Read 21: The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey for Free Online Page A

bundle soared aloft, followed with the utmost concentration by all hands: at exactly the right moment, the exact height to an inch, the coxswain snapp ed the tie and the rear-admiral’ s blue flag streamed out bravely in the wind, instantly greeted by the first of thirteen solemn guns, enormously loud, salutes from all the members of the blue squadron, distant cheering from Surprise and clouds of wheeling, discontented gulls.
    “ May I sugge st a tour of the flagship, sir?” asked Simmons, with what cheerfulness he could muster; and together they paced along the decks, through the heady scent of powder, watched with discreet intensity by all who could decently do so and by some who could not.
    “Tell me, Simmons,” said Jack as they left the main magazine, walking delicately, as well they might with so many ton s of gunpowder just behind them “ does the Admiral sail with a flag-captain?”
    “He did,” said Simmons, embarrassed. “ But Captain Fielding is going home with me if Surprise can find room for us both.”
    “Ah,” said Jack, aware t hat his question was untimely. “ I only asked because I thought he might answer some of my less important questions - an admiral has plenty to do without being pestered. Perhaps I might turn to his secretary.”
    “ I am afraid that would scarcely answer. Poor Coulter had been hauled over the coals before now for exceeding his office . . . it is very like what you and I knew aboard Pegasus .”
    “Oh, indeed?” That had been a short, unhappy cruise when Jack was lent to the ship to take the place of her third lieutenant, shot through the head while attempting to board a Frenchman, Pegasus being a ship in which most people seemed to spend their time doing wrong. “ Is not Suffolk somewhat shorthanded?” he asked, partly to change the subject but more to learn how a ship of the line could manage with so few people: the ‘ tween-decks were scarcely populated.
    He di d not learn, because the purser’ s clerk, an odd long-legged spectacled man devoured by curiosity, wished to find out who Captain Aubrey was, what he was doing here, and whether they would be able to water today or tomorrow - the great casks and hoses were all laid along — and as he uttered his almost mechanical questions, so he peered eagerly with his red-rimmed short-sighted eyes into Captain Aubrey’ s face, apparently devoid of shame. By the time his appetite, his very considerable appetite, was satisfied they had forgotten the shortage of hands and they walked on.
    It was a long inspection and in the course of it Jack met almost all his new officers again, a seamanlike set of men on the whole, and cautiously welcoming — one or two former shipmates, known long ago. But he received a general impression of anxiety and overwork, an impression that was in part overlaid by his meeting with the gunner, the master-gunner, among his twenty-four-pounders, all as trim as heavy cannon could well be and all equipped with shining Douglas sights.
    A long inspection, and by the end of it, when they stood there together in the bows, gazing out towards the approaching but still distant squadron Jack had come to like his anxious, somewhat hag-ridden companion well enough to ask, “ In really heavy weather, have you not found it difficult to work th e ship with so small a company?”
    “ I have indeed: and I have hea rd of it, I do assure you . . .” He was cut short by a hail from the masthead and a moment later the message came forward: the rear-admiral was desired to go aboard the flag.
    “ I a m afraid it will be a wet pull,” said Simmons. “ May I l end you a tarpaulin jacket?”
    “If you please,” said Jack: his fine but aged uniform had not much wear left in it and he was a long, long way from home.
    A wet pull it was, through an increasingly choppy sea, right into the eye of the wind: it was however shortened by the zeal of the white and blue squadrons to reach a hospitable port.
    “Well, Aubrey,”