The Fortune of War Read Free Page B

man who wrangled with the Lord about Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham, that's the name! Beat the Lord down from fifty to five and twenty and then to ten. You shall have Babbington and your mids and your surgeon, maybe even your coxswain, but let us hear no more about your bargemen. It is great nonsense and presumption on your part and anyhow there ain't room for another soul in La Flèche, so that's an end on it. Now tell me, among your remaining people, can you scrape together a decent eleven for a game of cricket? The squadron is playing ship against ship, for a hundred pound a side.'
    'I believe I could, sir,' said Jack, smiling: in the very instant the Admiral uttered the word, he resolved a minute problem that had been nagging some remote corner of his mind - what was that absurdly familiar sound that came from the spreading lawn behind the house? Answer: it was the crack of bat meeting ball. 'I believe I could, sir. And, sir, I believe you mentioned mail for the Leopard?'
    The Admiral's political adviser was a man of singular importance, for the British government had a mind to add the whole of the Dutch East Indies to the possessions of the Crown, and not only did the local rulers have to be persuaded to love King George, but the well-entrenched Dutch and French systems of influence and intelligence had to be counteracted and, if possible, eradicated; but he lived in a small, obscure house and he assumed no state at all, not half as much as the Admiral's secretary; and he dressed his subfusc person in a snuff-coloured coat, his only concession to the climate being a pair of nankin pantaloons, once white. His was a difficult task; yet since the Honourable East India Company had a great interest in eliminating their Dutch rivals, and since several members of the cabinet were holders of the Company's stock, he was at least well supplied with money. Indeed, he was sitting upon one of several chests crammed with small silver ingots, the most convenient currency in those parts, when his visitor was announced.
    'Maturin!' cried the politico, whipping off his green spectacles and grasping the doctor's hand. 'Maturin! By God, I am glad to see you. We had given you up for dead. How do you do? Achmet!' - clapping his hands
    - 'Coffee.'
    'Wallis,' said Maturin, 'I am happy to find you here. How is your penis?' At their last meeting he had carried out an operation on his colleague in political and military intelligence, who wished to pass for a Jew: the operation, on an adult, had proved by no means so trifling as he or Walls had supposed, and Stephen had long been haunted by thoughts of gangrene.
    Mr Wallis's delighted smile changed to gravity; a look of sincere self-commiseration came over his face, and he said that it had come along pretty well, but he feared it would never be quite the member it was. He related his symptoms in detail while the scent of coffee grew, pervading the little dirty room; but when the coffee itself appeared, in a brass pot on a brass tray, he broke off and said, 'Oh, Maturin, I am a mere weak monster, prattling about myself. Pray tell me of your voyage, your shockingly prolonged and I fear most arduous voyage - so prolonged that we had almost abandoned hope, and Sir Joseph's letters, from ecstatic, grew anxious, and at last melancholy to a degree.'
    'Sir Joseph is in the saddle again, I collect?'
    'More firmly than before; and with even wider powers,' said Wallis, and they exchanged a smile. Sir Joseph Blame had been the very able chief of naval intelligence; they both knew of the subtle manoeuvres that had caused his premature retirement, and of the even more subtle, far more intelligent manoeuvres that had brought him back.
    Stephen Maturin supped his scalding coffee, the right Mocha berry, brought back from Arabia Felix in the pilgrim dhows, and considered. He was naturally a reserved and even a secretive man: his illegitimate birth (his father was an Irish officer in the service of His Most Catholic