He had the diary back: but although he retained it he had in some degree taken against the book and illogically he no longer set his private mind on paper, as he had done for so many years. Apart from notes recording the appearance of various birds, his last entry was that of many days ago: 'Now I know what Jack Aubrey will look like when he is sixty-five.'
He had the diary back: yet an uneasiness remained. Had not the Americans been strangely ready to grant his request when he asked leave to accompany those patients who were too sick to be moved from the Constitution, Jack and the two quarter-gunners who had been buried at sea a week ago, the ship heaved to and her bell tolling as they went over the side? Had he put his head into a trap? What was the true nature of the passengers the ship was carrying from San Salvador to Boston? One was certainly a consular official, a foolish little man whose only care was his luxuriant whiskers, a tiny politician for whom the world might fall apart so long as the Republicans remained in power. The other two were Frenchmen; the first a small, subfusc, grey, middle-aged man with a liverish face who wore grey small-clothes, the kind of stockings that Franklin had made fashionable in Paris many years before, and a blue-grey coat; he was almost never seen on deck, and when he was, he was always being sick over the side, usually the windward side. The other was a tall, military-looking civilian, Pontet-Canet, who seemed at first sight to be as vain as the consular young man, even more loquacious and quite as silly; yet Stephen was not sure. Nor was he sure that he had not seen Pontet-Canet in some other place. Paris? Barcelona? Toulon? If he had, then it was certainly without those jet-black whiskers. But he had seen so very many people, and there were innumerable tall vain Frenchmen who dyed their hair and spoke with a strong Burgundian accent. A secret agent needed a prodigious memory: he also needed a diary to supply those inevitable gaps and failures.
Stephen had recently been looking into the Bible that a Boston society had placed in his cabin, as in every other part of the ship, and he had fallen upon two verses that stuck in his memory: the wicked fleeth where no man pursueth, and the fall of a liar is as from the housetop. A secret agent was not necessarily wicked, but an undue portion of his life was necessarily a lie. Once again Stephen felt the sickened weariness rising up, and he was not sorry to hear Pontet-Canet's voice wishing him good day.
The Frenchman messed in the gunroom and he often engaged Stephen in conversation, speaking a fluent though curious and heavily-accented English: now, having dealt with the weather and the probable nature of their coming dinner, they spoke of America, of the New World, comparatively empty, comparatively innocent.
'You have been in the States before, sir, I collect?' said Stephen. 'I dare say you know the country and the people well.'
'Perfectly,' replied Pontet-Canet. 'And I was very well received, for when I arrived among them, I spoke like them, I dressed like them, I bewared to have no more wit than them, and I found that all they did was good, ha, ha, ha!'
'Sometimes I think of retiring there,' said Stephen.
'Ah?' said Pontet-Canet, looking at him sharply. 'You would not object to the regime - you would not object on the national grounds?'
'Never in life,' said Stephen. 'Europe is so old, so tired, so wearisome, that one longs for the simplicity of ...' He would have added 'the noble Huron, and for the vast range of unknown birds, mammals, reptiles, plants', but he had rarely finished a sentence when talking to Pontet-Canet, and now the Frenchman broke in with a strong recommendation of such a course. America was the Golden Age revived: 'I myself was in the Connecticut, in the back grounds of the state, hunting savage turkeys with a veritable American farmer, and he held me the following discourse: 'In me, my dear sir, you see a happy man, if such is to be found under the Heaven. Everything you see about you comes from my own land. These stockings - my daughter knitted them. My shoes and clothes come from my herds; and these herds, with my poultry-yard and my garden, provide a solid, simple nourishment. The taxes here are almost nothing, and so long as they are paid we can sleep on both ears.' There is Arcadian simplicity, hem?'
'Certainly,' said Stephen. 'Pray, sir, did you find your turkeys?'
'Yes, yes!' cried Pontet-Canet. 'And some grey squirrels. I was the one that shot them all, ha, ha, ha! I was the best fusil of the party; and, I allow myself to say without forfantery, the best cook.'
'How did you dress them?'
'Sir?'
'How did you cook them?'
'The squirrels in madeira; the turkey roast. And all round the table was heard 'Very good! Exceedingly good! Oh, dear sir, what a glorious bit!''
'Please to describe the turkey's flight.'
Pontet-Canet spread his arms, but before he could take to the air Mr Evans appeared: the other Monsieur, in conference with the commodore, needed an interpreter.
'I hope Mr Bainbridge is well?' said Stephen.
'Oh yes, yes, yes,' said Mr Evans. 'A little laudable pus, no more. The wound is healing very prettily. Some pain, of course, and some discomfort; but we must learn to put up with that without growing mean or snappish.' A pause.
'They tell me we are nearing the edge of the stream,' said the surgeon, 'and that presently we shall see green water to larboard, and Cape Fear.'
'Ha,' said Stephen, 'the green water in with the land. How I hope that we shall also see a skimmer.'
'What is a skimmer?'
'It is one of your sea-birds. It has a singular beak, the lower mandible being longer than the upper: with this it skims the surface of the sea. I have always longed to see a skimmer.'
'I guess you must be a considerable ornithologist, Dr Maturin. You made some uncommon drawings of the far southern birds in your journal, I recall.' There were no birds on the pages Stephen had exhibited: clearly the book had been studied for some time. Mr Evans seemed quite unaware of his slip, however, and he now proposed that they should finish their game of chess, a match that had reached a desperately congested middle-game with almost all the pieces on the board, not one of which could be moved without the utmost peril.
'By all means,' said Stephen. 'But do you think it would be possible to play on deck? Then, while you attempt to delay your inevitable defeat, I may keep my eye upon the sea. I should be loath to miss my skimmer.'
