marmalade from Ashgrove, the coffee coming in a succession of pots.
Stephen watched them sitting there, all three haggard from their watch; and once again it occurred to him that it was not so much the iniquitous imposition of income tax that was causing the decline of this form of entertainment, but rather the boredom and the labour on the part of the host: by naval tradition Elliott could start no subject, and although as a well-bred man he made real efforts by way of response, he was no more gifted as a conversationalist than he was as a seaman, Greene, on the other hand, interrupted his steady eating only to say Yes, sir or No, sir.
'Now surely you will turn in, brother,' said Stephen, when they had gone. 'You look destroyed.'
'Oh certainly: quite soon,' said Jack. 'But first I must take some readings for Humboldt; I have not missed a day yet, and it would be a pity to start now. Perhaps I will come down and tell you the temperatures at least. We can test the salinity later. Ho, Killick, there. Pass the word for my clerk, will you?'
Elijah Butcher had been expecting the call and he came prepared, muffled up to his ears, with an inkhorn in his buttonhole, the register under his arm, hygrometer, cyanograph and a variety of thermometers in his pocket, all cased, his bright black eyes and his bright red face eager for the fray.
'Mr Butcher,' said Jack, rising, 'good morning to you. Let us get under way.'
Jack did not come down. He sent Butcher to show Dr Maturin the temperature at the surface, and ten and at fifty fathoms, together with the hygrometrical readings and a message to the effect that Captain Aubrey was obliged to stay on deck.
Stephen had expected it, because he knew very well that this was the kind of sailing that Jack loved beyond any other; but he did not know how wholly the Diane's captain would be absorbed in his task.
Jack had never really driven her before. The trades had been benign, regular, agreeable and steady, but always on the feeble side; they had hardly ever allowed him to log more than ten knots even with royal studdingsails abroad and the wind three points abaft the beam, which she liked best; and now he very earnestly wished to run off his easting as fast as ever he could make her fly. With the dear Surprise he knew exactly what sails would give her fifteen knots in these latitudes without straining, but he had little notion of what would suit the Diane. In winds of this force different ships behaved very differently on being driven; some would plunge their bows deep, shipping green seas that would tear aft; others would tuck down their sterns, and then the green seas, with a following wind, were worse by far; some might be sluggish, some might gripe, some might steer wild and even broach to with the very combination of sails that would make another fly.
As the Diane sailed south and south with even stronger winds, through even more tremendous seas, reaching forty-five degrees and then steering due east, he set about learning her true inner nature and her capabilities when she was pushed to the limit. This entailed many changes of sail, very exact trimming, very exact observation, and the closest watch on sheet and brace; but when the right set was found - they varied of course according to the amount of north or south in the great westerly winds, but they were variations on a single theme - there began a series of splendid days when she would run three hundred miles and more between noon and noon, and when Jack was rarely off the deck, appearing in the cabin only to eat or go fast asleep sitting in his elbow-chair.
This was splendid progress, the degrees of latitude passing in rapid succession; but for any but dedicated seamen the pleasure was intellectual only. This was the southern winter, the sky low and grey, the daylight sparse, the bitterly cold air filled with rain or sleet mixed with spindrift and atomized seawater, the decks permanently awash. The cry of sweepers was no longer heard; there was no dust, there were no ropeshakings nor any hint of them, and the frozen afterguard could huddle in peace beneath the booms.
Stephen came up from time to time when neither rain nor flying spray was very severe to gaze upon the albatrosses that accompanied the ship, sometimes staying for days together. Most were the Diomedea exulans of Linnaeus, the bird he loved best of all that lived at sea, the great wandering albatross, an immense creature, twelve feet across or even more, the old cock-birds a pure snowy white with black, black edgings; but there were others that he could not identify with any certainty, birds to which the sailors gave the general name of mollymawks.
'Not nearly enough serious attention has been paid to the albatrosses,' he said to Fox, who had come to consult him about pains or rather general discomfort in his lower belly, difficulties with defecation, disturbed nights.
'Nor to the digestive system,' said Fox. 'If man is a thinking reed he is also a reed that absorbs and excretes, and if these functions are disturbed so is the first, and humanity recedes, leaving the mere brute.'
'These pills will recall your colon to its duty, with the blessing, and the diet I have prescribed,' said Stephen. 'But you will admit that it is whimsical to make distinctions between the lesser pettichaps and her kin, counting their wing feathers, measuring their bills, and to neglect the albatrosses, the great soaring birds of the world.'
'They are not the same pills as before?' asked Fox.
'They are not,' said Stephen with an easy conscience, for this time to the powdered chalk he had added the harmless pink of cochineal.
Fox had consulted him quite often lately, and for a variety of disorders; but it had soon become apparent to Stephen that his trouble was loneliness. He was undoubtedly an able man- his account of the Malay rajahs and sultans, their intricate lines of descent, their connexions, feuds, alliances, past history and present policy was enough to prove that, without his profound knowledge of early Buddhism or current Mahometan law - but he had a strong, dominant personality and he had so crushed his retiring, unassertive secretary in everything except the matter of whist that the young man was no longer anything of a companion to him.
Yet although Fox might wish to be acquainted and even quite familiar with others, for his own part he did not choose to be known; he was unusually reserved. Then again there was a hint of condescension in his manner, a certain assumption of superior knowledge, status or natural parts, that prevented Jack and Stephen from looking forward to his company with very much pleasure.
Stephen had the impression that Fox thought the mission of very great consequence, in which he was probably right; and that the successful conclusion of it, the carrying home of a treaty, would gratify his ambition and self-esteem to the highest possible degree; but as well as this Stephen felt that he was more flattered by the office of envoy, and by its externals, than might have been expected in a man of his abilities. He never invited the officers, although they had been introduced to him; and if on the quarterdeck he asked them a question to do with the ship or gunnery he would listen to their explanation with a smile and a nod of his head that seemed to say that although he had not known these things the ignorance did not diminish him in any way - they were merely technical - an honn? homme was not required to know them.
In any case at this juncture neither Jack nor Stephen had any time to spare for social intercourse. Jack was taken up with sailing his ship and Stephen, quite apart from the preservation, classification and description of his
