Free The Fortune of War by Patrick O’Brian Page B

terrestrial, clouds their only companions. It was a sea-borne life, ordered by an exact sequence of bells and of naval rites: the sound of the decks being holy-stoned, swabbed, and flogged dry in the early morning, hammocks piped up, the forenoon tasks, the ceremony of noon itself, when a dozen sextants shot the sun from La Flèche's crowded quarterdeck and Captain Yorke said 'Make it so, Mr Warner', the bosun and his mates piping the hands to dinner, the fifer fifing them to grog; then the drum for the gunroom's meal, the quiet afternoon, and the drum again for quarters and for retreat, the piping down of hammocks, and the setting of the watch. All these were perfectly familiar to Stephen; but what was less familiar, and what in time came to have a hypnotic effect, as of living in the heart of an illusion, was the fact that these rites were never interrupted by the usual emergencies of the sailor's life: no sudden squalls, no untoward calms broke the smooth run of days. La Flèche sailed across the ocean, across a vast disc of sea whose limits always remained the same, neither nearer nor further; she sailed untroubled by the enemy, by storms, by crime aboard; and presently she might have been sailing for ever. Stephen was cut off from the past, and the future lay at so great and indeterminate a distance that it had little reality. His Leopards and McLean's Flitches were healthy, and however unreasonable it might appear, salt beef, salt pork, dried peas, hard work, far too much rum, stifling quarters, and little sleep kept them so; their surgeons had little to do in the physical line, and every morning after breakfast they repaired to the forepeak, where they sorted, classified, and described the wealth of Desolation and New Holland, discovering fascinating analogies between these forms of life and those with which they were more nearly acquainted. On occasion they withdrew to a lair behind the bitts, McLean's own domain, where by powerful lanterns they dissected, sometimes far into the night, admist a strong smell of alcohol and other preservatives. McLean was not a drinker - the spiritous reek he carried with him was innocent - but he was a smoker, a very heavy smoker, and it was in his lair that he told Stephen how he defied the first lieutenant, keeping his pipe perpetually lit. McLean was a respectable young man, the son of a crofter, who by extraordinary perseverance and exertion had acquired enough knowledge of medicine to qualify himself for a naval surgeon's career, and a much greater fund of anatomy, which was his delight. He was an admirable colleague for this kind of work, accurate, conscientious, learned, and wholly devoted to his chosen pursuit; he had studied under the illustrious Oken at Jena, and he knew an immense amount about the bones of the skull, of all skulls, considered as highly developed vertebral processes. He was prodigiously ignorant of literature, music, and the common graces, but he would have been ideal, from the scientific point of view, if he had not absorbed so much of the learned German's metaphysics that even his respect for Dr Maturin could not keep him from emitting them, together with clouds of smoke. On the more human plane, he could be a tedious companion. He rarely washed, his table manners were offensive, he was extremely umbrageous; and finding that Dr Maturin was an Irishman, he gave full vent to his dislike for the English. Thon southron loons didna ken cleanliness; nor, it seemed, did they ken anything else, much, until the Hunters had taught them anatomy; they profited shamelessly from the Union; and they despised their betters. A puir wambly set of boggarts: where would they be without Scotch generals?
    Stephen had no great love of the English government in its dealing with Ireland; in fact he had actively conspired against it. But he was deeply attached to individual English men and women, and in any case he did not like anyone to abuse the country but himself. 'You are