unbecoming to the character of an officer or drunkenness or all three. He hated these cases, the evidence of bad blood and rancour in a service where decent relations were essential to efficiency, to say nothing of happiness among the people. He knew very well that men on a long blockade, almost entirely cut off from contact with home and the outside world, apparently forgotten, badly supplied, badly fed, keeping the sea in all weathers, were likely to grow sour, and that small offences rankling could grow to monstrous proportions; but even so he was distressed to see the length of this second section of the list. All the trouble came from three ships, the Thunderer, Harte's flagship, the Superb, and the Defender; their officers must have been at loggerheads with one another and with their captains for months and months. 'At least,' he reflected, 'we shall not have time to get through more than a few of them, and then, what with exchanging and cooling down, most of the smaller charges will be withdrawn.'
Upon the whole he was right, a court-martial at sea being an exceptional affair, quite unsuited to the usual leisurely procedure in port; but even so they dealt with many more cases than he had expected, the judge- advocate - here the Admiral's secretary, Mr Allen, being a keen-witted, energetic, methodical, quick-thinking man of business.
They ran through the earlier, more routine cases with remarkable speed: and the sentences to death or to being flogged round the fleet with two, three and even four hundred lashes (which amounted to much the same thing, on occasion) plunged Jack's heart in gloom. Then, it appearing that the clerk accused of comforting the King's enemies, a most unusual case and no doubt the reason for this most unusual sitting, had killed himself, the court proceeded to some of these nasty wardroom quarrels. In a way Jack was relieved: he knew nothing of the clerk's case, but it might well have proved as monstrous as the one he had heard in Bombay, when a surgeon, an able, respected, but free-thinking man, was hanged for saying that he approved certain aspects of the revolution in France; and he wished to hear no more of the ghastly solemnity with which the judge-advocate told a wretched- culprit that he was to be put to death - the more so since he knew that the Commander-in-Chief, a man as hard to others as he was to himself, would probably confirm every sentence.
The disgruntled officers followed one another in a most disagreeable public washing of very dirty linen. Fellowes, the captain of the Thunderer, appeared no less than three times, either as accused or accuser, a big, angry-looking man with a red face and black hair; Charlton of the Superb and Marriot of the Defender twice each. The court dealt with these cases tenderly: often, when the proceedings were resumed after the members' deliberation, the judge-advocate would say 'The court having maturely and deliberately considered the evidence finds these charges partly proved: the sentence of this court is that you be reproved for petulance and admonished to be more circumspect and not to offend in a like manner for the future; and you are accordingly hereby reproved and so admonished.' But one young man was dismissed his ship and one, who had been provoked into giving Fellowes a very rash answer, was broke - dismissed the service.
They were both from the Thunderer, and the conclusive evidence, the interpretation of the lieutenant's attitude and unwise gesture, came from Harte, who spoke with evident ill-will. They turned to yet another case, a plain drunken murder on the lower deck this time, and as Jack listened sadly to the familiar evidence he saw Martin watching with a tense, shocked expression on his white face. 'If he wanted to see the dirty side of the Navy, he could not have come to a better place,' he reflected, as a seaman bearing witness rambled on: 'Which I heard the deceased abusing of the prisoner in a most dreadful manner; he first called him a Dutch galliot-built bugger, damned him, and asked how he came to be in the ship, or who brought him into her; then he damned the person whoever did bring him. I could not afterwards make out what the deceased said, as he was in a horrid passion, but Joseph Bates, yeoman of the sheets, bade him kiss his arse - he was no seaman...'
While the earlier cases were being heard Stephen was with Dr Harrington, the Physician of the Fleet, an old and esteemed acquaintance, a learned man with very sound ideas on hygiene and preventive medicine but unhappily somewhat too gentle and timid for full effectiveness at sea. They talked of the squadron's remarkably good state of health: no scurvy, Sicily and its orange-groves being near at hand; little venereal disease, the ships being so rarely in port and the Admiral forbidding all but the most unexceptionable women aboard and very few even of them; no casualties from action, of course, and surprisingly few of the maladies usual to seamen, except in Thunderer, Superb, and Defender. 'I put it down largely to the use of wind-sails to bring at least some fresh air below,' said Harrington, 'to the continual serving-out of antiscorbutics, and to the provision of wholesome wine instead of their pernicious rum; although it must be admitted that happiness, comparative happiness, is a most important factor. In this ship, where there is often dancing on the forecastle, and stage-plays, and an excellent band, we have almost no sickness: in the three ships I have mentioned, where the diet, the wind-sails and the antiscorbutics are exactly the same, the surgeons have their hands full.'
'Indeed, the effect of the mind on the body is extraordinarily great,' observed Stephen. 'I have noticed it again and again; and we have innumerable authorities, from Hippocrates to Dr Cheyne. I wish we could prescribe happiness.'
'I wish that we could prescribe common sense,' said Harrington. 'That might be at least a first step towards it. But there is so strong a resistance to change in the official mind, with so stubborn and dogged a clinging to tradition, however evil, in the seamen, that sometimes I grow discouraged. Yet I must admit that the Admiral, though a difficult patient himself, supports me in all the reforms I try to introduce.'
'A difficult patient?'
'I should scarcely go too far if I were to say an impossible patient. Disobedient, masterful, doses himself. I have ordered him home I do not know how many times: I might as well have spoken to the ship's figurehead. I regret it extremely. But he tells me that he has consulted you before, you must know what kind of a patient he is.'
'What is his present state?'
Harrington made a hopeless gesture. 'When I have said that there is a tabes of the inferior members and a generalized severe and progressive lowering of the whole constitution I have said all I can usefully say.' He nevertheless went on to give a more detailed picture of decline: great loss of physical strength in spite of adequate digestive and eliminatory functions, a wasting of the legs, little or no exercise, occasional seasickness - disturbing after so many years at sea and dangerous in such a reduced condition -lack of sleep, extreme irascibility.'
'Is there any imbecility of will?'
'Heavens, no! His mind is as sharp and clear as ever it was. But his task is beyond the powers of a man his age - it is beyond the powers of a man of any age, that is not in perfect health. Can you imagine dealing not only with the management of a large and often troublesome fleet, but with all the affairs of the Mediterranean as well?-Particularly of the eastern Mediterranean, with its devious, shifting politics? He is at it fourteen and fifteen hours a day, hardly finding time to eat, still less to digest. And all this is required of a man whose education has been that of a sailor, no more: it is required of him for years on end. I wonder the strain has not killed him before this. My prescriptions, my bark and steel, may do some good; but short of going home there is only one thing that will set him squarely on his feet again.'
'What is that?'
'Why, an action with the French, a victorious fleet-action with the French. You spoke of the effect of mind upon matter just now: I am convinced that if the French were to come out of Toulon, and if they could be brought to
