Mr Evans looked doubtful, but said he would have a word with the officer of the watch. 'All is well,' he said, coming back. 'Mr Heath has every sympathy with your wish: if you want to see a skimmer, you may play chess in any part of the ship, he says; and he will give orders that you be told if skimmers appear. He thinks there is a fair chance, once we are close in with the cape, and out of the blue water.'
Some minutes later he brought the board, saying, 'I love this game. Apart from anything else, it is agreeable to my sentiments as a citizen of a republic, since it always ends with the discomfiture of a king.'
'I too was a republican in the frothy pride of my youth,' said Stephen, inspecting the position, while an awning was being stretched to protect them from the sun. 'And had I been out of coats at the time, I should have joined you at Bunker Hill and Valley Forge and those other interesting spots. As it was, I cheered the taking of the Bastille. But with age, I have come to think that after all a monarchy is best.'
'When you look about the world, and view the monarchs in it - I do not refer to your own, of course - can you really maintain that the hereditary king cuts a very shining figure?'
'I cannot. Nor is that to the point: the person, unless he be extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, is of no importance. It is the living, moving, procreating, sometimes speaking symbol that counts.'
'But surely mere birth without any necessary merit is illogical?'
'Certainly, and that is its great merit. Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility. In good utilitarian logic a man does not sell all his goods to go crusading, nor does he build cathedrals; still less does he write verse. There are countless pieties without a name that find their focus in a crown. It is as well, I grant you, that the family should have worn it beyond the memory of man; for your recent creations do not answer - they are nothing in comparison of your priest-king, whose merit is irrelevant, whose place cannot be disputed, nor made the subject of a recurring vote.'
Six bells struck; the awning was finished; Mr Evans said, 'Good Dr Maturin, you will not take it amiss, if I point out that your priest-king is on the wrong square.'
'So he is, too,' said Stephen; and having put it right he fell to studying the position again. While he did so, a shadow crossed the board. He made his move and looked up: it was Pontet-Canet, surveying the game with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. The oblique sunlight fell on his black whiskers, showing an odd rusty tinge beneath the dye: or perhaps caused by the dye? Where had he seen the man before?
His eyes wandered beyond the whiskers, beyond Mr Evans's bowed cogitating head, swept the sea for skimmers, and returning beheld Jack Aubrey. Jack kept out of the way of his captors as much as he decently could - the necessary cheerfulness was burdensome to him, far more burdensome than the truly shocking pain in his shattered arm; but now that he was well enough to come on deck he could not decently sit moping in his cabin. He paused at the top of the ladder, and Stephen saw his keen gaze run round the horizon in search of a British man- of-war, preferably an exact match for the Constitution, ideally his own Acasta (though she only carried eighteen- pounders). Having searched in vain he cast an automatic glance at the sails and the sky to windward, and walked aft to watch the game.
'I have moved, sir,' said Mr Evans, disguising his triumph in a tone of false meekness.
He had indeed. Stephen, intent upon his own attack, had overlooked that odious knight. Whatever he did he must lose a piece, and against a player as strong as Mr Evans that must mean losing the game: unless ... He advanced a pawn.
'No, no,' cried Pontet-Canet. 'You must -'
'Hush,' cried Evans, Jack and Stephen.
Pontet-Canet glared, particularly at Jack, sniffed, and walked away; but presently he was back, his fingers fairly itching to put the chessmen right.
The pieces fell, a brisk massacre; the board was almost clear, and Evans, one piece and two pawns up, fell plump into the trap. 'Oh,' cried he, striking his forehead, 'a stalemate!'
'Morally you won,' said Stephen. 'But at least this time my king was not discomfited.'
'What you should have done,' cried Pontet-Canet, 'was to take the fool.'
Evans and Stephen were too busy telling one another how they had contrived to lose, each having an impregnable position, an invincible plan of attack, to pay much attention to the others; but they were soon obliged to do so. The tone had risen far beyond that of ordinary disagreement; it had risen to acrimony; and at the same time it had so increased in volume that the American officers who were on the quarterdeck looked round in surprise.
'I must insist that you have placed the pieces wrongly,' said Jack again in a strong voice, unaccustomed these many years to contradiction from any but admirals and his wife. 'The queen's rook was here.' He tweaked the piece from the Frenchman's hand, and firmly leaning across him, put it down, not without some emphasis.
'Do you believe to bully me?' cried Pontet-Canet. 'You damned rogue. By God, it will not be so... I'll overboard you like a dead cat... if I find you too heavy, I'll cling to you with hands, legs, nails, everything; my life is nothing to send such a dog to hell,. Now, just now. .
Fortunately his words came tumbling so fast, and in so very strange an accent, that Jack did not understand much of what he said; and fortunately, as Stephen and Mr Evans interposed, the quarterdeck filled for the solemn noonday observation of the sun - a ceremony as grave here as it was in the Royal Navy - and the moment Commodore Bainbridge decreed that the hour was twelve the uproar of All hands to dinner drowned all private dissension. Stephen and Evans led Jack below for the dressing of his arm, and made him lie down to rest before dining with the Commodore.
'Shall we save it, do you suppose?' asked Evans as they returned to the open air.
'I doubt it,' said Stephen, 'and sometimes I am much tempted to cut. It is this clammy heat that does so weigh against him. And of course the mental agitation: he will accept Mr Bainbridge's invitations, his very kindly-intended invitations, though it kill him.'
'As for the heat,' said Mr Evans, 'once we round Cape Hatteras and stand inshore for the stream, there will be no more of that. And as for the agitation, might not we add the inspissated juice of lettuce to our present measures? The pulse is light, quick, and irregular; and there is an uncommon degree of nervous excitement and irascibility, in spite of the apparent stoicism. Another such scene as this morning's may have very grave effects. Obnoxious fellow, with his 'what you ought to have done'! I would not lose a game of chess to that man for the
