He was contemplating one of the clocks, made by Wm Timmins of Gosport and ornamented with a creditable ship of the last age, a ship that still carried a lateen yard on the mizen, when the pattering feet reached the staircase on his right and looking up he saw Mercedes coming down - an unchanged Mercedes. Still pigeon-plump, but no vast spreading bulk, no moustache, no coarseness.
'Why, Mercy, my dear,' he cried. 'How happy I am to see you!' And stepping to the foot of the stairs he stood there with open arms.
Mercedes paused a moment in her course, and then, crying 'Capitan manyac!' flung herself into them. It was as well that he was a powerful man and well braced, for Mercedes, though slim-waisted, was a solid girl and she had the advantage of the height: he stood the shock however, the padded, scented shock, and having squeezed the breath out of her body he lifted her up and gazed at her face with great complacency. Pleasure, freshness, gaiety and peach-like bloom he saw there, and he kissed her heartily, a delighted, frankly amorous kiss, heartily returned. Kisses were not unknown at the Crown; Jack and Mercedes had exchanged them before now without the roof falling in; but these set off a very shocking hullabaloo. Both clocks struck the hour, the front door and two windows slammed with a sudden gust of wind, four or five bull-mastiffs began to bay, and at the same moment the hall filled with people coming in from the street or the courtyard or down the other flight of stairs, all with messages or questions or orders that had to be shouted over the hollow roaring of the dogs. Mercedes banged and thumped the mastiffs, dealt with the questions in English, Spanish and Catalan, and between two of them she told a boy to lead the Captain to the Mermaid, a particularly comfortable little room up one pair of stairs.
And in this little room, the Crown grown calm again, they sat very companionably together, eating their dinner at a small round table, the dishes coming up hot and hot from the kitchen by a plate-hoist let into the wall. Mercedes ate much less than Jack, but she talked much more, very much more: her English had never been accurate ; it had slipped with the years, and now her rather wild remarks were interrupted by bubbling laughter and cries of 'Cat's English, manyac; kitchen-cat's English.' Nevertheless Jack perfectly understood the essence: Mercedes had married the Crown, a man much older than herself, a poor, thin, pitiful, weak-hammed cat as avaricious as a badger who had only made the offer to spite his family and save her wages. He had never made her a single present and even her ring was found to be brass and therefore neither valid nor binding: whereas the present Jack had given her long ago yet not so very long ago neither was close to her heart at this very moment: she had put on a new pinner for the occasion, and now undoing it she leant over the table, showing him the diamond pendant he had bought for her in the year two, one of the many charming fruits of a valuable prize, nestling low in her bosom. The Crown, that sordid creature, was away for some days, in Barcelona. Jack would have his old room, no doubt: it had been new-hung with crimson curtains!
'Oh damme, Mercy dear,' he cried, 'I am a captain now, you know, and must not sleep out of my ship.'
'Would you not even be allowed a little siesta after all that duck pie, and the day so hot?' asked Mercy, gazing at him with wide innocent eyes.
Jack's face, somewhat more florid than usual with fish soup, lobster, lamp chops, duck pie, Minorcan cheese and three bottles of wine, spread in a rosy smile so wide that his bright blue eyes vanished and Mercedes knew that he was about to say something droll. So he would have done too, as soon as he had hit just the right balance between 'not sleeping' and indelicacy, if Stephen had not made the most unwelcome entrance of his life. They had heard his harsh, disagreeable voice on the stairs and Mercedes had had time to spring up and adopt the attitude of one waiting at table when he walked rapidly in, smelling of hot mule. 'Good day to you, young gentlewoman,' he said in Catalan and then without the slightest pause 'Come, brother, drink up your coffee. There is not a moment to lose. We must run to the boat.' He seized the water-jug, drained it, recognized Mercedes and said, 'Why, Mother of God, it is you, child, I am happy to see you. Pray run for the reckoning, my dear; the Captain must leave this minute. Is it a guest you have?' he asked Jack, observing the two places laid.
'No,' said Jack. 'That is to say, yes; most certainly -of course. Stephen, let us meet at the boat in a couple of hours' time - it is no good before then - I have given a youngster leave: he cannot be left behind.'
'Jack, I have run my poor mule nearly to death: you may certainly maroon a midshipman. Ten midshipmen.'
'Then again, I have some important communications to make to a friend here.'
'Are these communications of the very first importance to the service, tell?'
'They are more of a personal nature, but -'
'Then let us hear no more of them, I beg. Would I have rid the cruel long road from Ciudadela in the heat of the day - would I drag you from your coffee and your company and drink none myself, if there were no imperative haste? If it were not more important than amiable communications or even than spouse-breach for all love? Come, child, the Captain's hat and coat and sword, if you please: duty calls him away.'
Duty was obeyed, but with a sullen and a reluctant step; and it was clear to the coxswain and crew of the barge, hurriedly called from Florio's skittle-alley, that they had better watch out for squalls. A glance at their Captain's closed, forbidding face, a glance at one another, with an almost imperceptible jerk of the head or movement of an eyelid, and all was understood: the bargemen sat in their places, prim, mute, and correct as a Sunday-school while Bonden took the boat right down the harbour with a strong favourable breeze and the officers sat silent in the stern-sheets.
Jack's silence was that of extreme disappointment-and frustration: Stephen's that of a mind busy far away, preoccupied with motives and probabilities in the first place and then with questions of the distances to be covered by various men and the time required for their journeys. That morning he had received word of the meeting he and his colleagues had been working for, a meeting with men high in the service of the French and their allies that might lead to very great things: the meeting itself was confirmed, but to enable an important officer from Rochefort to attend it had been put forward three days. All the factors that Stephen could check agreed that the appointment could be kept by those on land, but there remained the Worcester's ability to carry him to that obscure marshy rendezvous and as soon as they were in the fore-cabin he said to Jack, 'Pray, Jack, could you set me down at the mouth of the Aigouille by Tuesday evening?'
'Where is the Aigouille?' asked Jack coldly. Stephen turned to the chart-table and ran his finger along the low flat coastline of Languedoc with its salt lagoons and brackish marshes, canals and small un-navigable rivers choked by sandbars, meandering through malarial fens, and said 'Here.'
Jack looked at the chart and whistled. 'As far as that?' cried he. 'I had supposed you meant something in these parts. How can I possibly answer for such a distance unless I can foretell the wind's direction and its force? Above all its direction. It is not quite foul at present, but it might haul forward until it is directly in our teeth any minute - dead on end, as they say. I wonder at your asking such a simple question: you must know by now that with the best will in the world a ship cannot lie closer than six points, and the Worcester will not come up so near. You must have heard of leeway - somebody must surely have told you of leeway and...'
'For God's love, Jack, just point the ship in as near the right direction as ever you can, and tell me about leeway afterwards. There is not a moment to be lost.' These words had so often been addressed to him during his
