The Ionian Mission. Patrick O’Brian

a man’s carnal nature and somewhat less possessive, he was profoundly attached to Sophie: and in any case he was often away from home for years on end.

      He now stood on the poop of HMS Worcester, about to set off again; and his wife sat a little way behind him, on an incongruous elbow-chair brought on deck for the occasion.

      The ship had been at single anchor in Spithead these long hours past, the Blue Peter as firmly established at her foretopmast head as though it had been nailed there, her foretopsail loosed, and her capstan-bars shipped and swifted a whole watch ago, ready to send her on her way: the entire ship’s company was in a state of angry tension – officers snappish, dinner delayed, all eyes indignantly turned to the shore. She swung broad on the slackening ebb, and Captain Aubrey moved over to the starboard rail, his telescope still trained on Portsmouth. His face, his naturally good-tempered, cheerful face, was set, dark, and stern: the wind still served, but only just, and once the tide began to make his ship might as well return to her moorings – she would never get out against the tide. He loathed unpunctuality; and unpunctuality it was, gross unpunctuality, that was keeping him here; he had already begged a long, long breathing-space from the port-admiral, who was devoted to Mrs Aubrey, but this could not last and any moment now a hoist would break out on that flagstaff over there, the Worcester’s signal to proceed to sea, and then sail she must, surgeon or no surgeon, leaving her gig’s crew to find their way as best they might.

      Dr Maturin’s sea-chest had come aboard, and his well-remembered ’cello-case, brought in good time from the Portsmouth mail; but no Doctor had come with them. It was in vain that Bonden, the Captain’s coxswain, badgered the coachman and the guard: no, they had not seen a little ill-looking sallow cove in a full-bottomed wig; no, they had not left him by accident at Guildford, Godalming or Petersfield, because why? Because he was never on the bleeding coach to begin with, cully. Bonden might put that in his pipe and smoke it, or stuff it up his arse, whichever he preferred; and there was eighteenpence to pay on the bass fiddle, as being unnatural baggage, unaccompanied.

      ‘How I do loathe unpunctuality,’ said Captain Aubrey. ‘Even by land. Forward there: belay that smiting-line.’ This last was delivered in a voice so strong that it echoed from the walls of Noman’s Land Fort, and the words ‘that smiting-line’ mingled faintly with his next remark, which was addressed to his wife. ‘Really, Sophie, you would think that a fellow of Stephen’s parts, a prodigious natural philosopher, could be brought to understand the nature of the tide. Here is the moon at her perigee, in syzygy, and near the equator, as I showed you last night, and you smoked it directly, did you not?’

      ‘Oh, perfectly, my dear,’ said Sophie, looking wild: at least she had a clear recollection of the pale crescent over Porchester Castle.

      ‘Or at least he might grasp its importance to seamen,’ said Jack. ‘And a full-blown spring tide at that. Sometimes I despair … My dear,’ looking at his watch again – ‘I am afraid we must say goodbye. If ever he should appear at Ashgrove Cottage, you will tell him to post down to Plymouth. Mr Pullings, a bosun’s chair, if you please, a whip for the dunnage, and pass the word for the children.’

      The cry ran through the ship ‘Children aft – children report to the Captain – all children aft’ and Jack’s two little girls came running from the galley, grasping massy half-eaten slabs of cold plum-duff, followed by George, their younger brother, in his first pair of pantaloons, carried by a hairy quartermaster. But George’s full-moon face was anxious and preoccupied; he whispered into the seaman’s hairy ear. ‘Can’t you wait?’ asked the seaman. George shook his head: the seaman whipped off the pantaloons, held the little boy well out over the leeward rail and called for a handful of tow.

      On the poop itself Jack was still gazing through the innumerable masts – half the Channel fleet and countless transports, with smallcraft of every shape and size plying between them and the shore. He had the Sally Port clear in his glass, with the men-of-war’s boats going to and fro, and his own gig waiting there, his coxswain sitting in the stern-sheets, eating bread and cheese with one hand and haranguing his shipmates with the other: behind the Sally Port the rough unpaved triangular square and the Keppel’s Head inn at the far side, with its broad white balcony. And as he watched a coach and four took the corner at break-neck speed, scattering officers, seamen, Marines and their attendant trollops, and drew up, still rocking perilously, in the middle of the open space.

      ‘Our number, sir,’ said the signal-midshipman, his glass trained on the flagstaff. ‘And now Worcester proceed to sea.’ Another hoist, and the midshipman searched madly in his book. ‘Without further … further …’

      ‘Delay,’ said Jack without taking his eye from his telescope. ‘Acknowledge. Mr Pullings: strike the Blue Peter. All hands to weigh.’ He saw a woman pass the reins to a man, leap from the box and run down to the boats, followed by a small black figure from the body of the coach, carrying an enormous parcel. ‘Sophie,’ he said, loud over the bosun’s pipes and the pounding of feet, ‘ain’t that Diana?’

      ‘I am sure it is,’ said she, looking through the glass. ‘I can recognize her sprigged muslin from here. And that is poor Stephen, with the parcel.’

      ‘At last,’ said Jack. ‘At last. The usual hell-fire drama. Thank God he has someone to look after him, even if it is only Diana. Mr Pullings, our skeleton crew may take some time to win the anchor, though I am sure it will be done with every appearance of alacrity. Sweetheart, it is over the side with you, alas.’ He handed her down to the quarterdeck, where the bosun’s chair was swung inboard, waiting to lower her into the Arethusa’s barge, lent by their friend Billy Harvey.

      ‘Goodbye, my dearest,’ she said, smiling as well as she could, the great tears welling. ‘God bless and keep you.’

      ‘God bless you too,’ said Jack, and in a hard, unnatural voice he called ‘A whip for the children.’ One by one they were lowered down like little bundles to their mother, their eyes closed and their hands tightly clasped. ‘Mr Watson,’ he said to the midshipman in charge of the boat, ‘be so good as to speak my gig as you pull in, and tell ’em to spread more canvas, to spread every stitch they possess. My compliments and best thanks to Captain Harvey.

      He turned to give the orders that would carry the Worcester into the offing on the very tail of the ebb: he had ten minutes in hand, which might just suffice with this breeze, Bonden being a capital smallcraft sailor; and these ten minutes must be spent in persuading the sharpest eyes in the Navy that the Worcester was in fact obeying orders with all imaginable zeal rather than sitting there with her hands in her pockets. Ordinarily he would have left all this to Tom Pullings, his first lieutenant, an old and trusted shipmate; but he knew that there was not a man aboard who was not perfectly well aware of his motions, the ship having a small temporary crew of old experienced hands, all men-of-war’s men, and since the seamen delighted in deception, above all any deception intended to blear the port-admiral’s eye, he was afraid they might overact their parts. It was a ticklish business, managing this tacit connivance at disobeying a direct order while at the same time maintaining his reputation as an efficient officer, and perhaps there was a little too much brisk running about to be quite convincing. At one point a gun from the shore brought his heart into his mouth, much as it had leapt when he was a youngster and the same Admiral, then a commander, had caught him playing the fool rather than attending to the exact trim of the outer jib; but it was only the great man emphasizing his desire that Andromache should send a lieutenant to his office: Andromache had spent more than forty seconds hoisting out a boat. Even so, Jack dared not risk the same reproof in the face of the fleet, and the Worcester was well under way, her best bower catted, her topsails sheeted home (though faintly), and her topgallants loose in the brails by the time the gig crossed her wake under a press of canvas and shot up her starboard side. Out here the flood was cutting up an awkward, high-chopping sea against the breeze and hooking on would require the most accurate judgement. However, Bonden was a most accurate judge of these things: he might decide to wait until the ship was clear of the Wight, but in any case there was no danger of the boat being stove alongside.

      Jack was still angry: he was also cold and unhappy. He glanced down at the