Desolation Island. Patrick O’Brian

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СКАЧАТЬ from one place to another, though with no determined tide as yet, and as Stephen did not know what they represented his interest in the matter faded quickly. Reminded by the shape of some of the tokens, he thought of Sophie’s fish, silently withdrew, and made his way along the busy High Street, past the George, to Holland’s, where he bought a couple of fine plump lampreys (his favourite dish) and the dabs: these he carried with him down to the Hard, where the Mentor’s crew, just paid off, were bawling and hallooing round a bonfire, together with a growing crowd of the thick, powerful young women known as brutes and a large number of pimps, idle apprentices, and pickpockets. The bonfire sent a ruddy glow far up into the night air, accentuating the darkness: disturbed gulls could be seen far above, their wings a reflected pink; and in the midst of the flames hung the effigy of the Mentor’s first lieutenant. ‘Shipmate,’ said Stephen into the ear of a bemused sailor whose brute was openly robbing him, ‘mind your poke.’ But even as he spoke he felt a violent twitch at the parcel under his arm. His lampreys and his dabs were gone – a wicked flying boy, not three foot tall, vanished in the milling crowd – and Stephen walked back to the shop, which could now afford him no more than a salmon of enormous price, and a pair of wizened plaice.

      Their smell grew more apparent as they warmed against his bosom, and he left them with the horses before returning to his seat. Everything seemed much as it had been, except that Jack’s store of counters had grown thin and sparse; they still called ‘pay the difference’ and ‘antipathy’; but there was certainly a new tension. Jenyns’ pale expanse of face was sweating more profusely; Carroll’s whole being was electric with excitement; the two Wrays were even colder and more guarded. As he was drawing a card, Jack brushed one of his remaining counters, a mother-of-pearl fish, off the table: Stephen picked it up, and Jack said, ‘Thankee, Stephen, that’s a pony.’

      ‘It looks more like a fish,’ said Stephen.

      ‘That is our slang term for five and twenty pound,’ said Carroll, smiling at him.

      ‘Indeed?’ said Stephen, realizing that they were playing for far, far higher stakes than he had ever imagined. He watched the silly game with much keener attention, and presently he began to think it strange that Jack should lose so much, so often, so regularly. Andrew Wray and Carroll were the principal winners; the judge seemed to be more or less where he had begun; Jack and Jenyns had lost heavily, and they both called for fresh counters before Stephen had been back half an hour. During this half hour he had made up his mind that something was amiss. Something was holding the law of probabilities in abeyance. Just what it was he could not tell, but he was sure that if only he could as it were break the code he should find evidence for the collusion that he sensed. A dropped handkerchief allowed him to inspect their feet, a usual means of communication; but their feet told him nothing. And where did the collusion lie? Between whom? Was Jenyns in fact losing as much as he appeared to be losing, or was he a deeper man than he seemed? It was easy to be too clever by half, and to over-reach oneself, in matters of this kind: in natural philosophy and in political intelligence a good rule was to look into the obvious first, and to solve the easy parts of the problem. The judge had a trick of drumming his fingers on the table; so did his cousin. Natural enough: but was not Andrew Wray’s drumming of a somewhat particular kind? Not so much the ordinary rhythmic roll as the motion of a man picking out a tune with variations: was he mistaken in thinking that Carroll’s lively, piratical eye dwelt upon those movements? Unable to decide, he moved round the table and stood behind Wray and Carroll, to establish a possible relationship between the drumming and the cards they held. His move was not directly useful, however. He had not been there for any length of time before Wray called for sandwiches and half a pint of sherry, and the drumming stopped – a hand holding a sandwich is naturally immobilized. Yet with the coming of the wine, the law of probabilities reasserted itself: Jack’s luck changed; fish returned to him in a modest shoal; and he stood up somewhat richer than he had sat down.

      He displayed no indecent self-complacency; indeed, all the gentlemen present might have been playing for love, from their lack of apparent emotion; but Stephen knew that secretly he was delighted. ‘You brought me luck, Stephen,’ he said, when they had mounted. ‘You broke the damnedest sequence of cards I have ever seen in my life, week after goddam week.’

      ‘I have also brought you a salmon, and a pair of plaice.’

      ‘Sophie’s fish!’ cried Jack. ‘God’s my life, they had gone completely out of my mind. Thank you, Stephen: you are a friend in a thousand.’

      They rode through Cosham in silence, avoiding drunken seamen, drunken soldiers, and drunken women. Stephen knew that Jack had repaired his fortunes in the Mauritius campaign: even with the admiral’s share, the proctors’ fees, and the civilians’ jobbery deducted, the recaptured Indiamen alone must have set him quite high in the list of captains who had done well out of prizemoney. But even so … When they were clear of the houses he said, ‘As such I should tell you some of the disagreeable things that are said to fall to friends; yet since I have so lately borrowed a large sum of money from you, I can scarcely cry up thrift, nor even common prudence, with much decency or conviction. I am struck dumb; and must content myself with observing that Lord Anson, whose wealth had the same source as yours, was said to have gone round the world, but never into the world.’

      ‘I take your meaning,’ said Jack. ‘You think they are sharps and I am a flat?’

      ‘I assert nothing: only that in your place I should not play with those men again.’

      ‘Oh come, Stephen, a judge, for all love? And a man so high in Government service?’

      ‘I make no accusation. Though if I had a certainty where in fact I have only a suspicion, a man’s being a judge would not weigh heavily. Sure, it is weak and illiberal to speak slightingly of any considerable body of men; yet it so happens that the only judges I have known have been froward companions, and it occurs to me that not only are they subjected to the evil influence of authority but also to that of righteous indignation, which is even more deleterious. Those who judge and sentence criminals address them with an unbridled, vindictive righteousness that would be excessive in an archangel and that is indecent to the highest degree in one sinner speaking to another, and he defenceless. Righteous indignation every day, and publicly applauded! I remember an acquaintance of mine literally foaming – there was a line of white between his lips – as he condemned a wretched youth to transportation for carnal knowledge of a fine bold up-standing wench: yet this same man was himself a smell-smock, a cold, determined lecher, a voluptuary, a libertine, a discreet frequenter of Mother Abbot’s establishment in Dover Street; while another, in whose house I have drunk uncustomed wine, tea, and brandy, told a smuggler, with great vehemence, that society must be protected from such wicked men as he and his accomplices. Do not suppose, however, that I am calling this judge of yours a sharper: his respectability may be no more than a useful screen.’

      ‘Well, I shall take care of them,’ said Jack. ‘I have given them another meeting next week, but I shall keep a weather-eye wide open. A delicate business … it would never do to offend Andrew Wray…’

      They walked their horses up the hill, and over on the right a nightjar churred, perched lengthways on the gibbet at the crest. After half a mile Jack said, ‘I cannot believe it of him. He is a great man in the City, apart from anything else. He understands the movement of the Funds, and once he told me that if I put money into Bank Stock, I should certainly make a handsome profit before the month was out. And sure enough, Mr Perceval made a statement, and some people cleared thousands. But I am not such a flat as that, Stephen; stocks and shares is gambling, and I stick to what I understand: ships and horses.’

      ‘And silver-mining.’

      ‘That is entirely different,’ cried Jack. ‘As I keep telling Sophie, the Lowthers did not have to understand coal when it was found on their land: all they had to do was to listen to experts, see that proper СКАЧАТЬ