his love, and of various other friends, many of them French royalists. She also said she positively longed to see him back again, and hoped he was taking care of himself. Then there were several communications from fellow- naturalists in various countries, bills of course, and a statement from his man of business, showing that he was far richer than he had supposed, which quite pleased him. And there was the usual letter from the anonymous correspondent who wished him to know that Diana was deceiving him with Captain Jagiello: they had now taken to 'doing it' in St Stephen's church, standing behind the altar. 'Would that be a man's notion, now, or a woman's?' he wondered, but he did not dwell on the question, because the next letter was from Sir Joseph Blaine, the chief of naval intelligence, a colleague and friend of such long standing that he could mingle news of the learned societies to which they both belonged (Sir Joseph was an entomologist) with veiled comments on various plans and on the progress of their particular war. The whole letter was interesting, but the part that Stephen re-read with unusual care was the observation that 'by now his dear Maturin would no doubt have met Mr Wray, our acting Second Secretary'. Just that and no more: no remarks about Wray's task, no request that Stephen should help him, and a slight insistence upon the word acting. In a man like Sir Joseph these were significant omissions, and coupled with the fact that Wray had brought no personal message they convinced Stephen that although Sir Joseph no doubt thought Wray capable of dealing with an affair like the leakage of naval information at Valletta he had not seen fit to let him into quite all the secrets of the department: it was natural enough, after all, that a recently-appointed and perhaps temporary official, unless he were a man of the most exceptional ability in that line, should not be treated with a complete lack of reserve in the matter of intelligence, where an otherwise unimportant lack of judgment or of discretion might have such disastrous effects. And since Wray did not enjoy Sir Joseph's fullest confidence - since he had presumably not yet been found to be a man of the most exceptional ability as far as intelligence was concerned - it appeared to Stephen that it would be wise to imitate his chief's reserve, and to deal with the case of Mrs Fielding by himself.
He had barely reached this decision before two messages arrived, the one requiring him to repair aboard the Caledonia at fifteen minutes past ten o'clock in the forenoon and the second inviting him to dine at the palace to meet Mr Summerhays, a very wealthy and well-connected botanist, with a civil note from Sir Hildebrand apologizing for the short notice - Mr S was proceeding to Jerusalem tomorrow and would infinitely regret leaving Malta without having heard Dr M. on the plants of Sinai.
The first of these messages necessarily came to him through Captain Aubrey, who said or rather bellowed (the dockyard caulkers were hammering away overhead and both watches were busy scraping the deck the caulkers had already dealt with from the mainmast forward) 'A quarter past ten: my word, you will have to bear a hand to be there in time, Stephen, with your decent uniform on shore.'
'Perhaps I shall not go until tomorrow,' said Stephen. 'Nonsense,' said Jack impatiently, and he called for his coxswain and steward. It took some little time to find them, since they too were fetching the clothes that they had left at the dockyard in the chest they shared, and in the interval Stephen said, 'Brother, I am afraid the post brought you sad, sad news; I have rarely seen you look so down.'
'No,' said Jack. 'It was not the post: they are all well at home, and send their dear love. It is something else. I will tell you: you will not repeat it to anyone.' He pointed to a broom in a corner of the echoing cabin and said 'We are to wear that at the masthead.' But seeing that this conveyed no meaning at all he forced himself to put it into plain words. 'Surprise is to be laid up or sold out of the service, and we are to take her home.' Stephen saw the tear well in his eye, and for want of any more adequate remark he said 'It will not affect you professionally?'
'No, since the Blackwater will be ready very soon: but I cannot tell you how it wounds . . Killick,' he said, breaking off as his steward and coxswain arrived, 'the Doctor is to be aboard the flag at ten minutes past ten: you know where his uniforms are stored: he will change in my room at Searle's. Bonden, he will travel in my gig, and he will not forget to pay respect to the quarterdeck, nor his compliments to the Captain of Caledonia and the Captain of the Fleet, if they are on deck. You will see that he goes aboard dryfoot.'
Dr Maturin reached not only the Caledonia's quarterdeck but even her great cabin dryfoot, Bonden having carried him bodily up the accommodation-ladder; and there he found Mr Wray, Mr Pocock, and young Mr Yarrow, the Admiral's secretary. A moment later the Admiral himself hurried in from the quarter-gallery, buttoning his clothes. 'Forgive me, gentlemen,' he said. 'I am afraid I must have eaten something. Dr Maturin, good morning to you. Now the purpose of our meeting is first to find out how our intelligence came to be so mistaken about the Mubara affair, and in the second place to consult about the steps to be taken to prevent the enemy from obtaining information concerning our movements here. Mr. Yarrow will begin by reading the relevant passages from Captain Aubrey's letter and then I shall ask you for your comments.'
Pocock was of the opinion that it all arose from the English refusal to back Mehemet Ali in his plan for becoming independent of Constantinople, thus throwing him into the arms of the French: the date of the temporizing English reply- in effect a refusal- coincided almost exactly with what must have been the first conception of this plot, which was obviously designed to win French support and to destroy British influence in the Red Sea, far more than to capture a ship.
Wray agreed, but he said that a scheme of this kind required a man on the spot, a person in French or Egyptian pay to transmit information and to coordinate the movements of the other side; and he was sure that the man in question was Hairabedian. It was most unfortunate that he had been killed; he might have been induced to make the most important revelations. He had brought the strongest recommendation from the resident in Cairo and glowing testimonials from the embassy in Constantinople at the same time as the first news of the French designs on Mubara; but with so urgent a matter there had been no time to verify either the resident's message or the testimonials. No doubt they would prove to be false, for it appeared that in Suez the dragoman had repeatedly passed on encouraging rumours about the galley's being loaded at Kassawa, which he must have invented or have known to be untrue. Dr Maturin would confirm that, he believed. 'Certainly,' said Stephen, 'but whether he was deceiving us or whether he was himself deceived I cannot say. Perhaps his papers will resolve the question.'
'What did he leave in the way of papers?' asked Wray.
'A small box containing some poems in modern Gneek and a number of letters,' said Stephen; and partly because he had liked Hairabedian and partly because he was naturally sparing of information he suppressed the words 'and Captain Aubrey's chelengk' and continued 'I went through them at Captain Aubrey's request, in case there should be any family we should communicate with; but those few that were in Greek gave us no indication, and those that were in Arabic or Turkish I could not read. I am not an oriental scholar at all, alas.'
'Were they not lost in the Bedouin raid?' asked Pocock.
The Admiral darted out of the room with a muttered excuse.
'They were not,' said Stephen. 'They were in the sea-chest that was saved, Captain Aubrey's sea-chest.'
While they waited for the Admiral Pocock spoke about the complexities of the relationship between Turkey and Egypt, and when he came back he said 'I think you will agree, Sir Francis, that from our last Cairo report it seems certain that Mehemet Ali would never have left the new sheikh in Mubara for more than a month or so, even if he had been installed.'
'Oh, quite so,' said the Admiral wearily. 'Well now, the first question must remain in suspense until Hairabedian's letters are deciphered: let us pass on to the next. Mr Wray?'
