Oxford, Stephen?'
'I rather believe it is the other place: at Oxford I think they only have fornicatores, but I may well be mistaken.'
'Well, it was something creditable, in any event. And she declares the reason he has never married is that Sophie broke his heart, running off to marry me. But now here he is, installed in our rectory these eighteen months at least: ain't it amazing?'
'I have rarely been more astonished.'
'I was perfectly prepared to hate him, of course, but he is such an open, friendly, agreeable fellow, a very fair horseman and an uncommon good bat, that I could not succeed. A big, well-built man, six foot odd; and he used to box at college: he has a broken nose.'
'That is a recommendation, sure.'
'Well, it does mean he cannot decently prate away in the evangelical line, like some parsons and some of our blue-light officers with their pious tracts. And he has come over from time to time, when Sophie's mama or Sophie herself was quite at a loss with their sums, which I take very civil. But Lord, how I wander. I was talking about Adams: now as you know very well there is a world of difference between a flag-officer's secretary and a captain's clerk, and having appointed him I cannot in decency ask him to stay ashore and help Sophie; but I shall certainly desire him to look about among his friends in Plymouth and Gosport. Here we are. Stephen, mind the ditch: tread in the middle of the plank. I brought you this roundabout way to show you a creeper I am trying to persuade to turn the pollard into a bower, but it seems to have been swallowed by the nettles. Now let me go in first and re- focus - there is a prodigious difference between a morning and an evening speculum, of course - and then you shall see all the squadron there is to be seen. Some of the brigs and a schooner or two are only to join us off Lisbon. You will not see them in their full detail, with the light coming from the east; but I hope you will get at least some notion.'
No man would ordinarily have associated Jack Aubrey with the idea of fuss; yet this was a special case. He had made the telescope, grinding seven mirrors before achieving the present masterpiece; he had invented the improved mounting as well as the singularly exact finder; and in this single instance he did fuss, trying to make it perform miracles, urging the sun to shed a diffused and even illumination, uttering otiose explanations.
Stephen disregarded his friend's anxious prattle, most of it deeply technical, dealing with diffraction, aberration and virtual images, and gazed upon the successive remote and silent visions as they appeared in the eyepiece.
First the splendid Beilona, in profile: some of her people were still washing the forecastle and all that was to be seen of the upper deck, while the afterguard and waisters flogged the poop and quarterdeck dry. 'Seventy-four guns, of course,' said Jack, 'a broadside weight of metal of nine hundred and twentysix pounds: twenty-eight thirty-six pounders on the gundeck, twenty-eight eighteen pounders on the upper deck, two long twelves as chasers and six short, with ten thirty-two-pound carronades and four little ones for the poop.'
'That makes seventy-eight guns.'
'For shame, Stephen. Surely you must recall that we only make a notional reckoning for the carronades, when we count them in at all.'
'I beg pardon.'
'She is a Chatham ship: one thousand six hundred and fifteen tons, gundeck a hundred and sixty-eight foot, beam forty-six foot nine; and she has a depth of nineteen foot nine in the hold, which I call really comfortable. With six months' stores she draws twenty-two foot nine, abaft. Less afore, of course.'
'When was she built?'
'In 176o,' said Jack in a somewhat unwilling, defensive voice. 'But you would not call her an old ship. Victory was laid down a year before, and she is pretty spry, I believe. She answered tolerably well at Trafalgar, they say. Besides, the Bellona was doubled and braced in the year five, and she is if anything better than new. Far better, with everything well shaken into position.'
'I beg pardon.'
'She was always an uncommonly weatherly ship - I remember her well in the West Indies when I was a boy - rolls easy, makes nine and even ten knots close-hauled on a brisk topgallant breeze, steers easy, wears quick, lies to perfectly well under maincourse and mizzen staysail, fore-reaching prodigiously all the while - amazing great wash.'
'I rejoice to hear it. Pray state the number of her crew.'
'The establishment is five hundred and ninety: I should think we are within a score or two of it, and I have great hopes of a draft from the Nore on Monday. But that is Tom's concern, you know; I only have to worry with the paper-work, the Admiralty, the Navy Board, the Port Admiral and the other captains belonging to the squadron. Now let me show you our other line-of-battle ship.' A little wheel turned: masts, yards, loose sails, rigging and stretches of pale gleaming water shot sideways through Stephen's field of vision: a sudden trembling halt, and there, as sharp, firm and distinct as Jack or any other telescope-maker could have wished, swam another two- decker, not sideways this time but seen from four points on her starboard bow, a three-quarter view that showed her exactly-squared yards to great advantage. Her sides were painted black and her gun-ports a fine clear blue, while above them ran a line of the same colour, a combination that gave Stephen's heart a strange wrench, it being so much favoured by Diana.
'That is Stately, the sixty-four,' said Jack. 'She was inflicted upon us when they took the Terrible away, as shabby a piece of favouritism and jobbery as the service has ever known.'
'Her captain is clearly a man of taste, however,' said Stephen.
'Well, I am no judge of taste: I am not a dilletanto. But if the Nelson checker was good enough for the great man himself, it is good enough for me.' Jack paused. 'And I tell you what, Stephen: I do not like saying anything behind anyone's back, but you are a medico, and that makes it different - you will understand. As you know, I hate the way sodomites are hanged or flogged round the fleet, and I like Duff: but you must not do it with the young foremast jacks, or discipline goes by the board. Duff is a pretty good seaman, and he does his best, but the Stately had taken all night to tow to her berth. And in any case, there really is an old ship for you: she may not have been launched until eighty-two, but she was on the Brest blockade for years and years, which wore her out before her time - those frightful south-westers lasting for weeks on end, with tremendous seas - and she has neither been doubled nor braced. She is now about as seaworthy as the Ark after Noah left her high and dry on the top of Ararat: perhaps the slowest of her miserable class, sagging to leeward so as to make even a midland ploughboy stare. Yet since we have to live with her, I will tell you she gauges one thousand three hundred and seventy tons:
