bursting in with the cry ‘Oh those hell-damned apes - they are at it again’. But his indignant voice changed when he saw the visitors. ‘Why, Aubrey! How very welcome you are - you too, Doctor. Lord how you stirred them up in the Adriatic! Your earlier dispatches came to me of course; and they gave a great deal of pleasure in Whitehall. And I do hope you will both give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on Saturday.’
‘Should be very happy, my Lord: but I have not yet quite finished carrying out your orders. I hope to have done so a little after the new moon, and then we are entirely at your disposal.’
The sound of a carriage - of another carriage - the voices of two different sets of callers. Jack and Stephen took their leave and by good luck they were able to skirt round the newcomers, all gathered in a knot on the gravel drive exclaiming at the extraordinary coincidence of the arrival at the very same moment!
They walked back to the town, and as they went along the quays Stephen noticed the daily Tangier hoy - it might almost have been called the ferry - rapidly filling with Moors, Gibraltar Jews and some odd few Spanish merchants. Jacob was among them, in a caftan and a skullcap, wholly inconspicuous; Stephen made no remark at the time but he was not surprised at finding a suitably obscure note from his colleague saying that he was crossing to see some people who might have some quite valuable jewels to sell: but later, as he and Jack were supping together he said, ‘I believe Jacob is not officially on the ship’s books?’
‘No: I think he is carried as a supernumerary, without victuals, wages or tobacco.’
‘Who feeds him, then?’
‘Why, I suppose you do: at any rate everything he eats or drinks or smokes will be stopped out of your pay to the last halfpenny and with the utmost rigour.’
‘I find that I have been giving my life’s blood to a parcel of hard-hearted mercenary rapacious sharks,’ said Stephen with a rather forced smile.
‘Exactly so. And the children you bought in Algiers have each a docket on which every dish of pap is charged against you, together with the earthenware pot they broke. This is the Navy, after all.’
‘So I do not suppose he would be flogged or put in irons for absenting himself without formal leave?’
‘No. In such cases we have a punishment known as keelhauling. But do not let it distress you: the victims often survive - well, fairly often. But I am so sorry: this really is not the time to be facetious. I am afraid you must be missing your children cruelly. They were engaging little creatures. I do beg your pardon.’
‘I miss them, I admit, though Lady Keith was so very good and kind: in better hands they could not be. But I do miss them, and when they fully understood my betrayal they howled most pitifully. Yet my grief was somewhat lessened by their fascination with the apes that gathered round, by their continuing suspicion of my seriousness and by the cheerful laughter that reached me when I was quite far away, nearly at the bottom of the hill, watching two intertwined serpents, rising in the air ‘almost the whole of their length in an amorous clasp.’
‘Oh sir,’ cried a messenger from Mr Harding, ‘please could the Doctor come and look at Abram White? He has fallen down in a fit.’
Abram White was in fact quite ill - comatose, bloated, heavily contused - yet this was not really a question of apoplexy nor yet of epilepsy. For reasons best known to himself he had brought three concealed bladders of rum aboard,to drink slowly, privately, with delectation. But believing himself detected by the ship’s corporal he had done away with the evidence of his crime by swallowing the whole pot-full, had choked, and had pitched down the forehatchway. He lay pallid, insensible, only just breathing, with a barely perceptible pulse.
Yet Stephen, after some years at sea, was quite used to pallid insensible seamen, and when he had made sure that Abram’s limbs, spine and skull were unbroken, he pumped him out and had him carried to the sick-berth. He was perfectly well and going about his duties by the time Jacob came back. If anyone had noticed his absence it must have been thought official or medical - a spell at the hospital or the like - for his return excited no comment at all, particularly as he had again changed his clothes.
He found Stephen counting glass-hard slabs of portable soup and he said, ‘I do hope my sudden disappearance did not prove inconvenient? I had sudden word of a friend the other side of the water.’
‘Not in the least. I hope the voyage was worth the displacement?’
‘You shall judge for yourself: on the other side their notions of security are contemptible and I have my information from no less than three concordant sources.’ They were speaking French, as they generally did when there was anything of a medical, private or confidential nature; but now, even so, he lowered his voice: ‘The Arzila galley is at present in Tangier, loaded, very heavily manned and as heavily armed as a galley can be: two twenty-four pounders in the bows and two in the stern, with a fair amount of musketry when she proceeds under sail. The guns are said to be
