（外文电子版资料）OBrian Patrick - Aub-Mat 18 - The Yellow Admiral.doc

The Yellow Admiral By Patrick OBrian Chapter One Sir Joseph Blaine, a heavy, yellow-faced man in a suit of grey clothes and a flannel waistcoat, walked down St Jamess Street, across the park, and so to the Admiralty, which he entered from behind, opening the private door with a key and making his way to the large, shabby room in which he had his official being. He looked over the papers on his desk, nodded, and touched the bell. If Mr Needham is in the way, pray show him up, he said to the answering clerk. He half rose as Needham appeared and waved him to a comfortable chair on the other side of the desk. Having finished with poor Delaney, he said, we now come to another gentleman of whom we have no news: Stephen Maturin. Dr Stephen Maturin, perhaps our most valuable adviser on Spanish affairs. I do not think I have heard his name. I do not suppose you have: yet you and your people have quite certainly found his cipher at the foot of many a cogent report. When he is going up and down in the world on our behalf, as he so often does... Sir Joseph stifled an or did and carried on, he almost invariably sails with Captain Aubrey, whose name is no doubt familiar. Oh, certainly, said Needham, who wished to make a good impression on this formidable figure, but whose talents did not really lie in that direction. The gentleman who was so unfortunate at the Guildhall trial. This reference to Captain Aubreys stand in the pillory did not seem to be well received and to remedy the situation Needham added a knowing Son to the notorious General Aubrey. If you wish, said Sir Joseph coldly. Yet he might also 2be described as the officer who, commanding a fourteen gun brig, took a thirty-two-gun Spanish xebec-frigate and carried her into Mahon in the year one; who cut out the French frigate Diane in a boat-attack on the heavily guarded port of Saint-Martin; and who, most recently, returning with his squadron from a most active cruise against slavery in the Gulf of Guinea, utterly