and in spite of Standish's want of experience.
Except for that excellence, Jack had rarely been more mistaken in a man: the modesty and diffidence that the penniless, unemployed Standish had brought aboard were now no longer to be seen; and the assurance of a monthly income and a settled position had developed a displeasing and often didactic loquacity. He was also, of course, incompetent. As Jack said in his letter to Sophie, 'I had supposed anyone with common sense could become a tolerable purser; but I was wrong. He did make an attempt at first, but as he is seasick every time we hand topgallants and as he can neither add nor multiply so as to get the same answer twice, he soon grew discouraged and now he leaves everything to his steward and Jack in the dust.
He is not without his good points. He is perfectly honest (which cannot be said of all pursers) and it was most gentlemanly in him not to let anyone know that he was a strong swimmer after I had pulled him out of the sea. And he listens attentively, even eagerly, when Stephen and Martin explain the ship's manoeuvres to him, and the difference between the plansheer and the spirketting; but apart from these lectures (and it would do your heart good to hear them) when he is quiet, he talks, he talks, he talks, and always about himself. Tom, West and Davidge, who have had no more education than can be picked up aboard ship and who are not much given to reading, are rather shy of him, he being a university man, and Martin is wonderfully charitable; but this cannot last, because as well as being incompetent as a purser, he is also sadly foolish.'
Jack paused, remembering an incident during his most recent dinner with the gunroom, when he heard someone, in the midst of Standish's long anecdote, say, 'I did not know you had been a schoolmaster.'
'Oh, it was only for a short time, when my fortunes were low. That is a recourse we university men always have - in case of temporary embarrassment, you can always take refuge in a school, if you have a degree.'
'Delightful task, to teach the young idea how to shoot,' observed Stephen.
'Oh no,' cried Standish. 'My duties were of a far higher order: I took them through Lily and the gradus. Another man came in and taught them fencing and archery and pistol-practice and that kind of thing.'
Jack returned to his pen. 'But it is the music that particularly distresses me. Martin is not a gifted player, and Standish perpetually puts him right - shows him how his fingering is at fault and his bowing, and the way he holds his instrument, and his notion of the tempo, and his phrasing. He has already offered Stephen a few hints and I think that when he grows bolder he may do the same kind office by me. I was very much mistaken in supposing I could play second fiddle to such a man and I shall have to find some decent excuse. The music is indeed celestial (how such a man can so lose himself in it and play so well is beyond my comprehension) but I do not look forward to this evening's bout at all. Perhaps there will be none. The sea is getting up a little.'
Jack paused, re-read the last page and shook his head. Sophie disliked fault-finding; it distressed her, and she had heard a very great deal of it when she was a girl. And fault-finding in a letter might well sound harsher than by word of mouth. He balled up the sheet and threw it into the waste-paper-basket, a mine of interest to Killick and those members of the crew who shared his confidence, and as he did so he heard Pullings cry 'Stand by to hand foretopgallant,' followed immediately by the bosun's call.
There was no music that evening apart from some quiet rumbling over familiar paths by Aubrey and Maturin - an evenly-shared mediocrity - and an hour or so of their favourite exercise, which was improvisation on a theme proposed by one and answered by the other, which sometimes rose well above mediocrity because of their deep mutual comprehension, in this field at least. Standish sent his excuses - regretted that indisposition prevented him from having the honour, etc - and Martin in his double capacity of assistant surgeon and early acquaintance sat by the wretched purser's side, holding a bowl.
There was no music when they reached the westerlies either, for they were blowing briskly with a little north in them, so briskly that the Surprise went bowling along under close-reefed topsails with the wind on her quarter at nine and even ten knots, wallowing at the bottom of her long roll and pitch in a way that did her little credit.
This splendid breeze held day after day, only slackening when they were approaching the Berlings. Martin led Standish on deck to view them that evening - cruel jagged rocks far out in a troubled ocean and under a troubled sky, the horizon dark. The purser clung to the rail, looking hungrily at these first specks of land since Maim Head: his clothes hung loose about him.
'I hope I see you in better trim, Mr Standish,' said Jack Aubrey. 'Even at this gentle rate we should raise the Rock of Lisbon by dawn, and if we are lucky with our tide you may eat your dinner in Black Horse Square. Nothing sets a man up like a good square meal.'
'But before that,' said Stephen, 'Mr Standish would be well advised to eat a couple of eggs, lightly boiled and taken with a little softened biscuit, as soon as ever his stomach will bear them; then he may have a good restorative, roborative sleep. As for the eggs, I heard two of the gunroom hens proclaim that they had laid this morning.'
They did indeed raise the Rock of Lisbon a little before the dawn of a brilliant sparkling clear morning with warm scented air breathing off the land; and at the same time they passed HMS Briseis, 74, a cloud of sail in the offing, obviously homeward bound from Lisbon and making the most of the stronger breeze out there. Jack struck his topsails as in duty bound to a King's ship and Briseis, now commanded by an amiable man called Lampson, returned the salute, at the same time throwing out a signal whose only intelligible word was Happy.
But they were not lucky with their tide: breathing the warm scented air was certainly a delight to those that longed for land, but it prevented the Surprise from crossing the Tagus bar and she was obliged to anchor all through slack water and well beyond before the pilot would consent to take her in.
In this lakelike peace Standish, who had eaten his two eggs the evening before and had spent a calm night, spent his time eating first three pints of portable soup, thickened with oatmeal, and then a large quantity of ham; this recovered his spirits wonderfully, and although he was still feeble he gasped his way into the maintop, where Stephen and Martin were to explain the operation of getting under way.
Below them on the quarterdeck the pilot finished his account of how the Weymouth, relying on her own knowledge of the river, had been wrecked on the bar - just over there, three points on the starboard bow, not quite a mile away - with the words 'And all for the sake of the pilot's fee.'
'That was very bad, I am sure,' said Jack. 'Were the people saved?'
'A few,' said the pilot reluctantly. 'But those few were all horribly disfigured. Now, sir, whenever you please to give the word, I believe we may proceed.'
'All hands unmoor ship,' said Jack, raising his voice to the pitch of an order, though every man had been at his station these ten minutes past, angrily willing the pilot to stop his prating, to stash it, to pipe down; and instantly the bosun sprung his call.
'See,' cried Stephen, 'the carpenter and his crew put the bars in the capstan - they ship them, pin them and
