The reply was lost as Jack's bosun and his mates piped their Captain over the side: a howling repeated three minutes later as the Berenice piped him aboard.
Stephen, Pullings and Philip withdrew from their splendid dinner quite early, Stephen carrying his pepper; and Jack said, 'Old Hen, what a pleasant young fellow you have made of Philip. I am so grateful.'
'Not at all,' said Dundas. 'He might have been born to the sea. Cobbold says he will rate him master's mate in Hyperion, next year, if you would like it.'
'I should like it very much indeed. It is time he was out of leading-strings; though yours I am sure were the kindest in the world.'
They sat comfortably together - very old friends and shipmates - sipping their port, pushing the decanter to and fro. Dundas told the servants to turn in, and presently he said, 'You have had a rough time of it, Jack: and so I think has Maturin.'
'Yes, I have: pretty rough. And he has, too. Then again we have both been away a terrible long time, you know, with very little news, and that adds to the ordinary battering of a distant voyage: not that it was so ordinary on this occasion. Tell me, how are things at home?'
'I was at Ashgrove last July, and they were all blooming -Sophie in splendid looks - her mother is living there with a friend, a Mrs Morris - children very well indeed, and the girls so pretty, modest and kind. Well, fairly modest, and very kind. I did not see Diana, though her horses do famously: she was in Ireland during my short leave. But when I called I did see Clarissa Oakes, poor young Oakes's widow, who lives there: what a fine young woman she is.' He paused again; then brightened and went on, 'But tell me, as far as you can, because Melville let me understand that there was something confidential about your voyage' - Melville, or more formally Lord Melville, was Heneage Dundas's elder brother and First Lord of the Admiralty - 'as far as you properly can, then, how your enterprise went.'
'Well, I gathered that the first part, in the East Indies, went well for Stephen - at least the French were discomforted - but I flung the Diane on a reef in the South China Sea, a total loss. And then in this second bout, now ending, thanks be, we did take a fair number of prizes to begin with and we destroyed a truly odious pirate; but then I contrived to lose three American China ships: Heavens, such wealth! It is true they were protected by a brig and a thirty-eight-gun frigate that nearly destroyed us. Oh, Hen, such wicked ice south of Diego Ramirez: and north, for that matter. We escaped, true enough; but even so I cannot call the enterprise anything but a failure. And I am very much afraid that Stephen was betrayed, that his plan did not come to good, and that it went right to his heart.'
'I will fetch some brandy,' said Heneage.
They drank it staring at the embers in the hanging stove; and when they had settled what masts and spars the Berenice could give the Surprise, with a long aside about Dundas's tender the Baltimore clipper, picked up perfect but empty - not a soul, not a scrap of paper - in the south Pacific, and her extraordinary sailing qualities, Jack said, 'No. Harking back to this voyage, I think it was a failure upon the whole, and a costly failure; but,' he said laughing with joy at the thought, 'I am so happy to be homeward-bound, and I am so happy, so very happy, to be alive."
End
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The Wine-Dark Sea Page 31