Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Innocent attentions?'

  'Well, yes, really; though I dare say they might have been misinterpreted. An astonishingly lovely girl, or rather woman—had been married once, husband knocked on the head in India—with a splendid dash and courage. And then, while I was eating my heart out between the Admiralty and the money-lenders in the City, I learnt that some fellow had made her an offer of marriage—it was spoken of everywhere as a settled thing. I cannot tell you how it hurt me. And this other girl, the one who stayed in Sussex, was so kind and sympathetic, and so very beautiful too, that I—well, you understand me. But, however, as soon as I thought things were going along capitally with her, and that we were very close friends, she pulled me up as though I had run into a boom, and asked me who the devil I thought I was? I had lost all my money by then, as you know; so upon my word, I could scarcely tell what to answer, particularly as I had begun to make out that maybe she was attached to my best friend, and perhaps the other way too, you follow me. I was not quite sure, but it looked damnably like it, above all when they parted. But I was so infernally hooked—could not sleep, could not eat—and sometimes she was charming to me again. So I committed myself pretty far, partly out of pique, do you see? Oh, God damn it all, if only—And then on top of it all there comes a letter from the first girl—'

  'A letter to you?' cried Christy-Pallière. 'But this was not an intrigue, as I understand you?'

  'As innocent as the day. Not so much as—well, hardly so much as a kiss. It was a surprising thing, was it not? But it was in England, you know, not in France, and things are rather different there: even so, it was astonishing. But such a sweet, modest letter, just to say that the whole thing about the marriage was so much God-damned stuff. It reached me the very day I left the country.'

  'Why, then everything is perfect, surely? It is, in a serious young woman, an avowal—what more could you ask?'

  'Why,' said Jack, with so wretched a look that Christy-Pallière, who had hitherto thought him a muff to mind having two young women at once, felt a wound in his heart. He patted Jack's arm to comfort him. 'Why, there is this other one, don't you see?' said Jack. 'In honour, I am pretty well committed to her, although it is not the same sort of feeling at all. To say nothing of my friend.'

  Stephen and Dr Ramis were closeted in a book-lined study. The great herbal that had been one of the subjects of their correspondence for the past year and more lay open on the table, with a high-detailed map of the new Spanish defences of Port Mahon folded into it. Dr Ramis had just come back from Minorca, his native island, and he had brought several documents for Stephen, for he was his most important contact with the Catalan autonomists. These papers, read and committed to memory, were now crushed black ashes in the fireplace, and the two men had moved on to the subject of humanity at large—man's general unfitness for life as it is lived.

  'This is particularly the case with sailors,' said Stephen. 'I have watched them attentively, and find that they are more unsuited for life as it is ordinarily understood than men of any other calling whatsoever. I propose the following reason for this: the sailor, at sea (his proper element), lives in the present. There is nothing he can do about the past at all; and, having regard to the uncertainty of the omnipotent ocean and the weather, very little about the future. This, I may say in passing, accounts for the common tar's improvidence. The officers spend their lives fighting against this attitude on the part of the men—persuading them to tighten ropes, to belay and so on, against a vast series of contingencies; but the officers, being as sea-borne as the rest, do their task with a half conviction: from this arises uneasiness of mind, and hence the vagaries of those in authority. Sailors will provide against a storm tomorrow, or even in a fortnight's time; but for them the remoter possibilities are academic, unreal. They live in the present, I say; and basing itself upon this my mind offers a partially-formed conjecture—I should value your reflections upon it.'

  'My lights are yours, for what they may be worth,' said Dr Ramis, leaning back and watching him with a dry, sharp, intelligent black eye. 'Though as you know, I am an enemy to speculation.'

  'Let us take the whole range of disorders that have their origin in the mind, the disordered or the merely idle mind—false pregnancies, many hysterias, palpitations, dyspepsias, eczematous affections, some forms of impotence and many more that will occur to you at once. Now as far as my limited experience goes, these we do not find aboard ship. You agree, my dear colleague?'

  Dr Ramis pursed his lips, and said, 'With reservations, I believe I may venture to say that I am tempted to do so. I do not commit myself, however.'

  'Now let us turn our honest tar ashore, where he is compelled to live not in the present but in the future, with reference to futurity—all joys, benefits, prosperities to be hoped for, looked forward to, the subject of anxious thought directed towards next month, next year, nay, the next generation; no slops provided by the purser, no food perpetually served out at stated intervals. And what do we find?'

  'Pox, drunkenness, a bestial dissolution of all moral principle, gross over-eating: the liver ruined in ten days' time.'

  'Certainly, certainly; but more than that, we find, not indeed false pregnancies, but everything short of them. Anxiety, hypochondria, displacency, melancholia, costive, delicate stomachs—the ills of the city merchant increased tenfold. I have a particularly interesting subject who was in the most robust health at sea—Hygeia's darling—in spite of every kind of excess and of the most untoward circumstances: a short while on land, with household cares, matrimonial fancies—always in the future, observe—and we have a loss of eleven pounds' weight; a retention of the urine; black, compact, meagre stools; an obstinate eczema.'

  'And for you all this is the effect of solid earth beneath the subject's feet? No more?'

  Stephen held up his hands. 'It is the foetus of a thought; but I cherish it.'

  'You speak of loss of weight. But I find that you yourself are thin. Nay, cadaverous, if I may speak as one physician to another. You have a very ill breath; your hair, already meagre two years ago, is now extremely sparse; you belch frequently; your eyes are hollow and dim. This is not merely your ill-considered use of tobacco—a noxious substance that should be prohibited by government—and of laudanum. I should very much like to see your excrement.'

  'You shall, my dear sir, you shall. But I must leave you now. You will not forget my tincture? I shall abandon it entirely, once I am in Lérida, but until then it is necessary to me.'

  'You shall have it. And,' said Dr Ramis, with a veiled look, 'it is possible that I may send you a note of the first importance at the same time: I shall not know for some hours yet. If I do, it will be in system three. But pray let me feel your pulse before you go. Reedy, intermittent, my friend, just as I thought.'

  'What did he mean by that?' said Stephen, referring not to the pulse but to the hypothetical note, and thinking again with some regret of the simplicity of his dealings with plain mercenary agents. Their motives were so clear; their loyalties were to their persons and their purse. The complexities of the entirely honest men, their sudden reticences, the interplay of conflicting loyalties, the personal sense of humour, made him feel old and tired.

  'Why, Stephen, here you are at last,' cried Jack, starting straight out of his sleep. 'I sat talking with Christy-Pallière; I hope you did not wait for me.' The subject of their conversation flooded his mind and put out its gaiety; but having gazed at the floor for a moment he looked up with at least an expression of cheerfulness and said, 'You were very nearly taken up for a spy this morning.'

  Stephen stopped in his movement towards the desk and stood motionless, unnaturally poised.

  'How I laughed when Christy-Pallière read me out your description, looking uncomfortable and prodigious grave; but I assured him on my sacred honour that you were looking for your double-headed eagles, and he was quite satisfied. He made an odd remark, by the way: said, was he in our shoes he should push on for Spain and not go to P
orquerolles.'

  'Aye, aye? Did he, so?' said Stephen mildly. 'Go back to sleep now, my dear. I conceive he would not choose to traverse the street to see euphorbia praestans, let alone cross an arm of the sea. I have a few notes to write, but I shall not disturb you. Go to sleep: we have a long day head of us.'

  Some hours later, in the first grey light, Jack awoke to a faint scratching on the door. His waking mind stated that this was a rat in the bread-room, but his body instantly contradicted it—sleeping or awake his body knew whether it was afloat or not; at no time was it ever unaware of the continua) shift and heave of the sea, or of the unnatural stability of the land. He opened his eyes and saw Stephen rise from his guttering candle, open the door, receive a bottle and a folded note. He went back to his table, opened the note, slowly deciphered it, burnt both scraps of paper in the candle flame; without turning round he said, 'Jack, you are awake, I believe?'

  'Yes. These last five minutes. A good morning to you, Stephen. Is it going to be hot?'

  'It is. And a good morning to you, my dear. Listen,' he said, sinking his voice to no more than a whisper, 'and do not call out or agitate yourself. Do you hear me now?'

  'Yes.'

  'War will be declared tomorrow. Bonaparte is seizing all British subjects.'

  In the narrow band of shade under the northern wall of Carcassonne a compassionate gendarme halted his convoy of English prisoners—seamen from detained and captured ships for the most part, a few officers who had been caught by the declaration of war, but some civilians too, travelling gentlemen, servants, grooms and tradesmen, since for the first time in civilized warfare Bonaparte had ordered the arrest of every British subject. They were hot, disconsolate and weary; their bundles had been soaked in a thunderstorm, and at first they had not even the spirit to spread them out in the sun, let alone to take notice of the dilapidated splendour of walls and turrets behind, the view of the new town and the river before them, or even the bear and its leader in the shadow of the next tower but one. But presently the word of the arrival of the convoy spread, and the crowd that had hurried out of the old town to stare was joined by market-women from over the bridge, bringing fruit, wine, bread, honey, sausages, pâté and goat cheeses wrapped in fresh green leaves. Most of the prisoners still had some money (this was only the beginning of their march to the far north-east) and when they had cooled a little, eaten and drunk, they put their clothes to dry and began to look about them.

  'What o, the bear,' cried a sailor, quite happy now, with a quart of wine under his brass-buckled belt. 'Can he dance, mate?'

  The bear-leader, an ill-looking brute with a patch over one eye and a fortnight's beard, took no notice. But the sailor was not to be put off by the sullenness of foreigners, and he was soon joined by an insistent group of friends, for he was the most popular and influential member of the crew of the pink Chastity, a merchantman that had had the unlucky idea of putting into Cette for water the day war was declared. One or two of them began shying stones at the great hairy mass to wake it up, or at least to have the pleasure of seeing it move. 'Avast the stone-throwing,' cried the sailor, his cheerful face clouding. 'You don't want to go a-teasing of bears, cully. Remember Elisha. There's nothing so unlucky as teasing of a bear.'

  'You been a-bear-baiting, George, you know you have,' said a shipmate, tossing his stone up and down, not to have the air of abandoning it. 'We been to Hockley together.'

  'Bear-baiting is different,' said George. 'The bears at Hockley is willing. This bear ain't. I dare say it's hot. Bears is Greenland creatures.'

  The bear certainly looked hot. It was stretched out on what little grass it could find, strangely prostrate. But the clamour had spread; crews of other ships wanted to see it dance, and after some time the bear-leader came up and gave them to understand that the animal was indisposed—could only perform at night—'im ave airy coat, mister; im ate up whole goat for im dinner; im belly ache.'

  'Why, shipmates, there you are. Just as I said,' cried George. 'How would you like dancing in a—great fur pelisse, in this—sun?'

  Events had escaped from George's control, however; an English sea-officer, wishing to impress the lady with whom he was travelling, had spoken to the sergeant of gendarmerie, and now the sergeant whistled to the master of the bear.

  'Papers,' he said. 'A Spanish passport, eh? A very greasy passport too, my friend; do you sleep with your bear? Joan Margall, born in—what's this place?'

  'Lérida, monsieur le sergent,' said the man, with the cringing humility of the poor.

  'Lérida. Profession, bear-leader. Eh, bien: a led bear knows how to dance—that is logic. I have to have proof; it is my duty to see the bear perform.'

  'Certainly, monsieur le sergent, at once. But the gentlemen will not expect too much from Flora; she is a female bear, and—' He whispered in the gendarme's ear. 'Ah, ah? Just so,' said the gendarme. 'Well, just a pace or two, to satisfy my sense of duty.'

  Dragged up by its chain and beaten by its leader till the dust flew from its shaggy side the bear shuffled forward. The man took a little pipe from his bosom, and playing it with one hand while he held the chain with the other, he hoisted the bear on to its hind legs, where it stood, swaying, amidst a murmur of disapprobation from the sailors. 'Crool buggers, these foringers,' said George. 'Look at his poor nose, with that—great ring.'

  'English gents,' said the man, with an ingratiating leer. 'Ornpip.'

  He played a recognizable hornpipe, and the bear staggered through a few of the steps, crossing its arms, before sitting down again. Trumpets sounded from the citadel behind the walls, the guard on the Narbonne gate changed, and the sergeant began to bawl 'En route, en route, les prisonniers.'

  With avid and shamelessly persistent busyness, the bear-leader hurried up and down the line. 'Remember the bear, gents. Remember the bear. N'oubliez pas l'ours, messieurs-dames.'

  Silence. The convoy's dust settled on the empty road. The inhabitants of Carcassonne all went to sleep; even the small boys who had been dropping mortar and clods of earth from the battlements on to the bear disappeared. Silence at last, and the chink of coins.

  'Two livres four sous,' said the bear-leader. 'One maravedi, two Levantine coins of whose exact provenance I am uncertain, a Scotch groat.'

  'When one sea-officer is to be roasted, there is always another at hand to turn the spit,' said the bear. 'It is an old service proverb. I hope to God I have that fornicating young sod under my command one day. I'll make him dance a hornpipe—oh, such a hornpipe. Stephen, prop my jaws open a little more, will you? I think I shall die in five minutes if you don't. Could we not creep into a field and take it off?'

  'No,' said Stephen. 'But I shall lead you to an inn as soon as the market has cleared, and lodge you in a cool damp cellar for the afternoon. I will also get you a collar, to enable you to breathe. We must reach Couiza by dawn.'

  The white road winding, winding, up and up the French side of the Pyrenees, the afternoon sun—the June sun now—beating straight down on the dusty slope: the bear and its leader plodding on. Scorned by carts, feared by horses, they had already walked three hundred and fifty miles, taking a zigzag route to avoid most large towns and the dangerous zone of the coast, and to stay two nights in houses belonging to sure friends. Stephen was leading the bear by the paw, for Jack could not see below his muzzle when his head was on, and in his other hand he had the broad spiked collar that covered the hole through which Jack breathed. He was obliged to put it on for the best part of the day, however, for although this was a remote valley there were houses every few hundred yards, hamlets not three or four miles apart, and fools that kept accompanying them on their way. 'Was it a wise bear? How much did it eat a week? Was it ever wicked? Could he buckle the two ends of his month by exhibiting it?' And the nearer they came to the mountains, the more anecdotes of the bears that had been heard of, actually seen, and even killed. Bears, wolves, smugglers and mountain bandits, the Trabucayres and the Migueletes. Communicative fools,
cheerful villagers, all eager for a treat, and dogs. Every hamlet, every farmhouse had its swarm of dogs that came Out, amazed, howling, yapping and barking, haunting the bear's heels sometimes as far as the next vile swarm; for the dogs, if not the men, knew that there was something unnatural in the bear.

  'It will not be long now,' said Stephen. 'At the far end, beyond the trees, I can see the turning of the main Le Perthus road. You can lie in the wood while I walk to the village to find out what is afoot. Should you like to sit down for a moment on this milestone? There is water in the ditch, and you could soak your feet.'

  'Oh, I do not mind it,' said Jack, staggering as Stephen altered the rhythm of his walk to peer into the ditch. 'And I dare not soak them again, in any case.' The massive, hairy shape writhed a little—a mechanical attempt at seeing its tattered buttocks, legs and lower paws, dog-lacerated. 'The wood is not very far off, I dare say?'

  'Oh, not above an hour or so. It is a beech-wood with an old marle-pit; and you may—I do not assert it, but I say you may—see the purple helleborine growing there!'

  Lying in the deep cool fern with his collar off Jack felt the sweat still coursing down his chest, and the movement of ants, ticks, unidentified insects invading him; he smelt his own unwashed reek and the moist stench of the skin, imperfectly preserved in turpentine; but he minded none of it. He was too far gone to do anything but lie in the complete relaxation of utter weariness. It had of course been impossible to disguise him: a six-foot, yellow-haired Englishman would have stood out like a steeple in the south of France—a France alive with people tracking fugitives of one kind or another, foreign and domestic; but the price for this attempt was beyond anything he had believed possible. The torment of the ill-fitting, chafing hide, the incessantly-repeated small rasping wounds, the ooze of blood, the flayed soles of his feet, attached to the fur by court-plaster, the heat, the suffocation, the vile uncleanliness, had reached what he had thought the unendurable point ten days, two hundred miles, ago, in the torrid waste of the Causse du Palan.