HMS Surprise. Patrick O’Brian

handsomely, my dear,’ he whispered as they eased him tenderly into a padded chair. ‘Will you give me something to drink, now, for the love of God? En Maragall, valga’m Deu,’ he said, smiling over Jack’s shoulder.

      ‘Clear the room, Satisfaction,’ said Jack, breaking off – several prisoners had come up, some crawling, and now two of them made a determined rush at Dutourd, standing ghastly, pressed into the corner.

      ‘That man must have a priest,’ said Stephen.

      ‘Must we kill him?’ said Jack.

      Stephen nodded. ‘But first he must write to the colonel – bring him here – say, vital information – the American has talked – it will not wait. Must not: vital.’

      ‘Tell him, sir,’ said Jack to Maragall, looking back over his shoulder, with the look of profound affection still on his face. ‘Tell him he must write this note. If the colonel is not here in ten minutes I shall kill him on that machine.’

      Maragall led Dutourd to the desk, put a pen in his hand. ‘He says he cannot,’ he reported. ‘Says his honour as an officer –’

      ‘His what?’ cried Jack, looking at the thing from which he had unstrapped Stephen.

      Shouting, scuffling, a fall on the way up.

      ‘Sir,’ said Bonden, ‘this chap comes in at the front door.’ Two of his mates propped a man into the room. ‘I’m afraid the prisoners nobbled him on the way up.’

      They stared at the dying, the dead colonel, and in the pause Dutourd whipped round, dashed out the lamp, and leapt from the window.

      ‘While trying to escape,’ said Stephen, when Java Dick came up to report. ‘Oh, altogether too – too – Jack, what now? I cannot scarcely crawl, alas.’

      ‘We carry you down to the gunboat,’ said Jack.

      Maragall said, ‘There is the shutter they carry their dead suspects on, behind the door.’

      ‘Joan,’ said Stephen to him, ‘all the papers that matter are in the press to the right of the table.’

      Gently, gently down through the open streets, Stephen staring up at the stars and the clean air reaching deep into his lungs. Dead streets, with one single figure that glanced at this familiar cortège and looked quickly away: right down to the quays and along. The gunboat: Satisfaction’s party there before them, ready at the sweeps. Bonden reporting ‘All present and sober, sir, if you please.’ Farewell, farewell, Maragall: God go with you and may no new thing arise. The black water slipping by faster, faster, lipping along her side. The strangled chime of a clock among the neat bundles of loot under the half-deck. Silence behind them: Mahon still fast asleep.

      Lazaretto Island left astern; the signal lanterns swaying up, answered from the battery with the regulation hoist and a last derisive cry of ‘Cochons’. And the blessed realisation that the dawn was bringing its usual slackening of the tramontane – and that the sail down to leeward was the Lively.

      ‘God knows I should do the same again,’ said Jack, leaning on the helm to close her, the keen spray stinging his tired, reddened eyes. ‘But I feel I need the whole sea to clean me.’