The Yellow Admiral

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Oh sir,' cried George, 'I don't mind it: and if I may I shall go right up to the very top.'

  'God love you,' said Jack laughing. 'You shall quite soon, but not until you are perfectly at home up to the crosstrees. There is St Alban's Head, and Lulworth beyond. We are making about eight knots and steering south-south-west, so about dinner-time you may see Alderney and perhaps the tip of Cape La Hague in France.'

  George laughed with joy, and repeated, 'Cape La Hague, in France.'

  When at last he could be prised off the crosstrees and so down through the maintop and by way of the ladder-like shrouds, he slid the last few feet to the deck by the topmast breast-backstay like his father. Dusting his hands he looked up at Jack with a glowing face and said, 'Oh sir, I shall be a sailor too. There is no better life.'

  There was nothing in the rest of this not inconsiderable voyage to change his opinion. The almost unvarying topgallant breeze from the north-east carried them along at between seven and ten knots day after day, and although they handed topgallants by night and sometimes took a reef in the topsails, it often looked as though they should reach the island in a week. Yet once or twice the wind hauled forward and the children had the pleasure of watching the frigate beat up tack upon tack, which she did with wonderful ease and fluency, for not only was she as handy as a ship could well be, but her people were right seaman who had known her for years and years, often in very furious seas indeed.

  Only once did the wind fail them entirely, and that was a barely disguised blessing, for all hands were able to watch a school of dolphins feeding eagerly upon a school of green-boned garfish, a school that dwindled as they watched. Then, George and his father having swum from the jolly-boat, they all gazed at a turtle, apparently asleep, just under the stern.

  'It cannot be eaten. Oh, it cannot be eaten, sure,' said Brigid, looking very earnestly at Stephen: she loved the turtle, and she had heard of turtle soup.

  'Never in life,' said Stephen. 'Never in life, my dear: he is a hawksbill.'

  That evening hands sang and danced upon the forecastle until the watch was set, ending a day that might have been designed to steal a boy's heart away. George had been twice to the maintop crosstrees with Bonden; and the only thing wanting for perfection was a whale.

  Yet an island stretching broad this side of the horizon next morning was a reasonable compensation for a whale: an island with tall mountains in the middle, tipped with snow, although down here it was shirt-sleeves weather, even at breakfast. On the larboard quarter there was another island, perhaps fifteen miles away, and on the bow some others, long rocky thin affairs that the hands told them were the Desertas. Yet though the name had its charm, they had eyes for nothing but Madeira itself, which came nearer and nearer, the coast, often sheer cliff, moved steadily from left to right. 'Oh how I wish Padeen was here,' said Brigid. 'He dearly loves a cliff.'

  'Somebody has to guard the house, with all the men away,' said George. 'Padeen is strong enough to tear a lion in two. And someone had to take the coach home with the groom.'

  The Surprise passed through a squadron of Portuguese men-of-war, those jellyfish with a kind of crest well above the surface, by which they are said to sail along, directing their course by the frightfully poisonous stinging tentacles that dangle a great way below. 'Was you to swim among those creatures, Master George,' said Joe Plaice, who had sailed with Jack all over the world, 'you would have died in screaming agony, being brought aboard maimed something horrible, though dead.' He laughed, and added, 'Worse nor sharks, seeing it lasts longer,' and laughed again at the reflection, which he repeated.

  But this damped no spirits: Funchal harbour was opening, a bay full of shipping with a small fort on an island rock, and then the town sweeping up behind it, white-washed houses one above another to a great height, with palm-trees bursting green among them, then vineyards and fields of sugar-cane rising higher still, and mountains beyond them.

  Stephen came and stood on the forecastle too—the women were busy packing below in their usual rather disappointing way—and with his glass he showed the children not only oranges and lemons, but also quantities of bananas among the sugar-canes, and the inhabitants of the island, dressed in the Madeiran manner, wonderfully strange and gratifying to an untravelled eye.

  Over to starboard Jack and Harding gazed at the ships and vessels in the harbour. A fair number of merchantmen and many, many fishing-boats, but what really interested them were the British men-of-war. 'Pomone, thirty-eight,' said Jack with absolute certainty, he having captured her in the Mauritius campaign. 'Wrangham has her now, I believe.'

  'Yes, sir: I think so. And behind her Dover, thirty-two; but she is only a troop-ship at present. I am sure you have noticed the union flag over the little fort, sir?'

  'Yes. And over the castle above the town. It seems that we are looking after the place for the Portuguese—left over from when we and they were both at war with Spain. Then beyond the brig there are two corvettes, Rainbow and Ganymede. We had better anchor just inshore of Ganymede: there is something of a sea running and she will shelter us. The ladies would not like being wetted. They would not object to a bosun's chair to reach the boat, either.'

  They made no objection, but sat quietly in the stern-sheets of the launch with Jack and Stephen, the children wedged in where they would fit, forbidden to trail their hands in the water, talk, or play the goddam fool; and they made their way through the many boats plying to and fro between the strand and the ships, carrying water and stores in one direction and liberty-men from the naval vessels in the other, all looking pleased, all dressed in their shore-going rig.

  When the launch was two or three cables' lengths from the landing-place Stephen murmured to Jack, 'Among the people there, I believe I see our Chilean friends.'

  He was quite right. With a spurt the launch ran up the fine grinding shingle and the bow-men heaved her high. The Chileans handed the ladies out with infinite courtesy and told Stephen that the whole party were their guests: and they had provided a conveyance to take them to an English hotel. This was a curtained sledge for four, with broad wooden runners that slid, more or less, up the brisk, uneven slope, drawn by oxen. The children, though fairly well disciplined and biddable in ordinary life, absolutely refused to get in, but ran by the side or in circles round it.

  The hotel might have been an English inn of the better sort in a country town, except for the wild burst of tropical plants in the courtyard; and here, while the women were unpacking, Jack, Harding and Stephen met several naval acquaintances. Stephen's was the surgeon of Pomone, who came over and asked him how he did; they talked for a long while, Jack and the Chileans having moved off to show Sophie, Clarissa and the children the wonders of Funchal. Stephen was fond of this Mr Glover, a most respectable, conscientious medical man; and when, with a certain hesitation, Glover asked, 'Would you think it improper if I were to speak of one of your patients?'

  'I would not, in your case,' said Stephen.

  'Well, now, I was aboard the Queen Charlotte a little while ago and Sherman asked me to look at the Admiral. I thought him in a very declining way. Sherman agreed: said you had prescribed digitalis . . . that he and the Admiral had noticed a marked improvement after two or three days: that the patient had increased the dose, and when Sherman protested had said you were a physician and therefore knew more than a mere surgeon. Indeed, he appears either to have confiscated the bottle or to have obtained the substance from another source—here poor Sherman's account was rather confused, though I should say that he at no time criticized your prescription—but at all events the unhappy Admiral must by now have absorbed great quantities. When I saw him and told him that there was grave and very dangerous excess, he was barely lucid.'

  'Thank you, dear colleague,' said Stephen. 'I shall write to Lord Stranraer at once, this very hour itself, dissuading him in the strongest possible terms. And I shall send Sherman a note suggesting the tincture of laudanum, to allay the constant anxiety that accompan
ies such a condition: then shore-leave as soon as possible.'

  'Or the grave,' said Glover in a low voice. 'Now will you come and look at my poor captain? He is a straightforward broken leg—tib and fib falling down a hatchway—in the dear nuns' hospital just up the way. It would comfort him, I am sure. And then I must admit it has been going on too long—will not knit. I should value your opinion.'

  The Chileans were kind, hospitable, civilized creatures: they knew—it was obvious—that Captain Aubrey and Dr Maturin wished their families to see the island before the packet left for England in a fortnight's time, but they did want to get Jack away to South America as soon as ever they could and they conducted the visit at a speed that reduced even the children to an exhausted silence: two vineyards and an extensive plantation of sugar-cane one morning, the cathedral and the charnel house in the afternoon. The mountains, on mule-back, the next day, with a pause to see the curious buildings in which madeira was matured in a vast barrel at a temperature that would have been considered excessive in the calidarium of a Turkish bath. A mysterious further delight was promised for the next day, and the victims were discussing various schemes of escape as they sat on the hotel terrace, eating a splendid English breakfast and gazing out over the harbour when Jack saw a xebec with an extraordinary press of sail come tearing in, weave through the moored shipping and race up to the landing-place. A young naval lieutenant in formal uniform leapt out, ran up the strand and vanished in the narrow streets below.

  'By God, that fellow was in a hurry,' said Jack, relaxing. 'I was sure he must foul a cable. My dear, pray be so good as to pour me another cup of coffee. I am quite exhausted.'

  The coffee crossed the table, gratefully received, but not half of it was drunk before the young lieutenant appeared, gazed about, saw Jack, advanced, whipped off his hat, begged pardon for interrupting Captain Aubrey, but here was a letter from the Admiral.

  'Thank you, Mr Adams,' said Jack, who had last seen him as a midshipman. 'Sit down and drink something long and cool while I read this in my room. Forgive me, my dears,' taking the letter and bowing all round.

  The letter was from Lord Keith: it was dated Royal Sovereign, at sea 28 February 1815 and it ran

  My dear Aubrey,

  Tom coxswain tells me that I walked straight past you on Common Hard the other day. I am heartily sorry for it, because it might have looked intentional—might have led to a misunderstanding.

  However, a particular friend of yours and of Dr Maturin's at the Admiralty told me where to reach you, so I trust I can put that inadvertence and some other things right: for this is a moment when we have need of good officers.

  Napoleon escaped from Elba the day before yesterday. You are to take all His Majesty's ships and vessels at present in Funchal under your command, hoisting your broad pennant in Pomone, and as soon as Briseis joins you will proceed without the loss of a moment to Gibraltar, there to block all exits from the Straits by any craft soever until further notice. And for so doing the enclosed order shall be your warrant.

  With our very best wishes to you and Mrs Aubrey,

  Most sincerely yours,

  Keith

  At the bottom a familiar hand had written Dearest Jack—I am so happy for you—love—Queenie.

  'Speech at the Painted Hall, Greenwich'

  WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE

  This speech was delivered by the Rt. Hon William Waldegrave, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, at a dinner in honour of Patrick O'Brian in the Painted Hall, Greenwich, on Friday 11th October 1996. It is reprinted here by kind permission of Mr Waldegrave.

  We have gathered here tonight, thanks to the splendid initiative of Max Hastings and the Evening Standard, to celebrate and to honour one of the greatest storytellers in the English language. I start with that word—storyteller—designedly. There are, or used to be, some in the world of English literary studies who regard the capacity to tell a story as being a most deadly disqualification from serious consideration. Only if a book proceeded in a properly inconsequential manner, only if the naive could be trapped into the ultimate solecism of enquiring what it might be about; only if the pages might be bound up in all manner of different orders without difference to the sense; only then could the thing be taken as high art.

  Well. When the old blind poet struck with his staff on the stone flagged floor of the great hall of Argos or of Thebes or of Sparta and began to tell of the wrath of swift-footed Achilles, he earned the hospitality he was given because he was the teller of stories. So this meal too pays some small, symbolic part of the debt we, who love his books, owe to Patrick O'Brian, storyteller.

  Let me follow it a little further. The Greeks called the old epic poets craftsmen of myth—where the word myth has at one level the meaning 'story'—but also at another, resonates with the power of our English word 'myth'. Teller of the story. Craftsman of the myth.

  Is that not what Patrick is, as he does what was once done for Hector and Achilles and the skirmish at windy Troy for the Royal Navy at its greatest epoch? He has told the story, with an historical accuracy which has won the admiration of the most unforgiving scholars and caused the frustration of the most nit picking of pedants; but he has elevated that story—to the point where it becomes a universal tale celebrating, as does all true myths, by means of the particular, the universal and unchanging nature of courage, honour, skill, love and hardihood. He has written the epic that Nelson's navy deserves; and in so doing he has shown how the heroism of that time can speak to all ages. That is what the true storyteller does, and there are not so many of them in the history of literature. That is why when one first reads him the shock of recognition of true gold is so very great.

  And that is also why it is fitting that we honour him here, in this greatest of all the buildings associated with the Royal Navy. He has built for that service a monument more lasting than bronze by the application of the magic of his imagination and the skill of his craftsmanship to the true accounts left by the officers and men of that time; the plans and the log books; the pictures and the poetry; the letters and the songs. It is fitting that the spiritual descendants of those sailors are here in such force tonight to acknowledge what he has done to honour their great ancestors. So if Kipling wrote the epic of British India and if Conrad did it for the worldwide mercantile empire of steam and iron, then Patrick has done that service for the navy of St. Vincent, the Nile and Trafalgar.

  And let me add one sentence on another kind of high public servant, not so often seen in public as is an officer of the navy. As Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida says: 'There is a mystery—with whom relation durst never meddle — in the soul of state . . .'

  In Maturin the intelligence services can celebrate a hero every bit as realistic and formidable as is Aubrey for the navy. Whether any of them may be here to pay tribute too must of course remain a mystery wrapped within an enigma. And I will pass over in silence the fact that Patrick himself has, in his time, done the State some service.

  But Patrick's monument to Nelson's navy is not some great dreary pompous thing like that statue of Pitt in the Guildhall. He has carved his tribute in a series of novels any one of which can stand by itself as a novel proper, in which an authentic world draws us in, to the point where we find ourselves as much at home there—if not more—than in the world we more regularly inhabit. Here there is a different kind of universality; the grandeur of his vision of the epic story is made up of components which are all truly human and real—universal in another sense. We know his people; love them, hate them, recognise them; and understand them; never does the sweep of the scale of the undertaking detract from the care with which each individual book or scene or subplot is crafted. This use of the community of a ship and the rhythm of voyage and return has always been fertile ground not only for epic, but also for the intimate and subtle explorations of personal relationships. Odysseus may stand at the head of one tributary of the river that flows here; but Melville and Conrad and Golding are fellow sailors o
n another.

  But this is not an occasion for literary review. Many very distinguished writers and critics are now of the true faith. I like best A. S. Byatt, who wrote that if Jane Austen's naval brothers had written novels, they might have written the novels of O'Brian. And there are plenty more where that tribute came, ranging from early apostles like Mary Renault and Dr Binyon and Irish Murdoch and Timothy Mo.

  And Patrick can make you laugh. This is not a skill the great historical novelists have always demonstrated. The concept of the great Sir Walter Scott chuckling as he wrote is not an easy one to conjure. Kipling can sometimes do it—there are some good jokes in Kim and Soldiers Three—though sometimes the results are lamentable. But is is the ever-present warmhearted irony in what Patrick writes—bubbling over sometimes into Wodehousian farce—which sometimes makes me want to put the book down and just catch up with the accumulated joy of the last few chapters I have read. Nor, I may say, is this a feature only of the novels. Try the account in his life of Picasso of the dinner given by his fellow painters for poor simple Douanier Rousseau. Patrick has a share of the true comic gold in his nature, and let me urge here and now those who have only read the Aubrey-Maturin series—only! or who have been put off by being told that it is a children's book—read The Golden Ocean, but not if your spouse is trying to sleep, because you will laugh as much when you read it as Patrick says he did when he was writing it.

  He is a private man. He is not a man who has sought the limelight. There is therefore something utterly delightful about the way the tide of recognition for his achievement has come flooding silently but inexorably in from every quarter of the globe and every kind and condition of people. The CBE from Her Majesty. High honours not only from the Royal Navy—I have carried his bag at a dinner given for him by the Sea Lords themselves in the boardroom at the Old Admiralty—but also from the great sibling navy, the US Navy, which took him to the bottom of the sea in a submarine of awesome power. In the US, the bumper stickers read Aubrey-Maturin in 96—and why not? Translation by now into every language under the sun—and a good many others—even, belatedly into French (the review I read in Le Monde said it was all right to admit he was good he lived in France and drove a 2CV). Honoured amongst the experts at Kew for his biography of Joseph Banks. First winner of the Heywood Hill Prize, Recognised long ago as a subtle and poetic novelist for Testimonies. Described by Civilisation Clark as the best biographer of Picasso. (I have to tell one story. At dinner once in our house with Caroline and me, we were getting well into discussion as my rather decent Armagnac disappeared as decisively as Jack Aubrey pursued by the tipstaff. The night was young—it was say 1.30 or 2.00—and another guest, rather younger than Patrick, a senior figure at the BBC—was tending, unlike Patrick, to nod a little. Waking the voice of the nation up I said, perhaps rather loudly, 'You know, Patrick wrote what the Spanish say is the best book on Picasso.' I do not remember the reply because I could not but hear Patrick saying to Caroline, and it was the authentic Maturin speaking, 'Lord, what an offensive man your husband is. Why should he be saying that only the Spanish say it is the best biography of Picasso?')