'I shall not tell them until I am forced to it;' he thought, as the boat turned among the lighters and he saw his ship. She was moored well outside the yard, but he was not at all surprised to see two lumpish scows still attached to her and a party of dockyard mateys busy about her stern.

'Larboard side,' he said to his coxswain. Any ceremony in receiving him aboard would be ridiculous: he was the only man in the ship at this moment who possessed more than a thin duck shirt and trousers and a battered straw hat.

'Sir,' said Mowett, taking off his with what grace its broken brim allowed, 'I am very sorry to tell you that the villains will not have caulked the quarterdeck abaft the mizen before Tuesday. Your cabins are open to the..."

'No glass in the stern windows, neither,' cried Killick in a shrill fury.

'Killick, pipe down,' said Jack.

'Sir,' said the purser, 'the storekeeper would not let me have hammocks and beds on my personal indent. He made game of my clothes, affected to believe I was in liquor, desired me to tell my story of camels and Arabs to the Marines, and walked off, laughing.'

'Nor in the quarter-galleries,' muttered Killick.

'No slops, either,' said the purser. 'And this to a purser of fifteen years' standing.'

'And the post, sir,' said Mowett. 'There is a sack for us, but it has been sent across to St Isidore's, and they say they are shut today, because of the feast.'

'Closed?' said Jack. 'Be damned to that. Bonden, my gig. Killick, jump across to Searle's, take me a room for the next few days, and lay on dinner tomorrow for Dromedary's officers. Mr Adams, come along with me.'

Then, turning at the gangway, 'Where is the Doctor?'

'He has taken Rogers, Mann and Himmelfahrt to the hospital, sir."

To the hospital, like a conscientious surgeon, to see his earlier patients, to bring three more, and to talk and even operate with his colleagues; but also, like a conscientious intelligence-agent, to Laura Fielding's house, quite late in the evening.

The outer door was open, but the lantern at the far end was not lit, and as he walked along the dark stone passage he thought 'What a cut-throat place it is, to be sure: as silent as death.' At the door he groped for the bell-chain, heard the faint answering peal, instantly drowned by Ponto's bellowing, and then Laura's voice asking who was there.

'Stephen Maturin," he said.

'Mother of God,' she cried, opening the door and letting out a flood of light, 'How happy I am to see you again.' And as he walked in, clearly visible, 'Oh, oh! Have you been shipwrecked?'

'Not at all,' said Stephen, rather nettled, for he had borrowed a pair of purple breeches at the hospital, and he had been shaved. 'Do you find my appearance not quite the thing?'

'Not in the least, dear Doctor. Only you are usually so... so point-device, shall I say?'

'By all means.'

'And always in uniform, so I was a little surprised to see your white coat.'

'We call it a banyan,' said Stephen, considering the garment, a loose sailcloth jacket with tapes instead of buttons, run up by Bonden out of what little light canvas the Dromedary had to spare. 'Yet perhaps it may look a little desperate on shore: perhaps it may. An ancient gentlewoman, Colonel Fellowes' mother, I believe, gave me this coin as I turned the corner of the street, saying "Not for drink, my good man. Pas gin. Niente debaucho."

But for the moment I have nothing else. A parcel of black thieves on horseback took away my bell may they rot for ever in the deep cinders of Hell and my collections and all my clothes was the way of it. However, like a prudent man I had not taken my other chest with my good uniform, at which I rather rejoice.' By this time they had reached the sitting-room and the little round table upon which Mrs Fielding's supper was laid out: three triangles of cold polenta, a hard-boiled egg, and a jug of lemonade. 'Will you believe it, my dear,' he said, sitting down opposite her and instantly seizing upon one of the triangles, 'that best coat of mine cost eleven guineas. Eleven guineas: a shocking sum indeed.' He was embarrassed - a rare state for him - and he talked somewhat at random: she poured him a glass of lemonade and watched a little wistfully as he reached out for the egg. 'But,' said he, unconsciously withdrawing his hand, 'if I had fetched all this splendour from the hotel where I left it, and put it on, I should never have had time to reach this house with any chance of finding you still up; and I thought it better to compromise your reputation in a banyan, as we agreed, than to leave it intact in a gorgeous coat.'

'It is truly benevolent in you to trouble with me, and to come so soon,' she said, taking his hand and looking at him with great troubled eyes.

'Not at all, my dear,' said Stephen, returning the pressure. 'Tell me now, have these people been pestering you since I went away?'

'Only twice. I had to go to St Simon's the next day, and I told him you had spent the night with me. He was pleased, and said I should have a letter the next time.'

'The same foreigner with the Neapolitan accent - the small pale middle-aged man?'

'Yes; but the one who gave me the letter was an Italian.'

'How is Mr Fielding?'

'Oh, he is not well. He does not say so - only that he had a fall and hurt his hand - but he is not himself. I am afraid he is very ill: sick to his heart. I will show you his letter.'

It was certainly devoid of some quality that the earlier letters had possessed: not elegance, for Mr Fielding had no talent that way, but rather flow, cohesion, natural sequence, and in some obscure way the affection that had showed through: it was a painstaking letter that hobbled along, recounting his fall on the icy steps into the exercise yard and his kind treatment in the prison infirmary, and urging Laura to do everything in her power to show their gratitude to the gentlemen who made this correspondence possible: they were certainly able to influence the government.

It would not do, thought Stephen as he looked at the carefully-formed writing. The tale of the injured hand was just a little too circumstantial and in any case it had been used far too often. His earlier impression became something very near a certainty: Fielding was dead and his forged hand was being used to keep Laura in subjection. The strong likelihood was that the French agent in Malta was Graham's Lesueur, and that Wray had failed to catch him: perhaps it was just as well, since a Lesueur fed false information through Laura would be far more useful than a Lesueur tied to a post in front of a firing-squad. But he would have to be fed fast, before the Surprise moved on, for without consulting Sir Joseph or one of his closest colleagues Stephen would not like to entrust the matter to anyone else in Malta: and of course before Fielding's death was known - once that happened Laura's function vanished. Not only would Lesueur disbelieve everything she told him, but since it would be in her power - indeed her interest - to compromise him and his whole organization he would certainly eliminate her. She would vanish with her function.

All this passed through his mind with the utmost rapidity, never even reaching the stage of words, while he looked at the letter. They were much the same reflections that had occurred to him the first time, but now they were informed with a far greater certainty, and, because of his very strong feeling for her, with a far greater sense of urgency. He made much the same comforting reply as he had made before, and their talk drifted away to the technical side of her connection with the intelligence agents. She was less cautious now and she gave him an accurate description of Lesueur and some of his colleagues, and she spoke of one Basilio's criminal levity- he had told her, for example, that it had never been intended that Dr Maturin should go to the Red Sea: another man was to have taken his place. From all she said it became distressingly clear that some at least had committed the common blunder and sometimes mortal sin of underestimating the power of a woman, and that even if Lesueur did not know that she had recognized him it was obvious that she knew so much about his network that he could not possibly tolerate her defection.