is at the Governor's.'
'He may well mean a black magus, or a potentate among the Hottentots. Now the Druids, I say . . . '
In fact the being's precedence was merely alphabetical: for in the gaiety of his heart Dr Maturin had referred to the aardvark. It stood before him now, a pale creature with a bulky hog-backed body close on five feet long, a broad tall, an immense elongated head ending in a disk-like snout, short stout legs and disproportionately. long translucent ass's ears; it was partially covered with sparse yellowish hair that showed the unwholesome nightwalker's skin below; it blinked repeatedly. The aardvark was acutely conscious of its position and from time to time it licked its small tubular lips, for not only had it been measured and weighed, while a tuft of bristles that could ill be spared had been clipped from its flank, but now it was being looked at through a diminishing-glass and drawn. It was a meek, apologetic animal, incapable of biting and too shy to scratch; and it grew lower and lower in its spirits: its ears drooped until they obscured its weak, melancholy, long lashed eyes.
'There, honey, it is done,' said Stephen, showing the aardvark its likeness: and calling upwards through the ceiling he said, 'Mr van der Poel, I am infinitely obliged to you, sir. Do not stir, I beg. I shall lock the door and leave the key under the mat: I am going back to the ship, and tomorrow you shall see the egg.'
Some hours later he beheld Simon's Town again, its inner anchorage scattered with Jack's prizes: It reminded him of Port Mahon long ago, when the Sophie's captured feluccas, trabacaloes and xebecs lined the quay. 'That was very well,' he said, 'and Minorca a delightful island; but even Minorca could never boast the aardvark.' The street was filled with liberty-men, a cheerful crew, for not only had Jack ordered a modest advance of prize money--two dollars a nob paid down on the capstan-head--but Dr Maturin's words on loot had not been obeyed quite as strictly as he could have wished, and pieces of the finest Oriental silk, slightly charred, covered the lithe forms, the infinitely seductive bosoms of the sailors' companions. He was hailed on all sides; kind hands led his hired nag away; and a Boadicean midshipman, smelling strongly of patchouli, rowed him out to the Raisonable. At ease in his spacious cabin he opened his book and looked at the picture again. 'It is perhaps the most gratifying beast I have ever figured,' he said, 'and it displays a touching affection for the good Mr van der Poel; I believe I shall attempt to colour it.' He turned back through the pages. Most were covered with the small close-written text of his diary, but there were several drawings--the Rodriguez tortoise, the seals of False Bay--some washed with water-colour. 'Perhaps not,' he said, considering them. 'My talents scarcely seem to lie that way.' He converted the Dutch weight of the aardvark into avoirdupois, sharpened his pen to a finer point, reflected for a while, gazing out of the scuttle, and began to write in his personal cipher.
'I cannot trace the chain of thought or rather of associations that leads me to reflect upon Clonfert and Jack Aubrey. Conceivably the aardvark plays a part, so ill at ease: but the links are obscure. Clonfert's tormina exercise my mind; for by whatever private scale of pain one may measure them, they must come tolerably high. It seems ludicrously facile to regard them as the direct transposition of his state of mind; yet McAdam is no fool except to himself; and in some not dissimilar cases that Dupuytren and I dissected we were able to eliminate any direct physical cause. The vermiform appendix, so often the villain in these apparent strangulations, as pink as a healthy worm, the whole tract from the oesophagus downwards, devoid of lesion. Clonfert is more of an Irishman, with the exacerbated susceptibilities of a subject race, than I had supposed; more indeed than I gave Jack to understand. I find that as a boy he did not attend a great English public school, as did most of his kind I have known; nor did he go early to sea and thereby wash away the barrier: the first years of his nominal service were book- time, as they call the amiable cheat by which a complaisant captain places an absent child upon his muster- roll. Far from it: he was brought up almost entirely by the servants at Jenkinsville (a desolate region). Squireen foster-parents too for a while, his own being so mad or so disreputable: and he seems to have sucked in the worst of both sides. On the one hand he derived his notion of himself as a lord from people who have had to cringe these many generations to hold on to the odd patch of land that is their only living; and on the other, though half belonging to them, he has been bred up to despise their religion, their language, their poverty, their manners and traditions. A conquering race, in the place of that conquest, is rarely amiable; the conquerors pay less obviously than the conquered, but perhaps in time they pay even more heavily, in the loss of the humane qualities. Hard, arrogant, profit-seeking adventurers flock to the spoil, and the natives, though outwardly civil, contemplate them with a resentment mingled with contempt, while at the same time respecting the face of conquest--acknowledging their greater strength. And to be divided between the two must-lead to a strange confusion of sentiment. In Clonfert's case the result of this and of other factors seems to me an uneasy awareness of his own distinction (he often mentions it), a profound uncertainty of its real value, and a conviction that to validate its claims he should be twice as tall as other men. In spite of his high heels, both literal and figurative, he is not twice as tall as other men: Jack, in particular, tops him by a head and more. He has surrounded himself with a strikingly inferior set of officers, which I do not remember to have seen done in the Navy, where the aristocratic captains are almost always accompanied by aristocratic officers and midshipmen, just as a Scotch commander will gather Scotchmen around him: no doubt they provide him with the approval he longs for; but how much can a man of his understanding value their approval? And if Lady Clonfert and Mrs Jennings are a fair example of his women, to what degree can their favours really gratify him?
'Upon this foundation, and upon what McAdam tells me, I could build up a moderately convincing Clonfert whose entire life is an unsatisfactory pretence: a puppet vainly striving to be another puppet, equally unreal--the antithesis of Jack, who has never played a part in his life', who has no need for any role. It would not satisfy me, however, for although it may have some truth in it and although it may go far towards pointing at the origin of the tormina and some other symptons I have noted (McAdam did not appreciate the significance of the asymmetric sudor insignis), it does not take into account the fact that he is not a puppet. Nor, which is far more important, does it take into account the affection of his men: Jack asserts that sailors love a lord and no doubt that is profoundly true (apart from anything else, the fancied difference diminishes the servitude); but they do not go on loving a lord if he is worthless. They did not go on loving Prince William. No: a continued affection over a long period must be based upon the recognition of real qualities in the man, for a ship at sea, particularly a small ship on a foreign station, is an enclosed village; and whoever heard of the long-matured judgment of a village being wrong? The communal mind, even where the community is largely made up of unthinking and illiterate men, is very nearly as infallible as a Council. And the qualities valued by a community of men are commonly good nature, generosity and courage. Courage: here I am on the most shifting ground in the world. For what is it? Men put different values on their lives at different times: different men value approval at different rates--for some it is the prime mover. Two men go through the same motions for widely different reasons; their conduct bears the same name. Yet if Clonfert has not performed these actions I am very sure that his men would not esteem him as they do. Farquhar's illogicality may well render their affection for Lord Clonfert greater than it would be for Mr Scroggs, but that is merely an addition; the esteem is already there, and so are the actions upon which it is founded. I saw him storm a battery at St Paul's; and in the result his outward gestures, his elan, and indeed his success were indistinguishable from Jack Aubrey's.
'Jack Aubrey. The lieutenant of long ago is still visible in the grave commodore, but there are times when he has to be looked for. One constant is that indubitable happy courage, the courage of the fabled lion--how I wish I may see a lion--which makes him go into action as some men might go to their marriage-bed. Every man would be a coward if he durst: it is true of most, I do believe, certainly of me, probably of Clonfert; but not of Jack Aubrey.
Marriage has changed him, except in this: he had hoped for too much, poor sanguine creature (though indeed he is sick for news from home). And the weight of this new responsibility; he feels it extremely: responsibility and the years--his youth is going or indeed is gone. The change is evident, but it is difficult to name many particular alterations, apart from the comparative want of gaiety, of that appetence for mirth, of those infinitesimal jests that caused him at least such enormous merriment. I might mention his attitude towards those under his command, apart from those he has known for years: it is attentive, conscientious, and informed; but is far less personal; his
