Stephen’s face for some gleam of intelligence, recognition of the name: no gleam of any kind whatsoever. ‘John Daniel,’ repeated Jack, ‘we were shipmates for a short while in Worcester. And he was in Agamemnon: Woodbine knows him well, and many other officers. He was paid off at the peace and joined a privateer...’
‘Sir, sir, oh sir, if you please,’ called a shrill boy, purple in the face from running, ‘the Admiral’s compliments and desires you will hand this to Dr Maturin.’
‘My compliments and duty to the Admiral,’ said Jack, taking the letter and passing it to Stephen, ‘and you may tell him that his orders have been carried out.’
They walked down the steps to the waiting boat, and as they walked Stephen turned the letter over and over, looking thoughtful. ‘Do not mind me, I beg,’ said Jack; but already bow-oar, an old seaman who knew Stephen well, was at hand to ensure that he cleared the gunwale with one firm stride.
Bonden shoved off the moment the Commodore was settled, cried ‘Give way,’ and the launch weaved through the melee with never a bump until he brought it alongside with his usual perfection.
In the cabin Stephen said, ‘Jack, I fear I have been so indiscreet as to ask Mr Wright to dine aboard without consulting you. I particularly wish to hear his view on the action of water flowing the whole length of the horn you so very kindly gave me long ago, upon the nature of the turbulence set up by the whorls or convolutions, and upon the effect of the more delicate ascending spirals.’
‘Not at all, not at all,’ said Jack. ‘I should very much like to hear him: no man more. Although I have been waterborne most of my days, I am sadly ignorant of hydrostatics except in a pragmatic, rule-of-thumb kind of fashion. We could invite Jacob too, and have some music. I know that Mr Wright, like some of the other mathematical Fellows, delights in a fugue. Oh, and Stephen, let me go back to John Daniel, Wantage’s replacement: he is so prodigiously shabby it would be cruel to introduce him to the berth. He is a poor, short, bent, meagre, ill-looking little creature, very like...that is to say, you are the only grown person aboard whose clothes would fit him. You shall have them back of course, as soon as he can whip up something to appear on the quarterdeck in.’
‘Killick,’ called Stephen, barely raising his voice, since he knew that their valuable common servant was listening behind the door - Killick had something of a cold in his
chest and his heavy breathing could have been heard at a far greater distance. ‘Killick, be so good as to bring a respectable white shirt, the blue coat whose button you were replacing, a neck-cloth, a pair of duck trousers, stockings, shoes - buckled shoes - and a handkerchief.’
Killick opened his mouth: but to Captain Aubrey’s astonishment he shut it again, paused, said, ‘Aye-aye, sir: respectable white shirt it is, the blue coat, neck-cloth, ducks, stockings, buckled shoes, wipe,’ and hurried away. Stephen was not surprised: it was but another example of that singular deference that attended not only his state but also that of men condemned to death. ‘Jack, pray tell me about your master’s mate,’ he said.
‘His name is John Daniel, and he comes from Leominster, where his father was a bookseller in a small way of business: he had a fair amount of education in his father’s shop and at the town school. But Mr Woodbine, whose family lived there, tells me that it was not a reading town at all, and with trade declining, the customers did not pay their bills. The shop was in a sad way, getting worse and worse, and to preserve his father from being carried off to the debtors’ prison, young Daniel took the bounty and went aboard the receiving ship at Pompey. He was drafted with such a hopeless set of quota-men to Arethusa that he was the only one who could write his name. Nicholls, Edward Nicholls, who was first of Arethusa, looked at him without much love- no seaman, too feeble to haul, no handicraft, and he was about to rate him landman and waister when he happened to ask him what he thought he could do that might be useful aboard a ship. Daniel said he had studied the mathematics and that he could cast accounts. Nicholls set him a few questions, saw that he was telling the truth, and said that if Daniel wrote a neat hand, he could be of some help to the purser or the captain’s clerk and perhaps the master. This he did to their satisfaction, but once they were clear of the Channel purser and clerk had little employment for him and he spent most of his time with the master, Oakhurst. You remember Oakhurst, Stephen? He was in Euryalus off Brest, a great lunarian. He dined with us once, and cried out against those ignorant idle swabs who would depend on chronometers.’
‘I remember him as a somewhat passionate, even an irascible companion.’
‘Yes. But he was kind to Daniel, who was entranced with the whole idea of navigation - the celestial clock - the circling stars - the planets among them - the moon - and who, being lent an old quadrant, perpetually took altitudes or measured the distances between the moon and various stars. He was a young man who delighted in the beauty of mathematics: who delighted in number itself...Furthermore, when Arethusa’s people were all turned over into Inflexible, he was rated ordinary and, being small and light, he was stationed in the maintop.’
‘He must have found that very hard.’
‘I am sure he did, and I cannot imagine what the premier was about - to be sure, they were cruel short-handed, yet even so... But, however, he survived it. He had been at sea for some time, turning out whenever all hands was piped and he was used to the ways of the Navy: he was
