The Fortune of War by Patrick O’Brian Read Free Book Online

always known perfectly well you were safe. But she was infinitely obliged to the sender, and the moment she received it she had set to work on a new set of active-service linen and some more stockings: she had not needed the letter, however.'
    'It must have been the American brig that put into Desolation Island, when we were trying to put ourselves to rights,' said Jack, laughing for joy. 'Honest, good-hearted fellows; though you would not think so to look at them. Ha, ha, ha! Bless 'em. There is good in everybody, Yorke, even an American.'
    'Certainly there is,' said Yorke. 'I have half a dozen in La Flèche at this moment, and prime seamen they are, every man-jack of them. I pressed them out of a Salem barque, a little south of Madeira. They cut up rough at the time, but they soon made the best of it. Capital fellows.'
    'You did not see the children, I suppose?' said Jack.
    'No. But I heard them. They were singing the Old Hundredth.'
    'Bless 'em,' said Jack again, and he cocked his head. 'That must be my surgeon coming aboard. You will like him; a reading man too, most amazing learned; a full-blown physician into the bargain, and my particular friend. But I must tell you this, Yorke; he is wealthy -'In point of fact Captain Aubrey had little idea of his surgeon's fortune, apart from knowing that he owned a good deal of hilly land in Catalonia with a tumbledown castle on it. But Stephen had done pretty well out of the Mauritius campaign; his manner of living was Spartan -one suit of clothes every five years and perhaps a couple of shirts - and apart from books he had no visible expenses at all. Jack was no Macchiavel, but he did know that to the rich 'it should be given; that capital possessed a mystical significance; that even the most perfectly disinterested respected it and its owner; and that although a naval surgeon was ordinarily a person of no great consequence, the same man moved into quite a different category the moment he was endowed with comfortable private means. In short, that whereas an ordinary surgeon, living on his pay, might not readily be indulged in room for exotic livestock, an imperfectly-preserved giant squid, and several tons of natural specimens, in a stranger's ship, a wealthy natural philosopher might meet with more consideration; and Jack knew how Stephen prized the collection he had made during their arduous voyage. '- he is wealthy, and he only comes with me because of the opportunities for natural philosophy; though he is a first-rate surgeon too, and we are very lucky to have him. But this voyage the opportunities have been prodigious, and he has turned the Leopard into a down-right Ark. Most of the Desolation creatures are stuffed or pickled but there are some from New Holland that skip and bound about: I hope you are not too crowded in La Fleche?'
    'Not at all,' said Yorke. 'We brought out a quantity of soldiers and their stores for Ceylon, and now there is plenty of room. Plenty, that is to say, for a twenty-gun post-ship.'
    'So that is a twenty-gun post-ship,' said Stephen Maturin to Babbington, as they stood by the rail, looking out over the sea at La Flèche: she was unusually beautiful in her pure lines, unbroken by quarterdeck or forecastle - a flush-decked ship - and her strongly-raked masts gave her a dashing air. She had recently been repainted with a blue streak, slightly darker than the perfect sea, up to her ports, then a band of white with the black port-lids dividing it, and then a lighter blue, while discreet gold twinkled with the ripple at her head and stern. She had been titivated off to the nines for the Admiral's inspection, scrubbed by the lifts and braces, sails furled in a body with never a wrinkle; and as she lay there, framed by the wooded Kampong headland a mile or so beyond her starboard bow and a low sandy island with a few palm-trees far on her quarter, she might have been something without weight or earthly substance, ideal, self-existing, belonging to another