Free Blue at the Mizzen by Patrick O’Brian

cousin only bought the place because of the parliamentary seat. Indeed, the borough may be rotten, but the land is very much worse. Killick,' he called, barely raising his voice at all.
    'Sir?' replied Killick, almost immediately.
    'Light along a pot of coffee, will you?'
    After a pause, Jack went on, 'One really should keep a log-book, you know; a diary: after some years it is difficult to put your ideas in order. At least, that is what I find. Well, the nephew - his name is Leicester, by the way: John Leicester - went down and reported that things were bad, very bad, but not incurable, and given the lie of the land, draining would answer very well. It would take time, it would take years; but most of the tenants would give their labour according to a scheme he had devised which would allow them time for their farming, and there would be no great outlay of money. So since at that time there had been some elegant prizes I told him to carry on: but there were to be no evictions, no distraints...'
    'Pot of coffee, sir,' said Killick.
    'Where was I? Told him to carry on, which he did; and we sailed away. I almost entirely forgot it... to be sure, Leicester, who was acting as agent as well, did send annual reports, but with so many things happening I am afraid I neglected them until last year, when he paid in rents of I think nearly forty pounds; and this year he spoke of the likelihood of a really abundant wheat harvest, ha, ha! However, I did not mention it, for fear of ill-luck: but today I have the truly welcome news that he has given the tenants a Lammas dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, at which they drank my health, and that he had placed �450 to my credit at the bank. �450, Stephen! More than my pay as a post-captain. There: that was my good news.'
    'And very good, very welcome news it is, my dear. I give you joy with all my heart. There you are... I am very glad of it.'
    So he was; but Jack, though not preternaturally sharp, detected the uneasiness, not so much in Stephen's expression as in a kind of particular tension in his attitude, and he said, 'Forgive me, Stephen, for boring you with all this personal and rather commonplace talk about money - you are uneasy.'
    'No. You mistake: I was not in the least degree bored, weary, inattentive. And if I am at all uneasy, it is from another cause. Jack, tell me how long will these repairs take before you can sail?'
    'With two saint's days coming and the vast amount of work to be done in so many of the shipwrights' own houses, eight or nine days.'
    'Then I must beg for Ringle to carry me to England. And if she could sail tonight how happy I should be.'
    It was at once clear to Jack that the request and the Gibraltar packet were connected: he asked no questions but passed the word for Mr. Reade, and when he came, said, 'William, how soon can you be under way?'
    'In twenty minutes, sir, if I may sail without my carpenter.'
    'You have his mate aboard?'
    'No. He is aboard you, sir.'
    'Then I shall send him over directly. Good-bye to you, William: you have the breeze as fair as ever you could wish.'
    Almost all voyages, from that of Noah's Ark to the sending of the ships to Troy, have been marked by interminable delays, with false starts and turning wind and tide; perhaps the schooner Ringle was too slim and slight to count as a worthy adversary, because she gently sailed her anchor out of the ground and then bore away a little east of north with a wind that allowed her to spread every sail she possessed, other than those reserved for foul or very foul weather.
    It was indeed almost perfect sailing, the captain rarely leaving the deck, and all hands (a select body by now) perfectly ready to clap on to any rope or line that showed the least inclination to heave slack and recall it to the most rigid sense of its duty - anything for an extra eighth part of a knot.
    Most of this time Stephen spent in his low triangular berth, vainly applying various formulae to Jacob's