H.M.S. Surprise

by Patrick O'Brian

  Canning shook his head, smiling. 'It was not altogether unsuccessful, however,' he said. 'A fleet worth six million of money has been saved; and the country, to say nothing of the Company, would have been in a strange position if it had been lost. And that brings me to the purpose of my visit. I am come at the desire of my associates to find out, with the utmost tact and delicacy, how they may express their sense of your achievement in something more—shall I say tangible?—than addresses, mountains of pilau, and indifferent burgundy. Something perhaps more negotiable, as we say in the City. I trust I do not offend you, sir?'

  'Not in the least, sir,' said Jack.

  'Well now, seeing that anything resembling a direct gratification is out of the question with a gentleman of your kind—'

  'Where, where do you get these wild romantic notions?' thought Jack, looking wistfully into his face.

  '—some members suggested a service of plate, or Suraj-ud-Dowlah's gold-mounted palanquin. But I put it to them, that a service of plate on the scale they suggested would take a year or so to reach your table, that to my personal knowledge you were already magnificently supplied with silver [Jack possessed six plates, at present in pawn}, and that a palanquin, however magnificent, was of little use to a sea-officer; and it occurred to me that freight was the answer to our problem. Am I too gross, speaking with this freedom?'

  'Oh no, no,' cried Jack. 'Use no ceremony, I beg.' But he was puzzled: freight-money, that charming unlooked-for, unlaborious, almost unearned shower of gold, fell only on those fortunate captains of men-of-war who carried treasure for Government or for the owners of bullion or specie who did not choose to trust their concentrated wealth to any conveyance less sure; it amounted to two or three per cent of the value carried, and very welcome it was. Although it was far rarer than prize-money (the sea-officer's only other road to a decent competence) it was surer; it had no possible legal difficulties attached, and no man had to risk his ship, his life or his career in getting it. Like every other sailor, Jack knew all about freight-money, but none had ever come his way: he felt a glowing benevolence towards Canning. Yet still he was in a state of doubt: bullion travelled out to India, not back to England; the Company's wealth sailed home in the form of tea and muslin, Cashmere shawls . . . He had never heard of bullion homeward-bound.

  'You may be aware that the Lushington was carrying Borneo rubies, one of our shipments of gems,' said Canning. 'And we have a consignment of Tinnevelly pearls as well as two parcels of sapphires. The whole amounts to no great value, I fear, not even quarter of a million; but it takes no room, either—you would not be incommoded. May I hope to persuade you to convey it, sir?'

  'I believe you may, sir,' said Jack, 'and I am exceedingly obliged to you for the, hey, delicate, gentlemanlike way this offer has been made.'

  'You must not thank me, my dear Aubrey: there is not the least personal obligation. I am only the mouthpiece of the Company. How I wish I could be of some direct service. If there is any way in which I can be of use, I should be most happy—would it, for example, be of any interest to you to send a message to England? If you were to put a few thousand into Bohea and mohair futures, you might well clear thirty per cent before you were home. Some cousins and I keep up an overland mail, and the courier is on the wing He goes by way of Suez'

  'Mohair futures,' said Jack, in a wondering voice 'I should be tolerably at sea, there, I am afraid. But I tell you what it is, Canning, I should be infinitely obliged if your man would take me a private letter. You shall have it in ten minutes—how kind, how very kind'

  He turned Canning over to Pullings for a thorough tour of the ship, with a particular recommendation that he should view the stringers abaft the manger, and the state of the bitts, and resumed his letter.

  Sophie dear, here is the prettiest thing in the world—John Company is stuffing the ship with treasure—you and I are to get freight, as we say—shall explain it to you later: very like prize, but the men don't share, nor the Admiral neither, this time, since I am under Admiralty orders, is not that charming? No vast great thumping sum, but it will clear me of debt and set us up in a neat cottage with an acre or two. So you are hereby required and directed to proceed to Madeira forthwith and here is a note for Heneage Dundas who will be delighted to give you a passage in Ethalion if he is still on the packet-run or to find one of our friends bound there if he is not. Lose not a moment: you may knit your wedding-dress aboard. In great haste, and with far greater love, Jack.

  PS Stephen is very well. We had a brush with Linois.

  Old Heneage,

  As you love me, give Sophie a passage to Madeira. Or if you cannot, stir up Clowes, Seymour, Rieu—any of our reliable, sober friends. And if you can ship a respectable woman as, say boatswain's servant, you would infinitely oblige

  Yours ever,

  Jack Aubrey

  PS Surprise had a mauling from Marengo, 74, but paid her back with interest, and the moment her bow-knees are something like, I put to sea. This comes overland, and I dare say it will outrun me by a couple of months.

  'Here you are, sir,' he cried, seeing Canning's bulk darken the cabin-door. 'Signed, sealed and delivered. I am most uncommon grateful.'

  'Not at all. I shall give it to Atkins directly, and he will take it to the courier before he leaves.'

  'Atkins? Mr Stanhope's Atkins?'

  'Yes. Dr Maturin gave him a chit for me: it seems that with the envoy dying in that unhappy way, he was out of a place. Are you acquainted with him?'

  'He came out in Surprise, of course: but really I hardly saw anything of the gentleman.'

  'Ah? Indeed? That reminds me, I have not had the pleasure of seeing Maturin for some days now.'

  'Nor have I. We meet at these splendid dinners, but otherwise he is busy at the hospital or running about the country looking for bugs and tigers.'

  'Be so good as to call me an elephant,' said Stephen.

  'Sahib, at once. Does the sahib prefer a male elephant, or a female elephant?'

  'A male elephant. I should be more at home with a male elephant.'

  'Would the sahib wish me to bring him to a house of boys? Cleaned, polite boys like gazelles, that sing and play the flute?'

  'No, Mahomet: just the elephant, if you please.'

  The enormous grey creature knelt down, and Stephen looked closely into its wise little old eye, gleaming among the paint and embroidery.

  'The sahib places his foot here, upon the brute.'

  'I beg your pardon,' murmured Stephen at the vast archaic ear, and mounted. They rode down the crowded Chowringhee, Mahomet pointing out objects of interest. 'There lives Mirza Shah, decrepit, blind: kings trembled at his name. There Kumar the rich, an unbeliever; he has a thousand concubines. The sahib is disgusted. Like me, the sahib looks upon women as tattling, guileful, tale-bearing, noisy, contemptible, mean, wretched, unsteady, harsh, inhospitable; I will bring him a young gentleman that smells of honey. This is the Maidan. The Sahib sees two peepul-trees near the bridge, God give him sight for ever. That is where the European gentlemen come to fight one another with swords and pistols. The building beyond the bridge is a heathen temple, full of idols. We cross the bridge. Now the sahib is in Alipur.'

  In Alipur: vast walled gardens, isolated houses; here a Gothic ruin with a true pagoda in its grounds, there a homesick Irishman's round tower. The elephant padded up a gravel drive to a portico, very like the portico of an English country house apart from the deep recesses on either side for the tigers, and the smell of wild beasts that hung beneath its roof. They paced out and looked not at but towards him with implacable eyes: their chains still dragged upon the ground, yet their faces were so close together that their whiskers mingled, and it was impossible to say from which cavernous chest came the growl that filled the echoing porch with this low, continuous sound. The porter's infant child, woken by the organ-note, applied himself to a winch, and the tigers were heaved apart.

  'infant child,' said Stephen, 'state the names and ages
of thy beasts.'

  'Father of the poor, their names are Right and Wrong. They are of immemorial antiquity, having been in this portico even before I was born.'

  'Yet the territory of the one overlaps the territory of the other?'

  'Maharaj, my understanding does not reach the word overlap; but no doubt it is so.'

  'Child, accept this coin.'

  Stephen was announced, 'Here is that physical chap again,' said Lady Forbes, peering at him under her shading hand. 'You must admit he has a certain air—has seen good company—but I never trust these half-castes. Good afternoon, sir: I trust I see you well, my Sawbones Romeo: they have been at it hammer and tongs and thrown in the bloody coal-scuttle, too: she would have reduced me to tears, if I had any left to shed. You find me at my tea, sir. May I offer you a cup? I lace it with gin, sir; the only thing against this hot relaxing damp. Kumar—where is that black sodomite? Another cup. So you have buried poor Stanhope, I hear? Well, well, we must all come to it: that's my comfort. Lord, the young men I have seen buried here! Mrs Villiers will be down presently. Perhaps I will pour you another cup and then help her with her gown. She will be lying there stark naked, sweating under the punkah: I dare say you would like to go and help her yourself, young fellow, for all your compassé airs. Don't tell me you have no—la, I am a coarse old woman; and to think I was once a girl, alas, alas.'

  'Stephen, my conquering hero,' cried Diana, coming in alone, 'how glad I am to see your phiz at last! Where have you been all these days? Did you not have my note? Sit down, do, and take off your coat. How can you bear this wicked heat? We are beside ourselves with stickiness and vexation, and you look as cool as—how I envy you. Is that your elephant outside? I will have him led into the shade at once—you must never leave an elephant in the sun.' She called a servant, a stupid man who did not understand her directions at once, and her voice rose to a tone that Stephen knew well.

  When I saw an elephant coming up the drive,' she said, smiling again, 'I thought it was that bore Johnstone, he is always calling. Not that he is really a bore—an interesting man, in fact; an American: you would like him—have you ever met an American?—nor had I before this: perfectly civilised, you know; all that about their spitting on the floor is so much stuff—and immensely rich, too—but it is embarrassing, and a source of these perpetual God-damned scenes. How I hate a man that makes scenes, particularly in this weather, when the least exertion brings you out in a muck-sweat. Everybody is furious in this weather. But what made you come on an elephant, Stephen, dressed in a bloom-coloured coat?'

  It was clear to a man with far less knowledge of morphology than Stephen possessed that there was nothing under Diana's gown, and he looked out of the window with a light frown: he wished his mind to be perfectly clear.

  He said, 'The elephant stands for splendour and confidence. These last weeks, ever since the ship turned back from the Sumatra coast, I have noticed a look of settled and increasing anxiety upon my face. I see it when I shave: I also feel the set of my features, head, neck, shoulders—the expressive parts. From time to time I look and again I verify that it is indeed this expression of an indwelling, undefined, and general apprehension or even dread. I dispel it; I look cheerful and alert, perhaps confident; and in a few moments it is there again. The elephant is to deal with this. You will remember the last time we met I begged you would do me the honour of marrying me.'

  'I do, Stephen,' cried Diana, blushing: he had never seen her blush, and it moved him. 'Indeed I do. But oh why did you not say so long ago—at Dover, say? It might have been different then, before all this.' She took a fan from the table and stood up, flicking it nervously. 'God, how hot it is today,' she said, and her expression changed. 'Why wait till now? Anyone would say I had brought myself so low that you could do something quixotic. Indeed, if I were not so fond of you—and I am fond of you, Maturin: you are a friend I love—I might call it a great impertinence. An affront. No woman of any spirit will put up with an affront. I have not degraded myself.' Her chin began to pucker; she mastered it and said, 'I have not come down to . . .' But in spite of her pride the tears came running fast: she bowed her head on his shoulder, and they ran down his bloom-coloured coat. 'In any case,' she said between her sobs, 'you do not really wish to marry me. You told me yourself, long ago, the hunter does not want the fox.'

  'What the devil are you about, sir?' cried Canning from the open door.

  'What is that to you, sir?' said Stephen, turning sharp upon him.

  'Mrs Villiers is under my protection,' said Canning. He was pale with fury.

  'I give no explanations to any man for kissing a woman, unless it is his wife.'

  'Do you not?'

  'I do not, sir. And what does your protection amount to? You know very well Mrs Canning will be here in the Hastings on the sixteenth. Where is your protection then? What kind of consideration is this?'

  'Is that true, Canning?' cried Diana.

  Canning flushed deeply. 'You have been tampering with my papers, Maturin. Your man Atkins has been tampering with my papers.' He stepped forward and in his passion he gave Stephen a furious open-handed blow.

  Instantly Diana thrust a table between them and pushed Canning hack, crying out, 'Pay no attention, Stephen. He does not mean it—it is the heat—he is drunk—he will apologise. Leave the house at once, Canning. What do you mean by this low vulgar brawling? Are you a groom, a pot-boy? You are ridiculous.'

  Stephen stood with his hands behind his back: he, too, was very pale, apart from the red print of Canning's hand.

  Canning, at the door, snatched up a chair and beat it on the ground: he wrenched the back apart, flung it down, and ran out.

  'Stephen,' said Diana, 'do not notice it. Do not, do not fight him. He will apologise—he will certainly apologise. Oh, do not fight him—promise me. He will apologise.'

  'Perhaps he will, my dear,' said Stephen. 'He is in a sad way entirely, poor fellow.' He opened the window. 'I believe I will go out this way, if I may: I do not altogether trust your tigers.'

  'Captain Etherege, sir,' he said, 'will you do me a service, now?'

  'With all the pleasure in life,' said Etherege, turning his round benevolent face from the scuttle, where he held it in the hope of air.

  'Something happened today that caused me uneasiness. I must beg you to call upon Mr Canning and desire him to give me satisfaction for a blow.'

  'A blow?' cried Etherege, his face instantly changing to a look of profound concern. 'Oh dear me. No apology in that case, I presume? But did you say Canning? Ain't he a Jew? You don't have to fight a Jew, Doctor. You must not put your life at risk for a Jew. Let a file of Marines tan his unbelieving hide and ram a piece of bacon down his throat, and leave it at that.'

  'We see things differently,' said Stephen. 'I have a particular devotion to Our Lady, who was a Jewess, and I cannot feel my race superior to her; besides, I feel for the man; I will fight him with the best will in the world.'

  'You do him too much honour,' said Etherege, dissatisfied and upset. 'But you know your own business best, of course. You cannot be expected to stomach a blow. And yet again, having to fight a commercial fellow is like being forced into an unequal match, or having to marry a maid-servant because you have got her with child. Should you not like to fight someone else? Well, I shall have to put on my regimentals. I should not do it for anyone but you, Maturin, not in this damned heat. I hope he can find a second that understands these things, a Christian, that's all.' He went to his cabin, worried and displeased; reappeared in his red coat, already damp with sweat, and putting his head through the door he made a last appeal. 'Are you sure you would not like to fight somebody else? A bystander, say, who saw the blow?'

  'It might not have quite the same effect,' said Stephen, shaking his head. 'And Etherege, I may rely upon your discretion, of course?'

  'Oh, I know what o'clock it is,' said Etherege crossly. 'As early as possible, I suppose? Will dawn suit?' and Stephen heard him muttering
'Obstinate—don't listen to reason—pig-headed,' as he went down the gangway.

  'What is the matter with our lobster?' asked Pullings, coming into the gun-room. 'I have never seen him so hellfire grum. Has he caught the prickly heat?'

  'He will be cooler, and more collected, in the evening.'

  On his return Etherege was much cooler, and almost satisfied. 'Well, at least he has some respectable friends,' he said. 'I spoke to Colonel Burke, of the Company's service, a very gentlemanlike man, quite the thing, and we agreed on pistols, at twenty paces. I hope that suits?'

  'Certainly. I am obliged to you, Etherege.'

  'The only thing I have left to do, is to view the ground: we agreed to meet after the Chief Justice's party, when it will be cooler.'

  'Oh, never trouble your kind heart, Etherege; I shall be content with any usual ground.'

  Etherege frowned, and said, 'No, no. I do hate any irregularity in affairs of this kind. It is strange enough already, without the seconds not viewing the ground.'

  'You are too good. I have prepared you a bowl of iced punch: pray drink off a glass or so.'

  'You have been preparing your pistols, too,' said Etherege, nodding at the open case. 'I do recommend corning the powder uncommon fine—but I am not to tell you anything about powder and shot. This is capital punch: I could drink it for ever.'

  Stephen walked into the great cabin. 'Jack,' he said, 'it is weeks since we played a note. What do you say to a bout this evening, if you are not too taken up with your bollards and capstan-bars?'