The fortune of war by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian [O'Brian, Patrick]
Format: epub

'Pray tell me about him now. There is an hour to go before our supper.' Stephen did not very much wish to know about Captain Broke, but he did want the steady background of Jack's deep, kindly voice while his mind revolved upon itself, waiting for the sudden flash that would tell him how to act.

'Well,' said Jack, 'Philip Broke and I are kind of cousins, and when my mother died I was packed off to stay at Broke Hall for a while, a fine old place in Suffolk. Their land runs down to the Orwell, the estuary of the Orwell, before it joins the Stour by Harwich, and Philip and I used to spend hours there in the mud, watching the shipping pass up to Ipswich, or fall down with the tide; a lot of those east-country craft, you know, that manage so amazingly well with short tacks in a tricky fairway, and colliers, barges from London river, and Dutchmen from across the way with their leeboards and fat arses, doggers, schuyts, and busses. We were both wild to run away to sea, and we tried once; but old Mr Broke came after us in a dog-cart, took us back, and whipped us till we cried like puppies - he was quite impartial. But still, we did have a misshapen sort of punt of our own, with a lugsail we were hardly strong enough to hoist: it was the most crossgrained brute that ever swam, and although it was so monstrous heavy, it would overset for a nothing. I used to save Philip's life three or four times a day, and once I said he should give me a halfpenny for each rescue. But he said no, if I could swim and he could not, it was clear duty as a Christian and a cousin to pull him out, particularly as I was already wet myself: still, he did say he would pray for me. Oh, those were happy days: you would have liked it, Stephen - there were all sorts of long-legged birds on the mud - we called 'em tukes - and bitterns booming away in the reeds, and those what-d'ye-call-'em big white birds with odd-shaped beaks - spoonbills - and the other kind whose bills turn upwards, and there was a dry place on the bank crammed with ruffs all fighting one another or pretending to, spreading out their neck-feathers like studdingsails. And we used to gather plovers' eggs by the bucketful. God knows how long it lasted, but it seemed like a small eternity, and it was always summer. But then he went off to school and I went off to sea.

'We wrote three or four times, which is a good deal for boys; but I am no great fist at a letter, as you know, and we rather lost touch with one another until I came back from the West Indies when Andromeda paid off. Then I found that he had been unable to

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