'Gambling, too,' said her husband. 'I have absolutely seen him lose a thousand guineas at a sitting in Willis's rooms. And then he tried to mend his fortunes by some crackpot scheme of getting silver out of the dross of an ancient lead-mine - trusted in some shady projector to carry it on while he was at sea. I hear he is in a very deep water now.'
'Poor Captain Aubrey,' murmured Mrs Goole.
'But the real trouble with Aubrey,' said the captain after a long pause during which he watched the distant frigate go about on to the larboard tack and head for Needham's Point, 'is that he cannot keep his breeches on.,
This seemed a very general failing in the Navy, for it was the character her husband gave to many, many of his fellow-officers; and in the first days of her marriage Mrs Goole had supposed that the fleet was largely manned by satyrs. Yet none had ever caused Mrs Goole the slightest uneasiness and as far as she was concerned they might all have been glued into their small-clothes. Her husband perceived her want of total conviction and went on, 'No, but I mean he goes beyond all measure: he is a rake, a whoremonger, a sad fellow. When we were midshipmen together in the Resolution, on the Cape station, he hid a black girl called Sally in the cable tiers - used to carry her most of his dinner - cried like a bull-calf when she was discovered and put over the side. The captain turned him before the mast: disrated him and turned him before the mast as a common seaman. But perhaps that was partly because of the tripe, too.'
'The tripe, my dear?'
'Yes. He stole most of the captain's dish of tripe by means of a system of hooks and tackles. We were on precious short commons in our mess, and the girl needed some too - famous tripe it was, famous tripe: I remember it now. So he was turned before the mast for the rest of the commission to learn him morals, and that is why I am senior to him. But it did not answer: presently he was at it again, in the Mediterranean this time, debauching a post-captain's wife when he was only a lieutenant, or a commander at the best.'
'Perhaps he has grown wiser with age and increasing responsibility,' suggested Mrs Goole. 'He is married now, I believe. I met a Mrs Aubrey at Lady Hood's, a very elegant, well-bred woman with a fine family of children.'
'Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,' cried Goole. 'The very last thing I heard of him was that he was careering about Valletta with a red-haired Italian woman. No, no, the leopard don't change his spots. Besides, his father is that mad rakish General Aubrey, the radical member that is always abusing the ministry, and this fellow is his father's son - he was always rash and foolhardy. And now he is going to dismast himself. See how he cracks on! He will certainly run straight on to the Needham's Point reef. He cannot possibly avoid it.'
This seemed to be the general opinion aboard the flagship, and talk died away entirely, to revive some minutes later in laughter and applause as the Surprise, racing towards destruction under a great spread of canvas, put her helm alee, hauled on an unseen spring leading from her larboard cathead to the towline, and spun about like a cutter.
'I have not seen that caper since I was a boy,' said the Admiral, thumping the rail with pleasure. 'Very prettily done. Though you have to be damned sure of your ship and your men to venture upon it, by God. Determined fellow: now he will come in easily on this leg. I am sure he is bringing a prize. Did you smoke the spring to his larboard cathead? Good afternoon to you, ma'am,' - this to Mrs Goole, whose husband had abandoned her for a hundred fathoms of decayed cablet - 'Did you smoke the spring to his larboard cathead? Richardson will explain it to you,' he said, making his rheumatic way down the steps to the quarterdeck.
'Well, ma'am,' said Richardson with a shy, particularly winning smile, 'it was not altogether unlike clubhauling, with the inertia of the tow taking the place of the pull of the Ice-anchor...'
The manoeuvre was particularly appreciated by the watch below, plying spyglasses at the open gunports, and as the Surprise ran in on her last leg they exchanged tales about her - her extraordinary speed if handled right and her awkwardness if handled wrong - and about her present skipper. For with all his faults Jack Aubrey was one of the better-known fighting captains, and although few of the men had been shipmates with him many had friends who had been engaged in one or another of his actions. William Harris's cousin had served with him in his first and perhaps most spectacular battle, when, commanding a squat little fourteen-gun sloop, he boarded and took the Spanish Cacafuego of thirty-two, and now Harris told the tale again, with even greater relish than usual, the captain in question being visible to them all, a yellow-haired figure, tall and clear on his quarterdeck, just abaft the wheel.
'There's my brother Barret,' said Robert Bonden, sail-maker's mate, at another gunport. 'Has been Captain Aubrey's coxswain this many a year. Thinks the world of him, though uncommon taut, and no women allowed.'
'There's Joe Noakes, bringing the red-hot poker for the salute,' said a coal-black seaman, having grasped the spyglass. 'He owes me two dollars and an almost new shore-going Jersey shirt, embroidered with the letter P.'
The smoke of the frigate's last saluting gun had hardly died away before her captain's gig splashed down and began pulling for the flagship in fine style. But half way across the roadstead the gig met the flotilla of bumboats bringing sixpenny whores out to the Surprise: it was a usual though not invariable practice - one that most captains liked on the grounds that it pleased the hands and kept them from sodomy, though others forbade it as bringing the pox and great quantities of illicit spirits aboard, which meant an endless sick-list, fighting, and drunken crime. Jack Aubrey was one of these. In general he loved tradition, but he thought discipline suffered too much from wholesale whoredom on board; and although he took no high moral stand on the matter he thoroughly disliked the sight of the brawling promiscuity of the lower deck of a newly-anchored man-of-war with some hundreds of men and women copulating, some in more or less screened hammocks, some in corners or behind guns, but most quite openly asprawl. His strong voice could now be heard, coming against the breeze, and the Irresistibles grinned.
'He's telling the bumboats to go and - themselves,' said Harris.
'Yes, but it's cruel hard for a young foremast jack as has been longing for it watch after watch,' observed Bonden, a goatish man, quite unlike his brother.
'Never you fret your heart about the young foremast jack, Bob Bonden,' said Harris. 'He will get what he wants as soon as he goes ashore. And at any rate he knew he was shipping with a taut skipper.'
'The taut skipper is going to get a surprise,' said Reuben Wilks, the lady of the gunroom, and he laughed, deeply though kindly amused.
'Along of the black parson?' said Bonden.
'The black parson will bring him up with a round turn, ha, ha,' said Wilks; and another man said 'Well, well,
