'I am sure it is; but I do not remember to have heard it.'
'I take the words to refer to that slanting progress, with the breeze not from behind, nor even sideways, but from ahead or partially ahead, so that the vessel slopes towards its goal. Yet no doubt I mistake: and no doubt I have used the wrong term.'
'No, no: I follow you exactly - a very good expression. Pray do not be so discouraged, Stephen.'
'Never in life, my dear.' But going to his room and his unfinished letter he wrote, 'This is the third time I have added to these many sheets since my earlier letters in which I acknowledged your extreme kindness in sending the dear potto's bones - so beautifully prepared - to me at the Royal Society, and the others in which I applauded your resolution of staying in Sierra Leone until you had come a little nearer to completing your account of the avifauna of Benin or at least that part of it studied by our great predecessor. How I pray that they reach you safely, in the care of the present Governor. But to come at last to this often-delayed message I am most unwillingly obliged to confess that it amounts to but another dismal postponement. Perhaps I had not attended with sufficient care or understanding to Captain Aubrey's remarks - often when he speaks of sea-going matters in the sailor's jargon my mind tends to wander, to miss some vital point - but whereas I had been convinced (or had convinced myself) that on leaving this port we should steer for Freetown, and that presently I should have the happiness of seeing you, of hearing your account of the new-hatched chanting-goshawks, I now find that I was mistaken - it is no such thing. All this more or less covert hammering, disorder, even devastation is a mere preliminary to far worse in Funchal, where Captain Aubrey declares we must certainly go, to be put into truly naval order for the southern hydrographical voyage, and to pick up some score or so of mariners to make the ship more amenable in the austral tempest.
And so, my dear Madam, I cut this thoroughly unsatisfactory message short, in the hope of renewing it with more definite tidings in a week or so: in the mean time I take the liberty of sending you this hermaphroditic crab, whose singularity I am sure your keen eye will appreciate, while in closing I beg you will accept the most respectful greeting of your humble, obedient servant S. Maturin.'
Yet although S. Maturin had a perfectly good sailcloth wrapper at hand (sea-going letters could not be trusted to paper, least of all in the Bight of Benin) he did not fold the many pages directly but read carefully through the whole to check for any expressions of undue familiarity, in spite of the fact that the earlier sheets were second or even third draughts, recopied from corrected pages.
'Come on, sir,' cried Killick. 'Ain't you finished yet? Tom Wilden says the Guineaman is fiddling about with the hoist of a Blue Peter. She will sail within the hour, and you won't get another this month or six weeks.'
'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Stephen in an undertone, and he read faster and faster. The dread of an impropriety, of an unwarranted evidence of affection - indelicate in the last degree on the part of a man in his condition, fairly haunted him. But rather than lose the letters' carriage he thrust the whole, far too hastily and imperfectly re-read, into the wrapping, sealed and corded it.
Dissimulation was nothing remotely new to Maturin: to it he owed his continuing existence. Yet this particular sup-pressio veri was by no means his province. Christine Wood had in fact dwelt in his memory, his mind, his recollection since their first meeting in Sierra Leone: not so much her striking good looks - slim, long-legged, almost androgynous - as her modesty, clarity of mind, and quite exceptional breadth of knowledge, covering most of the areas in which he took most delight.
Stephen was of course discreet: but in spite of a discretion carried to something not far from an apparent frigidity, he had strong, even very strong male impulses and a recollection of Christine swimming in stark innocent nakedness across a clear African stream to bring back a wounded ibis - swimming under the eyes of a perfectly indifferent and almost equally naked black servant-girl - had very often inhabited and indeed tormented his mind, preventing incipient sleep. But more than her Greek or African nakedness -bare flesh, after all, being less to an anatomist than to most - was the slight but clearly perceptible pressure of her hand when they last parted years ago that dwelt with him now, abed in the Crown, when he was not rehearsing passages of that interminable letter in which he may have blundered. Just before he went to sleep much the same part of consciousness that presented careful paragraph after careful paragraph called upon him to 'State a quality common to all those women for whom, as an adult, you have felt a strong tenderness'.
'A strong amorous tenderness?'
'Of course, you lemon.'
He reflected, and said: 'In all cases they have held themselves well: they have, all, without the least consciousness or affectation, taken quite long strides for a woman, placing each foot directly in the line of its fellow - a wholly natural grace.'
All this had been a weary, anxious task, and the contemplation of his hastily, partially re-read, almost certainly over-voluble and ill-considered series of letters bounding over the ocean wave (for the breeze was favourable) so wrung his weary spirit that for the first time in a great while he turned to his old friend and enemy laudanum, the alcoholic tincture of opium, and plunged into a sleep, guilty for the first few fathoms and then pure balm.
'Oh come on, sir,' called little Wells, his adolescent voice soaring with indignation. 'You'll miss it all, snorting there. . .'
Stephen gazed blinking at the brilliant sun, and the boy urged him to his feet, to the window, the extreme left-hand .side of the window which commanded part of the yard. 'There, sir: do you see?'
Yes, indeed he saw: Surprise still rocking from her violent run astern, but upright, trimmer every moment, but for the ill-looking gap where the sheers had plucked out her foremast. Volubly, with a wealth of detail, Wells recounted the whole event. '. . . and if you lean a little this way, sir, you can just make out the sheer-hulk going crabwise towards her... she makes fast... hush.'
And from over the still water far below came Harding's powerful voice: 'Silence, there. Silence fore and aft' - an urgent, imperative cry that from long habitude imposed an instant, remarkable calm, through which Jack's hurried step could be heard. 'Just in time,' he exclaimed. 'There, Stephen, do you see? The sheers raise the mast clear - they swing it over - they clap on - they lower away - handsomely, handsomely now - Harding gives the word - she is home!' All the other operations followed their natural course -shrouds, stays, top; and then the topmast itself swayed up.
'There,' said Jack. 'As pretty as could be wished. You would not have liked to miss a moment of that, I am sure.'
'No, indeed,' said Stephen.
'And I am sure Mr. Wells explained what little you had not seen before?'
'With the utmost clarity: I was extremely gratified.'
