Patrick O'Brian Novels: The Commodore, the Wine- Dark Sea, the Yellow Admiral, Blue at the Mizzen & the Hundred Days by O'Brian Patrick

Author:O'Brian, Patrick [O'Brian, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B085ZM1D25
Goodreads: 150800820
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1998-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

When they had drunk the loyal toast Stephen excused himself: there ‘was something he had forgotten’, he told the president, avoiding Jacob’s eye. There was indeed: but he had completely overlooked the difficulty, for those unrelated to the more nimble kind of ape, of climbing in tight breeches, buckled shoes, and a fine long-tailed coat. In his hurry he slipped again and again, for the ship, now almost becalmed in the lee of a headland, was rolling, wallowing, in a very disgraceful and uncharacteristic fashion. Sometimes he hung by both hands, writhing to get his feet back onto the ratlines, sometimes by one. He was in this ludicrous posture, much disturbed in his mind, when Bonden came racing up the shrouds, seized him with an iron grasp, wheeled him round to the outboard side and at his faint, wheezing request, propelled him into the top, where he gave him the buckled shoe that had dropped on deck. He asked no questions, he gave no advice; but he did look very thoughtfully at the Commodore’s telescope: he was, after all, Jack Aubrey’s coxswain.

‘Barret Bonden,’ said Stephen, when he had recovered his breath, ‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. Deeply obliged, upon my word. But you need not mention that telescope to the Commodore. I am about to carry it down to him myself, and explain . .

‘Why,’ cried the Commodore, heaving his powerful frame over the top-brim, ‘there’s my glass. I had been looking for it everywhere.’

‘I am so sorry - I should not have made you uneasy for the world - thank you, Bonden, for your very timely help: please be so good as to tell Dr Jacob that I may be a few minutes late for our appointment.’ When Bonden had disappeared, Stephen went on, ‘That dear good fellow gave me a hand when a hand was extraordinarily welcome: I found breeches and shoes a sad embarrassment. The truth is . .

He hesitated for a moment. ‘The truth is,’ he went on with more conviction, ‘that there was something on the shore that interested me extremely: I could not be certain of the object without bringing it closer, so seeing your glass on its usual peg, and you not being in the way, I took the perhaps unwarrantable liberty of seizing it and running aloft as fast as my powers would admit; and upon my soul it was worth the journey. And, although it is scarcely decent in me to say so, the liberty.’

All this time - and it was not inconsiderable, for diffidence reduced Maturin’s ordinarily rapid canter to a hobbling walk with frequent pauses - Jack had been examining his precious telescope, one of Dollond’s achromatic masterpieces, with a jealous eye: but finding it quite undamaged he said, ‘Well, I am glad you saw your object. A double-headed Dalmatian eagle, I make no doubt.’

‘Do you see the blur of smoke over the headland, somewhat to the left?’

‘Yes. It looks as if they were burning the furze on the far side: though spring is an odd time of year to be doing so.

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