The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  When at last he had gone away, Jack said, 'Fortunately it was only a common old pot, not that splendid Irish cut-glass affair you so kindly gave us. Yes, he did mention ten days; but only in a manner of speaking, you know. These blows never go by the calendar.'

  'When this present tempest slackens, perhaps we shall have a post. I quite long to hear from Woolcombe: and indeed from London and Ballinasloe. I had been led to believe that one of the very few advantages of the Brest blockade was that it allowed the sufferers frequent supplies of fresh food and mail.'

  'To be sure it is better in that line than say the New Holland station, but only in summer. Your informant, the man who led you into this high state of indignation, must have been thinking of the summer, not the season of equinoctial gales or the even more dreadful turning winter storms. But do not despair. The glass is rising quite evenly: so is the humidity. Tomorrow night, or the next, which is the dark of the moon, we may have one of the fogs this bay is so famous for, particularly as the wind is sure to fall indeed, it is less already. Steady rain, like this, often deadens both wind and sea. When you have finished breakfast, will you not put on a Magellan jacket and take a turn on deck?'

  'I will not. In the first place because I dislike getting wet, and in the second because I must complete my account of our sick-berth, which Dr Rutherford wished to recommend for universal adoption: and of course there are my medical notes.'

  'Yes, indeed. When you reach any height at all, you spend more time scratching paper than anything else. When I have done with the reefers, Mr Edwards and I must attend to the fair-writing of the log; and I have a score of returns to look over and sign. But after dinner if it calms enough for you to sit to your 'cello, let us work our way through the new Benda piece.'

  'By all means. Is there any more coffee in that pot?' There was, and having poured it Stephen said, 'I was talking to that boy Geoghegan, and I find that I know some of his relations in the Spanish service—his grandmother was a FitzGerald. Will I tell you why he finds it so difficult to coil down a rope in a way that pleases his mentors?'

  'Is it not just natural inborn vice?'

  'It is not. Like many of his nation he is a ciotóg, a left-handed man; and left to himself he will always coil a rope against the way of the sun.'

  'Then clearly he cannot be left to himself . . .' Jack prosed on about the need for exact uniformity in the service—for all ropes to run smooth—on the dreadful results, in an emergency, of the contrary practice—and when he paused for a piece of toast Stephen said, 'And there are degrees of left-handedness, some quite insuperable, others to be corrected if that is the right term, though usually at a cost, sometimes very great, to the soul. The harp of Brian of the Tributes, High King of Ireland and an unpersuadable man, carries the melody in the left hand; and this boy's oboe, made by his father, a skilful gentleman from a length of bog-oak, is the mirror image of the usual instrument. Would it be improper, do you think, to ask him to play with us? He blows the purest note.'

  'Indeed I love an oboe: it has nothing of the clarinet's cloying sweetness. But as for your boy . . . He seems a modest, well-bred young fellow, to be sure . . . Yet I knew a reefer in the West Indies who was amazingly good at chess—could beat anyone. The Admiral, a pretty good player, invited him, and was beat time and again. He laughed; but it did not end happy. The boy got above himself, talked too much, gave himself airs, made himself so unpopular in the cockpit and was kicked so very often that he had to be transferred. But I will take particular notice of young Geoghegan at nine o'clock; and if it can properly be done, we might try.'

  At nine o'clock the Bellona's young gentlemen who were not on duty attended in the Captain's fore-cabin washed pink, brushed smooth, and properly dressed, together with Mr Walkinshaw, the schoolmaster. 'Good morning, sir,' they cried, leaping up at the Captain's entrance, 'Good morning, sir,' some gruff, some still shrill, some wavering horribly a full octave. Jack desired them to sit down. Ordinarily, each by order of seniority, would have shown up his workings, that is to say his estimate of the ship's position, determined by observation of the sun's height at noon or by double altitudes, by dead reckoning, and on occasion by a certain amount of copying from their more gifted mess-mates. But the weather of the last days had been such that no observation was possible and Jack only required Mr Walkinshaw to lead them through Pythagoras once again, calling upon each in turn to rehearse the theorems upon which this most elegant, satisfying and wholly convincing argument was based. In his youth Jack had been wretchedly taught—mere rule of thumb at the best—and it was only quite late that the beauty of Pythagoras and Napier's Bones had been revealed to him, lighting a love of the mathematics that had burned steadily ever since; and he hoped that repeated exposure to them both might do the same for his youngsters. Generally speaking it had answered for one or two boys in each commission, which would probably not have happened if he had relied on ship's schoolmasters.

  The man he had at present, Mr Walkinshaw, was better than most; he knew a fair amount about mathematics and navigation, and he was generally sober; but like most of his kind he had very little authority. He messed with the midshipmen in the cockpit, he was little better paid than they, the regulations gave him no status in the ship, and he would have had to be an exceptional man to acquire one by force of character. Mr Walkinshaw had not managed to do so, and his lessons were far quieter, more orderly and useful when the Almighty was present, listening most of the time, interposing on occasion, learning a great deal about the boys.

  Today his eyes rested more often on Geoghegan than the others: again he noticed his awkward, cramped left-handed manner of writing, his modest way of answering a question, his smile when he was told that the answer was right—a smile that would have been enchanting if he had been a girl. 'He is too pretty for his own good, too pretty by far,' Jack reflected. 'He would be an odious little beast was he aware of it. Fortunately he ain't. Mr Dormer,' he said to a young gentleman whose attention seemed to be wandering, 'pray define a logarithm.'

  Dormer blushed, straightened himself, and said, 'A logarithm, sir, is when you raise ten to the power that gives the number you first thought of.'

  After a few more answers of this kind Jack desired Mr Walkinshaw to return to his remarks on the principles of spherical trigonometry and leafed through the rough copy of the Bellona's logbook that his clerk was to write fair later in the day, when the diminished sea might make fair writing more nearly possible.

  'Never say that I am no weather-prophet,' said Jack as he and Stephen sat down to dinner at a table that no longer required fiddles to keep the plates from one's lap. 'And I believe my fog is on its way.'

  'God love you for your words, my dear. I should have been sorely vexed to miss my rendezvous.'

  'Yet it must not be too thick, for although our Brittany pilot knows the bay like his own bed, he has to have a terminus a quo and a terminus ad quem.' He gave Stephen a satisfied look, and paused; but Stephen's face, civilly attentive, showed no change whatsoever; and Jack, never one to bear resentment, went on, 'He is marking Ramillies's chart at present—by the way, I asked Ramillies to dinner today—we have an enormous great fat goose—but he begged to be excused. He is taking medicine.'

  This meant that at seven bells in the morning watch the Ramillies's captain had stuffed himself with rhubarb, brimstone, the inspissated juice of figs and any other cathartics that happened to be at hand, so that he would be confined to the seat of ease in his quarter-gallery, groaning and straining, for the greater part of the day, clearly unfit as a guest at a dinner-table.

  'I wonder that a man of Captain Fanshawe's intelligence, education and taste should persist in that deleterious, superstitious self-torment,' said Stephen in a tone of real indignation. 'It is one of the unhappiest legacies of the dark ages—of mere barbarity.'

  'Oh,' said Jack, 'but William Fanshawe has studied health, you know, and he understands more about it than most, I do assure you. He is a great reader, and he has a b
ook by a man called Piggot who was all for the superiority of vegetables over bread, and who maintained that caps were far, far better for you than hats. His arguments, as I recall, were wonderfully convincing—to do with the humours.'

  This was not the first time that Stephen had learnt about medicine from sea-officers: as usual, he merely bowed, and at much the same moment the enormous great fat goose came in, Killick bearing it against the swell with a very fixed expression indeed on his face and setting it down without a drop of the abundant grease astray.

  When the massive remains of the bird, expertly carved by Stephen, had been sent down to the midshipmen's berth, according to the humane naval custom, and when the port was going to and fro, Jack said, 'I considered your young fellow this morning, and I think we might try. In these cases there is always the danger that if it don't answer it may do the boy or young man harm: I have known cases. Yet I think here we might try. Do you know the Mozart oboe quartet in F major?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Of course you do, of course you do,' cried Jack. 'I was only calling it to mind . . . no, what I mean is that I should love to hear it again: and Paisley is a respectable hand with a viola. We played it in Funchal with those cheerful Portuguese friars, and again—where?'

  'I forget. But I do remember that the viola broke a string in its most important passage and we were all thrown into a sad confusion—a sudden loss of all cohesion—the ground dropping from beneath one's feet—anticlimax is far too weak an expression.'

  'Naples. It was off Naples: the oboe was a castrato from the opera and John Hill of the Leviathan played the viola. At least as far as we went. I remember the grief of it—no spare strings. Stephen, may I beg you to ask Paisley whether he would like to study the score? Coming from me it would be so very like an order; and he is after all your messmate. And do you think you could find out whether the boy would be capable of bearing his part—whether he would like to try—and if so whether he too would choose to have the score. Do not take it amiss, Stephen, but these things would come so much better from a man who can clap leeches to their temples or rouse out their liver and lights—for their own good, of course—than from a fellow who cannot be contradicted and whose prime function is to command. No. I have put it very badly, I find. Do not be offended, Stephen—I do not really believe in all this gold lace: I do not really esteem myself another Pompous Pilate or Alexander the Great.'

  'Never in life, my dear. As for young Geoghegan, I understand that chamber-music has been part of his family life since he was a little boy: and as for the purser, I know that he plays in his parish choir when he is ashore, and that although in the wardroom it is mostly Vauxhall and Ranelagh airs, he is perfectly capable of other things. Now'—pouring each another glass of wine—'pray tell me about this Brittany pilot.'

  'Oh, he is one of the fishermen Calliope picked up when she was rescuing people who were trying to escape after the Vendée fighting—royalists, of course.'

  'Just so. I presume they have been carefully sieved?'

  'Oh, I am sure of it. They have been with us, scattered about the fleet ever since; and I believe that during the peace they brought their families across to Market Jew in Cornwall. They have the same kind of language, as I am sure you know, and they get along famously with the country people and fishermen. This one is called Yann: the Admiral sent him over some little time ago to mark all our charts. He is marking Ramillies's now, and he should be with us tomorrow.'

  'So much the better,' Stephen finished his glass and said, 'I shall make my rounds now: and if the sea grows even a little more reasonable, I believe we may have some music after supper. And if the rounds do not take long I shall have made my inquiries well before that.'

  'Well, my dear,' he said, coming in just before their toasted cheese—an invariable supper dish whenever they were within reach of the prime essentials—'that was eminently satisfactory. I found the boy by mere chance, and he puzzling over a knot with his sea-daddy—are you acquainted with the expression?'

  'Fairly well. My own sea-daddy, dear old William Parsons, was the best of men—endlessly patient.'

  'So was this one. Again and again he said, "No, sir: right over left and then up through the bight" without any wounding emphasis. And when at last the knot was tied he said that Nelson could not have done it better—that Mr Geoghegan would make a seaman yet. He then walked off to stow the rope wherever ropes are stowed and I talked to the boy. Of course he knew the quartet—had played it repeatedly at home, his father with the 'cello, his uncle Kevin the fiddle and Cousin Patrick the viola—but should be very happy to look over the score again. Mr Paisley was almost as good. He did not absolutely assert that he had borne a part in this particular quartet but he let it be understood that he was intimately familiar with it: and even if he had not been he was, as the skipper himself would testify, so practised a sight-reader that he did not need to study the score before sitting down to it, so long as he had a good light on his music-stand.'

  'Certainly, I have known him make his way through a sheaf of hand-written sheets seen for the very first time in a very creditable manner. What joy. Allow me to help you to some of this capital-smelling cheese.'

  'If you would be so good. What do you tell me of tomorrow's weather? Is it likely to be suitable?'

  'I will swear to nothing, but Harding and the master, who both know Ushant well, are of the same opinion: unless it grows so thick that we cannot see our music, why then, tomorrow'—touching wood—'should be all that a reasonable being could ask.'

  And indeed the four reasonable beings could hardly have been better served. There was still a heavy swell from the south-west, and urged on by the making tide it broke high, white and dreadful on the islands and reefs of the Saints and the mainland cliffs, but the wind had dropped to no more than a topgallant breeze, and although Jack's fog had made its infant appearance in the form of a veiling mist there was no question of its blurring even a hemidemisemiquaver. Yet when Jack and Stephen met for breakfast each looked at the other with a considering eye and Stephen said, 'Melancholy, brother? Hipped?'

  'Somewhat,' said Jack. 'I do not much like the behaviour of the glass'—pointing to an elegant barometer in brass gimbals—'Nor do I much care for poverty. I cannot afford to keep a table for my officers; I cannot afford to entertain my fellow-captains in the traditional service fashion; and what is more I cannot afford to buy extra powder to eke out our miserable allowance. Today, to the astonishment of one and all, we shall beat to quarters and carry out the great-gun exercise: but your only worthwhile exercise is with the true discharge, the furious recoil, the cloud of smoke; and even on this perfect day we can afford only two real broadsides for each battery. But Stephen, you are in much the same case, I believe? Haunted by the blue devils? Glum?'

  'It is nothing that coffee and perhaps a very lightly boiled egg will not bear away,' said Stephen. 'Yet I am saddened by the reflection that although age has not yet seriously decayed my powers in other directions, or so I flatter myself, I have real difficulty in grasping the geography of this Behemoth of a vessel. The sick-bay I know perfectly well, the wardroom, and this series of booths and cabins; but when I walk about at haphazard, as I was doing when I chanced upon young Geoghegan, I grow strangely bemused, scarcely knowing front from back; whereas in the dear Surprise—'

  'Bless her.'

  'Bless her by all means—I knew every recess, however remote, and of course all the people. Here I am something of a stranger in a largely unknown city. I do not find my not inconsiderable maritime knowledge increases; and I am by no means sure that the bold figure of speech I heard directed by an aged quartermaster at a ship's boy, "Thou wilt never shit a seaman's turd" may not be applied to me.'

  'Never in life,' cried Jack. 'You are the most seamanlike ship's surgeon I have ever known. Never in life. Killick. Killick, there. Light along that God-damned coffee, for Heaven's sake.'

  'Which . . .' began Killick: but seeing the Captain's face he closed his mo
uth and the door.

  'Not at all, Stephen. You are to consider, you have not been aboard very long, and for most of the last commission you were either looking after the sick or travelling about the African wilderness collecting rarities, except when you were sick yourself, very sick, very nearly dead, or so weak as to be able to do no more than creep about the poop. Killick . . .'

  'Which it's coming, ain't it?' cried Killick from behind his loaded tray, 'with a two-minute this morning's egg for his Honour.'

  Breakfast did indeed sweep away a good deal of superficial melancholy, and after it they walked up the poop, watching the sun rise, round and orange, over France: what mist there was (and it was thickening) did not yet hide all the ships of the inshore squadron and Jack pointed them out in the stations where Fanshawe (his senior by six months and therefore in command) had placed them. 'There is Ramillies, right in the middle of the Iroise Passage,' he said, nodding towards a rosy haze of topsails almost due north. 'And if you were to jump up to the masthead and clear the haze away you would see one of the frigates, probably Phoebe, guarding the way out of the Passage du Four: a good many vessels try to get into Brest from the north that way. And between the frigate and Ramillies you can make out a cutter even now, Fox, I believe, lying there to pass on signals.' He ran through the meagre tale of ships posted off most of the important means of access, just as the Bellona was posted within gunshot of the Raz de Sein; and among other things he showed him the general position of the uncharted or badly charted rock upon which HMS Magnificent struck in the year four, on Lady Day in the year four—a total loss, 'but her people were all saved by the boats of the squadron, mostly from the Impétueux, as I recall . . . Mr Harding,' he said to his hovering first lieutenant, 'I believe you wish to speak to me?'