The Yellow Admiral Read online

  The men had drawn lots to decide which should sit next to Diana for the first stage: it had fallen on Dundas, so Stephen and Jack were inside, with the head groom and a boy up behind. Jack remained silent for a while. He and Sophie disagreed fairly often, though perhaps less than most married people, but never had they done so on parting. It was true that this was not much of a parting - leave from the Brest blockade was reasonably frequent and letters passed to and fro - and it was true that Sophie's attitude towards Clarissa Oakes (a guest, after all) had irritated him extremely, all the more so since he had at one time been strongly tempted to lead Clarissa far astray - he was not a man to whom chastity came easy - and had had to impose a most rigorous self-command: but he was sorry he had spoken. Eventually he said, 'Old Harding is of opinion that the salmon had been ordered by Griffiths, and that it came by coach, being left at the Arms - according to village gossip he had ordered dinner for a score - for none of our streams ever yielded a fish like that. But I do hope our people are not coming it too high.'

  'The young fellows took some of his deer last night, and his keepers were out in force. I heard shots.'

  'The Devil you did?' cried Jack, and he would have gone on but that the coach was now in the village street and that many of the over-excited youths were still about. They started cheering, and waving, and the horses began to caper. Fortunately General Harte had thought better of his promise to provide an extra pair, but even so Dundas was tempted to take the reins. The determined expression on Diana's face most vividly alive - and the language in which she recalled the horses to their duty checked him, however; and presently the team were steadily climbing the hill before Maiden Oscott.

  'I wish they may not be coming it too high,' said Jack.

  'Stealing deer may be fun, but it is a very grave matter indeed when you come before a court, above all if you were disguised in any way - and Billy Hess, who ran by the coach just now, had a sort of skirt on and the remains of black round his face - or above all if you were armed. You heard shots... That Griffiths is a rancorous sort of cove - weak- you should have seen him quail before Harry Turnbull - and cruel. And there was that damned unlucky omen.' He jerked his head towards the chaise with poor Bonden in it, and sank into an uneasy train of thought while the coach climbed up and up, the horses well into their collars, warming now.

  Near the top he looked back for a last sight of Woolcombe, spread out far, far below, with both broad commons, the villages and the great mere, silver now with the coming day. 'Oh my God,' he cried, for there, over beyond Woolcombe, stacks were ablaze, a great pall of smoke drifting westwards, the bottom lit red. He let down the glass, leant out and called to the groom behind, 'Is that Hordsworth's rickyard, John?'

  'It is on Captain Griffiths' land, sir. The new piece he took in to round the home farm.'

  They were over the crest: nothing could be seen on the far side of the hill. Indeed they were well over and on the flat stretch of road before the much steeper descent to Maiden Oscott and the stream; and both Stephen and Jack heard Diana encourage the horses. There was a dog-cart ahead, drawn by a likely-looking chestnut mare and driven by a young man with a girl beside him.

  'Give him a halloo to pull over, will you, Dundas?' said Diana, and he let out a fine nautical roar.

  The girl nudged the young man, who looked round, flicked the mare with his whip and crouched forward, urging her on.

  Gradually the coach overhauled the dog-cart, Diana tense and concentrated, in complete control of the horses: but there was a left-handed corner ahead and not two hundred yards to go. 'Pull over, sir. Pull over directly,' called Dundas with all the authority of twenty years at sea. His vehemence, coupled with the pleas of the pale-faced girl, induced the young man to rein in, with his off wheel on the grassy verge; the coach swept by, followed by a look of pure hatred.

  'There was a good two foot to spare, so there was,' said Stephen, relaxing.

  'It is very well,' said Jack. 'Very well. But I dread the Oscott bridge. Does Diana know it, Stephen?'

  'Sure, she has been driving about the countryside day and night: it is her liveliest joy. But tell me, where is young Philip?'

  'Oh, he stayed at home to worship Mrs Oakes. Did you not remark his moon-struck gaze? No, of course you were sitting next to him. Still, you might have seen him pick up her napkin and press it to his lips. But this bridge is a most damnably awkward one. You come down a wicked steep hill in the middle of the village, and there right in front of you there is the bridge, hard on your left, a blind corner at an angle of ninety or even a hundred degrees, before you are aware of it. You have to turn terribly sharp - a damned narrow bridge with a low stone wall on either side and unless you judge it just so you hit the corner and you are in the river twenty feet below - deep water - with the coach on top. Don't you think you might mention it to her?'

  'I do not. She is a very fine whip, you know.'

  'Then perhaps I should,' said Jack.

  Stephen bowed, and after a moment Jack lowered the glass again, leant out, and in a conciliating tone he called, 'Coz, oh coz.'

  The coach slowed perceptibly. 'What now?' replied Diana. 'It is only that I thought, being a native as it were, that I thought perhaps I should tell you about the very dangerous bridge at Maiden Oscott. But perhaps you know it?'

  'Jack Aubrey,' she said, 'if you do not like the way I drive this coach, take the bloody reins yourself, and be damned to you.'

  'Not at all, not at all,' cried Jack. 'It was only that I thought...'

  The horses resumed their fine round pace: Jack sank back. 'Perhaps I have vexed her,' he said, 'though I spoke both meek and civil.'

  'Perhaps you have,' said Stephen.

  The downward slope grew steeper, and even steeper. The first houses appeared and very soon they were in the street itself, Dundas hallooing to clear dogs, cats, asses and children out of the way and the horses going rather faster than Diana would have allowed at another time. She had the tension of the reins just so: her hands were in close touch with the horses' mouths and her keen gaze was fixed on the left-hand leading corner of the wall that crossed the bridge, a wall scarred by innumerable vehicles in the last four hundred years. With a last glance down at the hub of her near forewheel, she changed the pressure on the reins, clucked to the leaders and swung the coach square on to the narrow bridge, avoiding the stone by half an inch and trotting superbly across to the other side.

  Where the Maiden Oscott road, having risen again and fallen again, joined the Exeter turnpike she pulled up at a famous coaching-inn by a delightful stream, and while the others held the horses' heads she climbed nimbly down. Jack gave her a hand from the lower step and said, 'I do ask your pardon, Diana.'

  'Never mind it, Jack,' she said with a brilliant smile - she was in excellent looks, with the fine fresh air arid the excitement - 'I have been frightened too, aboard your ships. Now be a good fellow and call for a room, coffee, toast, and perhaps bacon and eggs, if they have nothing better - Lord, I could do with a decent second breakfast. But for the moment I must retire.'

  Jack had given orders for the horses to be watered and walked up and down before their moderate bite, and he was rejoining his friends in front of the inn when he heard his name called. It was William Dolby, followed by Harry Lovage, both old friends (Lovage was called Old Lechery), crossing the road from the stream, both carrying fishingrods, and both looking thoroughly happy - indeed it was a delightful morning, a delightful scene - the water flowing in its smooth green banks, the scent of a late aftermath drifting across, and the air full of swallows.

  'Look what we have caught,' cried Dolby, opening his bag. 'Such trouts you might dream of, the glorious day!'

  'My best was still larger,' said Lovage. 'You must breakfast with us. The two fishes ain't in it, nor the five loaves. Dick' - this to a waiter - 'lay for us all in the Dolphin parlour, will you?'

  They moved slowly across the forecourt, admiring the fish, talking of claret and mallard and the mayf
ly hatch, and Lovage said, 'There will be plenty for supper; and if there ain't we shall make up on the evening rise. Fish suppers make a man skip like a flea, ha, ha, ha. We have Nelly Clapham with us, and her young sister Sue, such a cheerful, jolly...' He stopped abruptly, looking appalled, for there in the porch, pausing to join them, was Diana: very clearly not a lady of pleasure.

  They broke off to receive her - introductions - and Stephen said, 'My dear, these gentlemen have invited us to breakfast with them on some of the noblest trouts that ever yet were seen. But it may well be that you are tired after your drive, and would as soon sit quietly with a little thin gruel and perhaps a very small cup of chocolate. I cannot recommend cream or sugar.'

  'Never in life. I should be very happy to breakfast on these gentlemen's catch, in the company of their friends, whom I met on the stairs. They seemed good-natured young ladies - and they were singing, oh so sweetly.'

  It was a successful breakfast. The young ladies, finding that Diana gave herself neither airs nor graces, soon got over their shyness; the trout were excellent; the conversation free and cheerful; and at the end Nelly, having run upstairs for a small guitar, gave them a song, cheered to the echo by many people in other parts of the inn, and by a beaming, barely recognizable Killick at the window, while Dolby begged Diana and her party to stay to dinner - there would be a famous hare soup, and blackcock from Somerset.

  'Thank you, sir,' she replied. 'I would with all my heart, but I have promised to deliver these gentlemen to Torbay, and deliver them I shall, in spite of a certain timidity on the part of some of the crew.'

  Chapter Four

  This she did quite early the next morning, they having spent the night at a coaching-inn some way inland, for the fishingvillages on the coast itself were somewhat barbarous, and she brought them over the northern hills at the turn of the forenoon tide.The present blockade of Brest was being carried out by a much smaller squadron than that commanded by Cornwallis in the heroic days of 1803, yet even so Torbay was filled with shipping - sloops, cutters, liberty-boats and victuallers inshore and several larger men-of-war, ships of the line and frigates in the offing, the whole diversified by ships on passage and the scores of red-sailed Brixham trawlers coming round Berry Head, close-hauled on the freshening northeast breeze, for the south-wester had died in the course of the night.Diana reined in on the brow of the hill, and as they sat there, gazing down through the cool clear air, smiling as they did so, an elderly two-decker lying beyond the Thatcher rock hoisted the Blue Peter and fired a gun, galvanizing the three of her boats that were ashore.'That must be the old Mars,' said Dundas. 'Woolton has her now."What a glorious moment to get under way: breeze and tide just as they might have been prayed for,' said Jack. 'Harry Woolton is a fine brisk fellow, and if he can pick his boats off the Berry he will be in with Ushant by breakfast tomorrow. Oh Lord, how I hope I may catch one of her people. Dear Diana, Cousin Diana, pray be a good creature for once and run us down into the village - don't spare the horses and never mind our necks, so I get alongside that yawl before they shove off.'

  'Do, my dear, if you please,' said Stephen. 'It is our certain duty to be aboard without the loss of a minute.'

  But the road down wound intolerably, and even the most skilful, most intrepid whip could not clear a passage through the dense, sullen regiment of dull-red bullocks that flowed slowly but steadily from a small side-lane, stopping and staring, deaf to cries, entreaties and threats. By the time the sweating, exasperated horses had brought the coach to the strand at last all Mars' boats were skimming over the main towards the headland, there to intercept their ship in her course; and no amount of hailing, however passionate, would bring them back. Nor was there any report of another ship going for Ushant before Thursday, if that.

  'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Stephen, taking off his hat to a grave elderly man in black who had a solen shell in one hand and who was watching an immature gannet with close attention, unconscious of the loud and often ribald conversation of the liberty-men and their shipmates. 'I beg your pardon, sir, but I am a stranger in this place, and should be extremely grateful for the direction of a respectable inn that would shelter my wife and horses while my friends and I, sea-officers, seek for some vessel outward-bound.'

  The grave gentleman did not at once apprehend the question, but when it had been repeated he said, 'Why, sir, I am sorry to say that as far as I know there is no such place in this village, if village it may be called. At the Feathers, to be sure, she would not be insulted with the company of - of trollops; yet the Feathers has no stable-yard, no coachhouse, being little more than an eating-house, or tavern: a genteel tavern, however, capable of providing a lady with a pot of chocolate. But,' he went on after a slight hesitation, 'have I not the pleasure of speaking to Dr Maturin?'

  'Indeed, sir, that is my name,' said Stephen, not quite pleased at being recognized so easily; and through his mind darted the reflection 'Intelligence-agents should have turnip faces, indistinguishable one from another; their height should be the common height; their complexion sallow; their conversation prosy, commonplace, unmemorable.'

  'I had the happiness of hearing your discourse on Ornithorhynchus paradoxus at the Royal Society - such eloquence, such pregnant reflections! I was taken by my cousin Courteney.'

  Stephen bowed. He was acquainted with Hardwicke Courteney, who though only a mathematician when he was elected had come to a reasonably intimate acquaintance with bats, with west-European bats.

  'My name is Hope, sir,' said the other, loud enough to be heard over the strong voices of Jack and Dundas asking a young officer in a gig some two hundred yards offshore 'whether Acasta were going to sail tomorrow or not till Bloody Thursday?' 'And' (more gently, with a distinct shade of embarrassment), 'perhaps I may propose a solution- my cousin Courteney has a large decayed house not a furlong from here. It has no furniture - indeed it is almost entirely empty apart from the bats in the upper chambers - but it has noble stabling and a most spacious yard. May I suggest that while Mrs Maturin sits in the decent comfort of the Feathers, the coach and horses should take their ease in Cousin Co�y's inclosure? I have a rustic youth who looks after me while I count and register the bats - I camp in any odd corner - and he will certainly find hay, water, oats, whatever is necessary.'

  'You are very good indeed, sir,' cried Stephen, shaking Mr Hope by the hand, 'and I should be most uncommon happy to accept your generous offer. Allow me to introduce you to my wife.' They made their way slowly through the throng towards the coach, and as they went Stephen said, 'If my friends do not find a suitable conveyance today, perhaps we might count bats together.'

  With the horses cared for and Diana installed with Stephen in the Feathers' St Vincent parlour (the Feathers himself had served in the glorious action, losing a leg below the knee) and Bonden in the snug with the sea-chests, Jack and Dundas set off again, with Killick in tow to question his innumerable acquaintance among the seamen, thick along the highwater mark or lying in the dunes behind.

  The seamen, upon the whole, were a very decent set of men and Jack felt happy among them and at home - many he had served with and barely once did he forget a name - yet once again it surprised, even astonished him that such a decent set, with so much hard-won knowledge, should have so primitive a notion of what was fun, and that they should attract such an obviously false set of hangers-on, such a forbidding crew of doxies, so very often short, thick and swarthy, sometimes so obviously diseased.

  Still, both he and Heneage had known this long before their voices broke, when they were mere first-class volunteers, not even midshipmen, and they were not much moved by the spectacle, repeated again and again as they went along from respectable taverns to boozing-kens to billiard rooms to places that were not quite open brothels so early in the day. They were looking primarily for a captain who might be on the wing for Ushant and the squadron; but any officer, commissioned, warrant or petty who could give news was welcome - or of course old shipmates now serving o
ut there. It was a homely quest, variegated and pleasant in its way, thrusting land-borne cares into the background; and they learnt a great deal about the present way of life, the most recent news, out there off the Black Rocks and what was called Siberia.

  Yet familiar and congenial though this was - a kind of inverted homecoming, with the smell of sea and tide-wrack in their nostrils - it seemed as though their quest, so hopefully, so confidently begun, must end in disappointment and a dreary search for lodgings. A wider, much wider stretch of sand was showing now: the breeze was still steady in the true north-east, but the lovely tide alas was at half ebb as they reached the last place of all, a more reputable eatinghouse than most.

  'It is scarcely worth going in,' said Dundas. 'We have seen all the serving officers ashore, and this is no place for the penniless mid.'

  Yet there was a penniless mid, or at least a master's mate: young James Callaghan, laughing and talking, his large red face crimson with mirth, and he was entertaining a young person as cheerful as himself but of a more reasonable colour - a fresh, pretty, well-rounded girl, not a trollop at all.

  Captain Aubrey's tall shadow fell over them; they looked up; and in a moment their colours changed, the young woman's to an elegant rosy pink, Callaghan's to that of purser's cheese.

  Jack was a humane creature, upon the whole, and he checked the question 'What are you doing here?' - the only possible answer being 'Neglecting my duty, sir; and disobeying orders in order to lead out a wench (or some more civil equivalent)' and substituted 'Mr Callaghan, where is the tender?' Callaghan had of course leapt up, upsetting his chair, and he was almost launched into an explanation of his being here because Miss Webber could not be asked out in her home town when a glimmer of sense returned to him and he said, 'Brixham, sir: all hands aboard under Mr Despencer, at single anchor in the fairway.'

  'Then when you and your guest have finished your meal,' said Jack, with a bow to Miss Webber, 'be so good as to bring the tender round. We are at the Feathers. You need not press yourself unduly, so we catch the tail of the tide.'