The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  He was not, nor anything like it: but Mr Dalhousie had spent much of his life at sea—he was a marine animal—and Jack was very much at home with the surveyors and surveying. Theirs was a pleasant, friendly interview; yet even so, when Jack reached Whitehall, the broad and open street, he was still in something of a daze from that earlier series of orders, instructions, dockets and other papers that he had received and signed for, and by which he was now bound.

  'I was perfectly amazed,' he told Stephen. 'I had expected pretty long discussions, explanations, directions and so on, probably with the Fourth Sea Lord and some other grandees, with a possibility of putting in some humble requests of my own: but nothing of the sort—I was packed up like a parcel, and here I am, changed in a little over five minutes from a person fairly high on the post-captains' list to a man removed from it, lent to the Hydrographic Department and told to proceed to Chile in the hired vessel Surprise within seven calendar months from the present day, there to survey the coast and islands, my proceedings being at all times subordinate to the requirements of the political adviser. My full pay however will continue until the end of this lunar month, after which only half can be claimed or expected. So here I am'—tapping his swollen bosom—'as free as the air and strangely uneasy.'

  'I too have had an almost equally disturbing experience. The person responsible for hiring vessels on behalf of His Majesty received me, instantly agreed to the sum I proposed, gave me a bill at ninety days for the first quarter's hire, and bade me good day. He even wished me a pleasant voyage.'

  'There is an ale-house somewhere near Dunmow that I used to pass when I was shooting in those parts called The World Turned Upside Down,' said Jack. He stared out of the window; then, smiling as he turned he said, 'What do you say to being dogs for once and treating ourselves to a chaise all the way down to Woolcombe? I can see my prize-agent this afternoon, buy some presents for the family, pack Killick off with our chests by the coach, and set out tomorrow after breakfast.'

  Stephen considered for a moment, and returning the smile he said, 'With all my heart.'

  When a sailor, a sailor of Jack Aubrey's kind, a man-of-war's man through and through, has sunk the land for a week or two he insensibly parts his ties with the shore (in its wider sense) and returns to his ordered, exactly regulated, deeply traditional seaman's life, the solid world being bounded by the ship's bows and stern, the liquid by the unbroken rim of the horizon; this, together with time measured out by bells, being the natural form of existence.

  The same applies in reverse: the sailor, kept long enough at home, particularly in a county far from the sea, will in time revert to the ways and even the looks of the majority; and few people, seeing Captain Aubrey on his stout, stolid grey mare, riding back to Woolcombe, would have taken him for anything but an ordinary cheerful pink-faced country gentleman, like so many of his neighbours. And this was the more remarkable in that he had not really been cut off from the sea, but from the first week after coming home, had been much engaged with the Surprise, carrying her round with a scratch crew from Shelmerston to young Seppings' yard at Poole, and then going over on most Wednesdays to see how they were getting on—a practice interrupted only by his horse playing the fool and coming down with him on a slippery piece of road near Gromwell, a foolish caper that resulted in a broken collar-bone and the replacement of the sprightly gelding by the serious-minded grey mare.

  It was rather his companion, Dr Maturin, that the indifferent observer might have taken for a seaman: this however would not have been caused by anything about him nor by his seat on a horse (in this case the prettiest little Arab filly imaginable) but by a disreputable old blue coat that could still just be recognized as part of a naval surgeon's uniform and that, according to its owner, still had a great deal of wear in it.

  They reined in at the top of the hill and looked down at Woolcombe, the village, the house, the farms and outlying cottages, the great stretch of Simmon's unviolated Lea. 'Lord,' said Jack, 'how well I remember our coming home . . . all the women in the blue drawing-room, together with the parson's wife and Lady Butler, talking away twenty to the dozen and drinking tea. Amazed to see us—taken all aback—glad, in course: kind words and kisses: but George and Brigid were the only ones that did not seem out of countenance. I felt like an intruder. I had no idea women would get on so well together, just women alone: perhaps nunneries are like that.'

  'Perhaps they are,' said Stephen, who had seen a good many. 'I hope so, indeed.'

  'Then they all called out that it was peace now, huzzay, huzzay: we should be home for ever and the children would not grow up so rude and wild. Then there was the awkward business of saying, between cups of their vile tea, that no, not at all, we were off to Chile as soon as the barky could be patched up—what a hullaballoo!'

  'I take great credit to myself for saying that we were engaged only for six months or perhaps a year; and that Government was being extraordinarily liberal.'

  'That was pretty well, it is true. But the real turning-point came at supper, when I said they should all come, with the children, seeing us on our way as far as Madeira, admiring the island with us for a week or two and then going home in the packet. A cruise may not mean much to Diana or Clarissa, but Sophie has never been abroad at all and she is wild to go. So are the children.'

  'They often ask me Portuguese words, and chant them by the hour. But, my dear, are you not being unjust to Sophie? She is as strongly opposed to your being yellowed as ever you are, and she very clearly sees that further service and the possibility—probability—of distinction are the very best insurance against it.'

  'Yes, of course she does now, because day after day I have told her that however childish it may seem to her, hoisting my flag is the only thing that would make me happy—make me feel that my career had been a success. But I do believe that those brilliant words about the cruise were the beginning of the light—might also have been influenced by her.'

  'They certainly did no harm.' Stephen might have added Sophie's conviction that a husband busy in the South Pacific could not be doing himself harm in the House of Commons; but that would have been to betray her confidence; and as they rode on he reflected that Diana's attitude, though less solicitous, was more comfortable. She was a soldier's daughter, and for her, martial engagements, the prospect of advancement and distinction, took precedence over every other consideration. On being told that Stephen was bound for the Horn, she reflected and said, 'I shall set some of the fishermen's wives to work at once, knitting you really thick under-shirts and drawers of unbleached wool.'

  They rode into the courtyard, and George and Brigid came running out to meet them, both telling Stephen that there was a dead bat in the farther stable; they had covered it with hay; and please, please would he stuff it for them?

  Jack walked in alone, Padeen taking care of the horses. Sophie was in the hall, looking pretty; they kissed, and she asked him how the ship was coming on. 'What they have done is very, very good,' said Jack, 'and when the ship is ready she will be as strong as a Greenland whaler, and as tight: perfect for the southern ice. But they have still not advanced beyond the midship riders—I will show you on the model—and now they are at a stand for some knees that were promised last month; while their foreman Essex has given his foot a shocking great gash with an adze. Poor young Seppings confounds himself in apologies and I am sure he does all he can; but when we shall sail, the dear Lord alone can tell. Next time, sweetheart, you must come with me, and see what female charm can do. Diana will drive us over, if you don't choose to ride.'

  Yet the charm of even three women together—for Clarissa had come too—all dressed for the occasion, could not advance the work at a pace that would allow delivery before the end of the year; and since the Woolcombe estate was almost entirely made up of holdings let to tenant farmers, with only enough pasture for the horses and cows kept in hand, and since there was little fishing within reach and no shooting at this season, Jack was deprived of the u
sual country gentleman's pursuits; and he might have run melancholy mad had it not been for his duty as justice of the peace, the company of his wife, his friends, his children, a large inherited acquaintance, and his old love astronomy. Somewhat richer now (though not at all indecently) he caused a really efficient little observatory to be built and installed his telescopes.

  The big, spreading old house lived at the steady pace it had been accustomed to for so many generations, a mild but continuous activity. Stephen, with the help of Padeen and old Harding's grandson Will, established a pretty exhaustive census of the nesting birds, particularly of the waders round the mere; Sophie, and often Diana, paid or received the necessary calls; while at all times Diana trained, exercised and took care of her Arabs; Clarissa taught George and Brigid Latin verbally, as well as French, and read enormously, disturbing the dust of ages; and always there were familiar faces at hand, in the house, in the stables, in the village and all over the countryside. And at home, if anyone should forget his duty, there was always Killick to tell him of it; while the very frequent disagreements between Bonden and Mnason on the boundaries between a coxswain's rights and those of a butler prevented domestic harmony from becoming monotonous or cloying.

  Then—Jack still attending at Poole each week—after a kindly harvest, autumn came round, and Jack and Stephen shot a fair number of Woolcombe partridges, some pheasants almost certainly from Captain Griffiths' stock (the house was shut up and the keepers dismissed), wood-pigeons, rabbits, hares and the odd quail.

  In November Mr Colvin's hounds met a large field at Woolcombe House, including Diana, Jack and Stephen; and from this time until the hard frosts came all three went out at least once a week, rarely having a blank day, and on occasion some glorious runs. And when the hard frosts did come they brought remarkable quantities of wigeon and pintail and even three great northern divers to glorify the mere. Yet all these delights—very intense for those whose taste lay that way and whose frames could stand the strain—never kept Jack long from Seppings' yard. Occasionally Stephen, Surprise's nominal owner, went with him to be shown the progress, however slow; but once the divers were on the mere and an almost certain snowy owl, there was no tearing him from his carefully-constructed hides.

  Yet one day a little after Christmas, the northern birds' innate sense having told them that they might now return to their dreary wastes and the snowy owl having proved a myth, Stephen rode out to meet his returning friend, finding him on the road he always took, just this side of Southam. This he did with the greater zeal as Jack had been away since Monday, seeing friends in Portsmouth who might help him to some copper, still in absurdly short supply.

  'Well met,' he cried from a few yards off; and then, quite close, 'Why Jack, art sick? Art mad?'

  'No,' said Jack. 'Only cold, and low in my spirits. I passed through Portsmouth, as I told you I should, and there on Common Hard, just by the Ship, I saw Lord Keith going down to his barge. I stood aside, of course, pulled off my hat and stood there, smiling like a simpleton. He looked right past me: no change of expression whatsoever. It was the coldest, cruellest cut a man I so admired. By God, that shows how the wind is blowing: no wonder I look yellower still.'

  'Was Lady Keith there?'

  'Queenie? Yes: an even older friend. She was leaning on her woman's arm, all wrapped up in a fur pelisse and picking her way: though it is true she might have been watching her step, on that surface. I like to think so, anyhow: an even older friend—she almost brought me up, as I think I told you. I dared not call out.'

  'The Admiral is for the Mediterranean, I believe?'

  'Yes. In Royal Sovereign.

  'What a load of responsibility—what details—things to remember! Lord Keith must be close on seventy.'

  'Yes. I see what you mean and I hope you are right. However, let me tell you something more cheerful: Seppings finishes the hull—as pretty as cabinet-work—next week. And the copper is in hand, two thousand odd sheets of it and seventeen hundredweight of countersunk nails, together with ten reams of paper to go under the plates. He thinks he can promise delivery in the first or second week in February.'

  'I am glad of that,' said Stephen, 'because I have heard from our Chilean friends. They will be in Funchal by the end of the month, or in the first days of March.'

  'It can be very delightful in Madeira by March. I long to show the children oranges and lemons.'

  'Custard apples.'

  'Pineapples and bananas.'

  'And Madeira has a wren of its own, which I have never seen; far less its eggs.'

  'If we are to sail in the second week of February,' said Jack, 'I must go to Shelmerston again quite soon and recruit some of the best old Surprises. Even though we cannot offer them much in the way of prizes, with this American peace, I still think we can have our choice, so many ships having been paid off, and the merchantmen not wanting to take any more fresh hands until trade has revived.'

  The second week in February took on an enormous importance. George and Brigid studied the calendar and neglected their lessons to such a degree that Clarissa, who very rarely used a harsh word where they were concerned, said that they were a couple of shatter-brained ninnies, only fit for the stable-bucket. All Sophie's and much of Diana's energy was taken up with preparations—clothes for the cool part of the voyage and for the warmth expected in Madeira, the proper regulations of the house and the poultry-yard in their absence, a thousand things without a name. Happily Sophie now had a housekeeper, an old acquaintance from the village called Mrs Flower; she was a widow, and before her marriage she had been in service, having started in the still-room at Woolcombe House itself, in Jack's mother's time; but even so, such a hurry of mind once the date of departure was set! And then such indescribable confusion, near-panic, when Captain Aubrey returned from Poole, said cheerfully, 'Well, there we are: Harding, Somers and Whewell would be very happy to come. The last coat of blacking on the yards is dry, the shrouds are rattled down, stores and water are aboard, we have a leading wind, with a steady glass; and we can go aboard tomorrow.'

  They did not go aboard quite tomorrow, but very nearly; and it was a pale, nervously exhausted Sophie who sat nodding in the coach opposite Clarissa as they approached Poole. Indeed, she was positively asleep, with her mouth open, when they came in sight of the Surprise. George and Brigid were good, kind children, on the whole, and seeing that she had dropped off they kept quiet; but at the view of the Surprise Brigid put her hand gently on her knee and whispered, 'There she is.'

  Sophie woke instantly and saw the little frigate whole, full on, newly painted, her yards exactly square, her sails furled in the bunt. She might have been waiting for the King (or now alas the Prince Regent) to come aboard with a covey of admirals, holding her breath as she did so; and of course her people had been watching for the fine green coach driven by a lady.

  A splendid lady she was, too, and they would have received her, the Captain, the Doctor and his wife with all the restrained formality allowable in a private vessel—in effect a yacht, an ocean-going yacht. But Brigid, that intrepid sailor (she had crossed the Channel in the Ringle), burst free from all control and darted over the brow to greet and even embrace her former shipmates, ruining what modest ceremony they had proposed.

  She delighted in small-craft, ships and the sea; she had picked up and retained an extraordinary number of sailor's words from her first voyage and her second, in an English packet that brought her back from Valencia, and all these she explained to George in a high clear voice, hurrying him fore and aft.

  'Welcome aboard, sir,' said Harding. 'What a lovely vessel. Is she as weatherly as she looks?'

  'She will lie almost as close as the dear Ringle over there,' replied Jack, nodding towards the tender, laid up over the water. 'And she too despises leeway. I am sorry to have to leave the schooner.' Harding looked at him; but questioning one's superior officers was not encouraged in the Navy, not even in so marginally naval a vessel as this, with women and childre
n all over the deck, and no Marines.

  By way of acknowledging his first lieutenant's restraint Jack said, 'But the blue cutter has been coppered, and if we step her mast six inches forward I think she will do very well.'

  With his fortune restored, Stephen had passed the word to give the ship all she could wish; and Jack, easier now with his most recent prize, had filled those gaps that only a seaman could perceive, adding among other things Manilla cordage, blocks of the very first quality, full suits of sails for all weathers, cut by an artist in excellent canvas.

  Their leading wind was still with them and the glass beautifully steady as they cast off, took in fresh milk and vegetables, warped out into the harbour, spread their snowy wings and swept out on the ebbing tide.

  'That's the main-brace,' cried Brigid, as they trimmed the sails for a perfect departure. 'No, booby—at the end of the yard.' She was hoarse with explanation and George, though he admitted her superiority, had been growing a little sullen; but now, as the Surprise met the heave and roll of the sea and her bow-wave built up and up, tearing down her side with the most exhilarating sound in the world, all his sweetness and candour returned and he swore he should go up to the masthead as soon as the hands were not so busy.

  In fact his father, knowing that George was afflicted neither with giddiness nor seasickness, took him up shortly after; up, if not to the very head of the mast itself then at least to the topmast crosstrees, going by way of the maintop and placing his feet from below: from this height, the day being fine and clear, George could see for about fifteen miles, a vast expanse of glittering sea to larboard, with some shipping, and the English coast stretching away and away to starboard. 'If you look aft you will see the Wight,' said Jack, moving about with the ease of a spider—an enormous spider, truly, but benevolent. George's look of ecstasy touched his heart: and presently he said, 'Some people don't quite like being up here, just at first.'