Tongues of Serpents Page 0,29

sadly careless in this wild country, and the heat crushes all aspirations to stiffness. I hope you did not have a very tiring ride."

"Not at all; Temeraire brought me," Laurence said. "He is in your southwest field; I trust it no inconvenience."

"Why, none," she said, though her eyes had widened, and one of the officers said, "Do you mean you have that monster sitting out in the yard?"

"That monster's sharpest weapon is his tongue," MacArthur said. "I am pretty well cut to ribbons yet: did the cow sweeten him at all?"

"As much as you might like, sir," Laurence said, dryly. " - you have quite hit on the point of weakness."

The supper was, for all the ulterior motives likely to have been its inspiration, a comfortable and civilized affair: Laurence had not quite known what to expect, from the colonial society, but Mrs. MacArthur was plainly a woman of some character, and though indeed never striving for a formality which both the climate and the situation of the colony would have rendered tiresome and a little absurd, she directed the style of their gathering nevertheless. She could not have a balanced table, so she served the meal in two courses, inviting her guests to refresh themselves in between with a little walking in the gardens, illuminated with lamps, and rearranging the seating on their return to partner the ladies afresh.

The meal was thoughtfully suited to the weather as well: a cool soup of fresh cucumber and mint, meat served in jellied aspic, beef very thinly carved from the joint, lightly boiled chicken; and instead of pudding an array of cakes, with pots of jam, and excellent, fragrant tea; all served on porcelain of the very highest quality, the one real extravagance Laurence remarked: dishes of white and that particularly delicate shade of blue which could not be achieved by any European art, and the strength of real quality.

He noticed it to his hostess with compliments; to his surprise she looked a little crestfallen, and said, "Oh, you have found out my weakness, Mr. Laurence; I could not resist them, although I know very well I oughtn't: they must be smuggled, of course."

"Do not say it aloud!" MacArthur cried. "So long as you do not know it for certain, you may ha'e your dishes, and we our tea; and long may the rascals thrive."

One of the many charges Bligh had laid at the rebels' door had been the practice of smuggling: the back alleys and trading houses of Sydney were flooded with goods from China, which from the price alone one could tell had evaded the East India Company's monopoly on such trade. "And I expect he would blame us for the drought, too, if he heard me say I thought the weather would hold clear another month," MacArthur said, offering a glass of port, when the ladies had left them.

"I don't say we have never brought in some goods which a governor might not approve of," he continued, "but I am speaking of rum, which we must have; you cannot get a man to work here, except you fill his glass, and with more than you can pour at five shillings the bottle. A damned folly, too: a pickled liver cannot tell good dark West Indian rum from the Bengali stuff. But we cannot even bring in that, now: there is not a smell of any kind of goods, from Africa, since the Cape was lost.

"As for the China goods, by God! If I could make a profit selling China ware at two pounds a box in Sydney, with all the cost and risk of freight, I would be packing it on ships for England, instead, and die rich as Croesus. There are fellows making a pretty penny selling it on, I believe, even when they can only buy it one box at a time."

There was a general murmur of agreement, and some anecdotes of trading agreements followed: it seemed to Laurence the officers all were tradesmen also, in some measure, and the tradesmen all former officers, and many of them landed as well: they made no distinction amongst themselves, and perhaps could not have, if there were not men of business enough established in the colony to provide opportunities for investment, or their rough-and-tumble fortunes not yet sufficiently realized in coin to take advantage of them.

MacArthur drew him aside, as the cigars were offered around and lit, and to the open doors looking into the gardens: squeaking small bats