| All successful Royal Navy Captains had an "interest" who pushed their career along. In Jack Aubrey's case it was his friend Stephen Maturin who delicately and secretly gave Jack's career a push. As just now when Stephen rushes in on Sophie. "Sophie, my dear, briskly now: take pen and paper. Write: "Dear Jack, We have a ship, Surprise, for the East Indies, and must join at Plymouth instantly . . . . " ha, ha, what will he say to that?" "Surprise!" was what he said, in a voice that made the windows of the Grapes' one-pair front tremble. In the bar Mrs. Broad dropped a glass. "The Captain's had a surprise," she said, gazing placidly at the pieces. "I hope it is a pleasant one," said Nancy, picking them up. "Such a pretty gentleman." The travel-worn Pullings, discreetly turned to the window as Jack read his letter, spun about at the cry. "Surprise!" God love my heart, Pullings: do you know what the Doctor has done? He has found us a ship--Surprise for the East Indies--join at once. Killick, Killick! Sea-chest, portmanteau, small valise; and jump round to the office: insides on the Plymouth mail." <snip> "Surprise!" cried Jack again. "I have not set foot in her since I was a midshipman." He saw her plain, lying there a cable's length from him in the brilliant sunshine of English Harbour, a trim, beautiful little eight -and-twenty, French-built with a bluff bow and lovely lines, weatherly, stiff, a fine sea-boat, fast when she was well-handled, roomy, dry ... He had sailed in her under a taut captain and an even tauter first lieutenant--had spent hours and hours banished to the masthead--had done most of his reading there--had carved his initials on the cap: were they still to be seen? She was old, to be sure, and called for nursing; but what a ship to command." |
The Paragraph Missing from the Norton Edition of HMS Surprise. Had been the eighth chapter's, sixth paragraph of earlier editions. Stourton arrives to be the new first lieutenant and each man sizes up the other. As a result we have a quick sketch of Jack Aubrey. "Jack and Stourton had never met, but they knew one another by reputation. Stourton had expected a big, yellow-haired man (Captain Aubrey was known on the lower deck as Goldilocks, or as Lucky Jack Aubrey in the service generally), a fire-eater, a fighting captain; but he had not expected him to be quite so big, nor so forbidding. Stourton loved the service but his quick glance at the Surprise's perfect order on deck, and now his longer, more anxious inspection of the scarred leonine head the other side of the table---of the man who would have despotic power over his career and his happiness for the next year or so, made his heart sink. A year or so in a tartar's ship, with no possibility of exchange in these waters nor of distinguishing himself. "Perhaps he is not as savage as he looks,' he reflected, without conviction." In the following paragraph, Jack summarizes his philosophy of commanding a man-of-war, probably to Stourton's relief.. Return to Beginning. Return to Beginning of Models. |
