The Fortune of War (7 page)

'Why, as to that,' said Jack, 'I have nothing against the world's going round: indeed, I am rather in favour of it. But as for raising your spirits to the highest pitch, what do you say about hunting, or playing for high stakes? What do you say about war, about going into action?'

'Come, Aubrey, you must have observed that love is a kind of war; you must have seen the analogy. As for hunting and deep play, what is more obvious? You pursue in love, and if the game is worth engaging in at all, you play for very high stakes indeed. Do you not agree, Doctor?'

'Sure, you are in the right of it. Intermissa, Venus diu, rursus bella moves. And yet perhaps full war, martial war, may wind even more emotions to the breaking-point - the social emotions of comradeship, extreme joint endeavour, even patriotism and selfless devotion may be involved; and glory rather than a humid bed may be the aim. The stakes are perhaps higher still, since physical annihilation accompanies defeat. But how is this to be encompassed in a book? In a venereal engagement between a man and a woman the events occur in turn, in a sequence of time; each can be described as it arises. Whereas in a martial contest so many things happen at once, that even the ablest hand must despair of drawing the appearance of a serial thread from the confusion. For example, I have never yet heard two accounts of the battle of Trafalgar that consist with one another in their details.'

'You was at Trafalgar, Yorke,' said Jack, who knew that if Stephen were not brought up with a round turn he might go on for hours and hours. 'Pray tell us how it was.' He turned to Stephen, adding, 'Captain Yorke was second of Orion, you know, a line-of-battle ship.'

'Well, as you know,' said Yorke, 'I was in charge of the slaughter-house guns, so I did not see a great deal once the fun began, and I dare say my account will conflict with all those Dr Maturin has heard hitherto. But up until then I had a wonderful view, because we held our fire longer than any ship in the fleet, and Captain Codrington called us up to see it all. Orion was in the rear of the windward division: we lay ninth, with Agamemnon ahead and Minotaur astern, and as we bore down I could see the whole of Collingwood's division and the enemy's line clear from the Bucentaure down to the San Juan de Nepomuceno. They lay thus,' - placing a series of biscuit-crumbs - 'and these are their frigates... No, I will fetch a box of tooth-picks, and cut them in half for the frigates.'

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. 'You see those weevils, Stephen?' said Jack solemnly.

'I do.'

'Which would you choose?'

'There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.'

'But suppose you had to choose?'

'Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.'

'There I have you,' cried Jack. 'You are bit - you are completely dished. Don't you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!'

'I like your friend,' said Stephen, rejoining Captain Aubrey after a hurried visit to the forepeak, where he found all the Leopards sitting companionably among the perfect order of the collections.

'I was sure you would. There is not a better-hearted fellow in the service than Charles Yorke. Do you know, he called on Sophie on his way down to the ship, although it was out of his way and he was in a hell-fire hurry, posting down with despatches, merely to bring me news of her in case we had survived - a damned unlikely chance. But she knew we had! Don't that amaze you, Stephen?'

'It does. Yet from your overflowing spirits, your inordinate amusement at a couple of wretched clenches, and your general boisterous conduct, I was aware that something had pleased you. Will you tell me how she knew?'

Jack hesitated for a moment, 'Diana told her,' he said in a strange, awkward tone, entirely at variance with what had gone before.

'Diana Villiers?'

'Yes. I hope I have not wounded you, Stephen? I thought it better to be frank.'

'Never in life, my dear. I am exceedingly happy to hear it; and to hear of her. Will you tell me more, now?'

'Well, it seems that the Mrs Wogan who gave us the slip with Herapath on Desolation was acquainted with Diana, and that on getting back to the States she told her all about her adventures and about us - about the ice-mountain, the boats going off, the reaching Desolation, the coming of the whaler, the then state of the ship and so on. And Diana smoking what the state of affairs must be at home with us so long overdue, sat down without losing a moment and dashed off a letter to Sophie, telling her that all was well. I take it very handsomely in her, after all that has passed. So does Sophie: swears she will never again say an unkind word - however, that is to say, she takes it very kindly too. I have her account here,' he said, tapping his pocket. 'Only a quick scrawl, wrote while Yorke was waiting, but full of love and joy. And she sends both to you, Stephen - longs to see you safe at home.'

'Sweetheart,' wrote Jack in his daily letter, a letter that now amounted to a moderate book, since, unless his ship were either sinking or in action, he could not go to sleep without adding to it, and since he had not been able to send any part of it away since the remote days of Port Jackson - a letter that was quite pointless now that in the natural course of events he would be his own postman. 'Sweetheart, I had your dear letter this morning, brought me, together with the very welcome stockings, by that fine good-natured fellow Yorke. I have never been so pleased in all my life, as in knowing that you and the children are well and that you are not fretting your heart out after that unhappy business with the boats and the rumours that must have gone about when Grant brought the launch to the Cape. It was very kind, very handsome and considerate in Diana to write so quick. I had misjudged her: she has a good heart, and I shall always value her for it. I told Stephen straight out, and he said he should have expected it of her - she was a gentlemanlike creature, he said, with no pitiful spite or rancour about her. For his part he is in fine spirits, and better than I have seen him for years: he had a splendid run ashore, for a man of his tastes, on Desolation and then again at Botany Bay and some other parts of New Holland where we touched, and he filled the Leopard with some very curious animals indeed. But Leopard is mine no more. The survey proved she could not carry anything above a few nine- or six-pounders without she was rebuilt, so she is to be a transport; and since they have given me Acasta I am coming home as fast as La Flèche can fly, with Stephen, Babbington, Byron, my remaining mids, and Bonden and Killick. You would laugh to see Killick looking after Stephen, as he has been doing ever since Stephen's servant - a half-wit -went away in the boats. Stephen is very unwilling to be looked after, but Killick has taken it into his head that it is his duty, and sews on buttons, washes and darns his two and a half shirts, irons his neckcloth, brushes his only decent coat, and makes him shave at least once a week by steady nagging in that grating voice of his, in spite of any amount of abuse - it is like an old angular mother-hen with a fractious chick. He turned him out quite presentably for dinner with Yorke today, and he is working on what he thinks is the proper kind of wig for a doctor to wear, making it out of spun-yarn crimped at the galley fire: perhaps it will be an improvement on the horrible old scratch-bob that has survived so many storms and broken eggs and dank mossy plants. Yorke gave us a capital dinner, with roast buffalo, a pair of ducks, a ragoo, and a roly-poly pudding; and he and Stephen got along famously, as I hoped they should. People may say that Yorke is no great seaman, but he is a very good fellow, and he drank his two bottles without turning a hair; and in any case he has an excellent premier, a man by the name of Warner, who drives the ship at a tremendous pace - almost as fast as I could wish to see her eat up the fifteen thousand miles between us. They will be two hundred and fifty less at noon tomorrow, believe, for now we have sunk the land we have the full monsoon, and Warner is on deck at all hours, in jib, out jib, wetting the royals and top-gallants as though we were in chase of a golden fortune, and leading the foremast jacks a pretty dance of it. La Flèche was always a good sailer, like so many of your French flush-deck corvettes, but Warner gets more out of her than I should have thought possible: he may have persuaded Yorke to give her foremast a trifle more rake than is quite right, but he is a fine seaman, and at the moment we are making eleven knots one fathom. It is a pity that he and Stephen should have contrived to fall foul of one another, but so it is: there was some disagreement before dinner, and then a kind of hairy thing between a bear and an ape behaved unsuitably on the quarterdeck. And then there is a rule here that no smoking is allowed anywhere but in the galley, and Warner pointed it out: it is a good rule, but perhaps he might have put it more tactfully. Still, we have thousands of miles of sweet sailing before us (I hope), and being homeward bound, with everybody in a good humour, no doubt they will come to love one another before we reach soundings. I was amazingly witty at dinner, for your letter was as good as wine to me, and there was wine as well.' There followed a description of the wit, and Jack went on, 'As for that damned fellow Kimber, sweetheart, never let your mind be tormented: if the worst comes to the worst, and if he ruins us, the girls' portions are safe, and I always have my pay. The moment I am home I shall call him to a pretty sharp account, I promise you; until then I intend not to vex my spirits but to indulge in idleness, high living, sweet sailing, and music. And perhaps I shall attend to my youngsters more than I have been able to do up to the present: in the nature of things they have necessarily come to some notion of practical seamanship by now, but their notions of navigation are very strange. Young Forshaw is a good boy - far prettier even than his sisters, though no doubt adolescence will soon cope with that -but sometimes I doubt he knows the odds between east longitude and west, which would be a disadvantage to a mariner, particularly to a mariner in hurrying round the world to his wife. And so good night, my dearest soul.'

In another part of the ship Stephen Maturin, having no one to confide in, wrote to himself, to the Stephen Maturin of some future period, who alone could read this private, encoded diary: 'So Diana wrote. A generous, handsome motion on her part should not surprise me, since it is perfectly in character; meanness was never among her faults. Yet I am absurdly pleased. Herapath said of his Louisa Wogan that even when she was lying with other men she still remained his friend; and either he or I observed that deep friendship as men understand it is rare in women of the common sort On a smaller scale Wogan resembled Diana in many ways: perhaps also in this. I like to persuade myself - I easily persuade myself - that Diana Villiers retains a friendship, even a tenderness for me.' A pause, and he wrote, 'Wallis's report on the situation in Catalonia is the most interesting I have ever read. If only half of what Mateu states is true, the prospect has never been so full of promise; but how they need a man they can all trust, to act as a link between the different movements and to co-ordinate their efforts with those of the British government - in this case the government as represented by the Navy. Now that the French have killed En Jaume, I do not think there is a man better qualified than myself. I long to be there. But longing will not affect the countless miles of intervening sea, and I shall spend these months with my collections, happy in possessing such a wealth of time (though years would not be too long for a sound, scientific description of all the specimens). Some music and reading too, I trust. Captain Yorke seems a polite, amiable, and literate man, no mere sea-officer; he has neither read nor travelled in vain. My companions in the gunroom I have scarcely met. I hope they will prove more like their Captain than their first lieutenant; for on them the social comforts of this voyage must in a large degree depend.'

The social comforts of the gunroom were meagre enough, and after the Leopard's spacious, well-lighted wardroom the place itself seemed cramped. Warner was a mere sea-officer: his one aim in life seemed to be to make La Flèche run through the water at the greatest possible speed consistent with the safety of her masts, and although he was not one of those spit-and-polish first lieutenants whom Stephen looked upon as the bane of the Navy, he was no very good company either, except perhaps for those who could speak knowingly of kites, moonsails, and star-gazers. He seemed to take no pleasure in anything; and in him the naval love of punctuality reached something not far from mania. He was far older than any other officer in the gunroom, and he ruled its proceedings with a firm and gloomy authority. Like the second lieutenant and Marine officer, Warner was a tall man; and since La Flèche had been designed for swift-sailing stunted Frenchmen as far as her tween-decks was concerned, Stephen's first impression of the gunroom was that of a low thin shadowy place inhabited by three unnaturally large bowed figures, all looking at their watches. A fourth walked in immediately afterwards, bringing with him the smell of stale tobacco, alcohol, and unwashed clothes, a man even taller, even more bowed beneath the beams; and Warner introduced McLean, the surgeon. He was a young man and he seemed almost paralysed with shyness; at all events he remained profoundly silent, apart from an awkward plunge and grunt when Warner pronounced his name. Presently the drum beat and the room quickly filled, and when all were present, with their servants standing behind their chairs, there was scarcely room for the gunroom steward to carry in the pease-pudding and salt pork. The purser, the last man in, received a significant look from Mr Warner, a look that moved slowly from the purser's face to the watch still exposed in Warner's hand; but there were no harsh words, perhaps in honour of the guests. Babbington and Byron brought the sun with them, or if not the sun itself (for the gunroom had no stern-window) then at least some of the warmth and cheerfulness that Stephen had always associated with any gathering of sailors. They found a fellow-spirit in the master, and presently their end of the table was in a fine flow of conversation, reminiscence, anecdote, and laughter - former shipmates recalled, other commissions compared. Stephen laid out some pains in being agreeable to McLean, who sat by him, eating voraciously with a good deal of noise; but until half way through the meal there was little or no response. Then at last persuaded that Dr Maturin was neither going to snub or scorn him, McLean said, 'I hae your bukes,' adding something that Stephen could not catch, the accent being so strong, the voice so lowered in embarrassment. But judging by the young man's expression, the words were obliging, so Stephen bowed, murmuring, 'You are very good. too kind. I believe, sir, you are a naturalist yourself?'