kind of offhand cunning, shaving past the Lazaretto, catching the back-eddy by Cuckold's Reach (a spacious stretch in these warm latitudes), and slipping through the hospital channel, censuring all changes that had been made since their time. Not that there were many: the Spanish flag rather than the Union flew over various public buildings, and now the Spanish men-of-war in the harbour were not prizes to the Royal Navy but allies, yet upon the whole little had altered. The place still had much of the air of an English Georgian market-town and sea-port set down in an incongruous landscape of vines and olives, with the occasional palm, and a brilliant Mediterranean sky over all.
As they sailed along Jack pointed out the various places of interest to the youngster at his side, such as St Philip's, the powder mill, the ordnance-wharf and the mast-yard; but the gangling boy, a spotted first-voyager named Willet, was too much awed by his company, too eager to be ashore, and perhaps too stupid, to absorb much information and as they drew nearer to the town Jack fell silent. 'We will have a pint of sherry at Joselito's for old times' sake,' he said to himself, 'order a handsome dinner at the Crown - a beefsteak pudding, a solomon gundy, and those triangular almond cakes to finish with - and then walk about, looking at the places we used to know, until it is ready.' And then to Bonden, 'Captain of the port's office.'
The barge glided along under a high wall on the far side of the harbour, a wall with a discreet green door leading to the dove-house where he and Molly Harte had first made love. The wall was dotted with capers, growing wild in the interstices of the stones; they were now covered with their strange feathery flowers, as they had been on that occasion, and his mind was still ranging back with a mixture of lubricity and tenderness and indefinite regret when the barge sprang her luff and touched against-the opposing wharf at the Capitania steps. 'Jump up to the captain of the port, Mr Willet,' said Jack. 'Give him my compliments and ask where the Doctor's victualler lays. Her name is Els Set Dolors.'
'Yes, sir,' said Willet, looking appalled. 'Els Set Dolors it is, sir. What language shall I say it in, sir?'
'Spanish or French; and if that don't answer you may try Latin. Bonden will go with you.'
'The captain of the port's compliments, sir,' said the returning Willet, 'and the Set Dolors lays off la ... la . . .'
'Dogana,' said Bonden.
'But Dr Maturin is gone to . . .'
'Ciudadela, on a mule.'
'And they do not look to see him back before Sunday evening.'
'Asking your pardon, sir,' said Bonden, 'Saturday, I believe.'
'He said Sabbath-oh,' cried Willet.
'So he did, sir: but the Sabbath is on Saturdays in these parts, we find. Sunday they call Dimanche-oh, or something very like.'
'Thank you, Mr Willet,' said Jack, deeply disappointed. 'However, I think we may as well have our dinner here, before returning to the ship.' He reflected for a moment, his eye on the unattached ladies gathering at the waterside: he had put half a guinea of the boy's allowance into his hand before leaving the Worcester, and although Willet was neither amiable nor intelligent Jack did not wish him to buy a pox with it.
'Eldon,' he said to the grizzled, hard-faced bow-oar, 'Mr Willet will have dinner at Bunce's, and then you will show him the sights of Mahon, the ordnance-store, the careenage, the proving-ground and the Protestant church, the slips if there is anything a-building, and the mad-house if there is time before six o'clock.' He arranged with Bonden for the bargemen's dinner, told them to draw straws for boat-keepers, and walked off unattended.
Sentimental pilgrimages had rarely succeeded with Jack Aubrey: in the few that he had ever deliberately undertaken something had nearly always happened to spoil not only the present but much of the past as well; yet it now seemed that perhaps this might be an exception. The day itself was brilliantly clear, as it had often been when he was in Minorca as a lieutenant and a commander, and it was warm, so that climbing the steps to the upper town he unbuttoned his coat, a far finer coat than that which he wore in those days but one that did not prevent him from being recognized and welcomed at Joselito's and the other places he called at on his way to the Crown.
Port Mahon still showed many signs of the enjoining English connection: quite apart from the officers and men from the three Royal Navy vessels in the harbour - two sloops and a gun-brig on convoy-duty - pink faces and hair as bright yellow as Jack Aubrey's walked about the street. Tea and even buns were to be had, as well as English beer and tobacco, and at Joselito's there were copies of the London papers, not more than two or three months old. But the high days were gone, the days when the whole Mediterranean fleet lay in Port Mahon and powerful garrisons filled St Philip's and the citadel: the Royal Navy now relied much more on Malta and Gibraltar; the Spanish navy kept only a couple of brigs in Mahon, while the troops amounted to no more than a few companies of local militia; so it was understandable that the town as a whole should seem rather sleepy, while the places that catered chiefly for sailors and soldiers should have a somewhat deserted air.
Jack walked into the Crown by the back way, through a courtyard full of orange-trees; and there he sat on the stone rim of the fountain in the middle to draw breath and cool himself after his walk. His cold was gone long since but he was out of form and in any case walking on the hard, unyielding land after weeks and months of having a live deck underfoot always made him gasp. From an upper window came the voice of a woman singing to herself, a long flamenco song with strange intervals and Moorish cadences, often interrupted by the beating of a pillow or the turning of a bed. The throaty contralto reminded Jack of Mercedes, a very, very pretty Minorcan girl he had known in this same inn before his promotion. What would have happened to her? Swept off by some soldier, no doubt; a mother many times over, and fat. But still jolly, he hoped.
The song ran on, a lovely dying fall, and Jack listened more and more attentively: there were few things that moved him as deeply as music. Yet he was not all ears, all spirit, either, and in a long pause while a bolster was thrust into a case too small his brute belly gave so eager a twinge that he got up and walked into the taproom, a broad, low, cool, shadowy place with vast barrels let into its walls and a sanded floor. 'You bloody old fool,' said a parrot quietly in the silence, but without real conviction. Jack had known this place so thick with tobacco-smoke that you could hardly tell one uniform from another and so full of talk that orders had to be roared as though to the foretop. Now it was as though he were walking in a dream, a dream that respected the material surroundings to the last detail but emptied them of life, and to break the spell he called 'House. House, there. La casa, ho.'
No reply: but he was glad to see an enormous bull-mastiff come in from the hall, making the first marks in the newly-sprinkled sand. The Crown had always had fine English mastiffs, and this one, a young brindled bitch with a back broad enough to dine on, must be a granddaughter of those he had known very well. She had never seen him in her life, of course: she sniffed his hand with distant civility and then, obviously unimpressed, paced on to the patio. Jack stepped into the hall, a square hall with two staircases and two English longcase clocks in it, the whole full of brilliant sun: he called again and when the echo of his voice had died away he heard a distant screech of 'Coming' and the patter of feet on the corridor above.
