there was also a subtle delight in gliding over smooth water, coaxing every ounce of thrust from what light air there was: an infinitely varied joy. Yet since he had left the midshipmen's berth he had done very little sailing in this sense, and almost none for pure pleasure; and as a post-captain, usually wafted to and fro in the glory of his barge, he could scarcely remember half a dozen occasions. Apart from anything else, the life of a captain, even with such a conscientious, intelligent first lieutenant as Fielding, was an uncommonly busy one: at least as Jack Aubrey led it.
He was fond of the Diane, that honest, stout-hearted though unexciting ship, but he was thoroughly enjoying his holiday from her. The survey of the coast of Pulo Prabang with Mr Warren, an able hydrographer, was a lively pleasure in itself, but the great charm of these days was the sailing, as varied as could be wished, the swimming, the fishing, and the hauling up on a lonely strand at sunset to eat their catch, grilled on driftwood embers, and to sleep in tents or in hammocks slung between two palms. They had sailed east, following the curve of the island, the almost round island, to its northernmost point, passing several villages on the way, including Ambelan, the little port to which the French frigate Corn?e and her over-enterprising crew had been exiled. Now they were on their way back, checking their recorded bearings and soundings and carrying on with Humboldt's programme of measuring temperatures at various depths, salinity, atmospheric pressure and the like, but none of this was very arduous and at present Jack was directing the Diane's smaller cutter at the narrow pass between the cape right ahead and a small island just beyond it. He was sailing as close to the brisk west-southwesterly breeze as he could; the good clinker-built boat made little leeway and he thought he could run through the gap on the present tack.
Bonden, who though by right captain's coxswain had not had his hand on the tiller since the boat left Prabang, was sure he could. Warren, the master, who was unable to swim, thought he possibly could, but wished he would not attempt it; Yusuf, who had been brought along for the language and because he knew the difference between right and wrong, at least where fish and fruit were concerned, was convinced that it was impossible; but being a Muslim he took it in good part, since what was written was written and there was no arguing with fate, and in any case he was a sea Malay, as much at home in the water as out of it. There should have been a fifth opinion, that of Bampfylde Elliott. Jack had meant to bring him, because although young Elliott was no seaman and never would be, Jack liked him. As the Diane's commander he had had to address harsh words to her second lieutenant oftener than was either usual or pleasant and he had hoped that this break would bring back kinder relations. It was not that Elliott had grown dogged, sullen or resentful; it was rather that his mind seemed oppressed by a sense of guilt and inadequacy and by the little esteem in which he was held aboard the Diane. But the day before they set out, when Fielding was having the frigate's yards reblacked, a hand busy high aloft dropped his bucket. It might perfectly well have fallen safely, there being very few people on deck - a hundred to one it would have done no more harm than a black stain to be scrubbed out by the afterguard - but in fact it struck Elliott on his wounded shoulder, he being unlucky as well as inept.
The headland, the gap and the island were coming closer, much closer. Jack, bending and peering forward, saw that the high land was deflecting the breeze so that it would head him in mid-passage: there was a slight cross-ruffle on the ebbing tide. His mind at once began computing speed, inertia, distance, most desirable course, and presented him with the answer in something less than a second, a hundred yards short of the rock. A few moments more and he bore up, gathered way, and with the greater impetus shot through the gap right in the wind's eye, his mainsail shivering, rounded the cape and ran down its farther side. The saving of five insignificant minutes was no very great triumph; indeed the caper had a faint, very faint air of showing away; but it was pleasant to feel the old skills unimpaired.
The coast in this part of Pub Prabang was much indented, and the fjord they were now entering had a companion beyond it. These deep narrow bays were separated by Cape Bughis, and in his chart Jack called this one East Bughis Inlet and the next West Bughis Inlet, although in the Diane it was called Frenchmen's Creek, since Ambelan, with the Corn?e in its harbour, lay on the eastern shore. The road from a number of fishing villages and little towns to Prabang followed the coast wherever it could, and it crossed the bottom of both these inlets: Jack's idea was to land far down in the first, walk along the shore to the road and so round to the western side of the next, from which he could view the Corn?e over the water. In spite of all his swimming he felt in need of a walk, and he was by no means disinclined to see how the French were coming along. He knew they were careening their ship, a perilous business on a coast with such considerable tides, and he wanted to see their progress, if only from a professional point of view. On its outward voyage the boat had crossed the mouth of West Bughis Inlet, but Jack had not sailed down it, though the wind was fair. He wished to avoid any sort of indiscretion that might have a bad effect on Fox's dealings with the Sultan; but it seemed to him that his behaviour could not be thought improper if, in the course of a walk, he looked at the Corn?e from the other side of the bay, particularly as French officers had often brought telescopes to peer at the Diane from Prabang. Then, having gazed his fill and taken a fresh set of bearings, he would walk on, crossing the next promontory to the farther strand, where, touching wood, he would find the boat hauled up and smoke rising from the evening fire.
While the very word 'supper' was sounding in his head both Yusuf and Bonden caught a fish, a fine silvery fish, a two or three pounder with crimson eyes and crimson fins. 'Padang fish, tuan!' cried Yusuf. 'Good, good, very good fish!'
'So much the better,' said Jack, and he let fly the sheet, bringing the cutter gently to the shore: he stepped neatly out, his shoes and his ditty-bag slung round his neck, shoved the boat off, called out 'This evening, then, in Parrot Bay,' and sat down on the warm sand to dry his feet.
Warren replied cheerfully, but Bonden, though back in his rightful place in the stern sheets, shook his head with a despondent look: he would have liked the Captain to take at least a hanger and a brace of pistols, if not a musket and a couple of well-armed hands as well.
The sand here was pinkish-white, quite unlike the volcanic black of Prabang itself, and delightfully firm. Jack, dryfoot and shod, stretched out at a fine pace, his eyes half-closed against the glare, and presently he reached the bottom of the bay and, above highwater-mark, the road. Five minutes after striking into it he was in the grateful shade of sago-paims; they stood deep on either side almost the whole way to the village, and they were completely uninhabited - no people, no animals, scarcely a bird - except for myriads of insects which he could rarely see and never identify but which kept up a continual din, so all-pervading that after a few minutes he was unaware of it except on those rare occasions when it suddenly stopped entirely. The sago-palms were not very beautiful, being thick and short, while their dull-green crowns were rather dusty, and presently he found their company and the loneliness oppressive It was a relief to walk out of the shade at last and into the rice paddies outside the village at the bottom of West Bughis Inlet, people were working in them and some looked up as he went by, but without any particular interest, far less astonishment. Much the same applied to the village itself, sparsely inhabited at this time of day, and from here the reason, for their indifference was evident, since the whole bong bay was now open before him, with Ambelan on the eastern side, its harbour quite crowded and two Chinese junks lying just offshore. Of course these people were used to strangers.
Beyond the village the road mounted to the crest of the long rocky headland that formed the inlet's other arm, and at the top of the hill Jack, now in a fine state of sweat, turned off right-handed to walk out to a point where he would be opposite the little port. There was a path, he found, winding among the boulders and the low, wind- stunted vegetation, and soon he saw why: dotted along the edge of the sea below him there were great fallen rocks by the score, well out from the strand, and on many of them stood fishermen with long bamboos, casting beyond the moderate surf of the tide, now on the make; and each group of rocks had a corresponding side-path leading down to it.
When he had travelled something like a mile he took one of these and dropped down the slope, going rather
