The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian
he stepped round to see whether Keppel had arrived yet, and to leave a message if he had not.
Judge, then, of his perturbation when upon his return the footman told him that ‘they was a-carrying on something cruel in the libery,’ and the sound of further disagreement fell upon his ears, accompanied by the rumbling of heavy furniture. He darted upstairs: he was in time to prevent Tobias and his patron – or perhaps one should say his intended patron, or his ex-patron – from coming to actual blows, but only just; and Tobias was obliged to be dragged away, foaming and vociferating to the last.
This accounted well enough for Jack’s depressed appearance; but his mind was filled with apprehension, too. He had a haunting certainty that Keppel would have met with some comparable disaster in his designs upon the vacancies in the Centurion; and while upon the one hand he assured himself that it was better to remain in a state of hopeful ignorance, upon the other he watched the clock and the door with increasing impatience.
The great hand of Thacker’s clock – a wonderfully accurate clock – crept to the appointed minute, and Keppel walked in, accompanied by his particular friend Mr Midshipman Ransome. Keppel was small, neat and compact; he had been to a wedding and he was dressed with surprising magnificence in a gold-laced hat, an embroidered waistcoat with jewelled buttons and a crimson coat encrusted with gold plait wherever it could be conveniently sewn, and cascades of Mechlin lace at his throat and wrists: Ransome was a big, leonine fellow with a bright blue eye, not unlike Jack, but heavier and older; his kind-looking face was much marked by disagreements with the King’s enemies and his own, as well as the small-pox; and he wore a plain blue coat.
They stood for a moment in the doorway, looking over the big room with its many boxes: they saw Mr Saunders, the first lieutenant of their own ship, the Centurion, pulled off their hats and bowed very humbly; they saw a lieutenant of the Gloucester, a Marine captain belonging to the Severn and a group of black coats which included Mr Eliot, the surgeon of the Wager and the chaplain of the Pearl; to all of these they bowed with suitable degrees of humility, and then advanced to Jack and Tobias.
It took some little time to make Tobias understand that he was being introduced: and as he had the unfortunate habit of closing one eye and screwing his pursed mouth violently to one side whenever he was roused from a train of reflection, he did not make quite as favourable an impression as he might have done otherwise. Ransome moved perceptibly backwards, and Keppel said, ‘Your servant, sir,’ in a reserved and distant tone.
Keppel, in any case, was far from easy. ‘I am very sorry to bring you the news,’ he said. ‘Upon my word, I regret it extremely. But the fact is – the fact is, my dear Byron, the vacancies have gone to a couple of – Irishmen. ‘
‘Wery nasty undeserving swabs, I dare say,’ said Ransome, with the intention of bringing comfort, ‘if not Papists, too.’ He spoke in a hoarse whisper, having no other voice left, other than a penetrating bellow, for use only at sea.
‘Oh,’ said Jack, horribly disappointed, but smiling with what appearance of nonchalance he could summon. ‘Well, it was prodigious kind to try; and I am much obliged to you.’
‘But that ain’t all,’ said Keppel, with still greater embarrassment, after a long and awkward pause. ‘My father, d’ye see, being only a soldier, and not thoroughly understanding these things, although I have told him these many times the difference between one class of ship and another – and really you would think it plain enough to the meanest understanding; I mean, even a landsman can see that a pink is not a first-rate.’
Far from it,’ said Ransome.
‘Nor even a second,’ said Keppel.
Jack turned pale, and gazed from one to the other.
‘Not that some pinks ain’t pretty little vessels,’ said Ransome reflectively, after a prolonged silence.
‘But the fact is,’ said Keppel, who appeared to derive some comfort from this expression, ‘the fact is, my dear Byron, that my father, having once got into the matter, thought he could not come off handsomely without doing something: so when he found that he could not do what I asked, instead of waiting for my advice, he went blundering about like a horse in a hen-coop and had you – I beg you’ll not take it amiss – nominated to the Wager.’
‘Oh,’ said Jack again; and then with a slowly spreading grin he said, ‘While you were talking I had imagined something much worse. After all, Keppel, it does get me to St Helen’s; and I am sure we can manage some kind of a transfer. I must wait upon Lord Albemarle and thank him.’
‘You can’t do that,’ said Keppel, ‘for he went off in a passion - ’
‘And a coach and six,’ said Ransome.
‘What?’
‘He went off in a passion and a coach and six. Hor, hor.’
‘– to Aunt Grooby, and he won’t be back until the end of the month: and’ – Keppel lowered his voice – ‘we sail on Saturday sennight.’
‘Saturday week?’ cried Jack, whistling.
‘Hush,’ said Keppel, looking round.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Jack, ‘but it leaves so precious little time.’
They fell into a low-voiced, highly confidential discussion of the means at their disposal for coping with the situation. This lasted for some considerable time, and they were roused from it only by the repeated cries and nudges of Ransome and Tobias: these gentlemen had, after an unpromising start, taken to one another wonderfully, and Ransome, having learnt that Tobias’ sight-seeing had not yet included the lions at the Tower, now proposed taking him to see them. Nothing could have been calculated to cause Tobias more pleasure, and his eyes shone with anticipation; but for the moment he was pinned and immobilised, for they were on the inside of the box, and Jack and Keppel, lost in the depths of their planning, blocked the way to these simple joys.
‘What is it?’ said Jack impatiently.
‘The lions at the Tower,’ said Tobias, ‘ha, ha, the lions, eh, Jack?’
‘Which your friend ain’t seen ‘em,’ said Ransome. ‘Won’t you come?’
‘Bah,’ said Jack and Keppel, who scorned the lions in the Tower.
‘That fellow, Keppel,’ said Jack, looking after their departing backs, ‘that friend of mine, Tobias Barrow, causes me more anxiety than – worries me more than I can give you any conception of.’ He outlined the situation, and went on, ‘… so I left him with Cousin Brocas, and somehow they came to be talking about the government, and parliament, and the House of Lords and all that. Heaven knows why. And I think Cousin B. must have dropped some graceful hints of what an important, high-born, clever cove he was, and what an unimportant fellow Toby was: something of the “beggars can’t be choosers” nature – you know Cousin B’s little ways. Not that he means any harm; but it vexes people, sometimes. Anyhow, Tobias turned upon him. “Never been so roughly handled in all my life,” says Cousin B. “This dreadful creature of yours, Jack,” says he, “said things to me in Latin and Greek, and attacked the constitution in the most hellish way: a most hellish Whig – nay, a republican, God help us. A democratical visionary.” It seems that they fell out over the hereditary principle. “Would you employ an hereditary surgeon?” says Tobias, “A fellow who is to cut off your leg, not because he is an eminent anatomist, not because he is profoundly learned and highly skilled, but because he is merely the eldest son of a surgeon, or the eldest son of a man whose great-great-grandfather was a surgeon? And do you think the laws of the land less important than your infernal leg,” says he, “that they are to be made and unmade by a parcel of men whose only qualification is that their fathers were lords?” ’
‘What did he say to that?’ asked Keppel, with a kind of awful glee.
‘Why, truly,’ said Jack, ‘I think they gave up argument at that point, and took to calling names. They were hard at it when I came in, and Tobias had a long round