'There were two, my lord,' said I, but in a very meek, submissive tone.
'Then, said he, they were both to be flogged, with one dozen strokes from me and another dozen from him; and as for me, I might consider myself reprimanded, severely reprimanded.'
'And as for this alleged privateer,' he went on, 'I dare say it was only some trumpery merchantman; you young fellows are always whoring after merchantmen. The moment you are given a command you go whoring after merchantmen - after prizes. I have seen it time, time and again, and the fleet left without frigates. But since you are here, you might as well make yourself useful to your King and country.' I was rather pleased with the 'young fellows', but less so when it appeared that my usefulness might take the form of leading an attack by fireships on the harbour of Bainville, which I happen to know uncommonly well. I do not like fireships: the plan seemed to me ill-conceived, with not nearly enough attention paid to the coast batteries and the very strong run of the tide, and with little likelihood of the fireships' crews being able to get away. No one who has been in a fireship can expect any quarter: if he is taken he is either knocked on the head directly or put up against a wall and shot a little later; that is why they are always manned with volunteers. I am sure that all the Surprises would have volunteered, but I very much disliked the idea of their being captured and I was just as pleased when it was represented that if I were given the command it would mean my being put over the heads of several men senior to me on the post-captains' list. At the council the point was made several times with great eagerness and warmth and those who made it said that Lord Keith had preferred me again and again in the Mediterranean, while even these last few months I have been given a cruise that many frigate-captains would have given their eye-teeth for and that had no doubt brought me in great wealth (how I wish it had). True, I have spent less time on shore than most men, and few have had such luck; but I was surprised to find how much jealousy it had caused.
I had no idea I had so many enemies, or at least ill-wishers, in the service. But, however, the scheme was dropped, and my usefulness came down to conveying the Admiral's sister to Falmouth. She had been ordered to sea by her physicians for a shortness of breath; but as Stephen observed, the cruise had very nearly cured her of every disease in Buchan's Domestic Medicine by cutting off her breath entirely: the poor lady was sea-sick from the first word to the last, and was grown quite pitifully thin and yellow.
'Stephen himself left for town this morning, treating himself to a chaise so that he could set Parson Martin down somewhere far off the main road. I wish I could give you a better report of him. He seems anxious and unhappy. At first I thought he might be worrying about money, but not at all - our agent has been as brisk as a bee with having our prizes condemned and paid for. Besides, when he told me of his godfather's death he observed that he had inherited from him; I do not suppose it is anything out of the way, but Stephen has always been content with very little. I am afraid he grieves for the old gentleman, but. even more than that I believe he is most painfully anxious about Diana. I have never seen him so uneasy in his mind.' Jack thought of telling Sophie the rumours about Stephen's infidelity that had been current in the Mediterranean, but after a moment he shook his head and went on,
'I shall be sending you Killick, Bonden and perhaps Plaice with most of my dunnage by the slow coach, which leaves tomorrow: I shall have to stay a little longer, to make sure of leaving the ship as I could wish (there is some hope of her going into ordinary rather than to the breakers) and to see some inquisitive gentlemen from the Admiralty and Navy Board; yet even so I may be in town as soon as Stephen, or even sooner, if this sweet south- wester holds. Harry Tennant has Despatch, and he promises me a lift. She is acting as the cartel for the moment - you remember the cartel, that brought us back from our captivity in France? and she is very fast sailing large, though a slug on a bowline. It will only be touch and away at Calais, and then from Dover the London mail will whirl me up. I shall have to see the lawyers first to find how things stand - a proper flat I should look, was I to post down to Ashgrove and instantly be arrested for debt, if any of the cases have been decided against us. And for the same reason, since the ship's arrival will have been reported in the papers these many days past, I shall stay at the Grapes, and not come down till Sunday; but if you would like me to bring anything down, please write to me at the club; they are more used to letters there, and will not tidy them away among the dish-covers.' The Bunch of Grapes was a small, comfortable, old-fashioned inn that lay within the liberties of the Savoy, so its customers were out of reach of their creditors all the week, as they were throughout the kingdom on Sundays. Jack had spent a considerable time here, ever since he had grown rich enough to be a worthwhile prey for land- sharks, and Stephen kept a room all the year round, as a base, retaining it even after his marriage with Diana, they being an odd, semi-detached couple.
'But I believe I may say that Sunday is certain - as certain as anything can be, that has to do with the sea - and I cannot tell you how I long for it. After so long a time we shall have so very, very many things to say to one another.' He stood up and walked over to the window: it commanded a fine view of Telegraph Hill, where the vanes of the semaphore were in continual motion, information travelling to London and back at an extraordinary pace. The Admiralty would have known of the Surprise's arrival the very day she made her number, far out in the offing; and by now, perhaps, they would have made up their minds what to do with her. But he hoped that she might be laid up in ordinary, in reserve, rather than be sold out of the service: so long as she was whole there was hope.
'She would make a perfect cartel, for example,' he reflected on Tuesday, sitting alone in the great cabin of the Despatch as she ran fast up the Channel with the wind at west-south-west. 'Far, far better than this wallowing tub. She has everything to recommend her, beauty, speed, grace; at ten miles you cannot mistake her. Such waste - the pity of it all. But if I go on like this, battering my head against a brick wall, I shall go out of my mind - run melancholy mad.'
He did go on thinking about her however, and the more objective part of his mind offered the reflexion that although there was something to be said for speed, recognizability was no virtue in a cartel, or at least not in the particular cartels that plied between France and England this war. Since Buonaparte had decreed that there should be no exchange of prisoners these were scarcely cartels at all in the usual sense; nor had they much evident reason for existing. Yet to and fro they went, sometimes carrying envoys from one side or another with proposals or counterproposals, sometimes eminent natural philosophers such as Sir Humphry Davy or Dr Maturin, invited to address one or another of the academies in Paris or the Institut itself, sometimes objects to do with science or natural history captured by the Royal Navy and sent back by the Royal Society, to whom the Admiralty submitted them, and sometimes (though far more rarely) specimens travelling the other way, but always carrying the newspapers from either side and elegantly dressed dolls to show London just how fashions were developing in France. Discretion was their prime virtue, and on occasion their passengers spent the voyage in different cabins, being landed separately by night. This time the Despatch, met by a pilot-boat in Calais road, lay at an empty wharf until four in the morning, when Jack, dozing in a hammock slung in Tennant's dining-cabin, heard three sets of people come aboard at half-hour intervals.
He was reasonably familiar with the ways of a cartel, because he and Stephen had travelled in the Despatch's predecessor on one of the rare occasions when the convention was abused: they had been prisoners in France and Talleyrand had engineered their escape so that Stephen, whom he knew to be an intelligence-agent, might take his private proposals for betraying Buonaparte to the English government and the French court in exile at Hartwell. He was therefore not at all surprised when Tennant asked him to stay below while the other passengers disembarked in a secluded part of Dover harbour, far from the traffic of the port - far too from the customs office, through which Jack would have to pass. It did not matter as far as duty was concerned, since his valise had nothing customable in it, but it did mean that the people before him would probably take up all the places on the London coach, both inside and out, and possibly all the post-chaises too: in the present decayed state of the town there were very few.
'Come and have dinner with me at the Ship,' said Jack, as the Despatch tied up at the customs wharf and sent
