“That we shall lay to sister Mary's account,” I replied sardonically. “It cannot be remarkable that so cold-hearted a lady must require a good, steady fire. Her frame should lack animation entirely, Fly, without external application of heat.”
He looked at me in hurt surprise. “Jane!”
“Not your excellent creature, my dear,” I said quickly. “I speak entirely of James's Mary! You know that I have never borne her any affection, nor she but a pretence of the same for me.” I would to Heaven that my brothers had possessed the foresight to marry women of singularity, in their names at least. Two of the Austen men having chosen Elizabeths, and another two, Marys, we are forever attempting to distinguish them one from the other. My elder brother James had brought his unfortunate wife, Mary, to stay with us in our cramped lodgings over Christmastide. This was meant to be a great treat but my relief at the James Austens' departure far outweighed any pleasure won from their arrival.
Frank grasped my elbow. “Steady, Jane. The skiff approaches.”
A long, low-slung boat with two ruddy-faced fishwives at the oars had swung alongside the Quay. It bobbed like a cockleshell in the tide, and I should as readily have stepped into an inverted umbrella. I summoned my courage, however, so as not to disoblige my excellent brother.
“Pray take my arm,” Frank urged. “It is best not to step heavily—and not directly onto the gunwales, mind, or you shall have us all over! Just so—and there you are settled. Capital.”
Frank stowed himself neatly beside me on the damp wooden slat that served as seat, and began to whistle for wind. I attempted to ease my grip on the skiff.
As the two women bent their backs to the task of conveying us across the water to the single-masted hoy— which, despite its diminutive nature, Frank asserted might serve as a respectable gunboat in any but home waters—I struggled to maintain my composure. I had never crossed the Solent much less been aboard a ship, before; but I refused to earn the contempt of the British Navy. I should throw myself overboard rather than admit to a craven heart, or plead for a return to shore.
It had long been my chief desire to be swung in a chair to the very deck of one of my brothers' commands—the Canopus, when Frank captained her, or the Indian, should Charles ever return from the North American Station. But we had always lived beyond the reach of naval ports; and our visits to the sea were matters of bathing and Assemblies. My mother's decision to settle with Frank in Southampton, a mere seventeen miles from the great naval yard at Portsmouth, must ensure frequent occasion for familiarising myself with ships, and sailors' customs, and all the ardent matter of my brothers' lives, that have demanded such sacrifice, and conveyed so much of glory and regret.
Charles, my particular little brother, has been Master and Commander of his sloop in the Adantic for nearly three years—but is not yet made Post Captain.1 When he will find occasion for an act of brazen daring, a risk to life and limb such as might draw the Admiralty's approval, none can say. Charles may only hope for another American war. The Admiralty's attention has heretofore been trained upon my elder brother Frank—who has been Post Captain these seven years. But of late, the Admiralty appears to have found even him wanting.
Frank suffered the distinction of serving under the Great Man, Admiral Lord Nelson. His third-rate eighty gun ship, the Canopus, was destined to meet the combined French and Spanish fleets in 1805; but the Admiral, insensible that he should fall in with the Enemy off the headland of Trafalgar, and being desperately in need of water and stores, despatched my brother to Gibraltar in search of the same. Frank returned several days after the decisive action, to discover some twenty-four hundred British sailors wounded or dead, nineteen of the enemy's vessels captured or destroyed, the remnant of the Combined Fleet under flight—and the Great Man, wounded mortally by a musket shot
Frank's failure to engage the Enemy in so glorious a battle—a day that shall live forever in English hearts— was a bitter blow. Not all his subsequent victory at Santo Domingo, his prize money and silver trophies, his marriage to little Mary Gibson, may supply the want of distinction—though the affectionate hearts of his sisters must rejoice in the intervention of Divine Providence.