The Reverse of the Medal. Patrick O’Brian
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was not perhaps one of Stephen’s most outstanding characteristics; yet his mind was not wholly free of it and he had never even suspected the possibility of Wray’s being a French agent. Nor, it must be confessed, had the even less simple Sir Joseph, whose only objection to Wray was his unsuitability, his inexperience and his want of discretion. Neither Stephen nor Sir Joseph could conceive the possibility of any French intelligence organization recruiting an expensive, gambling, fashionable, unreliable, loquacious rake, however sharp and clever.
Nor did either of them conceive that Wray and his more intelligent and powerful but less showy friend Ledward (also a besotted admirer of Buonaparte) were in fact behind the obscure movement in Whitehall that was tending to discredit Sir Joseph and his allies, and to displace him in favour of the comparative nonentity Barrow, who could easily be manipulated even if he did return to effective office, a movement that would, if it were successful, give Wray and Ledward access to that curious body, so rarefied as to be almost ghostly, known simply as the Committee, which took cognizance, at the highest level, of the activities of all the various British and allied intelligence services.
And to crown all, in their short acquaintance Stephen had not perceived that Wray did in fact possess a malignant, revengeful mind. He hated Jack Aubrey for that distant quarrel and he had done him all the harm he could in the Admiralty. He did not hate Stephen except as Jack’s friend and as an agent who had undone many of his French colleagues, but if he could bring the occasion about he would certainly deliver him up to the other side.
‘I shall be glad to see him again,’ said Stephen. ‘Apart from anything else he owes me a vast great heap of money, so he does.’
‘Who does?’ asked Jack, for several minutes and a pound of steak and kidney pudding lay between his answer and Stephen’s remark, and pudding under a tropical sun had a more muffling effect on the mind than it had south of the Horn. ‘Wray,’ said Stephen, and as he spoke the Surprise hailed an approaching boat. In the confused bellowing that followed the hail they distinctly heard the word ‘letter’.
‘Killick,’ said Jack, ‘jump up on deck and see whether any mail has arrived.’
They both of them waited, their forks poised and motionless. Stephen was exceedingly anxious to learn the effect of his first letter to Diana and of those he had sent her from Brazil and the far South Atlantic, and Jack longed to know just what Sophie had to say about Samuel’s visit – he was deeply uneasy.
‘No, sir,’ said Killick returning. ‘It was only a letter for Mr Mowett from Captain Pullings, just the one. The Swede spoke a ship he was passenger in and they lay to for half a glass, passing the time of day; and Captain Pullings, he dashed off this letter. To Mr Mowett. But the Swede says he is going back by way of England once he has dropped the Americans, and if we have any mail, would be happy.’
‘Would it be worthwhile writing, at all?’ asked Stephen.
‘I doubt it,’ said Jack, whose book-long serial letter to Sophie had come to an abrupt halt the day Sam arrived. ‘We are little more than a thousand leagues from home, and we are likely to be there first – the Swede is only a high-sterned cat, you know. Not that I look forward to it very much,’ he added in an undertone; and then, ‘Killick, ask Mr Mowett whether he would like to take coffee with us.’
The first lieutenant appeared at the same time as the fragrant pot, and his face fairly lit the cabin. Even at ordinary times it was a pleasant young open face, quite agreeable to see, but now it fairly radiated delight and they both smiled in spite of their gloom. ‘Why, James Mowett, my dear,’ said Stephen, ‘what’s to do?’
‘My poems are to be published, sir. They are to be printed in a book.’ He laughed aloud in pure delight.
‘Well, I give you joy, I am sure,’ said Jack, shaking his hand. ‘Killick, Killick there. Rouse out a bottle of right Nantz.’
‘Which I’m getting, ain’t I?’ said Killick, but not very loud: he had heard, of course, and although it was not often that sea-officers brought out a volume of poetry he knew just how the fact should be celebrated.
Old Tom Pullings, it seemed, had been entrusted with the manuscript, and dear old Tom Pullings had found a most capital publisher, a splendid cove that meant to bring it out on the first of June, the Glorious First of June. This open-handed, gentlemanly cove loved poetry and loved the Navy, and had made a most amazingly handsome offer: Mowett was only to pay the cost of printing and paper and advertising and a small fee for seeing the book through the press, and he should have half the profits! The cove had said that Murray’s, a house of much less standing than his, had sold five editions of Byron’s book in nine months, and Byron’s book was not nearly so long: Tom had closed with the offer at once, seizing upon it like a flowing tide. The cove thought the book, set in pica, would make a very neat royal octavo, at half a guinea in boards. He was to have the copyright, of course, and welcome to it, and the refusal of all Mowett’s subsequent works on the same terms.
‘What is pica?’ asked Jack.
‘God knows, sir,’ said Mowett, laughing very cheerfully. ‘I mean to ask Mr Martin. He knows all about books.’
‘Let us ask him to share the ship’s triumph and tell us about the technicalities of publication,’ said Stephen.
When he was an unbeneficed clergyman Martin had indeed spent some lean, anxious and extraordinarily laborious years among the booksellers as a translator, compiler and even as a corrector of the press; he knew a good deal about the Trade and he instantly perceived that Mowett’s cove had a somewhat more pronounced resemblance to Barabbas than most. But after no more than a moment’s gravity he joined in the general congratulation and then told them (not without a certain satisfaction, having suffered much from cat-harpins and nether dog-pawls) that pica was the type that gave you six ems to the inch, and that all books, folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo or even less, took their dimensions from the original sheets, folded twice, four times, eight times and so on, as the case might be, the original sheets having themselves various sizes and names, as foolscap, crown, quad crown, double quad crown, post, demy, royal and many more. Then he told them about the appalling difficulties of distribution, the impenetrable mystery of why some books were bought and others not, and the part played by the reviewers, whom he described as a mixture of gentlemen of letters, ruffians, and old shuffling bribed sots.
At one time it seemed that the subject could never be exhausted, but Mowett was a well-bred soul; he checked himself in the midst of conjectures about the title-page – would By an Officer of Rank stun the critics into respect, or would By J. M., of the Royal Navy look better? – and said ‘Of course, sir, Tom sends you his best respects – love to all the gunroom too – and bids me tell you he had a most astonishing passage home, chased like smoke and oakum by the heaviest, fastest privateer he had ever seen, so that although the Danaë was a flyer – which we knew very well, ha, ha, ha! – he was forced to crack on most amazingly. Bonnets, drabblers, save-alls – the whole shooting-match – but even so he would have been caught if the privateer had not split her foresail in a late evening gust.’
‘That must be the Spartan,’ said Jack. ‘The Admiral was telling me about her: a joint French and American venture that specializes in West Indiamen. If they are outward bound she takes them in to New Bedford and if they are going home with sugar she runs the blockade, loading it into chasse-marées off the French coast. Her usual cruising-ground is the windward of the Azores.’
‘Yes, sir. That was where she took the Danaë in chase. And Tom says she was most diabolically cunning – so like a Portuguese man-of-war, trim, ensign, uniforms, signals and all that he let her come almost within gunshot before he smoked the cheat and bore away. Very like a man-of-war indeed.’
‘But is not a privateer a man-of-war?’ asked Stephen.
Jack and Mowett pursed their lips and looked disapproving. ‘Why,’ said Jack after a moment, ‘I suppose strictly speaking you could call them men-of-war, private men-of-war; but no one ever does.’
‘Some say letters of marque,’ observed Mowett. ‘It sounds a little