stages of the process. He has given me until Monday to make up my mind, and I mean to make use of that time. It appears to me that our safety lies in noise. I shall see our agent for prisoners of war, I shall speak to all our acquaintance, prisoners or otherwise, to all the foreign consuls in this town, perhaps to the civil authorities and the Federalist newspaper editors. Covert operations of this kind must be carried out in silence: noise is death to secret intelligence, above all in a town like this with an active, vocal public opinion, much of it strongly opposed to the war, and I mean to make all the public noise I can, just as I lay down in the street and bellowed and hallooed until a crowd gathered when Pontet-Canet set upon me. I believe it will answer in this case too; and that the shadowy charges against you having been abandoned, the exchange will take place in the usual way. That is how I shall spend tomorrow and what there is of Monday.'
'I hope to God you are right,' said Jack. 'But what about the bloody-minded Frenchmen in the meantime?'
'Johnson has given me assurances that they will not move before our next meeting: they are not in their own country, after all. He holds them over my head as a threat, you see, to compel me to acquiesce. It is reasonable to rely on his assurance, since he is not going to sacrifice a potentially valuable agent for the sake of gratifying Dubreuil's lust for revenge. It is in his interest to preserve me until our final interview on Monday; and after that we can sit here, never stirring out, protected by the public noise I shall have raised. And if, by any most unlikely chance, the French should make an attempt upon me here, we can now defend ourselves.'
Jack cut the thread and handed back the mended coat; he looked out of the window, where the Shannon's top-sails winked in the evening light, and said, 'Dear Lord above, how I do wish I could set you clear of all this dirty, ugly, underhanded mess: how I long for the open sea.'
The dawn of Sunday did not break at all. The fog that had formed in the night only became a little lighter and more visible as it moved in quiet swathes along the quays, sometimes making silent whirlpools at the street corners, where it met a current of air The slight increase in light was not enough to wake Dr Maturin, however, and the two nurses with whom he had contracted to go to early Mass were obliged to beat on his door to rouse him
He hurried into his clothes, but even so the priest was on the altar by the time they reached the obscure chapel in a side-alley, and crept into the immensely evocative smell of old incense There followed an interval on a completely different plane of being with the familiar ancient words around him, always the same, in whatever country he had ever been (though now uttered in a broad Munster Latin), he lived free of time or geography, and he might have walked out, a boy, into the streets of Barcelona, blazing white in the sun, or into those of Dublin under the soft rain He prayed, as he had prayed so long, for Diana, but even before the priest dismissed them, the changed nature of his inner words brought him back to the immediate present and to Boston, and if he had been a weeping man it would have brought the tears coursing down his face.
As it was, he felt a dry burning in his eyes, a constriction in his throat, while he waited for the priest to come out of the vestry. To him he stated that he was a prisoner of war, that he was likely to be exchanged in the next few days, that he wished to be married before his voyage, and that as soon as he could he would acquaint Father Costello with the day and hour, because the ceremony would have to be carried out with very little notice.
Then he left the misty, candle-lit chapel for the colder fog outside, and considered for a while. It would be no use calling on Diana at this time of the morning, since she often lay abed till noon, but there were many other things to do. Perhaps the first should be to see Mr Andrews, the British agent for prisoners of war: Stephen knew where he lived, and taking his bearings from the vague form of a clock-tower he set out. He had a fair knowledge of the town, and he was confident that presently he should cross the Street with Franchon's hotel in it; the agent's house lay not far from the hotel, a couple of hundred yards behind it. But the broad Street did not appear: instead he found himself at the harbour, with the far broader sea at his feet, stretching away into the greyness: high water, and scarcely a ripple. The wet quays were empty; drops fell from the yards and rigging of the ships tied up along them; no sound but the clopping of a few horses' hooves and the distant plash of oars as those few Bostonians who celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday or who did not celebrate it at all, rowed out to go fishing. On ordinary days there were a good many of these small craft: the Shannon never troubled them at all, but had been seen purchasing their lobsters, pollack, hake, and halibut in baskets.
At last he found a Negro on the waterfront, but the Negro was a stranger in those parts, and together they wandered in search of the street that ran down and opened on to the harbour itself. No street: only vile cobbles, puddles, dark warehouses and the encircling fog; and at one point Stephen thought they must soon reach the open country. But in time a light appeared, a row of lighted windows. 'Let us knock,' he said, 'and ask our way. We may be out of the town entirely.'
Yet before be had had time to knock he found he knew the place: although the fog removed it from its context and altered its perspective, it was the tavern where he had met Mr Herapath and his friends. The place was open, and as he pushed the door a rectangular flood of orange light lit up the fog. 'Come in and drink a cup of coffee, friend,' he said to his companion.
'But I am a nigra, sir, black man,' said he.
'That is no very heinous crime.'
'Oh brother, you sure are a stranger here,' said the Negro, laughing, and he vanished into the fog, laughing still.
When Stephen came out, wiping his lips, it had thinned somewhat, and at times the red ball of the sun could be seen. The geography at least was plain; he walked briskly along to what he privately called the Rambla and up it to the hotel There was some activity within, but as far as he could make out Diana's windows were blind no lights behind the balcony along the whole first floor. From the hotel he took first one side-street, where a disoriented cock was crowing, then another, peopled by ghostly hogs, and not by hogs alone He passed a couple of men lounging in a doorway, and an interminable family carrying prayerbooks, and as he drew near to Mr Andrews's house he saw a vague dark shape that very soon resolved itself into a coach Four horses stretching out before it, gently steaming through their cloths. A black coach- Pontet-Canet's coach. No light in Andrews's windows, none in the fanlight of his door.
Deliberately he began to cross the road, but a head at the coach window cried 'Le voila', the doors opened and men poured out. Stephen whipped round and raced back. A hog across his path very nearly brought him down and as he recovered he heard a whistle blown behind him and saw the two men leave their doorway. They ran to close the two side-alleys and both had their pistols out. The numerous family lay between him and them did they amount to a crowd, a group numerous enough? They did not. Stephen was among them, the woman's outraged face turning towards him as he jostled her tallest boys, but even so the man on the left levelled his piece and fired, hitting a child just by him. After an infinitesimal pause of stupor the man of the family went for him like a tiger with his stick and Stephen ran left-handed past the fighting pair.
The streaming hogs, the screaming children delayed the man on the right and those from the coach: Stephen had a clear start, but he also had a shocking stitch in his side. As he laboured on he looked right and left for a lighted house, a church, a tavern, and looked in vain, for this was a commercial district, gaunt warehouses with cranes protruding from their upper storeys, closed offices, shut-up shops, and the running feet were louder and louder behind. A weed-grown vacant lot - an improvised pig-sty within it. He slipped through the ragged palings and crouched there with a gravid sow, near her time, timid, and new-littered for her farrowing. Bent double to
