face Sir Francis saw did not wear the look of a man who had recently captured five thousand purses of piastres, and it was without much hope of a favourable reply that he said 'Well, here you are at last, Aubrey. Sit down. How did the expedition answer?'
'Not at all well, sir, I am afraid.'
'Did you not catch the galley?'
'We caught her, sir. Indeed, we sank her. But she had nothing aboard: they were expecting us.'
'In that case,' said the Admiral, 'I shall finish this report while I have all the facts in my mind. There are some newspapers on that locker, and the latest Navy List: it reached us only yesterday.'
Jack took up the familiar volume; he had not been away long, but already there were important changes. Some admirals had died, and their places, as well as certain vacancies, had been filled, so that everybody on the post-captain's list moved up, the highest to the glory of rear-admiral, blue or yellow as the case might be, and the others to a point somewhat nearer their apotheosis. J. Aubrey was now well past half way: farther past than the number of new admirals accounted for, and looking for the reason he found that several captains senior to him had also died- a sickly season in the Indies, east and west - while two had been killed.
'A pack of lies- mean shuffling excuses- anything to throw the blame elsewhere - infernal scrub,' muttered the Admiral, tapping the pages of the report into a neat pile and ranging them exactly among many others. 'You have seen the flag promotion, Aubrey? It has indeed removed a number of officers from the command of ships_ who at no period of their lives were capable of commanding them; but I am sorry to have occasion to observe, that the present state of the upper part of the list of captains is not much better than it stood before. It is impossible for a Commander-in-Chief to accomplish anything if his subordinates are incompetent.'
'No, sir,' said Jack, awkwardly enough; and after a disagreeable pause, 'I have brought you my official letter, sir,' - laying it on the desk - 'and I am concerned to say that it is unlikely to change your opinion.'
'Zounds,' said the Admiral - he was the only serving officer known to Jack who still said zounds - 'it goes on for ever. Two, no three pages, wrote small on both sides. You have now idea of how much I have to read, Aubrey. I am just in from off Toulon, and there was a great mass waiting here. Give me a precis.'
'A what, sir?' cried Jack.
'A succint abridgment, a summary, an abstract, for God's sake. You remind me of a half-witted midshipman I took aboard the Ajax once, in kindness to his father. 'Have you no nous?' I asked him. 'No, sir,' says he.'I did not know it would be wanted aboard ship, but shall certainly purchase some when next ashore.' '
'Ha, ha, sir,' said Jack, and he launched into an account of his voyage, ending 'And so, sir, having made a cock of it, if you will allow me the expression, I came away, my only consolation being that there were no casualties, apart from the dragoman.'
'Clearly our intelligence was at fault,' said the Admiral, 'and we shall have to go into the reasons for that.' A brooding pause. 'It is possible that you might have accomplished something by a direct dash at Mubara, throwing your Turks ashore at dawn and supporting them with a cannonade, rather than hanging about for the galley. Speed is the essence of attack.' Jack's orders had distinctly required him to proceed first to the southern channel: he opened his mouth to say so, but closed it again without a word. 'I do not mean that as any kind of reproof, however. No, no... The fact is that I have some unpleasant news for you. Surprise is to go home, either to be laid up or sold out of the service. No, no,' he said, holding up his hand, 'I know exactly what you are going to say. I should have said it myself at your age and in your position. She is in very good shape, with many years of useful life before her, and for sailing she has not her equal. All that is very true, though in passing I may say that very costly repairs may be needed soon: but what is equally true is that she is very, very old; she was old when we took her from the French at the beginning of the last war, and by modern standards she is very small and very weak, an anachronism.'
'You will allow me to observe, sir, that Victory is older still.'
'Only a little: and you know what she has cost in repairs. But that is not the point. The Victory can still batter any French first-rate, whereas there is virtually no frigate in the French or American navies that the Surprise can fight on anything like equal terms.'
It was quite true. For many years the trend had been to bigger, heavier ships, and the most usual frigate in the Royal Navy was now an eighteen-pounder thirty-eight-gun vessel that gauged well over a thousand tons, almost twice the size of the Surprise. Still, in his distress Jack did say 'The Americans have their Norfolk, sir, as well as their Essex.'
'Another anachronism - the exception that proves the rule. What would the Surprise have to say to their President or any of the other forty-four gun frigates with their twenty-four pounders? Nothing at all. She might as well tackle a ship of the line. But do not take it so hard, Aubrey: there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, you know.'
'Oh, I do not mind it, sir,' said Jack. 'Not at all. It was understood, when I brought the Worcester out, that this spell in the Mediterranean was to be a mere parenthesis, until the Blackwater should be ready.'
'The Blackwater? said Sir Francis, surprised.
'Yes, sir. I had a firm promise of her, for the North American station, as soon as she was ready.'
'From whom?'
'From the First Secretary himself, sir.'
'Ah, indeed,' said the Admiral, looking down. 'I see, I see. However, before you take the Surprise home I have some little jobs for her: a run up the Adriatic, to begin with.'
Jack said that he should be very happy, and then 'But I am afraid you must think me very uncivil, sir, for not having congratulated you on your promotion. I saw your flag had changed to red at the fore as I came over: give you joy with all my heart.'
'Thank you, Aubrey, thank you kindly; though at my time of life these things are only a matter of course. I hope you will live to hoist yours at the main. You will dine with me? I have some interesting people coming aboard.'
Once again Jack said that he should be very happy: and superficially happy he was, eating hearty and drinking the Admiral's good wine with an elegant woman on either side of him and his old friend Heneage Dundas smiling at him from across the table; but when he was being rowed back across the harbour sorrow for his ship welled up and nearly choked him. He had served in her as a midshipman and he had commanded her in the Indian Ocean, a
