The Wine-Dark Sea Is About the Pleasure of Outlasting Your Best Friend's Other Friend, and Is the Best Book in the Aubrey-Maturin Series

Mild spoilers ahead for friendship positioning in the last five Aubrey-Maturin books, if that's important to you

Previously in Patrick O’Brian coverage:

How to tell if you are Captain Jack Aubrey.

• You occasionally commit adultery, but in such a warm and generally life-affirming way, it somehow makes most people like you even more

• Your second-in-command both hates and respects you so much he can scarcely walk upright. You become dimly aware that he might have an opinion of you after about 150 pages

• In almost every possible way you resemble Taylor Swift: possessed of inescapable leggy blondeness, simultaneously culturally dominant and a perpetual underdog, opinions split on whether your frequent wordplay is laborious or charming

How to tell if you are Doctor Stephen Maturin.

• You are SUCH a good duellist that your friends have to warn everyone who tries to duel you. But nobody listens!! It’s not your fault that you’re such a good duellist you kill everybody

• Jack, look at this lizard I found!!!

Who is more “like a boy” in the Aubreiad, Captain Jack or Diana Villiers?

“In Jack’s case, boyishness denotes simplicity, enthusiasm, pureness of heart, and occasional innocence and vulnerability (though only occasional, as it can’t conflict with his overall manly competence and personal bravery); in Diana’s, it denotes a not-like-other-girls spirit, independence, idiosyncratic code of honor that is nonetheless subordinate to Maturin’s real-deal manly honor, a girlfriend-in-a-sexy-big-shirt moment.”

Plus everything Stephen Maturin dissects.

• A splendid toad

• Leg (human?)

• Striped hyena

There are twenty (completed) novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series, beginning with 1969’s Master and Commander and ending with 1999’s Blue at the Mizzen. There are some people who will try to tell you that the series begins to flag in quality after #14, The Nutmeg of Consolation¹, but they are mistaken.

In fact #16, The Wine-Dark Sea, is a very strong contender for one of the best in the series, as it brings to a decisive, brutal end the remarkably slow-burning friendship juggling between Captain Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin, and the Rev. Nathaniel Martin. The playing field is as follows:

From Master and Commander onward, Doctor Stephen Maturin is Captain Jack Aubrey’s best friend. Aubrey has lots of old buddies — Heaneage Dundas, Christy-Pallière, Lord Keith and Queenie — and is generally well-liked by his officers and crew, but there is no close second or even third candidate. When it comes to friendship, real friendship, Jack Aubrey is a single-issue voter: Stephen Maturin. He accepts no substitutes. This is partly a function of his job as a ship’s captain, since he lives generally at sea and can’t freely socialize with his subordinates, but he is, I think, also naturally monogamous in the matter of platonic affection, although nowhere else.

Jack Aubrey is Stephen Maturin’s best friend, without question, but he is best friends with at least two other people, and possibly quite a few more. He’s quite close with Sir Joseph Blaine, although their intimacy is necessarily curtailed² on account of Stephen’s being so frequently at sea, and Clarissa Oakes says more than once that she has confided in Stephen things she will never tell another living soul. Amos Jacob, Jagiello, Dr. Ramis, even Jack’s wife Sophie are all good friends of his too, and frequently share their deepest secrets and most private counsels with him.

Then there is Nathaniel Martin. He is a poor parson who joins a number of Jack’s missions, almost always in his capacity as surgeon’s assistant because Jack doesn’t care to have churchmen aboard. Stephen is undoubtedly Martin’s best friend, and may even consider him, in turn, to be a best friend of the second class (like Mindy Kaling, Stephen considers “best friend” a tier rather than a single person).

Jack and Stephen are the best of friends, are most particular friends, hold their lives and fortunes in common. But Jack does not like Nathaniel. He mistrusts him as a churchmen, to begin with, finds him awkward, lacking in courage, and an impediment to spending time with Stephen himself, and then things only get worse from there. Martin has all of Stephen’s worst qualities (lack of seamanship, personal clumsiness, a fascination with the natural world which often occludes his already-limited ability to get along socially) and none of his good ones (loyalty, courage, perception, active goodwill towards others, magnaminity, musical talent, a cool double life as a spy). Worse still, Martin has so much more in common with Maturin than Jack does, and monopolizes a good deal of his time ashore looking at birds.

Jack is unfailingly polite to Martin throughout the series, and never acknowledges his instinctive dislike of the man to anyone but himself. Stephen barely alludes to it, although he has certainly become aware of it by the time of The Wine-Dark Sea, while Martin seems little more than scarcely conscious of the dynamic. At one point Jack offers several livings on his estate to Martin, both to assuage his own guilt in disliking the man and to try to get rid of. him.

If you want a keen and subtle examination of the complicated pleasure a person can feel after their best friend finally dumps another friend you never liked, then The Wine-Dark Sea is the book for you. It is an unrelenting, terrible joy, and in TWDS the hits just keep on coming.

See in the first chapter how even the Austenian narrative voice has taken sides, placing Martin and Aubrey side by side and asking us to compare them physically in the heat of action [all emphases mine throughout]:

“As the Franklin's speed increased, her two stern-chasers fired together, the white smoke streaming away across her wake.

'How disagreeable it is to be fired at,' said Martin, shrinking into as small a space as possible; and as he spoke one ball hit the best bower anchor close behind them with an enormous clang: the sharp fragments, together with the second ball, cut away almost all the foretopgallantmast's support. The mast and its attendant canvas fell quite slowly, spars breaking right and left, and the Surprise's bow-chasers just had time to reply, both shots striking the Franklin's stern. But before either Jack's or Pullings' crew could reload their guns they were enveloped in sailcloth, whilst at the same time all hands aft raised the cry Man overboard and the ship flew up into the wind, all her sails taken aback and clattering like a madhouse. The Franklin fired a single gun: an extraordinary cloud of smoke, and extraordinary report. But it was drowned by Captain Aubrey's roar of 'Clew up, clew up, there,' and emerging from the canvas, 'Where away?'

“Larboard quarter, sir,' cried several hands. 'It's Mr Reade.'

'Carry on, Captain Pullings,' said Jack, whipping off his shirt and diving straight into the sea. He was a powerful swimmer, the only one in the ship, and from time to time he heaved himself high out of the water like a seal to make sure of his direction.”

Who would you choose to retain as your best friend in such a situation? The cringing mouse, or the beautifully heroic seal, who rips his shirt off at the first sign of an emergency and flings himself into the sea to help? There’s no competing with that. Martin doesn’t stand a chance.

---

Jack and Stephen are not always in perfect harmony with one another; they have some terrific quarrels throughout the series and are not infrequently stunned to learn the other is thinking almost the exact opposite of what he himself believes to be true. But in The Wine-Dark Sea they are vibrating on the exact same frequency. They often sense one another’s presence without speaking, anticipate one another’s wishes, and find themselves in a natural, unspoken alliance on almost every issue.

“Almost immediately after the Surprise had settled into her accustomed pace, shouldering the strange-coloured sea high and wide, the hands were piped to dinner, and in the usual Bedlam of cries and banging mess-kids that accompanied the ceremony, Stephen returned to the quarterdeck, where the Captain was standing at the windward rail, gazing steadily out to the eastward: he felt Stephen's presence and called him over. 'I have never seen anything like it," he said, nodding at the sea and the sky.”

---

A simple, devastating assessment. Close friendships, especially ones of longstanding, often involve private acknowledgment of your friend’s defects of character (or imperfections, if you prefer a gentler term), and sometimes even public discussion, but always with at least some benefit of the doubt, with at least moderate goodwill, and tolerant affection. When you catch yourself listing someone else’s flaws in a totally matter-of-fact way, not even in anger but as if you were reciting the multiplication tables, that’s when your friendship is really over:

“Martin would certainly mean well, but he had always been more sensitive to the feelings of birds than to those of men, and prosperity seemed to have made him rather selfish. Although he was sailing as Stephen's assistant he was in fact a clergyman and Jack had recently given him a couple of livings in his gift with the promise of a valuable third when it should fall in; Martin had all the particulars of these parishes and he discussed them over and over again, considering the possibility of different modes of gathering tithes or their equivalent and improvement of the glebes. But worse than the dullness of this conversation was a self-complacency that Stephen had never known in the penniless Martin of some years ago, who was incapable of being a bore.”

---

Conscious of his superior standing, and almost certainly feeling guilt over the inward pleasure he’s experiencing over Martin’s imminent loss of Stephen’s friendship, Jack asks Stephen to review one of his official letters, which is something he hardly ever does and really doesn’t need to do now. It’s both an attempt to cement the ascendancy of the Aubrey-Maturin axis and an invitation for Stephen to confide in him.

Notice how in comparison Stephen’s thoughts about Jack’s imperfections are forgiving, tolerant, natural, in no way at odds with the warmest of affection. These flaws are totally consistent with social graces:

“Jack always sat uneasy while his official letters were read: he always broke the current of the reader's thoughts by saying 'The piece about the carronade-slides ain't very elegantly put, I am afraid... this is just a draft, you understand, not polished at all... Anything that ain't grammar or that you don't quite like, pray dash it out... I never was much of a hand with a pen,' but after all these years Stephen took no more notice of it than the thin drifting Irish rain.”

---

Even their musical duets take on a new felicity. Their friendship, while old, is not stagnant; they can still push one another to growth and change, while Martin can only change for the worse:

“He had a Geronimo Amati at home, just as Aubrey had a treasured Guarnieri, but they travelled with rough old things that could put up with extremes of temperature and humidity. The rough old things always started the evening horribly flat, but in time the players tuned them to their own satisfaction, and exchanging a nod they dashed away into a duet which they knew very well indeed, having played it together these ten years and more, but in which they always found something fresh, some half-forgotten turn of phrase or of particular felicity. They also added new pieces of their own, small improvisations or repetitions, each player in turn.”

Worse still, there is a gentleman prisoner on board by the name of Dutourd whom Jack openly dislikes, but who repeatedly angles through both Martin and Stephen for an invitation to play together as a quartet. Martin drops the hint to Jack; Stephen knows better. The door shuts against Martin all the heavier for it.

---

Will there be no end to Martin’s humiliation? Will Patrick O’Brian never show mercy?

“Sure I saw the water and the guns; and I saw how she drew away, free of all that weight. I spent a few moments liberating poor Mr Martin from behind the seat of ease where the wreckage had imprisoned him and he so squeamish about excrement, the creature, and when I looked up again she was much smaller, flying with a supernatural velocity.”

---

Jack notices Stephen’s new infirmities, but kindly, with real affection, with the perceptiveness that comes with great and well-aged love. He has never been more keenly attuned to Stephen’s physical state, nor Stephen to him:

“A late breakfast? I hope so indeed,' said Stephen, making his way down by single steps and moving, as Jack noticed for the first time, like an old man.”

---

On the other hand, Stephen has stopped noticing when Martin is in the room. Worse still, when his mind is swept up in the thrill of surgery, with the care that must be taken when operating on the human head, his now-former friend is thinking (and worse, talking) only of what stocks are most appropriate for a rich man to purchase:

“The sun was nearly touching the horizon, and both over the water and in the Surprise the people could be seen coiling down and clearing away; the carpenters were collecting their tools; Stephen, sunk in melancholy thought, recalled his motions with that singular clarity which comes with certain degrees of tiredness and in some dreams. He could feel the vibration of his trephine cutting through the injured skull, an operation he had carried out many, many times without failure, the raising of the disk of bone, the flow of extravasated blood.

They were both far away in their reflexions and Stephen had almost forgotten that he was not alone when Martin, his eyes fixed on the prize, said, 'You understand these things better than I do, for sure: pray which do you think the better purchase for a man in my position and with my responsibilities, the Navy Fives or South Sea stock?'”

---

Martin doesn’t even care about bird taxonomy anymore!!!

“They paced up and down with their eyes narrowed until they became used to the brilliance; and Martin said, 'An odd, somewhat disturbing thing happened to me this morning. I was coming back from the Franklin when Johnson pointed out a bird, a small pale bird that overtook us, circled the boat and flew on: certainly a petrel and probably Hahnemann's. Yet although I watched it with a certain pleasure I suddenly realized that I did not really care. I did not mind what it was called.'

'We have never yet seen Hahnemann's petrel.'

'No. That was what made it so disturbing. I must not compare great things with small, but one hears of men losing their faith: waking up one morning and finding that they do not believe in the Creed they must recite to the congregation in a few hours' time.”

---

Jack becomes almost unbearably polite to Martin the clearer it becomes that he has lost Stephen’s love. (He is always gallant in victory.) “Whom he did not like very much” is the greatest of understatements, as is, I am sure, the acknowledgement of a “very slight” awkwardness:

“Six bells, and they hurried down the companion-ladder. 'Come in, gentlemen, come in,' cried Jack. He was always a little over-cordial with Martin, whom he did not like very much and whom he did not invite as often as he felt he ought. Killick's arrival with the coffee and his mate's with little toasted slices of dried breadfruit masked the slight, the very slight, awkwardness and when they were all sitting comfortably, holding their little cups and gazing out of the sweep of windows that formed the aftermost wall of the great cabin, Jack asked, 'What news of your instrument, Mr Martin?'”

---

In a letter home to his wife, Stephen dwells now on not just his own cooled regard for Martin, but projects it outward to the entire ship: I don’t like him, nobody likes him, in fact nobody has ever liked him, even though he is technically a good person and knows how to read and write.

“'I have just ferried Nathaniel Martin back, and I am afraid he regrets his return. He was happier messing along with Tom Pullings in the prize, and on the few occasions when he had come back to help me or to attend a particular dinner I have noticed that he has seemed more ill at ease in the gunroom than he was before...

Yet even in that case I do not think Martin's is likely to be an enviable lot. In this ship there was always a prejudice against him as a cleric, an unlucky man to have aboard; and now that it is known he is a parson in fact, the rector of two of Jack's livings, the prejudice has grown…

“At the same time, being a quiet, introspective man, he completely lacks the ebullient bonhomie that comes so naturally to Dutourd. It is acknowledged aboard that he is a good man, kind as a surgeon's mate, and in former commissions as a letter- or petition-writer (now there is little occasion for either and our few illiterates usually go to Mr Adams). But he is not cordially liked. He has been poor, miserably and visibly poor; now he is by lower-deck standards rich; and some suspect him of being over-elevated. But more than this it is known - in a ship everything is known after the first few thousand miles - that the Captain is not very fond of him; and at sea a captain's opinion is as important to his crew as that of an absolute monarch to his court. It is not that Jack has ever treated him with the least disrespect, but Martin's presence is a constraint upon him; they have little to say to one another; and in short Martin has not accomplished the feat of making a friend of his friend's closest associate. The attempt is rarely successful, I believe, and perhaps Martin never even ventured upon it. However that may be, they are not friends, and this means that he is looked upon by the people with less consideration than I think he deserves. It surprises me: I must say that I thought they would have used him better.”

But does it surprise him? It has not troubled him overmuch in the past; I wonder if his conscience is not more sensitive at present because he is aware of his own loss of loyalty, esteem, affection. He has never blamed Martin in the past for neglecting to befriend Jack, but now he does — nothing begets failure like failure. It is easy, I think, to begin to dislike someone for being unsuccessful, and for seeking more palatable reasons to cover that up.

---

Later in the same letter Stephen rhapsodizes about how much better Martin used to be when he was broke and still cared about birds. He sounds like a man saying “my wife doesn’t understand me anymore…what happened to the woman I married?” in a midcentury comic strip:

“In any event, I am afraid he is losing his taste for life. His pleasure in birds and marine creatures has deserted him; and an educated man who takes no delight in natural philosophy has no place in a ship, unless he is a sailor.

Yet I remember him in earlier commissions, in much the same circumstances, rejoicing in the distant whale, the stink-pot petrel, his face aglow and his one eye sparkling with satisfaction. He was quite penniless then, apart from his miserable pay; and at those times when cause and effect seem childishly evident I am inclined to blame his prosperity…He speaks of money very much more often than he did, more often than is quite agreeable; and the other day, referring to his marriage, which is as nearly ideal as can be, he was so thoughtless as to say that it would be even happier with his share of our current prize.”

---

Even his playing, never good, is now “slightly false” and “infinitely sad” — Martin cannot stop losing, and it’s devastating to see:

“Stephen paused again, and in the silence of the ship he heard Martin playing his viola in his cabin opening off the gunroom: an ascending scale, true enough, then coming down, slower, more hesitant and ending in a prolonged, slightly false, B flat, infinitely sad.”

---

I have sometimes had to pause the book and return after a day or two. Sometimes this disintegration of friendship is very funny — I am naturally on the side of Jack and Stephen, and never had very strong feelings towards Martin — but sometimes it feels like watching a baby penguin wander away from the flock, heading towards certain death, and I fear my heart will break.

Martin’s attempt to befriend Dutourd to ‘cover’ for his loss of Maturin helps not at all. They practice, but they do not improve; they fail to benefit from the ‘golden days’ at sea, he is not happy, he is not happy, he is not happy. He cannot distinguish between a valuable and a lowering companion, he does not know what is good for him. Like any drowning man, he cannot save himself:

“It did go on, day after golden day: and during the afternoons Martin and Dutourd could often be heard playing, sometimes evidently practising, since they would take a passage over and over again.

Yet in spite of his music, and in spite of the fact that he played better with the Frenchman far forward than he did in the cabin, Martin was not happy. Stephen was rarely in the gunroom - apart from anything else Dutourd, a frequent guest, was an inquisitive man, apt to ask questions, by no means always discreet; and evading enquiries was often potentially worse than answering them - and apart from the general taking of air on the quarterdeck Stephen and his assistant met for the most part either in the sick-berth or in Stephen's cabin, where their registers were kept.”

---

I am open to correction on this front, but I believe this is the first time Maturin thinks of Martin as his assistant outside of a surgical context in the series:

“‘Sometimes I turn a sermon in my mind, urging my hearers to bear their trials, to rely on their own fortitude, on fortitude from within, rather than their muddy ale, tobacco, or dram-drinking.’

'If a man has put his hand into boiling water, is he not to pull it out?'

'Certainly he is to pull it out - a momentary action. What I deprecate is the persistent indulgence.'

Stephen looked at Martin curiously. This was the first time his assistant had spoken to him in a disobliging if not downright uncivil manner and some brisk repartees came into his mind. He said nothing, however, but sat wondering what frustrations, jealousies, discontents had been at work on Nathaniel Martin to produce this change not only of tone but even of voice itself and conceivably of identity: the words and the manner of uttering them were completely out of character.

When the silence had lasted some heavy moments Martin said, 'I hope you do not think there is anything personal about my remarks. It was only that your mention of coca-leaves set my mind running in another direction...’”

---

Things go from bad to worse once they have openly disagreed with each other; Martin begins ‘sir’ing Stephen, a new and uncivil development:

“Stephen rose to his feet and coughed. Martin turned sharply. 'Good morning, sir,' he said, whipping the glass under his apron. The greeting was civil, but mechanically so, with no spontaneous smile. He had obviously not forgotten yesterday's unpleasantness and he appeared both to resent his exclusion from the passage to the Franklin and to expect resentment on Stephen's part for his offensive remarks. Stephen was in fact of a saturnine temperament, as Martin knew: he could even have been called revengeful, and he found it difficult to forgive a slight. But there was more than this; it was as though Martin had just escaped being detected in an act he was very willing to conceal, and there was some remaining tinge of defiant hostility about his attitude.”

---

Stephen makes a final, desperate attempt to reconnect by discussing an exciting new bird skeleton with Martin, and despite having had 200+ pages to prepare me, I gasped at Martin’s response as if he had slapped Stephen in the face:

“Martin was looking ill and thin and when they sat down Stephen said to him in a low voice, 'I trust I see you tolerably well?'

'Perfectly so, I thank you,' said Martin without a smile. 'It was only a passing malaise.'

'I am glad to hear it; but you must certainly stay on deck this evening,' said Stephen; and after a pause, 'I have just made a discovery that I think will please you. In the frigate-bird the symphysis of the furcula coalesces with the carina and the upper end of each ramus with the caracoid, while in its turn each caracoid coalesces with the proximal end of the scapula!'

His look of modest triumph faded as he saw that Martin's anatomy did not appear to reach so far, or at least not to grasp at the consequences, and he went on, 'The result, of course, is that the whole assembly is entirely rigid, apart from the slight flexion of the rami. I believe this to be unique among existing birds, and closely related to the creature's flight.'

'It is of some interest, if your example was not a sport,' said Martin, 'and perhaps it justifies taking the bird's life away. But how often have we seen hecatombs that yield nothing of significance - hundreds and hundreds of stomachs opened, all with much the same result. Even Mr White of Selborne shot very great numbers. Sometimes I feel that the dissection may take place merely to warrant the killing.'

Stephen had often known patients eager to be disagreeable: a common morbid irritability, especially in putrid fevers. But it was almost invariably kept for their friends and relations, rarely extending to their medical men. On the other hand, although Martin was undoubtedly sick, Stephen was not in fact his physician; nor was it likely that Martin would consult him. He made no reply, turning to Mr Grainger with praise of the squid soup; but he was wounded, deeply disappointed, far from pleased.”

To accuse Stephen Maturin of killing a frigate-bird merely for the pleasure of shooting, and not for the pure disinterested keen scientific delight of discovering the mechanics of flight is shocking. It is shocking, it is low, it is squalid, it is monstrous, and I am only amazed that Stephen was able to restrain himself from demanding satisfaction at once.

---

In the depths of his disappointment Stephen turns to Jack, and he is not disappointed. Jack is not a naturalist, not a scientist, not a surgeon. He takes no delight in dissection — and yet he loves Stephen more than he loves his own comfort and ease, and he readily stands in for Martin when asked:

“In time Jack finished his dinner, and when they were drinking their coffee Stephen said, 'I made a remarkable discovery this morning. I believe it will make a great stir in the Royal Society when I read my paper; and Cuvier will be amazed.'

He described the extraordinarily unyielding nature of the frigate-bird's bosom, contrasting it with that of other fowl, no more rigid than an indifferent wicker basket, and spoke of its probable connexion with the creature's soaring flight. As it was usual with them when they spoke of the lie of the land, naval manoeuvres or the like he traced lines on the table with wine, and Jack, following with keen attention, said, 'I take your point, and I believe you are right. For this, do you see' - drawing a ship seen from above - 'is the mainyard when we are close-hauled on the starboard tack. It is braced up sharp with the larboard brace - here is the larboard brace - the sheet hauled aft, the weather leeches hauled forward with bowlines twanging taut, and the tack hauled aboard, brought down to the chess-trees and well bowsed upon. When all this is done in a seaman“-like manner there is precious little give - flat as a board - and a stiff, well-trimmed ship fairly flies along. Surely there is a parallel here?”

“Certainly. If you will come next door I will show you the bones in question and their coalescence, and you will judge the degree of rigidity yourself, comparing it with that of your sheets and chess-trees. I was called away before the dissecting was quite complete - before everything was as white and distinct as a specimen or example mounted for an anatomy lesson - but you will never dislike a little blood and slime.'

Stephen was not a heavy, impercipient man in most respects, yet he had known Jack Aubrey all these years without discovering that he disliked even a very little blood and slime extremely: that is to say, cold blood and slime. In battle he was accustomed to wading ankle-deep in both without the least repulsion, laying about him in a very dreadful manner. But he could scarcely be brought to wring a chicken's neck, still less watch a surgical operation.”

‘You will take the exposed furcula between your finger and thumb,’ Stephen went on, ‘and all proportions guarded you will gauge its immobility.'

Jack gave a thin smile: seven excuses came to his mind. But he was much attached to his friend; and the excuses were improbable at the best. He walked slowly forward into what had once been his dining-cabin and was now, to judge from the reek, a charnel-house.”

This is active listening. This is speaking your best friend’s love language (touching bird skeletons) even when your own love language is eating cheese and going to bed. This is friendship. Spiritually this may be the apotheosis of the entire series. Stephen, usually so psychologically perceptive, has failed to notice something fairly obvious about his oldest and best friend; his best friend knows this, and cherishes him not one whit the less, and carefully preserves the illusion, his dignity, and his sense of pleasure in the world. I could weep.

---

At long last O’Brian has pity on Martin and brings things to a climax. He reveals that Martin, in dread of his own conscience, has convinced himself that he has contracted a venereal disease merely for lusting after Mrs. Clarissa Oakes in the previous novel, has overdosed himself with mercury to treat the phantom disease, and as a result lies close to death. This at least Stephen can treat; this deterioration can at least be openly acknowledged and discussed:

“It was the thunder of the drum, the piping and the cries down the hatchways, the deep growl and thump of guns being run out and the hurrying of feet that roused Martin. 'Is that you, Maturin?' he whispered, with a terrified sideways glance.

'It is,' said Stephen, taking his wrist. 'Good day to you, now.'

'Oh thank God, thank God, thank God,' said Martin, his voice broken with the horror of it. 'I thought I was dead and in Hell. This terrible room. Oh this terrible, terrible room.'

The pulse was now extremely agitated. The patient was growing more so. 'Maturin, my wits are astray - I am barely out of a night-long nightmare - forgive me my trespasses to you.”

---

But the repair is slight, and does not lead to renewed closeness; O’Brian later bundles Martin ashore, no longer fit for a life at sea (and therefore no longer fit for Stephen’s friendship).

To put their scene of repentance and forgivness in Biblical terms: it is the repair of Jacob and Esau, who forgive one another before parting ways forever, and not the full restoration of Joseph and his brothers. Stephen is already ashore, at work on a reconnaissance mission, barely able to see Martin depart from his life through a telescope:

“The distance to their lofty cliff had been greater than they thought, their pace slower; the Liverpool ship was already clear of the coast by the time they got there, and even with Stephen's spy-glass they could not be sure they had seen Martin, though he had gone aboard with no more than a hand to help him over the gangway and had promised to sit there by the taffrail.”

---

By contrast, when Stephen is reunited with Jack at the end of the book, after a comparatively brief absence, he could not be happier to see him again.

Most striking of all is his mealtime courtesy. Readers of the series will be tremendously familiar with Stephen’s ongoing, hostile, comic management of Jack’s weight. Hardly a book goes by without Stephen telling Jack he is too fat, that he should go on a diet, that he should start a new exercise regimen, does not announce his weight in front of the crew; in The Wine-Dark Sea Jack is caught in a storm on a launch and nearly starves to death. They do not speak of it together; they rarely speak of peril once they are out of it.

But for the first and only time in the entire series, Stephen asks Jack if he has had enough to eat and drink. He says something he has never said before or again in fifteen years, and after nearly 300 pages of emotional devastation we see at least a moment of great tenderness between friends:

“I do not believe those ships were his convoy: I believe there was a chance meeting in say the river Plate, no more. But it makes little odds, since I am convinced he will protect them now. My dear, you look sadly done up; and your appetite has failed you. Drink up another glass of wine and breathe as deeply as you can. I shall give you a comfortable dose tonight."

'No, Stephen: many thanks, but it would not do. I shall not turn in; nor I shall not heave to, neither. I dare not let that cove - a determined and bloody-minded cove if ever there was one -creep up on me in the night. Coffee is more the mark than a dose, however comfortable and kindly intended. Let us toy with these chops. I do love a dry chop, a really well-dried mutton chop, turned twice a day.'”

[Image via]

1. In particular my buddy Isaac

2. Like the dog’s watch