The Reverse of the Medal. Patrick O’Brian

political, that operated behind the scenes with what secrecy they could manage in spite of the indiscretion, not to say the incurable loquacity of certain colleagues; and he therefore stared with intense curiosity at a man who was, according to his fragmentary, imprecise information, one of the Admiralty’s most valued agents – stared until the quarterdeck filled with ceremonial Marines and the sound of bosun’s pipes and the first lieutenant said, ‘Come, gentlemen, if you please. We must receive the Captain of Surprise.’

      ‘The Captain of Surprise, sir, if you please,’ said the secretary at the cabin door.

      ‘Aubrey, I am delighted to see you,’ cried the Admiral, striking a last chord and holding out his hand. ‘Sit down and tell me how you have been doing. But first, what is that ship you are towing?’

      ‘One of our whalers, sir, the William Enderby of London, recaptured off Bahia. She rolled her masts out in a dead calm just north of the line, she being so deep-laden and the swell so uncommon heavy.’

      ‘Recaptured, so a lawful prize. And deep-laden, eh?’

      ‘Yes, sir. The Americans put the catch of three other ships into her, burnt them and sent her home alone. The master of Surprise, who was a whaler in his time, reckons her at ninety-seven thousand dollars. A sad time we have had with her, both of us being so precious short of stores. We did rig jury-masts made out of various bits and pieces and made fast with our shoe-strings, but she lost them in last Sunday’s blow.’

      ‘Never mind,’ said the Admiral, ‘you have brought her in, and that is the main thing. Ninety-seven thousand dollars, ha, ha! You shall have everything you need in the way of stores: I shall give particular orders myself. Now give me some account of your voyage. Just the essentials to begin with.’

      ‘Very good, sir. I was unable to come up with the Norfolk in the Atlantic as I had hoped, but south of Falkland’s Islands I did at least recapture the packet she had taken, the Danaë ...’

      ‘I know you did. Your volunteer commander – what was his name?’

      ‘Pullings, sir. Thomas Pullings.’

      ‘Yes, Captain Pullings – brought her in for wood and water before carrying her home. He was in Plymouth before the end of the month – having been chased like smoke and oakum for three days and nights by a heavy privateer – an amazing rapid passage. But tell me, Aubrey, I heard there were two chests of gold aboard that packet, each as much as two men could lift. I suppose you did not recapture them too?’

      ‘Oh dear me no, sir. The Americans had transferred every last penny to the Norfolk within an hour of taking her. We did recover some confidential papers, however.’

      At this point there was a silence, a silence that Captain Aubrey found exceedingly disagreeable. An untoward fall, the bursting open of a hidden brass box, had shown him that these papers were in fact money, a perfectly enormous sum of money, though in a less obvious form than coin; but this was unofficial knowledge, acquired only by accident, in his capacity as Maturin’s friend, not his captain; and the real custodian of it was Stephen, whose superiors in the intelligence service had told him where to find the box and what to do with it. They had not told him why it was there, but no very great penetration was required to see that a sum of such extraordinary magnitude, in such an anonymous and negotiable form, must be intended for the subversion of a government at least. It was clearly something that Captain Aubrey could not speak about openly except in the improbable event of the Admiral’s having been informed and of his giving a lead; but Jack hated this concealment – there was something sly, shifty and mean about it, together with an edge of very dangerous dishonesty – and he found the silence more and more oppressive until he saw that in fact it was caused by Sir William’s private conversion of ninety-seven thousand dollars into pounds and his division of the answer by twelve: this with a piece of black pencil on the corner of a dispatch. ‘Forgive me for a moment,’ said the Admiral, looking up from his sum with a cheerful face. ‘I must pump ship.’

      The Admiral vanished into the quarter-gallery, and as Jack Aubrey waited he recalled the conversation he had had with Stephen while the Surprise was running in. By nature and profession Stephen was exceedingly close; they had never spoken about these bonds, obligations, bank-notes and so on until it became obvious that Jack would be summoned aboard the flagship in the next few hours, but then in the privacy of the frigate’s stern-gallery, he said, ‘Everyone has heard the couplet

       In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave If secret gold sap on from knave to knave

      but how many know how it goes on?’

      ‘Not I, for one,’ said Jack, laughing heartily.

      ‘Will I tell you, so?’

      ‘Pray do,’ said Jack.

      Stephen held up a watch-bill by way of symbol, and with a significant look he continued,

       ‘Blest paper credit! last and best supply!

       That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!

       A single leaf shall waft an army o’er

       Or ship off senates to a distant shore.

       Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen

      And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.’

      ‘I wish someone would try to corrupt me,’ said Jack. ‘When I think of how my account with Hoares must stand at the present moment, I would ship any number of senates to a distant shore for five hundred pounds; and for another ten the whole board of Admiralty too.’

      ‘I dare say you would,’ said Stephen. ‘But you take my meaning, do you not? Were I in your place I should glide over that unhappy brass box and its contents, with just a passing reference to certain confidential papers to salve your conscience. I will come with you, if I may, so that if the Admiral prove inquisitive, I may toss him off with a round turn.’

      Jack looked at Stephen with affection: Dr Maturin could dash away in Latin and Greek, and as for modern languages, to Jack’s certain knowledge he spoke half a dozen; yet he was quite incapable of mastering low English cant or slang or flash expressions, let alone the technical terms necessarily used aboard ship. Even now, he suspected, Stephen had difficulty with starboard and larboard.

      ‘The less said about these things the better,’ added Stephen. ‘I wish...’ But here he stopped. He did not go on to say that he wished he had never seen these papers, had never had anything to do with them; but that was the case. Money, though obviously essential on occasion, usually had a bad effect on intelligence – for his part he had never touched a Brummagem farthing for his services – and money in such exorbitant, unnatural amounts might be very bad indeed, endangering all those who came into contact with it.

      ‘I don’t know how it is, Aubrey,’ said the Admiral, coming back, ‘but I seem to piss every glass these days. Perhaps it is anno Domini, and nothing to be done about it, but perhaps it is something that one of these new pills can set right. I should like to consult your surgeon while Surprise is refitting. I hear he is an eminent hand – was called in to the Duke of Clarence. But that to one side: carry on with your account, Aubrey.’

      ‘Well, sir, not finding the Norfolk in the Atlantic I followed her round into the South Sea. No luck at Juan Fernandez, but a little later I had word of her playing Old Harry among our whalers along the coast of Chile and Peru and among the Galapagos. So I proceeded north, retaking one of her prizes on the way, and reached the islands a little after she had left; but there again I had fairly certain intelligence that she was bound for the Marquesas, where her commander meant to establish a colony as well as snapping up the half dozen whalers we had fishing in those waters. So I bore away westward, and to cut a long story short, after some weeks of sweet sailing, when we were right in her track – saw her beef-barrels floating – we had a most unholy blow, scudding under bare poles day after day, that we survived and she did not. We found her wrecked on the coral-reef of an uncharted