Blue At The Mizzen Part 3

'My dear Stephen, how happy I am to see you,' cried Sir Joseph, clasping his hand most affectionately. 'Tell me, have you eaten yet? Shall we hurry over to the club and call for broiled chops? But no..." he said, on consideration. 'No. I have a little room here, and you may wish to speak without informing all the nation?'

'A little small private room would suit admirably. But please, dear Joseph, may a messenger be sent round to the Grapes, in the Liberties of the Savoy, to tell them of my presence here? Not only shall I stay there, which Mrs. Broad and the little girls do not yet know, for I am come straight from the Pool, but there at least I have some respectable clothes - I keep a room there permanently, you know. I am not what would ordinarily be called a dressy man, as you are aware; but I should not have presented myself here in the utmost degree of squalor...'

'No, no..."

'... had it not been a matter of some urgency. Though,' he murmured, looking at his cuff, 'this was quite a good s.h.i.+rt, some years ago. Of some urgency,' he resumed, and plucking the undeciphered message from his pocket he laid it on the desk, smoothing the paper flat.

'I cannot make it out offhand,' said Sir Joseph. 'What were you using?'

'Ajax with one s.h.i.+ft,' said Stephen. 'It worked perfectly for the first page.'

'I cannot make it out at all, though I know Ajax with a s.h.i.+ft quite well.' Blaine rang a bell and said, 'Ask Mr. Hep-worth to step this way.'

Mr. Hepworth glanced at Stephen with discreet curiosity and quickly looked down. Sir Joseph said to him, 'Mr. Hep-worth, be so good as to take this away and determine the system upon which it was based. Will it take you more than half an hour?'

'I hope not, Sir Joseph; I think I see some familiar combinations.'

'Then please to send the t.i.tle and a transcript to my little room.'

The tension was too great for either of them to eat chops with any real appet.i.te, and they abandoned their meal entirely when Mr. Hepworth came back, looking grave and carrying his transcript. 'The gentleman who encoded this, sir,' he said, 'was using the new book: and both book and code being unfamiliar he turned over a whole gathering, taking it for the direct continuation of Ajax three. It looks very like: I have known this happen before, when the encoder was hurried, or uneasy in his mind.'

'Thank you, Mr. Hepworth,' said Blaine, and when the door had closed he went on, 'shall we read together? I am afraid our forecast was all too accurate.'

They thrust their chops away - already congealed - and Blaine pulled his chair round to sit next to Stephen. They read intently, and from these short, nervous pa.s.sages they learnt that an important and reasonably well-supplied body of Chileans had entered into contact with Sir David Lindsay, formerly of the Royal Navy, a most enterprising officer, who had undertaken to come out and command their naval forces. The informant gave particulars of his sources, and although Blaine murmured a few names aloud - known allies or conceivably agents - he was perfectly mute about Bernardo O'Higgins and Jose San Martin, with whom Stephen had been so intimately well acquainted during his attempt, his very nearly successful attempt, to induce the Peruvians to declare themselves independent of Spain. Some of the names Stephen saw with pleasure - the names of the sources rather than those of the committee - the latter with distaste, anger, and sometimes distrust and once again, once again he realised the fragility of these movements for liberation - so many who wished to be leaders, so few to follow.

When they had finished, Blaine said, 'No wonder Dr. Jacob strayed into the wrong code. We had indeed some remote notion of this possibility, but none whatsoever of its imminence... come in.'

'I beg pardon, Sir Joseph,' said Hepworth. 'I just thought you would like to know that the same signal is coming through by semaph.o.r.e.'

'Thank you, Mr. Hepwrorth. What is its source?'

'Hebe, sir; in Plymouth.'

There was a silence, and then Stephen said, 'The name of Sir David Lindsay has a familiar ring, a naval ring, but I cannot connect it with any particular event.'

'He is certainly a very able sailor, and he gained his reputation on some fine single-s.h.i.+p actions: but const.i.tutionally he was perhaps more willing to give orders than to receive them, and he did less well on reaching post-rank and being obliged to submit to the discipline of fleet manoeuvres. There was some story of an improper challenge in India, I believe - possibly even of a.s.sault - the charge being withdrawn on an undertaking to leave the service. But I make no a.s.sertions. I only know that he has not served in a King's s.h.i.+p since, and that some people are a little shy of him.'

'I think I remember now,' said Stephen, perfectly aware that though his friend had told the truth, it was by no means the whole truth.

'Returning to Dr. Jacob's lapse - dear me, I wonder it does not happen more often - I believe I am right in saying that none of the names of his Chilean committee are those of the gentlemen who first approached us?'

'That is so: and although I know too little of the country to a.s.sert it, there may well be a difference, as between north and south."

'Very true.' Sir Joseph considered the proposition for some time; and then, having gazed at the long, thin extent of Chile on a revolving globe, he went on in quite a different voice. 'Of course, I shall have to submit whatever I have to say to my superiors, but I think the general feeling will be that Captain Aubrey should carry on with the original plan, in spite of the unfortunately necessary delay in Seppings' yard, making the best of his way to Valparaiso, where you will feel the ground - a.s.sess the possibilities - and proceed accordingly. In spite of everything we have a representative in Buenos Aires who is very well with the authorities, and who can ensure reasonably brisk communication - brisker, at all events, than messages that have to come back round the Horn. It is extremely unlikely that Sir David will already be there: but whether or no, some degree of cooperation would seem the wisest course; though he must be given no official countenance. He is unlikely to have any vessel equal to Surprise; but I must admit that until we have the naval attache's report from Madrid we remain ignorant of the present Chilean government's strength and of the number of armed merchantmen at their disposal. The att.i.tude of the Peruvian viceroy is naturally of the first importance, but that you know as well as I, indeed probably far better. However, let me consult those who must be consulted and deliver the sum of our collective wisdom tomorrow. Will you drink tea with me in Shepherd's Market - I have one or two trifles to show you - and then perhaps we could sup at Black's?' 'I should be very happy. Joseph, would you have the goodness to lend me half a crown?'

Stephen was greeted with the utmost kindness at the Grapes. His little black G.o.d-daughters, Sarah and Emily, had so shot up, had grown so leggy, that he did not have to bend to kiss them, and both were in fine spirits, since they had spent the last half hour in the company of William Reade, Stephen's supper guest, who had shown them the Royal Navy's version of Puss in the Corner, a more complex and subtle game than was usual in the Liberties.

But Mrs. Broad, though as welcoming as could be, was very much shocked by Stephen's appearance, which indeed would have done no credit to a hedge-creeper. 'Well, as for that Killick and his capers,' she said when all was explained, 'don't he wish he may have anything at all to eat or drink in this house, to serve the Doctor so. And I shall tell him, ho, ho, don't you fear - I shall let him know.'

Her natural good humour returned, nevertheless, as she laid out his fine London clothes - black, elegant severity and gleaming Hessian boots - and it was in this splendour that he sat in the parlour while the little girls nervously showed him their copy-books, their sums, and their geographical exercises, with maps. In faltering voices, prompting one another, they recited mediocre verse in English and French, and with more confidence, showed their knitting, sewing and sampler-work. They were not very clever girls, but they were wonderfully neat - their copy-books would have pleased a fastidious engraver - and they were most affectionate to one another, to Mrs. Broad and to Stephen. There was one thing that did puzzle him, however: they were still capable of speaking both lower-deck English (now somewhat tinged with Billingsgate, where they did much of the Grape's shopping) and the quarterdeck variety, slipping effortlessly from one to the other; yet neither could manage even tolerable French.

But it was at supper-time that they showed their real, and very considerable talent. Mrs. Broad was away with her cook, cook-maids, tapsters and waiters looking after the ordinary occupations of a fairly busy inn, and Stephen and Reade played backgammon, drinking brown sherry and discussing the pitiful state of their fellow-sailors in a dissolving Navy, when Sarah and Emily came in, wearing long ap.r.o.ns, and laid the table.

A pause. 'Now, gentlemen, if you please,' they cried, placing chairs. Stephen was draped in a remarkably broad napkin: Reade was allowed to look after himself.

The first dish was simply fresh, perfectly fresh green peas, to be eaten with a spoon: then, borne in with some anxiety, a great oval plate sizzling at the edges and containing filleted soles, lobster claws and tails, with here and there a great fat mussel, the whole bathing deep in cream.

Sarah filled the plates; Emily poured the wine, a pale golden hock.

'Oh my dears,' cried Stephen, having gazed, smelt and tasted, 'what a sinful delight! What a glorious dis.h.!.+ My dears, how I do congratulate you both!"

'I ask no better in all my days,' said William Reade. 'No, not even if I hoist the union at the main.'

'I hope you had a hand in it?' asked Stephen.

'Sir,' said Emily, 'Sarah and I did every last thing, except that Henry in the snug broke the claws with the side of his cleaver.'

'Well, I am heartily glad of it. You are dear good girls, and uncommon talented. Bless you both.'

Drinking tea with Sir Joseph in his very comfortable house in Shepherd's Market could not conceivably be compared to supping at the Grapes: but there was a pleasure, though of a wholly different kind. Blaine, pa.s.sing by Somerset House, had looked in to see the conscientious man who received and looked after specimens sent to the Royal Society to be kept for members - both Blaine and Stephen were Fellows - and he had brought Christine Wood's parcel, addressed to Dr. Maturin, back with him. It was the skeleton, very delicately dissected and rea.s.sembled, of his potto, a rare and curious little West African creature, nominally one of the primates, though quiet, slow, harmless, and remarkably affectionate. Stephen had been much attached to his potto, and now he opened the case, gazing upon the anatomy with a mixture of friends.h.i.+p and scientific interest - the very singular formation of the index-finger and of the lower thorax were strangely moving all over again, but even more so the strong link of affection.

'I believe you do not take sugar?' asked Sir Joseph.

'No sugar at all, I thank you,' replied Stephen, closing the box and bracing himself for immediate close attention, persuaded by Blaine's expression and att.i.tude that he was coming to the important matter. Yet to his surprise Sir Joseph went on in a falsely casual tone, 'I gather you are well acquainted with the Duke of Clarence, with Prince William?' Stephen bowed: he had treated Prince William several times, but he was not a physician who discussed his patients. Somewhat embarra.s.sed Blaine went on, 'I happened to run into him at the Admiralty this morning. Some extraordinarily indiscreet person had told him that the hydrographical voyage was to go ahead, with Captain Aubrey in command -just that: no mention of anything remotely political. The Prince, as I dare say you know, has an almost reverential awe of Captain Aubrey - too great a respect to present himself unasked, though ordinarily he is not at all shy, not at all backward in such matters.'

'A bounding, confident, foul-mouthed scrub,' said Maturin: but very low.

'... and he was intimate with Nelson, who liked him well. However, the point is this: he has a son.'

'I have seen the little FitzClarences, and an ill-bred set of swabs they are: which is odd, when you consider what a dear, cheerful - and indeed beautiful - woman their mother is.

'You know Mrs Jordan?'

'Moderately well: and I have often seen her on the stage.'

'But it is not one of those that I have in mind. It is a boy by another woman, a child he does not openly acknowledge, perhaps from fear of angering Mrs. Jordan, a son he calls Horatio Fitzroy Hanson. He is about fourteen or fifteen: he has decent manners, a tolerable education, and I think he is the only one of his children that Prince William really likes. Horatio, I ought to say, has no idea of this relations.h.i.+p: the acquaintance, or more than acquaintance, with Clarence - Uncle William - is perfectly acknowledged, but solely on the basis of his being a former s.h.i.+pmate of the boy's putative father. The mother, I am sorry to say, was rather unstable, and she went off to Canada when Horatio was two or three: his grandfather, a severe rural dean, brought him up. Clarence is all you say and I am aware that neither you nor Captain Aubrey could esteem him: but he does nevertheless have some respectable qualities: he is affectionate, fairly generous, and good to former s.h.i.+pmates. Furthermore, he fairly wors.h.i.+ps the service; and he has the greatest respect for Captain Aubrey. In short he desires me to ask you to use your influence with Aubrey to have the boy admitted to his mids.h.i.+pmen's berth for this coming voyage.'

'Are you prepared to tell me any more about Horatio's parentage?'

'Mr. Hanson, his nominal father, was a sea-officer: he and Prince William served together in the West Indies. Horatio's mother was staying in Kingston with relatives. She and Mr. Hanson became engaged: they nevertheless quarrelled furiously. But there is said to have been a more or less irregular marriage. In any case Hanson was lost in the Serapis and his wife went home, pregnant. I have this from three sources, none of them capable of providing a consistent or even a coherent account. The only thing I know is that Clarence provided consolation and that he is persuaded the child is his.'

'I am sure Jack will at least look at the boy, if only for his Christian name. I shall speak of him when I write to tell about the voyage: perhaps it would be better not to mention the alleged connexion. But tell me, did the extraordinarily indiscreet person who told the duke that the hydrographical voyage was to go ahead have any grounds for his a.s.sertion?'

'Oh, certainly... I am so sorry. I should have told you that at the very beginning: after all, it concerns you more than anyone else. I grow sadly muddled these days - as though you must know it by intuition - and then I will admit that the endless uninformed arguments for and against the project, topped by Clarence's indecently prolonged and public harangue about this boy, quite upset me. Yes, yes: you shall go: but I must warn you, Stephen, that now the war is over, rigid economy is the order of the day, and you will not be furnished with anything like the means you carried to Peru.'

Stephen nodded and said, 'Since we are to go, I think I must write to Captain Aubrey at once. His tender, Ringle, is an extraordinarily swift-sailing vessel, and will certainly outstrip any packet. I shall send her off tonight, with the falling tide, and desire Jack to put into Seppings' yard for the repairs that are still needed without the loss of a minute. If you could induce your colleagues to cast these words into the form of an order properly signed and sealed, I might enclose it in my letter.'

'Shall you not go yourself?'

'I shall not: I am going down into the country to see my daughter Brigid, Sophie Aubrey and her children.'

'Please give them all my love: but before going you will accompany me to the Foreign Office and Treasury for technical details?'

'Certainly. And Mrs. Oakes will almost certainly be there: you remember her, I am sure?'

'Indeed I do, and with much grat.i.tude - the clearest, most valuable information imaginable; and an unusually handsome woman too, unusually handsome. So are some of my latest acquisitions, sent by an intelligent s.h.i.+p's surgeon from the Seych.e.l.les.'

Some of the beetles were indeed truly remarkable; but for beauty it seemed to Maturin that his daughter, Sophie, and even her children surpa.s.sed them in everything but colour. His unpredictably time-eating interview with people in and about Whitehall had made it impossible for him to give notice of his arrival, and he found them wholly unprepared, playing cricket of a sort in a new-mown paddock by the house.

Brigid, who was at the wicket, being bowled to by George, was the best-placed to see the chaise stop in the lane and a figure step out. 'It's my Papa,' she cried, flung down her bat and ran like a hare across the gra.s.s, leaping up to catch him round the neck - no shyness, no hesitation - it fairly touched his heart. 'My dear, you have grown almost pretty,' he said tenderly, putting her down to greet the others. 'Dearest Stephen,' said Sophie, 'I do hope you will put up with an egg - there is almost nothing else in the larder: but tomorrow... Do you see Clarissa coming up with a gentleman? He is her husband, the rector of Wytherton, a great scholar. They were married from here last month. Clarissa, you remember Dr. Maturin, I am very sure?'

'I give you all the joy in the world, my dear,' said Stephen, kissing her. 'Your servant, sir: and my very best congratulations,' shaking the parson's hand. 'My dears,' he went on, 'it is delightful to see you sporting in the sun, and on so pure a green. Forgive me for a few moments while I fetch what few trappings may have survived the voyage.'

'I will carry your bag, sir, if I may,' said George, on leave from Lion, 74, commanded by Jack's old friend Heneage Dundas.

What pleasant days they were - an English summer at its best, and English countryside at its best, enough night-rain in the hills to keep the trout-streams fine and brisk, and there were reports of a hoopoe seen three times at Chiddingfold parsonage. This year was happy in unusual numbers of birds (nesting-time had been particularly favourable) and Stephen and Brigid wandered about the smooth hay-meadows, by the standing corn, and along the banks, he telling her the names of countless insects, many, many birds - kingfishers, dippers, dabchicks, and the occasional teal: coots and moorhens, of course - as well as his particular favourites, henharrier, sparrowhawk and kestrel and once a single splendid peregrine, a falcon clipping her way not much above head-height with effortless speed. A hare in her form: two dormice: an infant weasel, unalarmed: and such quant.i.ties of b.u.t.terflies. He found with lively pleasure that she was much more receptive now: but she was a very tender creature, and he was not at all sure how she would like his hunting, shooting and fis.h.i.+ng. But that would not be for a great while yet: and there was the force of example - all the people she loved and respected were more or less pa.s.sionately concerned with these pursuits.

Then again there was the mild, agreeable social life. Old friends to dinner once or twice; a few morning calls; and Mr. and Mrs. Andrews came over in their gig to spend a few hours in the library, a n.o.ble collection built up by some generations of Aubreys with good black ink in their veins.

Yet there was a certain sadness too: the end of the war had meant that almost all the soldiers and sailors and those mult.i.tudes who had kept them in activity were now obliged to find civilian work, and obviously wages dropped, when there were any wages to be had at all. And now with the cry of 'Economy, economy!' taxes soared to extraordinary heights - Jack's agent on the Milport estate wrote in anguish that the one fair-sized farm - three hundred acres - which was just coming into good heart after all the draining, was required to pay 383 us 4d in rates and taxes. Fortunately neither Cousin Edward's nor the Aubrey land had ever been enclosed, so the villagers and outlying cottagers, together with their returning sons and younger brothers, got along moderately well in the traditional way: it is true that Jack's game dwindled strangely; but on a nearby estate, which had been subjected to rigorous enclosure - no common land with rights of grazing, cutting fern, taking turf - there was not so much as a single rabbit to be seen. Then again, although the Corn Laws endeavoured to keep the price of wheat at 4, taxing imports accordingly, a great deal of American and Continental food now came in, legally or illegally, and farming was no longer a very profitable business. The landowners suffered, of course; and most of the farmers suffered even more; but the people who were really ground right down into misery were the men, women and children who worked the land - those who had not so much as a decent garden left after enclosure.

Clearly this was not the case immediately around Wool-combe, but it was most emphatically the case quite near; and it diminished the joy of living there.

Then again, like most naval wives, Sophie had looked forward with the keenest delight to an almost indefinite time of perfect peace in her husband's company, and she heard of this hydrographical voyage, this certain hydrographical voyage to the uttermost point of the inhabited globe, with the most intense disapproval and vexation of spirit. Stephen timidly put forward the proposition that it would greatly enhance Jack's likelihood of a flag: but even repeated it seemed to have little good effect.

'I think," he said, after one of these useless and indeed rather irritating attempts at consolation - consolation, after all, does imply a superiority of experience or just plain intellect on the part of the consoler: a superiority which an intensely discontented mind is unlikely to accept - 'I think I shall ride over to Shelmerston this afternoon.'

'Do not forget that the Andrews are coming to spend the evening with us.'

'Who are the Andrews?'

'Clarissa and her husband.'

'Dearest Papa,' cried Brigid in her fearless way, but speaking English, Irish not being allowed in the house any more than Maltese aboard a man-of-war. 'Dearest Papa, was you to take the dog-cart, we could both go.'

'Four of us could go,' said George. 'The back dog-boards take up.'

'Five,' cried his twin sisters. 'We are very thin, and will squeeze close.'

'But what about Padeen?' asked Sophie, who had almost never been in the fast, rakish, high-wheeled dog-cart.

'Oh,' they replied, but quite kindly - no scorn for her ignorance. 'He runs by the dog-cart, you know.'

'He always gets up behind the coach,' said f.a.n.n.y, 'but he runs by the dog-cart.'

'Is he not the finest runner in all Connaught?' asked Brigid.

Stephen had long been on good terms with the slim, leggy, yellow gelding: a gelding not to be disturbed by mares or fillies, obviously, but not by voluble children either, and they bowled pleasantly down to the coast, then turned left-handed along the sandy roads to Saint Peter's Pond, where men were already working on the ca.n.a.ls that would drain it, but where at the far distant upper end innocent water-fowl swam, waded and dived. 'There,' said Stephen, clapping his gla.s.s to with infinite satisfaction, 'the purple herons have brought off their brood again: the only pair in the three kingdoms.'

The gelding and the children, trained to motionless silence during these usually brief sessions, expanded, breathed again and laughed aloud at the lively expectation of tea at Shelmerston, now almost at hand.

A few gentle miles more and the gelding lifted his head to the wind, to the homely scent in the wind, and mended his pace: the sandy roads were left behind, the narrow way (taken cautiously, with Padeen at the horse's head) led winding down to the awkward, rock-strewn bay on whose sh.o.r.e stood Shelmerston, an indifferent port inhabited by fishermen, deep-sea sailors and other seamen, any one of whom would turn smuggler, highly-skilled and enterprising smuggler, at the drop of a hat or a private signal from a French cha.s.se-maree in the offing (flags by day, lanterns by night) - a port with tricks of the tide peculiar to itself, a d.a.m.ned awkward bar, and yet surprisingly well-liked by those who lived there. It was at Shelmerston that Jack Aubrey had fitted out and manned Surprise as a privateer during his naval eclipse before reinstatement, filling her not only with man-of-war's men who had followed him in his heavy misfortune but also with Shelmerstonians, rare seamen and perfect for a private s.h.i.+p of war. He and Stephen knew the place and its people well - the ladies of the town had been particularly kind to the children, much smaller then, and apt to do themselves harm - and a journey there, even a stay of a week or so, was considered a finer treat than Bath or Lyme.

The memorious gelding paced into the stable, and while Padeen tried to extricate the rear-children from the dog-boxes, where in their squabbling they had contrived to entangle themselves in a half-bale of close-meshed netting, Stephen walked into the William's Head. 'Mrs. Hake,' he said, 'good day to you, ma'am. How do you do?'

'Why, it is the Doctor!' cried she. 'Very well, sir, I thank you: and I trust you are the same?'

'Tolerably so, ma'am: and I should be even more so if you would feed the children. They have been quarrelling and whining this last half hour, but tea and those round things with cream will mend their temper - they are not fundamentally vicious. I have just run down to see whether you have any news of Surprise and Captain Aubrey.'

'Captain Aubrey, sir?' she replied with a look if not of actual horror then of the very deepest pale stupidity mixed with alarm and as it were distress. 'Surprise and Captain Aubrey?' She sat down heavily, still gazing at him. 'But they was here this morning - snapped up a score of old s.h.i.+pmates, oh ha, ha, ha! They was right happy to go, too, ha, ha, ha! And rode pretty over the bar at three-quarter ebb with the breeze as fair for Seppings' yard as ever you could wish.

And you never knew. Oh, ha, ha, ha ha!' She beat her knees and laughed and laughed. 'G.o.d bless you, sir, and please forgive me. I'll feed those vermin childer right away. Come, children,' she called from the door towards the stable-yard. 'Tea will be ready this directly minute.' And then to Stephen, 'Which he sent a young gentleman on a pony to tell Mrs. Aubrey he was quite well and should be home tomorrow.' She hurried into the kitchen, where she could be heard telling the maids, 'And the Doctor says to me "I have just run down to see whether you have any news of Surprise and Captain Aubrey", and I says to him...'

Stephen walked out on to the familiar strand: news of his arrival had spread, and several of his former s.h.i.+pmates, particularly those he had treated, came to shake his hand, give him good day, and say how well the barky looked, in spite of her wounded bows; but some, even most, were shy of doing so, which puzzled him. Presently he invited five or six men he knew particularly well to come and take a pot of ale with him; and when they had sat down in the parlour he said to the eldest, a former quartermaster, 'What is amiss here in Shelmerston? Why do some of my old s.h.i.+pmates seem uneasy in their minds?'

'Well, sir,' said Proctor, 'it is like this: with the end of the war - with the two ends of the war, the one when you was in Bellona and this one just now, with Waterloo - well, at the end of the war, for most of the people here it was the end of all peace. I mean the peace of being sure of your victuals, however rough, and a little money to send home. We were turned ash.o.r.e; paid off. Ordinarily, for a sailorman, living in the usual sort of port, that means finding another s.h.i.+p - not very hard, when trade is brisk. But this ain't the usual sort of port. With our d.a.m.ned bar and our d.a.m.ned rocks, there is hardly any coastwise trade. This was first a fis.h.i.+ng-village: but the fis.h.i.+ng fell off-would not keep above a score of boats. So presently we became a kind of privateering port; and we did pretty well, sir, as you know, so long as there were enemies to privateer upon - French, Spanish, Portuguese, Americans some of the time, the Dutch and the northern ports like Papenburg and so on. But where are they now? All at peace.'

'Was there not a little running of uncustomed goods?'

'Well, sir, I must admit that some people - I name no names, mark you - did not object to occasional smuggling. You had to be a d.a.m.ned good seaman with a right weatherly craft to prosper; yet as I think you know very well, sir, brandy was what you might call the life-blood of Shel-merston.'

'Well?'

'Well, sir: just lean over and look out of the window, a little south of east.'

'Cutters?'

'Yes, sir. The new sharp-built revenue cutters, very well-manned and very well built - just up the way, and how young Mr. Seppings found it in his heart to do so, I do not know. They can eat the wind out of any of ours. And right high on the cliff they have a look-out post. The wicked dogs get half the fine and half the goods. It is enough to make your heart bleed, to see their zeal.'

'I can well believe it.'

'So, do you see, when we saw Surprise come in this morning it was like - well, I must not be irreverent, but it was a wonderful sight. And when his honour took a dozen of us aboard to run her up to the yard, oh we were right glad that she was to make a voyage, after repairs.'

'Did Captain Aubrey tell you about his intention?'

'Oh yes, sir. He said it was just for surveying the Horn, the Straits and the Chile coast - little chance of any prize, unless we happened to run into a pirate. Hard-lying guaranteed, but nothing much in the way of hard-lying money. But those he picked, oh, was they glad to have a berth with him! They knew something about Captain Aubrey's luck -we all know something about Captain Aubrey's luck: and if you could put in a word for any of us, sir, we should be right grateful.'

Although the children were very urgent to push on to Seppings' yard, Stephen would have none of it, and presently the dog-cart was creeping up the rocky hill-road out of Shelmerston. 'There is the Sethians' chapel,' he said, nodding in the direction of a white building with enormous brilliant letters of bra.s.s on its face. 'Seth,' they read. 'What is Seth? Who is Seth?'

'He was one of Adam's sons, brother to Cain and Abel.'

'Oh look!' cried Brigid. 'Just over the horizon! There is Ringle fairly tearing in.'

'We shall see them all tomorrow,' said Stephen. 'What joy!'

Yet they had first to pick up Surprise's young gentleman, Mr. Wells, whose pony had tossed him into a deep ditch lined with stones and surrounded by brambles, and had then run away. Fortunately he was rather dwarvish even for a first-voyager, and they were able to cram him into the dogcart, although at the cost of blood-stains all round.

Home, and frocks had to be changed, Mr. Wells stripped, daubed with balm, hog's lard and court-plaster - even a few st.i.tches here and there - and then everyone, including Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, had to be fed. Stephen had known battles more wearing, and he retired to his own room quite early.