not particularly wanted this sum of money once his gambling fever was over, but having risked his own in perfectly good faith, he had certainly earned it.
Wray was aware of his feelings. 'Is there anything I can do to sugar this pill? I have a certain amount of influence on patronage, as you know.'
'I think you will admit that the pill you propose calls for a world of sugar,' said Stephen. Wray admitted it entirely, and Stephen went on, 'I heard a very ugly rumour at the club this morning: it was said that the Blackwater, though long promised to Captain Aubrey, had been given to a Captain Irby. Is this true?'
'Yes,' said Wray, after a moment's hesitation. 'His parliamentary interest required it.'
'In that case,' said Stephen, 'I shall look to you to provide Aubrey with a similar vessel. You know his fighting- record, his just claims, and his desire for a heavy frigate on the North American station.'
'Certainly,' said Wray.
'Secondly I should like a sea-going command for Captain-Pullings, and thirdly your general benevolence with regard to the Reverend Mr Martin, and a helping hand if ever he should require a transfer from one ship to another.'
'Very well,' said Wray, noting down the names. 'I shall do what I can. As you know, sloops are in very short supply - there are twice as many commanders as there are ships for them to command - but I shall do what I can. As for the chaplain, there will be no difficulty: he may go wherever he wishes.' He put his notebook back in his pocket and called for more coffee. When it came he said 'I am very much obliged to you for your forbearance, Maturin, indeed I am. I do not think you will be kept waiting very long, however. My father-in-law is sixty-seven and he is far from well.' Admiral Harte had a dropsical tendency, it appeared, and although the actuaries' table of expectation of life gave him nearly eight years he was unlikely to last half that time. In his agitation Wray spoke with such a want of common hypocrisy that Stephen scarcely knew how to reply. He observed that some physicians were treating dropsy with a new preparation of digitalis, but that for his own part he should be very cautious in exhibiting so potentially dangerous a drug. The conversation continued on these lines for some little while, and Stephen had the impression that any dose that might diminish the Admiral's expectation of life still further would be heartily welcome; but before Wray could commit himself on that point Pullings and Martin came to take Stephen to the cave.
'That cave, my dear,' he said to Laura as they settled down to a midnight feast in his room, 'that cave is one of the wonders of the universe. I absolutely saw every species of Mediterranean bat, and two that I suspect of being African; but they were somewhat shy, and retired to a crevice beyond the reach of Pullings' rope. A monstrous fine cave indeed! In the more favoured places there was two foot of their dung upon the floor, with a large number of bones and mummified specimens. I shall carry you there on Friday.'
'Not on Friday you will not,' said Laura, spreading his bread with red mullet roe.
'Do not tell me you are superstitious, for shame!'
'I am, though. I should not spit in a wolf's eye-for the world. But it is not that. On Friday you will be far away. Oh, how I shall miss you!'
'Are you prepared to reveal the source of your information?'
'Mrs Colonel Rhodes told me that a party of Marines were going aboard the Surprise on Thursday to sail the next day, and her brother, who commands them, is much put out, because he had an engagement on Saturday. And the port-captain's daughter said it was decided that the Surprise was to take the Adriatic convoy.'
'Thank you, my dear,' said Stephen. 'I am happy to know it.' And after some reflection he said, 'It would seem natural that our farewell embraces should produce something unusually substantial for your foreign gentleman.' He went into his bedroom, chose carefully among the poisoned gifts he had prepared with such loving pains, and picked out a small dirty-white sheepskin pocketbook with a clasp. 'There, my friend,' he said to himself, 'with the blessing that should confound your knavish tricks for quite a while.'
CHAPTER NINE
The surgeon's cabin in HMS Surprise would have been a dark, cramped triangle, like a slice of cake, if its sharp end had not been cut off, which made it into a dark, cramped quadrilateral. It was so low that a moderately tall man would have struck his head on the deck above if he had stood upright, and it did not possess a single right-angle in its entire construction; but Dr Maturin was rather short, and although he was reasonably fond of right-angles he was fonder still of a place that did not have to be stripped bare every time the ship cleared for action, as the Surprise did every evening, a place where his books and specimens could remain undisturbed. As for the want of room, long use and his friend the carpenter's ingenuity in the matter of folding cot and table and of lockers built in unlikely places dealt with that to some degree; and as for the darkness, Stephen had devoted a very small fraction of his preposterous winnings - the winnings he had actually received, in elegant Bank of England notes - to the lining of all free surfaces with sheets of best Venetian looking-glass, which increased the light that filtered down to such an extent that it allowed him to read and write without a candle. He was writing now, and to his wife, his feet wedged against one stanchion and the back of his chair against another, for the frigate was behaving in a very skittish manner as she beat up against a short head-sea: the letter had begun the day before, when the Surprise, steering for Santa Maura, where two ships of her convoy were to be left, had been forced away by stress of weather, forced away almost to Ithaca. 'To Ithaca itself, upon my word of honour. But would any amount of pleading on my part or on the part of all the literate members of the ship's company induce that animal to bear away for the sacred spot? It would not. Certainly he had heard of Homer, and had indeed looked into Mr Pope's version of his tale; but for aught he could make out, the fellow was no seaman. Admittedly Ulysses had no chronometer, and probably no sextant neither; but with no more than log, lead and lookout an officer-like commander would have found his way home from Troy a d?d sight quicker than that. Hanging about in port and philandering, that was what it amounted to, the vice of navies from the time of Noah to that of Nelson. And as for that tale of all his foremast hands being turned into swine, so that he could not win his anchor or make sail, why, he might tell that to the Marines. Besides, he behaved like a very mere scrub to Queen Dido - though on second thought perhaps that was the other cove, the pious Anchises. But it was all one: they were six of one and half a dozen of the other, neither seamen nor gentlemen, and both of 'em God d?d bores into the bargain. For his part he far preferred what Mowett and Rowan wrote; that was poetry a man could get his teeth into, and it was sound seamanship too; in any case he was here to conduct his convoy into Santa Maura, not to gape at curiosities.'
Then, feeling that he was exposing his friend rather too much (for the animal in question was of course the captain of the Surprise) he laid the sheet aside and wrote 'Jack Aubrey has faults and to spare, the Dear knows: he thinks a sailor's highest aim is to carry his ship from A to B in the shortest possible time, losing not a minute, so that life is a kind of perpetually harassing race, and only yesterday he was doggedly, mechanically stubborn in his refusal to turn a little way aside so that we might view Ithaca. Yet on the other hand (and this is my real point) he is capable of a most surprising degree of magnanimity and self-command when the occasion calls for it: a much higher degree than you might suppose from his impatience over trifles. Of this I had an instance the day after we left Valletta. Among other passengers we are carrying a Major Pollock, and at dinner this gentleman happened to
