Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O’Brian Read Free Book Online Page B

I had thought we were sure of you for a great while yet.'
    'Alas, I understand that we are to sail rather late this evening, if the breeze lies as Captain Aubrey could wish. He is making his farewells to the Keiths at present, and I am sure he will have done all that is proper at headquarters.'
    'When I was not at home.' She reflected and said, 'I should be sorry not to say good-bye: Jack Aubrey and I are very old friends. Perhaps I shall meet him as he comes down. Come, Pepita. Dear Dr. Maturin, thank you very much for my delicious sorbet: do not move, I beg.'
    He did move, but only to stand as she walked off, followed by her maid - walked off with just that lithe pace he had had in mind.
    It was the same, the very same step he recognized that night, when at last the breeze came true and Surprise, filling her fore and main topsails, glided along the outside of the mole, her lanterns faintly lighting the veiled figures upon it, one of them discreetly waving - a sight so usual on the quay of partings as to excite no attention among the odd, scattered, immobile fishermen.
    For the next few days they had some very sweet sailing on a warm, moderate breeze whose only fault was that it varied from west-north-west to north-north-west, so that at times they were close-hauled and at times they were fetching, but always with a fine array of headsails: very sweet sailing had they not been in a hurry. But the more or less clandestine work on the frigate's bows had not fully restored her windward qualities - quite outstanding until that vile collision - and again and again Ringle, who in any case was schooner-rigged, had to ease her sheets or even take in sail not to shoot ahead - discreet manoeuvres, but never unnoticed, never unresented by the Surprises. Yet in spite of these drawbacks and the comparative slowness, upon the whole this was a happy time, a kind of homecoming and the restoration of what even to Maturin seemed the good and natural life, with its immutable regularity (whatever the weather might say), its steady though not very appetizing nourishment, the association with men who, if not brilliant company, were almost all sound, solid, professional seamen and far more agreeable than any mere chance gathering of the same size.
    With all its disadvantages of close quarters, lack of privacy, and desperate shortage of post, to say nothing of books, newspapers, magazines, it was indeed a return to order, to that unquestioned order so absent in life, above all urban life ashore. In a very little while they might have been back in a sea-going monastic order - monastic, but for the shocking prevalence of pox in its dismal varieties that kept Stephen, and at a certain remove his loblolly girl, so busy.
    How quickly the old train of life, ruled by bells and pipes, the swabbing of decks, by quarters, lights out, the cry of sentinels and all the rest came back - all the rest including an excellent appetite, particularly among the young, who, when invited to the captain's breakfast-table (which often happened if they had had the morning watch) would eat four eggs without a blush and then finish whatever happened to be in the bacon-dish. Good appetites, together with a longing for a change of diet and, among the older seamen, a dread of running out of stores, so that now, when they had scarcely sunk the high land behind Rabat, they cheered the foretopmast look-out when he hailed the quarterdeck with the news of a body of tunny-fishers standing along the Moroccan coast; and when the Captain altered course to meet the boats even the grizzled old fo'c'sle hands capered like lambs on a summer's green.
    Here the Surprise bought a fine great fish, still quivering, hoisted him aboard, cut him up on the fo'c'sle, carried the massive pieces to the galley in tubs, washed the red blood off the deck, swabbed and flogged it dry, and ate an improbable amount for dinner. A very great deal: yet even so, the wind veering northerly, they were still eating