he could contemplate the Greek remains, he was happy to carry despatches to and from the Indies, leaving the running of the ship to his capable first lieutenant. They knew that the bosun and the carpenter had contrived to move a surprising quantity of the ship's stores to unfrequented places, and they had little doubt that these objects would vanish once La Fl?e reached the Cape: the only question was, who shared? They knew a great many other things, some of no importance whatsoever, such as that the Leopard's midshipmen were finding the voyage a burden to their spirits.
Jack Aubrey was a conscientious captain; he thought it his duty to form his youngsters, most of whom had been entrusted to him by friends or relations, not only into officers who understood their profession but into reasonably moral and socially presentable beings as well. During the first part of the Leopard's voyage he had delegated much of this to the schoolmaster and the chaplain; then from the time these men vanished he had had little leisure for education; but now the whole day was his own, and he devoted far more of it than they liked to leading his reefers through Robinson's Elements of Navigation, None's Epitome, and Gregory's Polite Education. For his part Jack had received precious little education, polite or otherwise, and he learnt a great deal from Gregory as he went along - an exact list of the kings of Israel, among other things. There were no doubt conscientious captains at the time of the Spanish armament, when he first went to sea; but those he had sailed with had confined themselves to seeing that their midshipmen's drinking and whoring were kept within limits, limits that varied according to the captain. Only one of his early ships had carried a schoolmaster, a gentleman who passed his waking hours in an alcoholic haze; so that apart from a term or two at school by land, where a little Latin had been beaten into him, he was, from the point of view of literature, as the beasts that perish. Seamanship, of course, had come naturally to him he was a born mariner and then he had fallen in love with mathematics, a late love, but fruitful. Yet in the new, smoother, more scientific Navy that was coming into being this was not enough: his youngsters must add a powerful dose of Gregory to their Robinson. He made them read The Present State of Europe, Impartially Considered; he saw that the journals they were required to keep would meet the inspection of the severest board of examiners; he stood by while his coxswain taught them the finer points of knotting and splicing. It was a pity that his material was so indifferent, so refractory to anything but the knots and splices; for his intentions were of the best. In some commissions he had had midshipmen who loved the mathematics too, who doted upon spherical trigonometry, so that it was a pleasure to teach them navigation; it was not the case at present.
'Mr Forshaw,' he said. 'What is a sine?'
'A sine, sir,' said Forshaw, speaking very fast, 'is when you draw a right line from one end of an arc perpendicular upon the radius from the centre to the other end of the arc.'
'And what is its relation to the chord of that arc?'
Mr Forshaw looked wild, gazed about the day-cabin that Captain Yorke had given over to his guest, but found no help in its neat fittings, its skylight, nor in the nine-pounder gun that took up so much of its space, nor in the blank and hideous face of his companion, Holles, nor in the title of the novel The Vicissitudes of Genteel Life: life aboard La Fl?e might not be particularly genteel but it was certainly full of vicissitudes. After a long pause he still had no views to offer, other than that the relationship was no doubt pretty close.
'Well, well,' said Jack, 'you must read page seventeen again, I see. But that is not what I sent for you for -that is not the reason for which I sent for you. There was a great deal of correspondence for me to attend to at Pulo Batang, and I have only now reached this letter from your mother. She begs me to take great care that when you brush your teeth you will brush them up and down, and not only sideways. Do you understand me, Mr Forshaw?'
Forshaw loved his mother dearly, but at this moment he wished she might be deprived of the power of holding a pen for ever. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'Up and down it is, not only sideways, sir.'
'What are you tittering at, Mr Holles?' asked Captain Aubrey.
'Nothing, sir.'
'Now I come to think of it, I have a letter from your guardian, Mr Holles. He wishes to be assured that your moral welfare is well in hand, and that you do not neglect your Bible. You do not neglect your Bibles, any of you, I dare say?'
'Oh, no, sir.'
'I am glad to hear it. Where the Devil would you be, if you neglected your Bible? Tell me, Mr Holles, who was Abraham?' Jack was particularly well up in this part of sacred history, having checked Admiral Drury's remarks on Sodom: 'Abraham, sir,' said Holles, his pasty, spotted face turning a nasty variegated purple. 'Why, Abraham was...'
But no more emerged, other than a murmur of 'bosom'.
'Mr Peters?'
Mr Peters expressed his conviction that Abraham was a very good man; perhaps a corn-chandler, since one said 'Abraham and his seed for ever'.
'Mr Forshaw?'
'Abraham, sir?' said Forshaw, whose spirits had recovered with their usual speed. 'Oh, he was only an ordinary wicked Jew.'
Jack fixed him with his eye. Was Forshaw making game of him? Probably, judging from the extreme innocence of his face. 'Bonden,' he called, and his coxswain, who was waiting outside the door with sailcloth and rope-yarn to learn the young gentlemen to make foxes, walked in. 'Bonden, seize Mr Forshaw to the gun, and knot me that rope's end.'
'Golden days, Doctor, golden days,' said the master of La Fl?e to Stephen Maturin. Far, far to leeward an enormous dust-storm in Africa had raised such a veil that the sun, setting behind it, suffused the clean sea-air with an amber light, turning the waves jade-green; though in a few minutes it was to make one of its more spectacular disappearances in crimson glory, when the same waves would show deep amethyst. Stephen was standing on the quarterdeck with his hands behind his back, his lips pursed, his eyes fixed, wide open, seeing nothing, upon a ring-bolt. He uttered a low whistling sound. 'I said these were golden days, Doctor,' said the master rather louder, smiling at him.
'So they are too,' cried Stephen, starting from a dream of Diana Villiers and staring round. 'Such a light as Claude might have painted, had he ever been to sea, the creature. But you are speaking figuratively, no doubt? You refer to the ease of our progress, the prosperous gale, the ocean's amenity?'
'Yes. I never touched sheet or brace right through the middle watch, and not a hand but took a caulk, bar the lookouts and the man at the wheel. Never was there such a run: at least two hundred mile logged regular from noon to noon without a break. Golden days - though maybe it has been a bloody day for him,' - nodding towards
