reverend Mr Geoghegan that he must write out fair—he could scarcely ask his clerk to do so—in order that it should go to the flag as soon as possible: and to change the current of his mind he swallowed the last of his coffee and walked forward along the quarterdeck, all its inhabitants silently moving over to the larboard side as he appeared.

  'Where away?' he asked.

  'Two points on the starboard bow, sir,' said Somers, the officer of the watch, and two of the midshipmen exchanged a knowing look, for most of the people could see her perfectly well.

  It was fully day now, though the sun was still hidden by cloud low over the distant land, and there was mist over the sea itself, and presently Jack, bringing his good eye to bear with a now habitual twist of his neck, made out the little frigate, her sails whiter than the whiteness between the two ships.

  'She is heading for the Black Rocks,' said Jack. 'Has she uttered?'

  'She dipped a topsail, sir,' said Somers. 'But that was probably just Captain Nasmyth's fun.'

  'Give her a waft,' said Jack, who was much senior to Nasmyth, the frigate's commander, 'and throw out Desire to speak you.'

  The signal midshipman, an oldster named Callow who had sailed with Jack before, and the yeoman were expecting this and the signal raced up, breaking out directly.

  The Alexandria put before the wind, spread studdingsails and began throwing a bow-wave, most creditable in this moderate breeze.

  'Say Dyce: come no higher,' called Jack. 'Then Have you any news, any letters?'

  A short pause, in which all the telescopes on the Bellona's quarterdeck focused earnestly upon the frigate: and even before Callow could read out the answer an audible sigh arose from the quicker-minded watchers. 'No news, sir. No letters. Regret. Repeat regret.'

  'Reply Many thanks: the Lord will provide. Carry on.'

  The Alexandria carried on, vanishing entirely within half an hour as their courses diverged, Jack beating up for his usual station at this time of day off Dinant Point, where he might possibly fall in with the Ramillies coming down from St Matthews, or one of the cutters that plied between the squadrons.

  But for the time being he was to attend to the young gentlemen. They were gathering there on the quarterdeck behind him, accompanied by the schoolmaster, and although some were furtively giggling, treading on one another's toes, most were decently apprehensive.

  'Very well, gentlemen, let us begin,' said Jack in their direction, and he led the way into the fore-cabin. Here they showed up their day's workings, which, as there had been no noon observation the day before, were necessarily the product of dead reckoning, and they differed little, except in neatness.

  Both Walkinshaw and Jack were perfectly at home with the mathematics of navigation and it was difficult for either to understand how very deeply ignorant it was possible for the young and feather-brained to be, particularly those young men who had spent most of their school-time ashore learning Latin and in some cases Greek and even a little Hebrew—possibly some French. This occurred to Jack with some force in the silence that followed his commendation of the neat and his giving back the workings; and out of this silence he said to a dwarfish twelve-year-old, the son of one of his former lieutenants, 'Mr Thomson, what is meant by a sine?'

  He glanced round the general blankness and went on, 'Each of you take a piece of paper and write down what is meant by a sine. Mr Weller'—this to a boy who had been to a nautical academy at Wapping—'you are whispering to your neighbour. Jump up to the masthead and stay there until you are told to come down. But before you go, gather the papers and show them to me.'

  It was difficult to tell whether the schoolmaster or his pupils felt the more distressed as the Captain looked through the undeniable proof of such very complete ignorance of the first elements. 'Very well,' he said at last, 'we shall have to start again with the ABC. Pass the word for my joiner.' The joiner appeared, brushing chips fr
om his apron. 'Hemmings,' said Jack, 'run me up a blackboard, will you? A flat dead paint that will take chalk handsomely, and let me have it by this time tomorrow.' To the youngsters he said, 'I shall write definitions and draw diagrams, and you will get them by heart.' He was not in the best of moods, and his absolute determination, together with his bulk and his immense authority on board, was singularly impressive. They filed out in silence, looking grave.

  The next morning the blackboard was present, fixed by thumbscrews within easy reach of the Captain's hand, and from it the boys were taught, with words and diagrams, the nature of sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant, the relations between them, and their value in helping to find your position in a prodigious ocean, no shore, no landmark for ten thousand miles. All these things were to be found in Robinson's Elements of Navigation which, together with the Requisite Tables and Nautical Almanac, lay in their sea-chests, a necessary part of their equipment; and Mr Walkinshaw had tried to lead the youngsters through them. But nothing came anywhere near the concentrated forceful instructions of Jove himself; and after what seemed an anxious eternity to the midshipmen's berth but which in fact lasted no more than a few of the Bellona's usual patrols from Douarnenez Bay to the Black Rocks in hazy, sometimes foggy weather in which they saw nothing at all and sometimes with such light airs that on occasion they lacked even steerage-way and the Captain had all the time in the world for trigonometry.

  Yet Thursday came at last, a blessed Thursday, a make-and-mend day when the mist cleared, a decent breeze blew from the north-east and the youngsters sat in the sun on the forecastle with their sea-daddies showing them how to darn their stockings or mend torn clothes or tie the simple knots and learn the elements of splicing—a Thursday on which the lookout at the masthead hailed 'On deck, there. A ship's topsails right to leeward.'

  Presently most of those who felt they could be spared below were aloft with telescopes and after a while it was found that she was the Ramillies, now lying to and presumably watching some suspect sail northwards along the Passage du Four, out of sight from the Bellona. No sooner was this agreed to by all than a second vessel was seen, a cutter coming from the direction of Ushant, beyond the Black Rocks; and then even a third, the heavy frigate Doris. After such loneliness the bay seemed positively crowded. The Ramillies was a right welcome sight to all hands and particularly to Jack: her captain, Billy Fanshawe, was an old friend of his. So indeed was the Doris; but what really delighted every man aboard, including those who could neither read nor write, was the identification of the cutter as one belonging to the flagship and employed for distribution of the mail throughout the squadron under Admiral Stranraer's command.

  The Doris, out in the offing, had altered course to intercept the cutter well before the Bellona and she had her letters first, although Harding, who had left his wife expecting her first child, spread an unreasonable amount of canvas. Yet quite soon the Bellonas' grim, discontented looks gave way to tense and happy anticipation: the cutter came neatly alongside, seized the net dangling from a whip to the mainyard, put a fine round mailsack into it and sped off towards the distant Ramillies.

  The sack was carried hotfoot to the great cabin, where Jack, the first lieutenant and the clerk sorted it: from the cabin it filtered down, first to the wardroom, then by way of the clerk to the warrant-officers and petty officers and then by way of the midshipmen to the ratings of their particular divisions.

  Jack's mail obviously stayed where it was, and as soon as the cabin-door had closed behind Harding and the clerk he seized the first on the pile, a letter addressed, and badly addressed, in that most familiar of hands. They had parted on indifferent terms and he opened it with the liveliest expectation of all their affection being fully restored, smiling as he did so. The letter was dated from Woolcombe on the fourteenth: with these northerly winds it had taken no more than five days.

  Mr Aubrey,

  It is with a deepest, the very deepest concern, that I must tell you I have been shown unanswerable proof of your infidelity. In open contempt of your promise before God's altar you lay with a woman called Amanda Smith in Canada and got her with child. Deny it if you can. I have the proofs and I mean to take advice. In the mean time I shall give the Admiral notice to leave my house at Ashgrove and return there with the children.

  Then came some tear-blotted and scratched-out lines. The obviously composed and recopied letter now abandoned its original and improvised, grew far less coherent, far less legible. He had just made out the words 'you left her bed and came into mine' when he was called on deck.

  'Sir,' said Harding, 'you asked me to tell you if Ramillies gave any sign of life. This last minute she has thrown out our number and Captain repair aboard. I have acknowledged and given word to ready your barge.'

  'Thank you, Mr Harding,' said Jack. 'Make all suitable sail, if you please.'

  He returned to the cabin and having sat for a while he reached out for the other letter from Sophie and opened it with a hesitant, almost trembling hand.

  The date was a week before that which he had just read, the writing more wholly familiar.

  My dearest Jack,

  How sorry I am to have sent you off so shabbily, and for a great while I have been meaning to beg pardon for my bad temper—trying to tell you how even a most loving heart—a female heart—can be affected by the ill-humoured Moon: but these things are very hard for a sadly ignorant creature to set down on paper so that the words give any real picture of her feelings, and before I had written anything but odd headings such as Love and Kisses and Forgiveness a letter came from Bath with the most frightful news.

  You will certainly remember that Mama lived with a friend called Mrs Morris—the Honourable Mrs Morris—who helped her with the business, and that they had a manservant, a worthless fellow we all disliked when they lived here, particularly your seamen; but he was useful in the business because he understood horse-racing and the laying of odds.

  Well, Mrs Morris has run off with him, apparently taking all the money and anything else they could carry and when Mama heard they were married, legally married in a church, she fell down senseless and had to be bled, and she has had fits ever since, laughing and crying. With dear Diana's help I brought her back here—she had almost destroyed their apartment in Pulteney Street and anyhow she was not fit to live there alone—the servants, apart from old Molly, had all left—and I am afraid she behaved dreadfully in the coach—and since the girls are back from school bringing friends with them, the little Nugent children, I have had to put her in your study, so near the necessary room: but do not fear—we have put a bed in the left-hand corner with a wardrobe and a chest of drawers behind it (I cannot tell you how kind dear Mrs Oakes has been) and she will never come near your precious ship-models or surveying instruments.

  When you come on leave (and oh may it be soon, my love) and when the holiday girls and their friends are gone, we will move her upstairs; or possibly back to Bath, with a much more suitable companion. She says there is a clergyman who was on the brink of making her an offer.

  Dear Jack, please do not worry about having money sent to me for housekeeping; we are very well with what comes from the farm, the dairy, the kitchen-garden and my poultry-yard, but even if it were not for them, Diana absolutely insists on giving us a very handsome rent for her wing of the house and the stabling—such stabling now! Such horses! With the help of the gentleman who lent her the coach she took you and Stephen down in—she has it yet—she pawned that enormous great blue diamond she brought back with her from America—'Be damned to living on £200 a year,' she cried—and is launching into breeding Arabs again. And although that sad place at Barham is not yet sold, she has taken all Meares' pasture for them. She said it was absurd to keep the Blue Peter as they call it hidden away in a jeweller's case—she could not wear it at our Dorchester assemblies, only in London or Paris—and in any case she would soon have it again, once Stephen's affairs were in order. She looks forward extremely to
a coach and six . . .

  Jack laid the paper down, and in a dull, heavy way he wondered how he had come to be so deeply foolish as to leave Amanda's letters in a square cardboard box among his official and business correspondence; a certain liking, a certain gratitude had prevented him from balling them up and throwing them away. There would have been an indecency in doing so, in spite of her extreme silliness. He felt no particular guilt except for this foolishness: by his code a man who was directly challenged must in honesty engage—anything else would be intolerably insulting. Yet had he known of this miserable old woman's prying and her malice he would certainly have played the scrub in Canada. He reflected on Sophie's general attitude towards these matters—her extreme disapproval of any irregularity, any levity in speaking of even a looseness that reached nowhere near as far as criminal conversation—for her looseness in conversation was criminal, almost in the lawyer's sense of the term.

  'Sir,' said his first lieutenant, 'forgive me for bursting in on you, but your barge is lowering down. And sir, may I tell you Eleanor and I have a daughter, healthy, pink and cheerful?'

  'Give you joy of her with all my heart, William,' said Jack, crushing his hand. 'And Mrs Harding too, of course. I am sure that she will turn out to be a good 'un.'

  The ceremony of the side, and the Captain of the Bellona, preceded by a midshipman, stepped into the boat. Bonden shoved off: the bargemen gave way, pulling a fine even stroke across the fifty yards to the Ramillies. The ceremony of the side again, Captain Aubrey piped aboard and kindly greeted by Captain Fanshawe, his senior by a short neck, who led him into the cabin, placed a glass of brandy in his hand and with a curiously embarrassed air said, 'Well, Jack, I hope you had an agreeable post?'

  'Not quite what I could have wished, as far as I have looked,' said Jack. 'But perhaps something better may appear. How was yours?'