The Fortune of War Read Free

neither. So despairing of getting anything out of the military men in charge - they seemed to have taken against the Navy since Mr Bligh's time in command - I discharged our remaining convicts and proceeded to this rendezvous with the utmost despatch. That is to say, considering the state of the ship under my command.'
    'I am sure you did, Aubrey. A very creditable feat, upon my soul, and very welcome you are, too. By God, I thought you had lost the number of your mess long ago -lying somewhere in a thousand fathoms and Mrs Aubrey crying her pretty eyes out. Not that she gave you up, however: I had a note from her not a couple of months ago, by Thalia, begging me to send some things on -books and stockings, as I remember - to send them on to New Holland, because you were certainly detained there. Poor lady, thought I, she has been knitting for a corpse. Such a pretty note; I dare say I have it still. Yes,' said he, rummaging among his papers, 'here we are.'
    The sight of that familiar hand struck Jack with astonishing force, and for a moment he could have sworn he heard her voice: for this moment it was as though he were in the breakfast-parlour at Ashgrove Cottage, in
    Hampshire, half the world away, and as though she were there on the other side of the table, tall, gentle, lovely, so wholly a part of himself. But the figure on the other side of the table was in fact a rather coarse rear-admiral of the white, making a remark to the effect that 'all wives were the same, even naval wives; they all supposed there was a penny post at every station where a ship could swim, ready to carry and fetch their letters without a moment's delay. That was why sailors were so often ill-received at home, and blamed for not writing oftener: wives were all the same.'
    'Not mine,' said Jack; but not aloud, and the Admiral went on, 'The Admiralty did not give you up, either. They have given you Acasta, and Burrel came out months and months ago to supersede you in the Leopard; but he died of the bloody flux, together with half his followers, like so many people here; and what I shall do with Leopard I cannot tell. I have no guns here but what I can take from the Dutch, and our balls, as you know very well, don't fit Dutch guns... and without guns, she can only be a transport. Should have been turned into a transport these ten years past - fifteen years past. But that is nothing to do with the present case: what you will have to do, Aubrey, is to get your dunnage ashore as quick as you can, because La Flèche is due from Bombay. Yorke has her. She just touches here, the time to pick up my despatches, and then she flies home as quick as an arrow. As quick as an arrow, Aubrey.'
    'Yes, sir.'
    'Flèche is the French for an arrow, Aubrey.'
    'Oh, indeed? I was not aware. Very good, sir. Capital, upon my word. Quick as an arrow - I shall repeat that.'
    'I dare say you will, and pass it off as your own, too.
    And if Yorke don't delay, if he don't hang about in the
    Sunda Strait, whoring after prizes, you should still have the monsoon to carry you right across - a famous passage.
    Now give me a quick idea of the state of your ship. Of course, she must be surveyed, but I should like to have a general notion at once. And tell me just how many people you have aboard - you would scarcely credit how hungry I am for men. Ogres ain't in it.'
    There followed a highly technical discussion in which the boor Leopard's shortcomings were candidly exposed
    - the state of her futtocks, her deplorable knees - a discussion from which it appeared that even if the Admiral had had the guns to arm her, she could hardly bear them, her timbers being so strained, and the rot having spread forward from her stern to so shocking a degree. This discussion, though melancholy, was perfectly amicable: no harsh words were heard until they reached the subject of followers, the officers, young gentlemen, and hands who, by the custom of the service, accompanied a captain from one command to