Clarissa Oakes (The Truelove)

'Quite well, I thank you: they are as comfortable as can be expected, and with the blessing they will soon be more so.'

'Capital, capital. I shall pay them a visit." Then in a much lower tone he added 'I have been to the head myself. I thought you might like to know.'

'I am heartily glad of it,' said Stephen, and asked him exact and particular questions; but Jack Aubrey was more prudish than might have been supposed about such matters and he only answered 'Like a horse,' walking forward out of range.

He brought the ship round again to meet the boat, but Stephen stayed where he was. With the turn the island slid out of view, to be replaced by a vast expanse of ocean; and today the ocean had a horizon as taut and sharp as could be desired, except in the west-south-west, where the early morning's cloudbank had grown, working up against the wind as thunder-clouds and squalls so often did, contrary to all sense of what was right and natural by land.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Reade at his side, 'but the Captain thought you might like me to pour this water over your hand.'

'God love you, Mr Reade, my dear,' said Stephen. 'Pray pour away, and I will rub. I did wash at one time, I recall; but I dare say I adjusted a dressing afterwards. Fortunately, however, I turned back the cuffs of my coat, or I should be in sad trouble with ..." He stopped abruptly, for here was Bonden coming up the side.

'Well, Bonden?' asked Captain Aubrey on the silent, listening quarterdeck.

'No landing, sir,' said Bonden. 'A wicked surf and a worse undertow, though the tide was on the ebb.'

 'No landing at all?' 'None at all, sir.'

'Very good. Captain Pullings, since there is no possibility whatsoever of landing we will hoist in the jolly-boat and make all possible sail on our former course.'

'On deck there,' hailed the lookout at the masthead. 'A sail right astern. Fore-and-aft, I reckon.'

Jack took the watch telescope and ran aloft. 'Where away, Trilling?' he called from the crosstrees.

'Right astern, sir, on the edge of that ill-looking bank,' replied Trilling, who had moved out along the yard.

  'I can't see her.'

'Why, to tell you the truth nor can I now, sir,' said Trilling in that amused, conversational tone more usual in a letter of marque than a man-of-war. 'She comes and goes, like. But you could see her from the deck, was it to clear a little: she ain't a great way off.'

Jack returned to the deck by way of a backstay, as he had done when he was a boy. 'As I was saying, Captain Pullings,' he went on, 'we will make all possible sail on our former course. There is not a moment to be lost.'

The jolly-boat was hoisted in and made fast, the topgallants were sheeted home and hoisted to the strange musical cries of the Orkneymen aboard, the bowlines hauled to the one chant the Royal Navy countenanced 'One! Two! Three! Belay oh!', and Martin said to Stephen 'I was much astonished to hear that the surf made landing impossible. From my vantage-point I could have sworn I saw a relatively smooth stretch just this side of the cape. I hope you are not too deeply disappointed, Maturin?'

'Faith, if I were to repine at every promising island I have been swept past in my naval career, I should have run melancholy mad long since. We have at least seen the mutton-bird and the monstrous pines, bad luck to them. I think them as ugly as they are tall; the ugliest vegetables known to man except for that vile Araucaria imbricata of Chile, which in some ways it resembles.'

They talked about the conifers they had seen in New South Wales; they watched the upper-yard men race aloft to set the royals; and Martin, looking round to see that no one was at hand, said in a low voice 'Tell me, Maturin, why are they said to be set flying? Flying'? I have been at sea so long I do not like to ask anyone else.'

'Martin, you lean on a broken reed: we are in the same boat, as reeds so often are. Let us comfort ourselves with the reflexion that not all of our shipmates could tell how an ablative comes to be so very absolute, on occasion.'

'Sir,' called West, who was standing on the leeward hammock-nettings with a telescope. 'I believe I make her out on the rise. I think she may be wearing a pennant; and if so she is the cutter we heard about.'

Pullings relayed this to the Captain, adding 'When we were in Sydney they spoke of a fast fourteen-gun cutter called the Eclair that was coming up from Van Diemen's Land.'

'I heard about her,' said Jack, training his telescope aft. 'But I see nothing.'

Noon. The officers took their altitudes: Pullings reported that the sun was on the meridian: Jack allowed that it was twelve o'clock and that the new naval day might now begin. Eight bells struck; the hands hurried to their dinner; and a curious noise they made, not the muffled anxiety of the day before, but still restrained and as it were conspiratorial.

When the din was over and when the hands were perhaps half way through their dinner (oatmeal, ship's bread and cheese, Monday being a banyan day) West repeated that he was sure of the cutter now, and almost certain of her pennant.

'You may be right, sir, though I see nothing of it,' said Jack. 'But even if you are, there is nothing extraordinary about a cutter being sent to Norfolk Island. There are still quantities of Government stores ashore, and several people, I understand.'

'Surely they are throwing out a signal, sir?' cried West a moment later.

'I do not see it, sir,' said Jack coldly. 'Besides, I have no time for idle gossip with a cutter." And Davidge, who was quicker than his shipmate, murmured 'Tace is the Latin for a candlestick, old fellow.'

When the hands and therefore the midshipmen had finished their dinner Jack went below and sent for Oakes. 'Sit down, Mr Oakes,' he said. 'I have been considering what to do with you, and although it is clear that we must part - apart from anything else no women are allowed in the Surprise - I do not mean to discharge you until we reach some reasonably Christian port in Chile or Peru, where you can easily take the passage home. You will have enough money to do so: there is not only your pay but also the probability of some prize-money. If we should take nothing then I will advance what is necessary.'

'Thank you very much, sir.'

'I shall also give you a recommendation to any naval officer you may choose to show it to, mentioning your good and seamanlike conduct under my command. But then there is your . . . your companion. She is under your protection, as I take it?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Have you considered what is to become of her?'

'Yes, sir. If you would be so extremely kind as to marry us, she would be free; and if that cutter were to come aboard we could bid them kiss our - we could laugh in their faces.'

'Have you made her an offer?'

'No, sir. I supposed . . .'

'Then go and do so, sir. If she agrees, bring her back here and let me hear her confirm it: be damned to Hell if I allow any forced marriage in my ship. If she don't, we shall have to find some place for her to sling her hammock. Cut along now. You may be as quick as you like. I have many things to do. By the way, what is her name?'

'Clarissa Harvill, sir.'

'Clarissa Harvilclass="underline" very well. Carry on, Mr Oakes.'

They came panting aft, and Oakes urged her through the cabin door. She had heard of her lover's summons; she had had time to do what could be done to clothes, hair, face, against all eventualities, and looked quite well as she stood there, slim and boyish in her uniform, her fair head bowed.

'Miss Harvill,' said Jack, rising, 'pray be seated. Oakes, place a chair and sit down yourself.' She sat, her eyes cast down, her ankles crossed, her hands in her lap, her back quite straight, looking as nearly like one wearing a skirt as possible, and Jack addressed her: 'Mr Oakes tells me that you might consent to marry him. May I take it that this is so, or is the fish water to - that is to say, or does he flatter himself?'

'No, sir: I am quite ready to marry Mr Oakes.'

'Of your own free will?'