Frenchmen he let them win it back again. He also let them suppose that he was a Spaniard in the English service, which, as they confessed, was natural enough, Spain and England now being allies: for their part they had been impressed as long ago as 1807, when another face of things was seen, and they had never been able to get away since.
The rest of the time he walked about the countryside in a way that would be expected of a natural philosopher, the Captain's guest, sometimes with Richardson, sometimes with Macmillan, occasionally with Jack, but more often by himself, for his companions objected to the forest-leeches that fastened upon them by the score in the wilder parts and the tormenting flies and mosquitoes in the irrigated fields. They were most profitable walks however, in spite of these disadvantages and even in spite of a shockingly aggressive kind of bee that built its comb in the open, hanging from a stout branch, and that attacked on sight, pursuing the intruder for a quarter of a mile or to the nearest very thick bush, sometimes itself inhabited by still more ferocious red ants or in one instance by an irritable female python, coiled about her eggs. Quite early he chanced upon a broad track where woodcutters had dragged their timber down with teams of buffaloes, and this clear tract in the deep forest gave him wonderful views of the arboreal birds, particularly the hornbills, and sometimes of a mouse-deer, while gibbons were far from rare, It was in this glade that Jack found him on the evening of a day during which he had had an unusually interesting conversation with Wu Han's Pondicherry clerk.
'There you are, Stephen,' cried Jack. 'They told me you might be here; but if I had known you was gone so far up the mountain-side I should have taken a pony. Lord, ain't it hot! Where you get the energy from, after your nightly activities, I cannot tell, I am sure.' Like the rest of the ship's company Jack had heard of the Doctor's extraordinarily dissolute life, smoking and drinking until all hours, gambling; but he alone knew that Stephen could take the sacrament without confession.
'To be sure,' said Stephen, thinking of their work on the tapir, now a mere skeleton, 'I was very busy last night. But you too would walk far up the mountain-side without gasping if you did not eat so much. You were much better, physically, when you were poor and wretched. What do you weigh now?'
'Never mind.'
'At least another stone and a half, perhaps two stone, God be with us. You fellows of an obese and sanguine habit are always on the verge of an apoplexy, particularly in this climate. Will you not omit suppers, at least? Suppers have killed more than Avicenna ever cured.'
'The reason I came sweating up this infernal hill,' said Jack, 'was to tell you that Fox summons us both to a conference this evening. The Sultan returns tomorrow night, only a week after his appointed time, and we are to have our audience the day after.'
On the way down he told Stephen how the ship was faring, and how the stores laid in at Anjer, especially the great quantities of Manila cordage, were now being put to use, together with a detailed, perhaps a little too detailed, account of the restowing of the hold to bring her slightly by the stern. 'Just half a strake or so, you understand, nothing flash or outlandish or showing away. It pleased me very much indeed. But,' shaking his head and looking melancholy, 'there was something else that did not please me nearly so well. Having advised with Fox, I called all hands aft and told them that we were here to settle a treaty between the King and the Sultan, and that the French were here too for the same purpose: that the French foremast jacks had gone ashore in droves and had given great offence by getting drunk, fighting, offering to kiss honest young women, and touching their bare bosoms, and that they and their ship had been packed off to Malaria Creek. So, said I, the Dianes were not going to be given liberty except on promise of good behaviour, and even then only in small numbers at a time and with very little pay advanced. It was for their country's good, I said, only for their country's good. And I had thought of ending with God save the King or Three cheers for the King; but somehow by the time I had finished it did not seem quite suitable. A sullen, dogged set, upon my word: nothing but sour looks and wry faces. Even with Killick and Bonden it is nothing but Yes, sir or No, sir - never a smile. But then I am no orator. The Surprises might have worn it without oratory, because they know me; but not these swabs. They want to be ashore tumbling a wench and be damned to their country's good.'
'It is after all a very powerful instinct, perhaps the strongest of them all... I know your objections to having women aboard, but in this case, providing young Reade and Harper and perhaps Fleming were sent on shore, I cannot see that any very grave moral harm is likely to ensue.'
'Would you look after them?'
'I would not. But of Fox I have no doubt at all. He would sell his soul for this treaty, or tend to the needs of a whole orphanage.'
'I shall ask him.'
'Good evening, gentlemen,' said Fox. 'How kind of you to come. May I offer you some East India ale? It has been hanging down the well in a basket, and it is almost cold.' He poured it out and went on, 'As you know, we are to have our audience of the Sultan the day after tomorrow, and as it is possible that I may be called upon to address his council immediately after the formal proceedings, I should be grateful for any observations that may strengthen our case. You know the position. The French offer a subsidy, guns, ammunition and skilled ship- builders: we offer a subsidy, I hope larger than the French, subsequent protection and some trading concessions, admittedly of no great importance; and there is always the implicit threat of what we might do after the war is over. The trouble is that one single Indiaman taken would be exceedingly damaging to us and more immediately profitable than any subsidy I am empowered to offer: and in these parts the outcome of the war seems by no means as certain as I could wish.'
'Well, sir,' said Jack, 'as far as these ships are concerned - and this is the only matter on which I am qualified to speak - you could point out that although the Malays are capital hands at building proas and smallcraft - I have indeed ordered a new pinnace - they have not the slightest notion of what we call a man-of-war, a real ship capable of bearing the weight of a deck of guns and the strain of firing them. And although the French shipwrights may understand their trade, they must necessarily be used to working oak and elm; and they for their part would not have the slightest notion of these East Indies woods. Then you might tell them that although a proa can be run up in a week or so, a ship, a square-rigged ship, is quite another thing. In the first place it needs a proper yard, a dock, a slip; then, to take the example of a seventy-four, the hull alone needs the seasoned timber - the seasoned timber, mind - of some two thousand trees of about two ton apiece, with forty-seven shipwrights working a twelvemonth. Even a frigate like ours calls for twenty-seven skilled hands to build her in a year. And when the ship is built at last the men have to be taught to manage an unfamiliar rig and to handle the guns so that they are more dangerous to the enemy than to themselves - no easy task. The whole thing seems to me a scheme concocted in an office by a parcel of landsmen, if it is looked upon as one that will give quick returns.'
'Those are most valuable figures,' said Fox, writing them down. 'Thank you very much indeed. But Paris may also have had in mind the potential threat that would compel us to weaken our forces elsewhere. A potential threat often has effects far beyond... but I am not to be teaching you about strategy or tactics,' he said with a smile. 'Doctor, can you add a shot to my locker?'
'I have little definite to say at present and I do not propose to trouble you with surmises,' said Stephen. 'But I will observe that at least some of the shipwrights are impressed Spaniards, likely to run away to the Philippines as soon as ever they can; that at least some of the proposed French guns are said to be honey-combed: while at
