telling the Niobe's lieutenant that the Worcester was so short of men that he could not possibly spare a single one in exchange, no, not even a one-legged boy, when the Dryad repeated the signal Worcester : captain repair aboard flag.
'My barge, if you please, Mr Pullings,' said Jack, and as he stayed to have a civil word with the Niobe's officer and to ask after Mr Pitt, he saw Davis plunge in among the hands who were preparing to hoist the boat out and then thrust one of its crew aside by brute force, passionately asserting his right to be one of the captain's bargemen again. Jack left Bonden and Pullings to deal with this by themselves and stepped aft for a last draught of hot lemon. How they did so without a scene he did not know, but as he sat in the barge, wrapped in his boat- cloak, with a supply of warm dry handkerchiefs in his lap and a ludicrous woollen comforter round his neck, he noticed that Davis was rowing number three, pulling with his usual very powerful, jerky, inaccurate stroke and wearing a look of surly triumph on his ill-natured and even sinister face. Whether he was staring straight at his captain Jack could not decide, seeing that one of Davis's eyes had a wicked cast in it.
Captain Aubrey repaired aboard the flag with all possible dispatch, pulling for three-quarters of a mile through a cold and choppy sea against the wind; but the flag was not ready to receive him. The Flag-Captain was a hospitable soul, however, and at once took him, together with the Captain of the Fleet, into his cabin, where he called for drinks. 'Though now I come to think of it, Aubrey,' he said, examining Jack's face, his red, bottle-shaped nose, with narrowed eyes, 'you seem to have a cold coming on. You want to take care of these things, you know. Baker,' he called to his steward, 'mix a couple of glasses of my fearnought draught, and bring 'em hot and hot.'
'I saw you swimming the other day,' said the Captain of the Fleet. 'Swimming in the sea. And I said to myself, This is madness, stark, staring madness; the fellow will catch cold directly and then go wandering about the squadron like a mad lunatic, spreading infection far and wide, like a plague-cart. Swimming, for God's sake! In a sheltered cove, under proper supervision, on a warm calm day with the sun veiled and on an empty stomach but not too empty neither, I have nothing against it; but in the open sea, why, it is just asking for a cold. The only cure is a raw onion.'
The first glass of the fearnought draught came in. 'Drink it while it is hot,' said the Flag-Captain.
'Oh, oh,' cried Jack the moment it had gone down. 'God help us.'
'I learnt it in Finland,' said the Flag-Captain. 'Quick, the second glass, or the first is mortal.'
'It is all great nonsense,' said the Captain of the Fleet. 'Nothing could be worse for you than boiling alcohol, pepper, and Spanish fly. An invalid should never touch alcohol: nor Spanish fly, neither. What you want is a raw onion.
'Captain Aubrey, sir, if you please,' said a deferential young man.
Admiral Harte was sitting with his secretary and a clerk. In an impressive tone he said, 'Captain Aubrey, there is a service of great importance to be performed, and it is therefore to be confided to a reliable, discreet officer.' Jack sneezed. 'If you have a cold, Aubrey,' said Harte in a more natural voice, 'I will thank you to sit farther off. Mr Paul, open the scuttle. A service of great importance ... you will take the Dryad under your orders and proceed to Palermo, where you will find the armed transport Polyphemus with presents for the Pasha of Barka and a new envoy aboard, Mr Consul Hamilton. You will carry this gentleman and the presents to Barka with the utmost dispatch. As you are no doubt aware, the benevolent neutrality of the rulers of the Barbary States is of the first importance to us, and nothing whatsoever must be done to offend the Pasha: on the other hand, you are not to yield to any improper demands nor sink the dignity of this country in the least degree, and you are to insist upon satisfaction in the matter of the Christian slaves. You will also carry these dispatches for our consul at Medina. They will be put aboard the Dryad when you are a day's sail from Medina: Captain Babbington will stand in, deliver them to the consul, and rejoin you and the transport on your passage east. It is clear, is it not, that Dryad is to part company a full day's sail from Medina?'
'I believe so, sir, but in any case I shall read my orders over and over again, until I have them by rote.' Like many other captains, Jack knew that in dealing with Admiral Harte it was as well to have everything in writing, and since this was one of the few points on which a captain was entitled to run counter to a flag-officer's wishes he carried the day, though not without wrangling. Harte was badly placed, since he had an audience perfectly well acquainted with the rules of the service, and after some remarks about unnecessary delay and waste of a fair breeze, urgent service and foolish punctilio, the clerk was told to draw up a summary of Captain Aubrey's orders as quickly as he could. While it was being written out Harte said, 'Was you to be bled, it would help your cold. Even twelve or fourteen ounces would do a great deal, and more would really set you up: cure you for good and all.' The notion pleased him. 'Cure you for good and all,' he repeated in a low, inward voice.
The Worcester and the Dryad had hardly sunk the squadron's topsails below the western horizon before the sun came out and the breeze increased so that the sparkling blue was flecked with white horses.
'Buttons, the French call them,' observed Captain Aubrey in his thick, cold-ridden voice.
'Do they indeed, sir?' said Captain Babbington. 'I never knew that. What a very curious notion.'
'Well, you could say that they are as much like sheep as they are horses,' said Jack, blowing his nose. 'But sheep ain't poetical, whereas horses are.' 'Are they really, sir? I was not aware.' 'Of course they are, William. Nothing more poetical, except maybe doves. Pegasus, and so on. Think of the fellow in that play that calls out 'My kingdom for a horse' - it would not have been poetry at all, had he said sheep. Now here are the orders: read them while I finish my letter, and commit the piece that concerns you to heart. Or copy it out, if you prefer.'
'Well, sir,' said Babbington as Jack laid down his pen, 'my part seems plain sailing: I part company a day's sail from Medina, run in, deliver the dispatches to the consul there, and rejoin. Indeed, the whole trip seems pretty straightforward: Palermo, Medina, Barka and back.'
'Yes,' said Jack. 'So it seems to me; and at the time I wondered at the Rear-Admiral saying it was an important service, calling for a discreet officer that could be relied upon - at his saying it with such a knowing look.'
There was a short silence. Jack and Babbington had much the same opinion of Admiral Harte, and each knew the other's mind; but neither acknowledged this by so much as a glance.
'As pretty a run as you could wish,' said Babbington. 'We are sure to be able to pick up some pickled tunny at Barka, let alone other stores, and then there is always the possibility of a prize - a fat merchantman from the Levant, creeping between Pantellaria and the main at dawn, and we bringing up the breeze!'
'I have almost forgotten what a prize is like,' said Jack; but then the fine piratical gleam died out of his eyes and he said, 'But those days are pretty well over, I am afraid, except maybe in the Adriatic or farther east. At this end what few ships there are that are fair prize crowd sail for the African coast the moment they see one of our cruisers, and once in with the land they are safe. These Beys and Pashas are so hellfire touchy about their neutrality and their goodwill is so important to us at this stage that the Admiral would break any man that cut out a prize on their shores, even if it were bursting with silk and pearls, gold, myrrh, and frankincense. I know that
