Post Captain

by Patrick O'Brian

  The house darkened and the first notes of the overture quelled the greater part of the talk, muting the rest. Stephen turned his eyes and his attention to the band. Poor thin pompous overblown stuff, he thought; not unpleasant, but quite trivial. What was Sir Joseph thinking of, to compare this man with Mozart? He admired the red-faced 'cellist's bowing, however—agile, determined, brisk. To his right a flash of brightness drew his eye: a party of latecomers walking into their box and letting in the light from the door at the back. Goths: Moorish barbarity. Not, indeed, that the music had much to say: not that his attention had been wrenched painfully from something that required close concentration. Though it would have been all one to those grass-combing Huns, had it been Orpheus in person.

  A charming harp came up through the strings, two harps running up and down, an amiable warbling. Signifying nothing, sure; but how pleasant to hear them. Pleasant, oh certainly it was pleasant, just as it had been pleasant to hear Molter's trumpet; so why was his heart oppressed, filled with an anxious foreboding, a dread of something imminent that he could not define? That arch girl posturing upon the stage had a sweet, true little voice; she was as pretty as God and art could make her; and he took no pleasure in it. His hands were sweating.

  A foolish German had said that man thought in words. It was totally false; a pernicious doctrine; the thought flashed into being in a hundred simultaneous forms, with a thousand associations, and the speaking mind selected one, forming it grossly into the inadequate symbols of words, inadequate because common to disparate situations—admitted to be inadequate for vast regions of expression, since for them there were the parallel languages of music and painting. Words were not called for in many or indeed most forms of thought: Mozart certainly thought in terms of music. He himself at this moment was thinking in terms of scent.

  The orchestra and the people on the stage pumped busily up to the obvious climax: it blared out—the house burst into a roar of applause, and in the latecomers' box he saw Diana Villiers, clapping politely but with no great enthusiasm, not looking at the stage with its smirking bowing actors but at someone deeper in the box behind her. Her head was turned in a curve he would have recognized in an even greater crowd: her long white gloves, pointing upwards, beat steadily together as she talked over the general din, her expression and the movements of her head pushing her meaning through the noise.

  There was another woman beside her—Lady Jersey, he thought—and four men behind. Canning; two officers in scarlet and gold; a civilian with the high colour and oyster eye of Hanover and the ribbon of the Garter across his breast—a minor royal. This was the man to whom she was speaking: he looked stupid, uncomprehending; but pleased, almost lively.

  Stephen watched with no particular emotion but with extreme accuracy. He had noted the great leap of his heart at the first moment and the disorder in his breathing, and he noted too that this had no effect upon his powers of observation. He must in fact have been aware of her presence from the first: it was her scent that was running in his mind before the curtain fell; it was in connection with her that he had reflected upon these harps.

  Now the applause had stopped, but Diana's hands were still raised, and leaning forward he watched with an even greater intensity. She was moving her right hand as she talked to the man behind her and by Christ she was moving it with a conscious grace. The door at the back of the box opened. Another broad blue ribbon, and the women stood up, bobbed. He could not see the face for the tall standing men, but he could see, he did see this essential change confirmed—her whole movement, from the carriage of her head to the pretty flirt of her ostrich-fan was subtly altered. Bows, more bobs, laughter, the door closed, the outward-facing group reformed: the figure reappeared in another box. Stephen took no notice of him, did not care if he were the Duke of Hell, but concentrated his utmost attention upon Diana to prove what he knew to be the fact. It was so: everything showed it, and he extracted the last dreg of pain from the knowledge, the spectacle. She was on display. The purity of wild grace was gone, and the thought that from now on he must associate vulgarity with his idea of her was so painful that for a while he could not think clearly. Not that it was in the least obvious to anyone who knew her less well, or who valued that purity less highly, and not that it detracted in any way from the admiration of the men in the audience or of her companions, for it was done with great instinctive art; but the woman in the box over there was not one to whom he would have paid any attention, at any time.

  She was uneasy. She felt the intensity of his gaze and from time to time she looked round the house; and each time she did so he dropped his eyes, as he would have done, stalking a doe: there were plenty of people looking at her from the pit and the other boxes—indeed, she was perhaps the finest woman there, in her low sky-blue dress and the diamonds in her black, high-piled hair. In spite of his precaution their eyes crossed at last: she stopped talking. He meant to rise and bow, but there was no power whatsoever in his legs. He was astonished, and before he could grip the pad in front of him to raise himself the curtain had gone up and the harps were racing through glissando after glissando.

  That my body should be affected to this point, he said, is something beyond my experience. I have felt the great nausea before, God knows, but this want of control . . . Did the Diana I last saw at New Place ever exist in fact? A creation of my own? Can you create a unicorn by longing?

  Through the music and the caterwauling on the stage the insistent knocking at the locked door of his box disturbed the course of his reflection. He did not reply, and presently it went away. Had he had a hand in her death? He shook his head to deny it.

  At last the curtain came sweeping down and the light increased. The box over there was empty, a pair of long white gloves drooped over the plush in front; and the band was playing God save the King. He sat on, and in time the standing slowly-moving crowd below shuffled out, a few people darting back for forgotten hats, and the place was empty, an enormous shell. The people of the house walked about the emptiness with an everyday step, picking up rubbish, putting out the lights.

  Two said, 'There's a gent still there, up in the box.'

  'Is he drunk?'

  'Perhaps he thinks there is another act; but there ain't no more, thank God.'

  'Come, sir,' they said, opening the door with their little key, 'it's all over now. This is the end of the piece.'

  Long before dawn the Lively's warm, smelly, close-packed gun-deck awoke to violent and unexpected life, the strong-voiced bosun's mates roaring 'All hands! All hands unmoor ship. Rise and shine! Show a leg there! Tumble up, tumble up, tumble up!' The Livelies—the male Livelies, for there were about a hundred women aboard—tore themselves from their pink companions or their more prosaic wives, tumbled up into the wet darkness and unmoored the ship, as they were desired. The capstan turned, the fiddle squeaked, the temporary ladies hurried ashore, and the Nore light faded astern: the frigate stood for the North Foreland with a favourable tide and a quartering wind.

  The officer of the watch checked the noise of speculation, but it continued under the cover of the rumbling holystones while the people washed the decks. What was up? Had Boney started his invasion? Something was up, or they would never have been ordered to sea with only half their water filled. Port admiral's barge had come alongside, a civilian and an officer: one gent was with the captain yet. No news so far, but that there Killick or Bonden would know before breakfast-time was over.

  In the gun-room the wonder was quite as great, and quite as uninformed; but it had a depth of apprehension and uneasiness that was lacking before the mast. Word had gone about that Dr Maturin was aboard again, and although they liked him well enough, they dreaded what he might bring with him.

  'Are you quite sure?' they asked Dashwood, who had had the morning watch.

  'I would not positively take my oath,' he said, 'because he was muffled against the rain, and it was dark. But I have never seen anyone else on earth come up the side like a left-
handed bear: you would never believe it could be done, without you see it. I should be certain, if the boat had not answered "aye aye".'

  'That decides it,' said Mr Simmons. 'The Admiral's coxswain could never have made such a mistake. It must have been some commissioned officer that the Captain knew well enough to call him his dear fellow; an old shipmate, no doubt. It cannot be Dr Maturin.'

  'Certainly not,' said Mr Randall.

  'Never in life,' said the master.

  The purser, whose cabin had been out of reach of the bees, was more concerned with the political aspects of their sudden move, and with the wretched state of his stores. 'I have not above fifty fathoms of duck aboard,' he said, 'and not a scrap of sennit. What will become of us when we cross the line? What will become of us at Madeira, even: to say nothing of Fernando Poo? And Fernando Poo is our destination, I am very sure, for reasons of high strategy.'

  Some time before this, Jack, having given directions to put to sea, came back in his nightshirt and watch-coat to his cabin, where his immediate orders lay, next to the sheaf of detailed instructions and a fat sealed envelope marked Not to be opened until latitude 43° N. He looked somewhat ecclesiastical, but also deeply concerned. 'Dear Stephen,' he said, 'thank you a thousand times for coming down so quick; I hardly hoped to see you before Falmouth. But I find I have lured you aboard on false pretences—Madeira and the West Indies are quite exploded. I am ordered to proceed to sea with the utmost possible dispatch—rendezvous off the Dodman.' He held the paper close to the light. 'Rendezvous with Indefatigable, Medusa and Amphion. Strange. And sealed orders not to be opened until so and so. What can they mean by that, Stephen?'

  'I have no idea,' said Stephen.

  'God damn and blast the Admiralty and all its lords,' cried Jack. 'Utmost dispatch—muck up all one's plans—I do apologize most humbly, Stephen.' He read on. 'Hey, hey, Stephen? I thought you had no idea: I thought you had just chanced to come down with the messenger. But in case of separation of one or more . . . certain eventualities and all that, I am requested and directed to avail myself of the counsels and advice of S. Maturin, esquire, MD etc., etc., appointed pro hac vice a captain in the Royal Navy . . . his knowledge and discretion.'

  'It is possible that you may be required to undertake some negotiations, and that I may be of use in them.'

  'Well, I must be discreet myself, I find,' said Jack, sitting down and looking wonderingly at Stephen. 'But you did say . . .'

  'Now listen, Jack, will you? I am somewhat given to lying: my occasions require it from time to time. But I do not choose to have any man alive tell me of it.'

  'Oh no, no, no,' cried Jack. 'I should never dream of doing such a thing. Not,' he added, recollecting himself and blushing, 'not when I am in my right mind. Quite apart from my love for you, it is far, far too dangerous. Hush: mum's the word. Tace is the Latin for a candle. I quite understand—am amazed I did not smoke it before: what a deep old file you are. But I twig it now.'

  'Do you, my dear? Bless you.'

  'But what takes my breath away, what flabbergasts me to this high pitch,' said Jack, 'is, that they should have given you a temporary commission. The Navy, you know, is uncommon jealous of rank, very sparing of such compliments. I hardly remember ever to have heard of it, except once. They must think the world of you in Whitehall.'

  'I wonder at it too, this insistence upon a commission. It struck me at the time. I am sensible of the compliment, but puzzled. Why should I not have been your guest?'

  'I have it,' cried Jack. 'Stephen, may I ask without indiscretion whether this could be a—what shall I say?—a profitable expedition?'

  'It might be, too.'

  'Then they mean to cut you in on the prize-money. Depend upon it, they mean you to share as a captain. These are Admiralty orders, so no flag gets a share: if it comes to anything, your cut should be pretty handsome.'

  'What a pretty thought in Sir Joseph; remarkably delicate in him. I do not regret sending him my gynandromorph by the messenger now: the fellow seemed amazed, as well he might—a princely gift. Tell me, what would be a captain's share of—I name a hypothetical sum—a million pounds?'

  'Taken by a squadron with four, no, five, captains in it? Let me see, fives into ten is two, and eights into two hundred, five and twenty—seventy-five thousand pounds. But there are no prizes like that afloat these days, my poor Stephen, more's the pity.'

  'Seventy-five thousand pounds? How absurd. What could Sir Joseph imagine I should do with such a sum? What could any reasonable man do with such a sum?'

  'I can tell you what I should do,' cried Jack, his eyes ablaze. He darted out of the cabin in spite of the cry of 'Stay!' to see whether the inner jibs were drawing, and every bowline harp-string taut. Having harassed the watch for some minutes he returned, leaving tart, unfavourable comments behind him.

  'I hope this skipper is not going to turn into a jib and stays'l jack,' said the captain of the foretop.

  'I don't like the look of it at all,' said the yeoman of the sheets. 'This giving of himself such airs is something new.'

  'Perhaps he has a rendezvous with his Miss,' said Blue Edward, the Malay. 'God damn my eye, I should crack on, if I had such a Miss to see, Sophie by name.'

  'No disrespectful words, Blue Edward,' cried George Allen. 'For I won't abide it.'

  'A man might, of course, make a circumambulation of Lapland, or emulate Banks in the Great South Sea,' observed Stephen. 'But tell me, Jack, how did your journey go? How did Sophie withstand the motion of the vessel? Did she take her porter with her meals?'

  'Oh, admirably, admirably!' It had been the most perfect series of warm, gentle days, scarcely a fleck of white water—Simmons had made a magnificent show with royals and skysails, and studdingsails aloft and alow; she had never seen anything more beautiful, she said—the Lively had left the Amethyst standing: red faces on her quarterdeck—and then there had been some charming dead calms, the whole day long—they had often talked of Stephen—how they had missed him!—and she had been so kind to that youngster Randall, who wept when poor Cassandra died—Randall senior loved her to distraction; so did the whole gun-room—they had dined twice with the officers—Cecilia seemed very well with Dredge, of the Marines—Jack was grateful to him for drawing her off—certainly Sophie had drunk her porter, and a glass of bosun's grog—had eaten splendidly: Jack loved a girl that tucked in hearty—and as for the future, they were full of hope, but . . . could do with very little . . . no horses . . . cottage . . . potatoes. 'Stephen,' he said, 'you are asleep.'

  'I am not,' said Stephen. 'You just mentioned the last syllable of recorded time with evident approval. But I am weary, I confess. I travelled all night, and yesterday was something of a trial. I will turn in, if I may. Where must I sleep?'

  'There's a question,' said Jack. 'Where should you berth, in fact? Of course you shall sleep in my cot; but officially where should you be? That would puzzle Solomon. What seniority did they give you?'

  'I have no idea. I did not read the document; apart from the phrase. We, reposing especial trust and confidence in S.M., which pleased me.'

  'Well, I suppose you are junior to me; so you shall have the leeward side of the cabin and I the windward, and every time we go about, we shall change sides, ha, ha, ha. Ain't I a rattle? But seriously, I suppose you should be read in to the ship's company—an amazing situation.'

  'If there is any doubt, pray do no such thing. It would be far better for me to remain unobserved. And Jack, in all this that has passed between us, all that you may have guessed, I rely wholly upon your discretion, eh? There are moments when my life might turn upon it.'

  He had every reason to rely upon Jack, who could keep close counsel; but not all captains were so discreet, and when the Medusa came tearing out of Plymouth with a dark gentleman aboard, known to speak Spanish—a gentleman who remained closeted with the captains of the Lively, the Amphion and the Medusa, and Dr Maturin while they were lying to off the Dodman, waiting for the Indefatig
able to join—the general opinion of the ship was that they were bound for Cadiz, that Spain had come in or was just about to come in; and this gave a great deal of simple pleasure, for hitherto Spanish merchantmen had been immune from capture. In a sea swept almost clear of prizes, they ploughed steadily along past cruisers, through blockading squadrons, laughing and kissing their hands, their holds so full of wealth that a foremast jack might make five years' pay in one pleasant Saturday afternoon.

  At last the Indefatigable hove in sight, a heavy forty-gun frigate, making heavy weather of it too, close-hauled on the westerly gale with green seas keeping her beak-head clean and the signal flying Form in line astern: make all suitable sail.

  Now, as the four frigates, in a perfect line, each two cables from the next, stretched away to the south-southwest, came a tedious, frustrating time for the Livelies: the topmen were rarely on deck, but it was not to make sail. In order to keep rigidly to her station in the Amphion's wake, the Lively was perpetually reefing, dewing up, hauling down jibe, staysails, spanker, starting sheets. And when the sealed orders were opened—when, after the captains' last conference aboard the Indefatigable, it became certain knowledge that they were to intercept a Spanish squadron from the River Plate to Cadiz, this impatience grew to such a height that they welcomed the dirty look of Sunday evening. A vast unformed blackness filled the south and western sky, an enormous swell was running, so great that men who had scarcely set foot on shore for years were sick; the wind boxed the compass, blowing now hot, now cold, and the sun went down in an ill-looking bank of livid purple with green lights showing through. Cape Finisterre was not far under their lee, and they doubled their preventer-stays and rolling-tackle, roused up storm canvas, secured the boats on the booms, double-breeched their guns, struck the topgallants down on deck, and made all snug.