The answer to his note came over from the Nymphe shortly before Stephen walked into the great cabin. 'There you are, Stephen,' said Jack. 'I suppose you know that Laura's husband has escaped, and is aboard the Nymphe?'

'I do,' said Stephen.

'Well, here is a damned thing,' said Jack, 'it seems that some God-damned fool has told him I was his wife's lover. Cotton was here just now, and he said so. I instantly denied it, of course, and to make my denial utterly convincing I sent over straight away, offering to carry Fielding to Valletta at once: he could not be there for a month otherwise. I had no time to consult you,' he said, looking anxiously into Stephen's face, 'but in any case it was necessary - it was the least I could do - and it had to be done immediately. I offered him my dining-cabin, which I thought pretty handsome; but here is his answer.'

'You were quite right to do so, I am sure,' said Stephen, taking it. 'And there was no call in the world to be consulting me, my dear; sometimes you misinterpret my actions. No call at all, at all,' he murmured, reading Mr Fielding begs to acknowledge Captain Aubrey's letter of today's date, but regrets he is unable to avail himself of the offer it contains: he hopes however that he may meet Captain Aubrey in Malta before any considerable time shall have passed. 'I regret it extremely,' he said, and although Jack knew him very well he could not tell what he meant or on what grounds he regretted it so. 'I operated on the gentleman this forenoon, and talked with him for some time afterwards,' said Stephen after a while. 'And although by far the best thing would be for him to come back with us, I do not feel that persuasion would serve any useful purpose. Rather the contrary, indeed. But I may take it, may I not, that we must necessarily be the first to reach Valletta with the news of Mr Fielding's escape?'

'Certainly. We shall have that vile tub of Babbington's with us, so we shall probably not set royals or even topgallants all the way, but even so there is nothing else sailing back from here until the next convoy.'

There was a silence, each far away. Jack had fought the odd duel in his time, but he had disliked them then and he disliked them even more now that it was almost always a matter of pistols, generally more deadly than the sword. They seemed to him foolish and even wicked: he had not the least wish to make Laura a widow, even less to do the same to Sophie.

'Barge alongside, sir, if you please,' said Bonden in his loud sea-voice, startling the silence of the cabin.

'Barge?' said Captain Aubrey, brought up all standing in his meditations.

'Why, yes, your honour,' said Bonden politely. 'Which you are to eat your dinner with Captain Babbington aboard of Dryad in five minutes' time.'

CHAPTER TEN

Few creatures in the sea gave Stephen Maturin more delight than dolphins, and here in the Strait of Otranto he had them by the score. One particular troop had been with the ship ever since he finished with the sick-bay, and he had been watching them all this time, as far forward as he could get, leaning against the warm figurehead and gazing down. The dolphins would come racing up the larboard, the sunlit side, and leap all together before crossing and going down to play in the wake before running up again: sometimes they would scratch themselves against the frigate's side or even her cutwater before turning, but generally they leapt, and he would see their amiable faces clear of the water. The same troop, with two exceptionally fat, profusely spotted dolphins in it, had appeared several times before; he knew most of the individuals, and he was convinced that they were aware of his presence. He hoped that they recognized him and even liked him, and each time they rose he waved.

The dolphins did not have to exert themselves, for in these gentle breezes the Surprise was scarcely making five knots as she steered south-south-west under an easy sail, while far to leeward her lumpish consort the Dryad laboured along under almost everything she could spread to keep her station. The two were covering as wide an expanse of sea as ever they could because there was a strong possibility of enemy privateers in the southern Adriatic and the northern Ionian (unaccompanied British ships and even small convoys had been sadly mauled), while a French or Venetian man-of-war was by no means out of the question, nor yet a merchantman, fat and lawful prize. The Dryad was as eager as any sloop in the Navy for glory and even indeed for gain, but although she was small and low she was also ponderous and slow on the rise, and she was making very heavy weather of the long swell that beat against her starboard bow, a sure sign of storms in the western Mediterranean. Sometimes her lower sails were becalmed when she was in the trough, and sometimes their filling on the rise would make her butt into the top of the wave, so that green water swept over her forecastle, along her waist and into her captain's cabin. The Surprise on the other hand rose to them like a wild swan; and sometimes, when the swell mounted very high and the ship sank very low, Stephen would see his dolphins swimming away up there in the solid transparent uptilted mass of water as though he were looking through the side of some immeasurable tank. He had been at his post since the sun was only half way up the brilliant eastern sky, reclining at his ease, sometimes reflecting, sometimes merely staring, the bowsprit just above his head gently creaking with the pitch of the ship and the pull of the forestaysail, and the warm breeze wafting by him: he had been there at the time of the noon observation and throughout the hullaballoo of piping the hands to dinner and the piercing scream of the fife for grog, and he might have stayed there indefinitely had he not been called away. He had long since made up his mind what to do about the situation brought into being in Fielding's reappearance: although the Surprise would be well ahead of the news it would still be best to act quickly. He would have to open himself entirely to the Admiral and Wray, which, though regrettable, was still a small price to pay for pinning all the important French agents in Malta. Laura would make an appointment with her man, and it would be strange if he did not lead them to the rest. But before they were gathered in she would have to be moved to a place of safety, since some unimportant people among the discontented Maltese would probably escape; he had already worked out a formula that would exculpate her in the Admiral's eyes, and he had no very rigid morality to fear on the part of Wray. That decision belonged to the past: for the present he was giving himself up entirely to immediate, intense pleasure in the warm, astonishingly clear air, the brilliant light, the ship's rhythmic bounding through the clean blue-green sea. The sun had now passed the zenith; it had moved two handsbreadths to the west and the staysail was casting a grateful shade upon him by the time Calamy came forward in a clean frilled shirt with his hair brushed smooth and said 'Why, sir, what's all this? Surely you have not forgot you are entertaining the Captain?'

'And how am I supposed to entertain the Captain, for all love?' asked Stephen. 'Am I to grin at him through a horse-collar, propose riddles and conundrums, cut capers?'

'Come, sir,' said Calamy, 'the gunroom is entertaining the Captain to dinner, and you have only ten minutes to change. There is not a moment to be lost.' And as he led Stephen aft, 'I am coming too. Ain't that fun?'

Fun it was, although at first the Captain was unusually quiet: not glum, but mum. He had a singularly poignant feeling of loss as he sat there at Mowett's right. He missed Pullings extremely, and when he looked at the rows of faces that he knew so well, liked and esteemed - looked with the knowledge that this society would be broken up in the next few weeks - he had a strong sense of his life being upon the turn, between two seasons, as it were, with the certainties of the one no longer valid for the other. He was not a fanciful man, but for some time now he had had an indefinable sense of chaos following order, of impending disaster; and it oppressed his mind.