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being Sunday: but you had better pack your chest.'
       When he had gone Jack rang for his steward and asked whether the gun-room had finished their dinner. 'No, sir,' said Killick. 'I doubt they are even at their pudding yet.'
       'Then when they have finished—when they have quite finished, mind—I should like to see Captain Pullings. My compliments, and I should like to see Captain Pullings.'
       He looked doggedly through the sheets of physical observations he had made for Humboldt, temperature and salinity of the sea at various depths, barometric pressure, temperature of the air by wet and dry bulb thermometer, a chain of observations more than half way round the world, and he derived a certain satisfaction from them. Eventually he heard Pullings' steps.
       'Sit down, Tom,' he said, waving to a chair. 'I have seen Oakes, and the only explanation he could bring out was that she was very unhappy: then the damn fool threw Padeen in my teeth.'
       'You did not know, sir?'
       'Of course I did not. Did you?'
       'I believe it was common knowledge in the ship, but I had no certainty. Nor did I enquire. My impression was that the situation being so delicate you did not choose to have it brought to your attention or for there to be any question of returning to Botany Bay.'
       'Was it not your duty as first lieutenant to let me know?'
       'Perhaps it was, sir; and if I have done wrong I am very sorry for it. In a regular King's ship with a pennant, a party of Marines, a master-at-arms and ship's corporals I could not have avoided knowing it officially, and then in duty bound I should have been obliged to inform you. But here, with no Marines, no master-at-arms and no ship's corporals I should have had to listen at doors to be certain. No, sir: nobody wanted to tell either me or you, so that you, officially in the dark until it was too late, could not be blamed—could sail on for Easter Island with an easy conscience.'
       'You think it is too late now, do you?'
       'Wittles is up, sir, if you please,' said Killick at the door of the dining-cabin.
       'Tom,' said Jack, 'we left that odious wench in the starboard cable-tier. I dare say Oakes has fed her, but she cannot stay there watch after watch: she had better be stowed forward with the little girls until I have made up my mind what to do with her.'
       This was one of the few Sundays when no guests had been invited to the cabin, the Captain feeling so out of sorts, one of the few Sundays when Dr Maturin dined in the gun-room, and Aubrey sat in the solitary splendour usual in some captains but rare in him—he liked seeing his officers and midshipmen at his table and particularly his surgeon. Not that Stephen could in any way be called a guest, since they had shared the cabin these many years, and until recently he had actually owned the ship.
       He might have been expected for coffee, but in fact Jack saw nothing of him until the evening, when he walked in with a dose and a clyster: he and Martin had spent the intervening hours describing the more perishable specimens from their tour in the bush, and writing to their wives.
       'Here's a pretty kettle of fish,' cried Jack. 'An elegant God-damned kettle, upon my word.' Solitude and a heavy afternoon sleep had increased his ill-humour, and Stephen did not at all like the colour of his face. 'What's afoot?' he asked.
       'What's afoot? Why, the ship is turned into a bawdy-house—Oakes has had a girl in the cable-tier ever since we left Sydney Cove—everybody knew, and I have been made a fool of in my own command.'
       'Oh, that? It is of no great consequence, brother. And as for being made a fool of, it is no such matter but rather a mark of the people's affection, since they wished to avoid your being placed in a disagreeable posture.'
       'You knew, and you did not tell me?'
       'Of course I did not. I could not tell my friend Jack without at the same time telling Captain Aubrey,