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Have him at the door in five minutes, will you? And see if you can find me a cloak. We shall have rain before ever I reach Dorset.'
    Abhorson was indeed a powerful brute, but with his heavy common head and small eyes he looked neither intelligent nor handsome: he flung away from Jack's caress and made an irregular crab-like movement so that the groom at his head was towed sideways and Jack, trying to mount, went hop,hop, hop half across the yard before swinging into the saddle. He had not been on a horse since he was in Java, half a world away; but once there, with the leather creaking agreeably under him and his feet well in the stirrups he felt pleasantly at home; and although Abhorson was undoubtedly nappy, inclined to indulge in such capers as tossing his head, snorting very violently and going along in a silly mincing diagonal gait, Jack's powerful hands and knees had their effect, and by the time the rain or rather the drizzle began they were travelling quite well together through the new plantations. Jack was possessed with admiration at the lovely growth of his trees, far beyond what he had expected and in very beautiful fresh leaf; but this was only the forefront of his mind: all the deeper part that was not taken up with the idea of Woolcombe, the family house he had recently inherited, and with Sophie and the children in it, kept revolving the delightful prospect of his squadron, the Royal Navy's unattached ships and officers perpetually forming fresh combinations of possibility. 'But I shall certainly keep the Ringle as my tender,' he observed aloud.
    The drizzle increased to downright rain. He returned from these very happy speculations - he was a man unusually gifted for happiness when happiness was at all possible: and now it was flooding in from every side - and told Abhorson to cheer up, for it could not last long, coming down so hard. The horse was moving with a dogged, sullen pace, but he moved his ears as though there were at least some communication, and Jack twisted round to get at the cloak roiled up behind the saddle.
    As he did so a blackbird shot across the road right under the horse's nose, cackling loud. Abhorson gave a violent sideways leap, a turning leap that threw Jack with perfect ease - a heavy, heavy fall, Jack's head hitting the stone that marked his boundary.
    Chapter Two
    'Good morning to you,' said Stephen. 'My name is Maturin, and I have an appointment with Sir Joseph Blaine.'
    'Good morning, sir,' replied the porter. 'Pray be so good as to take a seat. James, show the gentleman into the second waiting-room.'
    This was not that famous place, looking out over the court and so through the screen into Whitehall, in which generation after generation of naval officers had waited, usually in the hope of promotion or at any rate of an appointment to a ship, but a far smaller, far more discreet little room with only one chair in it; and Stephen had barely had time to sit down before the inner door opened. Sir Joseph, a portly man with a pale, glabrous and usually anxious, work-worn face, hurried in, smiling, looking thoroughly pleased. He took both Stephen's hands, crying 'Why, Stephen, how very, very happy I am to see you! How are you, my dear sir? How do you do after all these countless miles and days?'
    'Very well, I thank you, dear Joseph; but I wish I could see you less pale and harried and overworked. Do you sleep? Do you eat at all?'
    'Sleep is difficult, I must confess; yet I still eat tolerably well. Will you join me this evening at Black's? Do join me, and you will see: I always sup on a boiled fowl with oyster sauce and a pint of our claret.'
    'I shall happily watch you,' said Stephen, 'but for my own part I have already bespoke turbot and a bottle of Sillery.' He felt in his pocket and went on, 'Pray accept this offering.' He passed over a dirty handkerchief, and eagerly unwrapping it. Sir Joseph cried 'Eupator ingens! How very kind of you to remember - a splendid specimen indeed -