greater pleasure to be admitted to one of your sessions: I am no virtuoso, but I have held my own in quite distinguished company; and if I were allowed to play second fiddle we might embark upon quartets, which have always seemed to me the quintessence of music.'
'I will mention it if you wish,' said Stephen, 'but I should observe that in general the Captain looks upon these as little private affairs, quite unbuttoned and informal.'
'Then perhaps I must be content to listen from afar,' said Dutourd, taking no apparent offence. 'Yet it would be benevolent in you to speak of it, if a suitable occasion should offer.' He broke off to ask what was going on aboard the Franklin. Stephen told him that they were rigging out the foretopgallant studdingsail booms. 'Les bouts-dehors des bonnettes du petit perroquet,' he added, seeing Dutourd's look of blank ignorance, an ignorance equal to his own until yesterday, when he had helped Reade to write the terms in his journal. From this they moved on to a consideration of sails in general; and after a while, when Stephen was already impatient to be gone, Dutourd, looking him full in the face, said, 'It is surely very remarkable that you should know the French for studdingsail booms as well as for so many animals and birds. But it is true that you have a remarkable command of our language.' A meditative pause. 'And now that I have the honour of being better acquainted with you it seems to me that we may have met before. Do not you know Georges Cuvier?'
'I have been introduced to Monsieur Cuvier.'
'Yes. And were you not at Madame Roland's soirees from time to time?'
'You are probably thinking of my cousin Domanova. We are often confused.'
'Perhaps so. But tell me, sir, how do you come to have a cousin called Domanova?'
Stephen looked at him with astonishment, and Dutourd, visibly drawing himself in, said, 'Forgive me, sir: I am impertinent.'
'Not at all, sir,' replied Stephen, walking off. His inward voice ran on, 'Is it possible that the animal has recognized me - that he has some notion however vague of what we are about - and that this is in some degree a threat?' Dutourd's was not an easy face to read. Superficially it had the open simplicity of an enthusiast, together with the politeness of his class and nation; these did not of course exclude everyday cunning and duplicity, but there was also something else, a slight insistence in his look, a certain self-confidence, that might mean far deeper implications. 'Shall I never learn to keep my mouth shut?' he muttered, opening the sick-berth door, and aloud, 'God and Mary and Patrick be with you,' in answer to Padeen's greeting. 'Mr Martin, a good morning to you.'
'How these halcyon days go on and on, the one following the other with only a perfect night between,' he said, walking into the cabin. 'We might almost be on dry land. But tell me, Jack, will it never rain at all - hush. I interrupt your calculations, I find.'
'What is twelve sixes?' asked Jack.
'Ninety-two,' said Stephen. 'My shirt is like a cilice with the salt. I should wear it dirty and reasonably soft, but that Killick takes it away - he finds it out with a devilish ingenuity and flings it into the sea-water tub and I am convinced that he adds more salt from the brine-tubs.'
'What is a cilice?'
'It is a penitential garment made of the harshest cloth known to man and worn next the skin by saints, hermits, and the more anxious sinners.'
Jack returned to his figures and Stephen to his disagreeable reflexions. 'What goeth before destruction?' he asked. 'Pride goeth before destruction, that is what. I was so proud of knowing those spars in English, let alone in French, that I could not contain, but must be blabbing like a fool. Hair-shirt, indeed: the Dear knows I deserve one.'
In time Jack put down his pen and said, 'As for rain, there is no hope of it, according to the glass. But I have been casting the prize accounts, as far as I can without figures for the Franklin's specie: a roundish figure, which is some sort of consolation.'
'Very good. To predatory creatures like myself there is something wonderfully fetching about a prize. The very word evokes a smile of concupiscent greed. Speaking of the Franklin reminds me that Dutourd wishes you to know that he would be glad of an invitation to play music with us.'
'So I gather from Martin,' said Jack, 'and I thought it a most uncommon stroke of effrontery. A fellow with wild, bloody, regicide revolutionary ideas, like Tom Paine and Charles Fox and all those wicked fellows at Brooks's and that adulterous cove - I forget his name, but you know who I mean - '
'I do not believe I am acquainted with any adulterers, Jack.'
'Well, never mind. A fellow who roams about the sea attacking our merchantmen with no commission or letter of marque from anyone, next door to a pirate if not actually bound for Execution Dock - be damned if I should invite him if he were a second Tartini, which he ain't - and in any case I disliked him from the start - disliked everything I heard of him. Enthusiasm, democracy, universal benevolence - a pretty state of affairs.'
'He has qualities.'
'Oh yes. He is not shy; and he stood up very well for his own people.'
'Some of ours think highly of him and his ideas.'
'I know they do: we have some hands from Shelmerston, decent men and prime seamen, who are little better than democrats - republicans, if you follow me - and would easily be led astray by a clever political cove with a fine flow of words: but the man-of-war's men, particularly the old Surprises, do not like him. They call him Monsieur Turd, and they will not be won round by smirking and leering and the brotherhood of man: they dislike his notions as much as I do.'
'They are tolerably chimerical, admittedly, and it is surprising that a man of his age and his parts should still entertain them. In 1789 I too had great hopes of my fellows, but now I believe the only point on which Dutourd and I are in agreement is slavery.'
'Well, as for slavery... it is true that I should not like to be one myself, yet Nelson was in favour of it and he said that the country's shipping would be ruined if the trade were put down. Perhaps it comes more natural if you are black... but come, I remember how you tore that unfortunate scrub Bosville to pieces years ago in Barbados for saying that the slaves liked it - that it was in their masters' interest to treat them kindly - that doing away with slavery would be shutting the gates of mercy on the negroes. Hey, hey! The strongest language I have ever heard you use. I wonder he did not ask for satisfaction.'
