Away and away, with the sky lightening on the right hand of the road. At Beaumont le Chateau they changed carriages in a great silent house far down its avenue of limes. Duhamel seemed to be the somewhat incongruous master of the place and he led them in to shave, to put on civilian clothes, and to breakfast. As they were trying on their coats Stephen said, 'Listen, Jack, you must know that Diana gave her great diamond to a minister's wife for our release.'
'Did she, by God?' cried Jack, motionless, one arm in his sleeve. 'Handsome - damn my soul if that ain't handsome. But Stephen, she was so pleased and proud of it - nothing finer in the Tower - a king's ransom - how can I thank her? She was always a thoroughbred, but this ...Sophie will be so eternally grateful: so am I, upon my sacred honour, so am I.' He ran into the high gaunt echoing room where breakfast stood on a trestle-table, seized her in his powerful grasp, kissed her heartily on either cheek and said, 'Cousin Diana, I am so grateful. I am proud, oh so proud, to call you kin, as proud as Lucifer, upon my soul. God bless you, my dear.'
In their new coach, a vast machine with six horses, he said she must live at Ashgrove Cottage; neither Sophie nor he would hear of a refusal; and as they sped through Picardy they talked of Stephen at length. He was now in the leading carriage with d'Anglars and Duhamel, in close discussion of the documents he was to carry and to comment upon in London. Any plan for bringing Buonaparte down had his wholehearted support, however wild it might be; and this was very far from wild. He made suggestions for rendering it more acceptable to English feelings, but these were changes of tone or of shading, never of substance: he thought the whole proposal admirably well conceived. Keen, intelligent, analytical minds had been at work, and he cordially hoped they might succeed - that they might meet with equal intelligence in London and at Hartwell.
The same minds had worked out their route and the details of their journey, and although he had seen what could be accomplished by efficient organization when urgent intelligence had to move fast, he had never experienced anything as smoothly effective as this. Only once, three miles beyond Villeneuve, was there the slightest delay, when a horse cast a shoe; otherwise they rolled across Picardy, rolled across Artois with never an unforeseen pause. They passed columns of troops, many of them mere boys, all marching north, long lines of cavalry remounts, a siege-train, ammunition and victualling waggons, field artillery; and every time the road was cleared well before they swept by.
Stephen knew very well that most French victories had been founded on brilliant staff-work, and it was clear that the conspiracy included some eminent staff-officers; yet he sometimes felt that this perfection could not endure, that some senior general commanding an important post might require explanations and confirmation from Paris, or that some other faction that valued Johnson and his government should send after them or worse still use the semaphore telegraph whose towers he saw on every hill. But he was mistaken: they ran into Calais at high water, with the cartel, HMS Oedipus, in the harbour, ready to sail on the ebb; and there was even a moderate off-shore breeze.
'You will have a comfortable voyage at least,' he said, for it had been agreed that d'Anglars should accompany him, if only to make everything doubly clear to his cousin Blacas and to the titular king. 'That ship, or rather brig, is a particularly fine sailer: a good, dry, weatherly sea-boat, as we say. Furthermore, the ocean is placid.'
'I am glad of that,' said d'Anglars. 'The last time I crossed I was very dangerously ill. I was obliged to lie down.'
Apart from smugglers, the Channel knew no vessels more discreet than these cartels; they moored in a discreet, shielded part of the harbour, and when they belonged to the Royal Navy, as did the Oedipus of course, they were commanded by unusually discreet captains, often quite senior men temporarily detached for the purpose. Jack, sitting in the window of the private house where they were waiting to embark, was therefore surprised to see William Babbington on the quarterdeck, obviously directing proceedings; for Babbington had served under him as a midshipman and a lieutenant, and although Jack knew he had been made commander into the captured Sylphide - Jack had in fact written many letters and stirred up his friends to that very effect - Babbington still seemed to him remarkably young for such a position.
But young or not, Captain Babbington understood the meaning of the word discretion as well as any man in the service; and when his passengers, English and French, came aboard there was no hint of recognition in his correct, civil reception, no hint on either side. He directed a midshipman to take Captain Aubrey, Dr Maturin and the lady to his cabin, the foreign gentlemen to the gunroom: this being done, he looked fore and aft, and in a creditable imitation of Jack's quarterdeck voice he roared 'All hands unmoor ship.'
The Oedipus cleared the wharf under forestaysail and jib, with her topsails on the cap; she hoisted home her yards in the fairway and ran past the north buoy, wafting very gently and discreetly through the crowd of fishing- boats and coming to the outer roads in a little over half an hour. Here Captain Babbington let fall his courses and some pretty severe remarks about the sloth of the midshipmen at the larboard gaskets, a sloth that foretold the ruin of the Navy within a very short lapse of time. He had just uttered this prophecy, which he had first heard from Jack at the age of twelve, when a tall shadow fell across the deck, and turning he saw the original prophet himself, looking nervous, apprehensive, uneasy, timid, a striking sight for one who had gone into action with Captain Aubrey as often as William Babbington.
'Shall we go below, sir?' he asked, smiling uncertainly.
'Why, I believe I shall take the air for a while,' said Jack, moving aft to the taffrail. 'It is rather hot down there.'
'Carry on, Mr Somerville,' said Babbington, and he joined his former captain by the ensign-staff.
'They are at it hammer and tongs,' said Jack in a low, private voice. 'Hammer and goddam tongs. They might have been married this twelvemonth and more.'
'Dear me,' said Babbington, appalled.
The yards were braced just so, the Oedipus was heading for Dover over a quiet, gently rippling sea, her deck was almost as steady as a table, and now that all was coiled down and pretty there was scarcely a sound but the wind in her rigging, the distant cry of gulls, and the water slipping down her side. They were standing not far from the cabin skylight, and in the comparative silence they distinctly heard the words, 'God's death, Maturin, what an obstinate stubborn pigheaded brute you are, upon my honour. You always were.'
'Perhaps you would like to see our figurehead, sir,' said Babbington. 'It is a new one: in the Grecian taste, I believe.'
Oedipus might well have been in the Grecian taste, if the Greeks had been much given to very thick paint, an insipid smirk, eyes fixed in a meaningless glare, and scarlet cheeks. The two captains stared at the image and after a while Jack said, 'I was never any great fist at the classics, but was there not something rather odd about his feet?'
'I believe there was, sir. But fortunately they don't show, he being cut off at the waist.'
'Though now I come to think of it, was it not his marriage, rather than his feet?'
