Miss Flossy, it was not I who made Pullings into the perfect man. O'Brian made him a sweet, kind, shy man and a perfect officer. I just made him a generous lover. ;-)

Legrace, I haven't decided what to do with the little boys yet, if anything. I don't know if the secrets revealed in this chapter will make things easier to understand or will just make it all more murky.

I'll stick on the quotations about Jack's "perfect lieutenant" at the end: there are a lot of them!

An Offer and a Promise

As with any sailor, Tom Pullings woke instantly and knew that it was early in the morning watch. The sun had not yet risen, but a predawn grayness filled the room with murky shadow. Rose slept fitted comfortably back against him with her shoulders against his chest and her hair strewn over both of them. He held her with one arm tossed over her, and she slept hugging his arm, holding it against her bosom like a child sleeping with a doll. Her grip was lax now, though, and he was easily able to slide his arm free.

He pushed the coverlet off her feet to examine a tattoo he had noticed near her left ankle. Even in the dim murkiness, he could see it was a rose. Beautiful work, it was a blooming red rose, a lovely little thing set just above her ankle, an inch or two. With a little chuckle, he wondered if her mother had been tattooed with a pretty lily blossom, but Rose yawned a little and turned on her back. Settling back beside her, he allowed his hand to trail up and down the length of her under the blanket. She giggled a little, still not fully awake and stretched luxuriously. "Good morning," he greeted, kissing her temple.

"It's still the middle of the night," she yawned. Again she laughed a little as he stroked her and made a sound of contentment in her throat like a cat's purr. It was enough of a signal for him to proceed, and soon they were twined together again, joined in a gentle ecstasy with none of the urgency of the night before.

Afterwards, as Rose lay against him, her tears brushed against his chest. "What is it, my sweet?" he asked, propping himself up on his elbow to look at her. "Have I hurt you?" he asked in sudden horror.

"No." She was smiling languidly despite the wet eyes. "The feelings.... They're strong. It has been a long time…" She sighed a little. "They're happy tears."

"I'm glad." He brushed them away with his fingertips, kissed one of her eyelids and then the other before collecting her again in his arms. He held her against him and enjoyed the feel of her nestling against him more comfortably, and very shortly, she was asleep. He stroked her hair and practiced what he was going to say to her.

"I cannot believe we have forgotten about the poor doctor," Rose said as she sat on the richly upholstered bench before the glass, carefully securing her upswept coils of hair with the pins. "We must go directly to check on him though I feel in my heart that we shall find him quite well."

"Selfish creatures we are to forget him," he said with a grin.

Catching sight of him in the mirror as he arranged his neckcloth, she grinned back. "You are incorrigible, sir!"

"I said once before that you provoke me to it!"

"Infamous!" she laughed as she finished with her hair and turned her head from side to side to check that all the hairpins were secure. "I am sure I do no such a thing, but if I do, well, then I am glad."

Nervously, he took in a deep breath. "Rose, before we go to find the doctor, let us speak a moment in secret."

"In secret?" She turned upon the bench to face him with a tiny frown of confusion.

Unable to relax, he began to pace and clasped his hands behind his back. "My dear Rose, you said last night that this is no game for you, and thus I say that it is the same for me. My intentions are honorable, to be sure, though I know that as I am now, I am not nearly worthy of you."

"Not worthy?" she repeated with her frown deepening, but he did not look at her. He hardly seemed to have heard her as he recited his piece.

"I do hope to make captain one day," he assured her. "Even then, I shall still be a lowly farmer's son who came over the bow into service, but when I am a captain, you need not be ashamed of me as a mere lieutenant."

"Ashamed? Of you?" she whispered, looking stricken.

"You know I have nothing to recommend me to you, save all what you see and know." He finally looked at her, and the expression on her face, appalled, disgusted, made him falter uncertainly. "Forgive me. I thought you... looked fond enough upon me. I will take you any day under the sun to church, if you agree to have me. Or would you rather I ask the captain?"

Still, she said nothing and now seemed to be regarding him in some kind of pained horror.

"I am dreadfully sorry to presume so much. I know a common sailor like me can never be worthy of a lady such as yourself. I thought that having a husband you liked and could rely on, even one as low and base as myself, might help you to settle more contently in life. I would certainly take you to sea with me if I could." He looked wretchedly at her. "And I should dearly like to know your boys. Perhaps have another one. And certainly have another little girl who mayhaps should heal your heart." He stopped speaking. In all his life, he had never felt so low and stupid, and terrible fear gnawed at him. "I have no idea how to offer marriage to a lady. If you will not have me, then please tell me now in plain words: it is the kindest thing you could do."

"My dear kind Tom," she said in a voice wavering with emotion. "You honor me too greatly and undervalue yourself. It is… just hard to talk of such happy things now with doom still handing over my head like the sword of Damocles. What lies ahead will be bad, worse than what has gone before."

Some hope returned. Although he waited, she said nothing further. "Is that all?" he asked. "You have no objections to me, to my person, my birth?"

"No, of course not." She gazed at him with deep, warm affection and the exquisite light of love. "My mother once told me that she was introduced to a man who was a legitimate child of a king and a queen and thus held the title of prince. She found that his title was in name only, for his behavior was as the most common sewer rat. I would rather have a good man whose words and deeds were princely than a prince whose words and deeds were common."

"Then have me," he said softly.

Tenderness misted her eyes; a smile trembled on her lips. "By the Goddess, no other man could make me as happy as you, yet there is so much you don't know about me and my life. It would be a poor match for you: I could never make a proper wife for an officer. Besides, you should have a fresh young girl who can keep house and give you plenty of children."

These words shocked and hurt him, for at first he thought it must be a poor attempt at a joke at his expense. He knew, though, that she would not tease him about this, she was not cruel. "You can't be serious," he said.

Gravely she looked at him. "I have told you and the captain and doctor the things in my life that you needed to know for this mission, but there is more. For instance, I have a brother. Few others know this."

The news was a great surprise to him. "Indeed? Is he a pirate? Not aboard the Walrus?"

"No, he is neither. He is someone whom you know and have said you respect." She sighed heavily. "Please understand that what I am going to tell you now can never be repeated to anyone. A man's life and career could be ruined."

"Upon my honor, I shall not speak of it."

"David Hawkes, Captain Hawkes is my brother, my full brother. Very few people know of it."

Her brother? The news confounded him, for it was an open secret that Hawkes was Admiral Bellows's illegitimate son. Such a thing was not held against a man, especially such a prime seaman and inspiring leader. In fact, when he had heard that young Christopher Stirling had been sent to his ship, Tom had told Rose that he liked and admired Hawkes quite a bit. The man had unparalleled nerve and had racked up success after success over the years despite a tendency to overlook both orders and laws time after time. It was said that he had the devil's own luck, but Tom did no believe in luck and knew that the difference between a good captain and a great one was the ability to think on his feet and be decisive. Hawkes was a brilliant man and people couldn't help being drawn to him. "I don't understand. Is Admiral Bellows your father as well?"

"No, we are both children of John Flint, you see. You can imagine how it would ruin his career if it were known! No, the story that he is Admiral Bellows's son is not true, but it serves a purpose."

"Hawkes is Flint's son?" he asked slowly. Like all seafaring men, he afforded a special disgust for pirates though he had only actually come across them in the South China Sea. Flint, however, had been another breed entirely, and despite his lawless ways, even honest seamen admired his successes, his style and flair, his wholly damn-you-all-I-shall-do-as-I-please attitude. "How did he come to be a captain in the Royal Navy?"

"As young men, my father and Bellows were friends, shipmates, and brothers-in-arms," she explained. "Until they quarreled over a lady."

"Your mother?"

"Yes. Well, I don't need to tell you how that turned out, but when she passed on, my father sent us both to him and Mrs. Bellows to be raised honestly. Thus, Theo Bellows is like our brother as well."

Her elder boy, he knew, was with Commodore Theodore Bellows, son of the admiral, on the Coventry, a 74-gun ship of the line now somewhere in the Pacific. Although he knew neither the admiral nor the commodore, what he did know of them impressed him.

"My dear lady, how came you to live among pirates while your brother became an officer in the Royal Navy?" he asked in amazement.

"When I was very young, I tried living there as a lady, and it was pleasant for a while, for I loved Admiral and Mrs. Bellows very dearly. But I missed the sea too acutely and could not go to the Navy, so I ran away and back to Savannah. My father was terribly angry, but my mother always said that a short merry life was better than a long miserable one, and when I reminded him of it, he said not a word and let me stay."

Slowly, Tom moved to sit down in one of the chairs. There was much he did not know, but in the end, it would make no difference. From the beginning, he had been deeply sorry for her. The poor lady had lived an impossible life. Who could go back to living the life of a landsman after being born and bred to the sea? And not merely a landsman, a lady within the confines of genteel salons and drawing rooms, or a widow with wee children to think of? And this horror she was living, a death sentence and her children sent away.

Over the course of their friendship, she had often talked of life aboard her husband's ship the Calypso and of the challenges and hilarity of raising two clever little boys. Conversely, she had said little about the time she had spent after Captain Stirling's death, and he had not asked. He wondered sometimes how it had been. Had she really been forced to stay ashore all that time? It would be like trying to grow a potted plant in a closet, a sickly half-existence. The few times she had mentioned her life to them, her voice had echoed bitterness. No family, no husband, not even the parish church to support her, pagan that she was. Despite his deep pity for her, he had to grin. How like old Flint she was in some ways! Not that the devil-take-you attitude would have made her life any easier, but he admired it greatly, and mixed with her womanly softness and sweetness, he fierce spirit made him love her helplessly.

"There is nothing in your past that can change my mind, known or unknown," he said to her. "I will not change my mind, and my offer is genuine, if you will have me. As for the rest, well, no one knows how things will turn out in the end, and we need at least come to some understanding between us today. I cannot in good conscience take you back to the ship without that, at least."

Their eyes met, and her expression was sweet and warm, but she gave him no answer. It emboldened him a little, and he got up and went down on one knee to her.

"Give me your promise today, my sweet. Say that when this business is over and settled that you will be mine."

Warm and smiling though she was, she still seemed to be tinged with sadness. "The gods know what is going to happen, but I will give you my promise now, at least."

His face lit as if by a thousand candles. "My lovely, darling Rose," he murmured, then clasped her tightly in his arms. She hugged him, laughing, and let him kiss her.

Mr Baldrick's report to the new Captain Aubrey.
'…The master's mates, Pullings and young Mowett, can be trusted with a watch: Pullings passed for a lieutenant years ago, but he has never been made….'
Master and Commander

Just another disappointment.
Mr Dalziel was one of the disappointments of Malta: everybody aboard had hoped that Thomas Pullings would be confirmed lieutenant, but the admiral had sent down his own nominee, a cousin. Mr Dalziel of Auchterbothie and Sodds. He had softened it with a private note promising to 'keep Mr Pullings in mind and to make particular mention of him to the Admiralty', but there it was – Pullings remained a master's mate. He was not 'made' – the first spot on their victory. Mr Dalziel felt, it and he was particularly conciliatory; though, indeed, he had very little need to be, for Pullings was the most unassuming creature on earth, painfully diffident anywhere except on the enemy's deck.
Master and Commander

No promotion, no ship, no money, walking twenty miles, no food…Tom Pullings has no choice but to go into the merchant service.
'How do you come to be here, Pullings, in all your glory?'

'Why, sir, I could not get a ship an they would not confirm me in my rank. "No white lapels for you, Pullings, old cock," they said. "We've got too many coves like you by half."'

'What a damned shame!' cried Jack, who had seen Pullings in action and who knew that the Navy did not and indeed could not possibly have too many coves like him.

'So, I tried for midshipman again, but none of my old captains had a ship themselves; or if they had – and the Honroable Berkely had – no vacancy. I took your letter to Captain Seymour – Amethyst, refitting in Hamoaze. Old Cozzens gave me a lift as far as the Vizes. Captain Seymour received me very polite when I said I was from you, most obliging: nothing starchy or touch-me-not about him, sir. But he scratched his head and damned his wig when he opened the letter and read it. He said he would have blessed the day he could have obliged you, particularly with such advantage to himself, which was the civilest thing I ever heard – turned so neat – but that it was not in his power. He lead me to the gun-room and to the mids' berth himself to prove he could not take another young gentleman on to his quarterdeck. He was so earnest to be believed, though in course I credited him the moment he opened his mouth, that he desired me to count their chests. Then he gave me a thunderous good dinner in his cabin just him and me – I needed it, sir, for I'd walked the last twenty miles – and after the pudding we went over your action in the Sophie: he knew every-thing, except quite how the wind had veered, and he made me tel just where I had been from the first gun to the last. Then, "damn my eyes," says he, "I cannot let one of Captain Aubrey's officers rot on shore without trying to stretch the little interest I have," and he wrote me one letter for Mr Adams at the Admirality and another for Mr Bowles, a great man at East India House.'
Post Captain

Tom finally gets promotion to lieutenant.
'A gentleman to see you, sir,' said the waiter. 'A lieutenant.'

'A lieutenant?' said Stephen; and after a pause, 'Desire him to walk up.'

A thundering on the stairs, as though someone had released a bull; the door burst inwards, trembling, and Pullings appeared, lighting up the room with his happiness and his new blue coat. 'I'm made, sir,' he cried, seizing Stephen's hand. 'Made at last! My commission came down with the mail. Oh, wish me joy!'

'Why, so I do,' Said Stephen, wincing in that iron grip, 'if more joy you can contain – if more felicity will not make your cup overflow. Have you been drinking, Lieutenant Pullings? Pray, sit in a chair like a rational being, and do not spring about the room.'

'Oh, say it again, sir,' said the lieutenant, sitting and gazing at Stephen with pure love beaming from his face. 'Not a drop.'
Post Captain

And the celebratory feast.
Stephen remained perfectly mute in some dark study of his own, and it was not until they were coming in to the landing-stage that the sight of Pullings waiting for him lighted some cheerfulness in Jack's mind. The young man was standing there with his parents and an astonishingly pretty girl, a sweet little pink creature in lace mittens with immense blue eyes and an expression of grave alarm. 'I should like to take her home and keep her as a pet,' thought Jack, looking down at her with great benevolence.

The elder Mr Pullings was a farmer in a small way on the skirts of the New Forest, and he had brought a couple of sucking-pigs, a great deal of the King's game, and a pie that was obliged to be accommodated with a table of its own, while the inn provided the turtle soup, the wine and the fish. The other guests were junior lieutenants and master's mates; and to begin with the feast was stiffer and more funereal than might have been wished; Mr Pullings was too shy to see or hear, and once he had delivered his piece about their sense of Captain Aubrey's kindness to their Tom in a burring undertone whose drift Jack seized only half-way through, he set himself to his bottle with a dreadful silent perseverance. However, the young men were all sharp-set, for this was well past their dinner-hour, and presently the huge amounts of food they ate engendered talk. After a while there was a steady hum, the sound of laughter, general merriment, and Jack could relax and give his attention to Mrs Pullings's low, confidential account of her anxiety when Tom ran away to sea 'with no change of linen, nothing to shift into – not even so much as his good woolen stockings'.

'Truffles!' cried Stephen, deep in the monumental pie, Mrs Pullings's particular dish, her masterpiece (young hen pheasants, boned, stuffed tight with truffles, in a jelly of their own life's blood, Madeira and calves' foot). 'Truffles! My dear madam, where did you find these princely truffles?' – holding one up on his fork.

'The stuffing, sir? We call 'em yearth-grobbets; and Pullings has a little old spayed sow turns 'em up by the score along the edge of the forest.'
Post Captain

A right tartar. Not.
…and for the first time Stephen saw all the Polychrest's officers together – all except for Pullings, who had the watch, and who was walking the quarterdeck with his hands behind his back, pacing in as close an imitation of Captain Aubrey as his form could manage, and remembering, every now and then, to look stern, devilish, as like a right tartar as possible, in spite of his bubbling happiness.
Post Captain

O'Brian's description.
A thundering double knock below; Bonden vanished. Powerful sea-going voices on the stairs – a booming remark about the 'oakum-topped piece' which could only refer to Cecilia and her much-teased yellow hair – and Mr Pullings made his appearance, a tall, kind-looking, loose-limbed young man, a follower of Jack Aubrey's, as far as so unfortunate a captain could be said to have followers.
H.M.S. Surprise

Tom was married long before Jack
'…I shall have the choice of one or two officers, for sure. Shall you come, Pullings?'

'Why, in course, sir,' – surprised.

'Mrs Pullings no objection? No – eh?'

'Mrs Pullings will pipe he eye, I dare say; but then presently she will brighten up. And I dare say she will be main pleased to see me back again at the end of the commission; more pleased that now is, maybe. I get sadly underfoot, among the brooms and pans. It ain't like aboard ship, sir, the marriage-state.'

'Ain't it, Pullings?' said Jack looking at him wistfully.
H.M.S. Surprise

After Stephen's miraculous rescue.
…After a moment he said, 'Come, you must go below and to bed. M'Alister shall physic you. Mr M'Alister, pray take Dr Maturin below – '

'Let me carry you, sir,' said Pullings. 'I will give you a hand,' said Hervey. The whole quarterdeck and the greater part of the ship's company were gazing at the resuscitated Doctor, his older shipmates with plain delight, the others with heavy wonder: Pullings went so far as to push between the captain and the surgeon and to seize him by the arm.
H.M.S. Surprise

Jack's letter to Sophie.
What a capital fellow Tom Pullings is! He worked like a black, driving the hands day and night; and then when the Admiral sent this Mr Stourton to be first lieutenant over poor Pullings's head (all the labour of refitting being over), not a word of complaint, nor a hint of being ill-used. It was heavy work, as heavy as I can remember, and the boatswain being sick, even more fell to his share: I do not believe he went out of the ship above once, saying in his cheerful way 'that he knew Bombay – had often been there before – it was no more than Gosport to him'.
H.M.S. Surprise

Surprise meeting. This makes me laugh every time I read it but really reflects the friendship between Stephen Maturin and Tom Pullings..
He had not gone a hundred yards before a voice behind him called out, 'Doctor! Doctor!'

'Not again?' he muttered angrily, walking faster among the screw-pines and drawing his head down between his shoulders. But he was pursued, run down: and in his overtaker he instantly recognized the tall, lank, and still very boyish form of Thomas Pullings, a shipmate from his first day at sea. 'Thomas Pullings,' he cried, with a look of real pleasure replacing the first malignant glare. 'Lieutenant Pullings, upon my word and honor. How do you do, sir?'

They shook hands, and having inqured tenderly after the Doctor's health and the Commodore's, Pullings said, 'I remember you was the first that ever called me Lieutenant P, sir, back in dear old Pompey. Well, now if you choose to tip it the most uncommon civil, you could say Captain.'

'You do not tell me so? And are you indeed a captain already?'

'Not by land, sir; I am not Captain P by land. But at sea I am the captain of the Groper transport. You can see her from here, if you stand from behind the tree. Hey, you, the lobster there,' he called to an intervening soldier, 'your dad worn't no glazier. We can't see through you. There, sir: the brig just beyond the snow. She's only a transport, but did you ever see such lovely lines?'

Stephen had seen just such lines in a Dutch herring-buss, but he did not mention the fact, saying no more than 'Elegant, elegant.'

When her captain had gloated over the squat, thick object for a while he said, 'She's my first command, sir. A wonderful brig on a bowline; and she draws so amazing little water, she can run up the smallest creek. Will you honor us with a visit?'

'I should be very happy, Captain,' said Stephen.
The Mauritius Command

Stephen's musings
The English, Stephen knew – and most of those sitting round the table were Englishmen – were extremely sensitive to social difference; he was conscious of a sets of ears acutely tuned to minute differences of intonation, and he was particularly pleased to hear Pullings' fine southern burr: surely it argued a steady though wholly unaggressive self-confidence, a particular kind of strength. He contemplated Pullings as the first lieutenant stood there carving the round of beef, and it occurred to him that he had been singularly unobservant. He had known Pullings so long, from the time when Pullings had been a leggy master's mate, that Pullings seemed endowed with perpetual youth: Stephen had not seen maturity come down on him. To be sure, in company with Jack, the patron he loved and admired, Pullings still seemed very young: but here, in his own wardroom, he surprised Stephen with his size and his easy authority. Clearly he had left his youth in Hampshire, perhaps quite a long time ago: he was on his way to becoming one of those strong, eminently valuable lower-deck commanders in the line of Cook or Bowen; and until now Stephen had never noticed it.
Desolation Island

After Tom's terrible wound.
Dr Maturin too was fond of Thomas Pullings: like Captain Aubrey he had known him as a midshipman, master's mate and lieutenant; he esteemed him highly and had sewn back his nose and forehead with even more than his usual care, sitting by his cot night after night during his days of fever.
Treason's Harbour

The crew's regards for the first officer. (He was "captain" – commander – but had no ship so he came on the cruise as a volunteer).
Jack reflected for a moment upon the force of the breeze, the current, the bearing of the packet, and said 'Let the hands go to breakfast, and then we will turn to. If she is what I think she is, and if we catch her, you shall take her home.'

'Thank you, sir' said Pullings, his face a great grin. From the professional point of view nothing could suit him better. There would not be the glory of a battle – the packet's armament could not possibly compete with the frigate's and would certainly not come into action – but that did not signify, since the glory always went to the credit of the captain and the first lieutenant: for a volunteer, bringing in a valuable recaptured prize would be a more evident, noteworthy testimony of his zeal, and of his good luck too, by no means a negligible quality when it came to employment….

…And though it might seem that nothing could add to the combined effect of the hunting instinct and the very strong desire of something for nothing, in this case there was also a hearty wish to do well by Captain Pullings: for Jack's promise had of course been overheard. He was very much liked aboard, and with the extra spur the men flung themselves into their work with an even greater zeal….
The Far Side of the World

Stephen's letter to Diana. (Poor Tom lost his looks with that horribly disfiguring wound.)
Tom Pullings and West, whose nose mortified on the outward voyage, are even less lovely than I am: they are treated with the same friendliness.
The Truelove