difficult and temperamental little frigate, but wonderfully responsive, fast and mettlesome for those who knew her ways; she had never failed him in an emergency, and he would never know a more sea-kindly ship, by or large, in light airs or in a strong gale. The idea of her rotting away in some foul creek and then being broken up or sold out of the service to be cut down into a creeping merchantman was more than he could bear. If that galley had been what it seemed, he would have bought her himself, to preserve her from such a fate: he had known ships, particularly enemies' ships, sold for no great sum if they were not wanted for the Navy.
Nor was it likely that he should ever command such a crew again, a crew of hand-picked seamen, every one of whom could hand, reef and steer, and practically every one of whom he knew and liked as a man. He knew exactly where he was with the Surprises and they knew exactly where they were with him and his officers; the Surprises could be allowed liberties unheard-of in a ship with a mixed set of people, including landsmen and thieves as well as a large proportion of sullen, understandably resentful pressed men, a ship's company that needed the perpetual tight discipline usual in the service, the repetitive drilling in reefing, furling, shifting topmasts, hoisting out boats and so on, all adapted to the capacities of the least endowed, the hard driving, and almost inevitably the hard punishment. Jack Aubrey was a taut captain, but he had never shared the zeal for punishing that characterized so many officers; he loathed flogging; he could never with a clear conscience order it for faults he had committed at times himself, and although the traditions of the service being what they were he had in fact ordered many a round dozen in his time he found it a great relief not to have to do so, a great relief not to be righteously indignant and perpetually holier than everyone else in the ship. There had scarcely been a flogging aboard the Surprise since he took her over; and if only her people had included a somewhat more amiable, less uncouth captain's steward, a captain's cook with more than two puddings at his command, a couple of officers who could play well enough for Stephen and him to have an occasional quartet, and a stronger midshipmen's berth, he would have said that before Pullings was promoted and before so many of the hands were drafted away, the frigate had had the finest ship's company in the squadron, if not in the entire service.
'I shall not tell them until I am forced to it;' he thought, as the boat turned among the lighters and he saw his ship. She was moored well outside the yard, but he was not at all surprised to see two lumpish scows still attached to her and a party of dockyard mateys busy about her stern.
'Larboard side,' he said to his coxswain. Any ceremony in receiving him aboard would be ridiculous: he was the only man in the ship at this moment who possessed more than a thin duck shirt and trousers and a battered straw hat.
'Sir,' said Mowett, taking off his with what grace its broken brim allowed, 'I am very sorry to tell you that the villains will not have caulked the quarterdeck abaft the mizen before Tuesday. Your cabins are open to the...'
'No glass in the stern windows, neither,' cried Killick in a shrill fury.
'Killick, pipe down,' said Jack.
'Sir,' said the purser, 'the storekeeper would not let me have hammocks and beds on my personal indent. He made game of my clothes, affected to believe I was in liquor, desired me to tell my story of camels and Arabs to the Marines, and walked off, laughing.'
'Nor in the quarter-galleries,' muttered Killick.
'No slops, either,' said the purser. 'And this to a purser of fifteen years' standing.'
'And the post, sir,' said Mowett. 'There is a sack for us, but it has been sent across to St Isidore's, and they say they are shut today, because of the feast.'
'Closed?' said Jack. 'Be damned to that. Bonden, my gig. Killick, jump across to Searle's, take me a room for the next few days, and lay on dinner tomorrow for Dromedary's officers. Mr Adams, come along with me.'
Then, turning at the gangway, 'Where is the Doctor?'
'He has taken Rogers, Mann and Himmelfahrt to the hospital, sir.'
To the hospital, like a conscientious surgeon, to see his earlier patients, to bring three more, and to talk and even operate with his colleagues; but also, like a conscientious intelligence-agent, to Laura Fielding's house, quite late in the evening.
The outer door was open, but the lantern at the far end was not lit, and as he walked along the dark stone passage he thought 'What a cut-throat place it is, to be sure: as silent as death.' At the door he groped for the bell-chain, heard the faint answering peal, instantly drowned by Ponto's bellowing, and then Laura's voice asking who was there.
'Stephen Maturin,' he said.
'Mother of God,' she cried, opening the door and letting out a flood of light, 'How happy I am to see you again.' And as he walked in, clearly visible, 'Oh, oh! Have you been shipwrecked?'
'Not at all,' said Stephen, rather nettled, for he had borrowed a pair of purple breeches at the hospital, and he had been shaved. 'Do you find my appearance not quite the thing?'
'Not in the least, dear Doctor. Only you are usually so... so point-device, shall I say?'
'By all means.'
'And always in uniform, so I was a little surprised to see your white coat.'
'We call it a banyan,' said Stephen, considering the garment, a loose sailcloth jacket with tapes instead of buttons, run up by Bonden out of what little light canvas the Dromedary had to spare. 'Yet perhaps it may look a little desperate on shore: perhaps it may. An ancient gentlewoman, Colonel Fellowes' mother, I believe, gave me this coin as I turned the corner of the street, saying 'Not for drink, my good man. Pas gin. Niente debaucho.'
But for the moment I have nothing else. A parcel of black thieves on horseback took away my bell may they rot for ever in the deep cinders of Hell and my collections and all my clothes was the way of it. However, like a prudent man I had not taken my other chest with my good uniform, at which I rather rejoice.' By this time they had reached the sitting-room and the little round table upon which Mrs Fielding's supper was laid out: three triangles of cold polenta, a hard-boiled egg, and a jug of lemonade. 'Will you believe it, my dear,' he said, sitting down opposite her and instantly seizing upon one of the triangles, 'that best coat of mine cost eleven guineas. Eleven guineas: a shocking sum indeed.' He was embarrassed - a rare state for him - and he talked somewhat at random: she poured him a glass of lemonade and watched a little wistfully as he reached out for the egg. 'But,' said he, unconsciously withdrawing his hand, 'if I had fetched all this splendour from the hotel where I left it, and put it on, I should never have had time to reach this house with any chance of finding you still up; and I thought it better to compromise your reputation in a banyan, as we agreed, than to leave it intact in a gorgeous coat.'
'It is truly benevolent in you to trouble with me, and to come so soon,' she said, taking his hand and looking at
