Spring, 1806

"My dear sir!" Thomas Jefferson, president of the thirteen United States, took Stephen Maturin's hand. Maturin smiled - he had cause to. It had been twelve weeks since he had been left at the Galapagos Islands by Jack, and had watched the Surprise sail away with his wife aboard. Now, not only had made it up the west coast of Central America, but his notes on the singular beasts he had discovered were now in the hands of arguably the most important man on the continent.

"I could not thank you enough for your timely warning."

"I could not in all conscience keep this from you," Stephen Maturin told the president, "I trust that my presumption on a meeting with you was not too not too much to ask for." The man who had been elected the country's third president paused in the process of stepping towards the landscaped garden of the presidential palace and gave the doctor one of his trademark grins, wide and welcoming.

"My dear sir!" Jefferson said again, clapping Stephen on the back, "I would have you search the whole of Maryland if it would further your cause," the man continued. Heresy crossed Stephen's mind for a moment - considering the people in these States in America had fought a war thirty years before to be free of Great Britain, that Jefferson had drafted the Declaration of Independence, they did not seem to hold with letting go of everything. White, neoclassical lines were in front of them of the palace, landscaped garden, as if Capability Brown had visited, and Stephen wondered whether it would just as well fit into any noble estate back in England.

"You must stay for dinner, Dr. Maturin," Jefferson continued, as Stephen detailed his travels, on a ship heading from Cumana to Havana in Cuba and then to New York. "It is the least I can offer."

"The least would be nothing," Stephen told him, graciously accepting the invitation, Stephen and nodding to Meriwether Lewis, who had also been invited, for he had been offered a great deal more than dinner, and when Lewis prompted Stephen to recount his journey to Washington, Maturin nodded and continued

"I then thought to take a passage back to Britain, to present what I needed then. Except that I don't have what I need, entirely." Because he had left the information he had discovered at the Orinico, Humboldt's own information, in the care of Cicely, who was now with her uncle on an island in Sarawak.

"So you saw fit to write," Jefferson continued, clapping Stephen on the back. "To say you had vital news and to ask permission to travel to the west coast."

If I was asking permission, then I would be asking it of the Spanish, Stephen thought. You don't own the land from here to the Pacific. "And you sought to bring me this intelligence," Jefferson went on. That was at least true. In the spring flowers of the White House's gardens, Stephen nodded to Jefferson's hand, into which he had placed all he knew about John Wilkinson's plan for freeing the states bought from France, ignoring the irony that it had been a British bank - Barings - which had underwritten the loan to Jefferson, a loan which, if it had ever been made public - that two enemies of the country had been financially assisted - would have been a scandal of titanic proportions.

And Stephen could do it, if he chose to. He could have made it public, sided with William Wickham and put pressure on the freeing of Ireland from Britain. Considering what Jefferson had just told him, it would be a justified and logical course of action.

Yet, he could not, not in his heart. Though Catholic, though Feinian, though as opposed to Jack Aubrey in almost every aspect of politics, enlightenment shone through from the place he had never called home. All that he valued cerebrally came from the gentle sharing of information from one gentleman to another, over dinners such as he was about to enjoy that evening.

"If only that were all, Mr. President," Stephen told him, and then turned his head a little at the sound of the bird which was calling from a cherry tree in the middle distance. A blue jay. Beautiful, just beautiful on such a mellow evening as it was. He wished he did not have to think about Wickham, and yet Thomas Jefferson had just imparted knowledge from his own lips, unsuspecting of their value to Stephen Maturin, that he wondered whether there really was a deity guiding all things.

"Lewis has confided that he would be delighted to help," Jefferson told Stephen, as they walked up the wide path to the front of the palace. "That you managed to recover for him, Nicolas Baudin's specimens from South Africa and Trinidad, is beyond any thanks we can give to you."

"Indeed," nodded Meriwether Lewis, graciously. Stephen waved his hand. He had at least had some money left to dress suitably that evening. And all because he had managed to board a privateer in the Caribbean to get to the United States on board which Baudin had left all of his work, and the captain had been grateful to Stephen for relieving him of them, so much so that he had offered passage free of charge.

In New York, anxious to buy something for Cicely, he got talking to a collector of rocks, gemstones and minerals who lived near the south of the island of Manhattan, and had sold a lot of the rock samples to him, and had bought sapphires for Cicely, which he wrapped in a piece of velvet and stowed into his jacket. Then, he had written a letter to Lewis and sent on the samples, stopping overnight before boldly making his way across to Washington, with a letter of introduction sent ahead.

Staying in a hotel near the Hudson river, Stephen was reading from the notes and papers Baudin had made, and something struck him about the Louisiana Purchase, the sale of a third of the landmass west of Maryland, and something that Jefferson had been in the dark about until his ambassadors had returned from Europe.

Baudin had been associated with the resettlement of the Acadians from French Canada to Louisiana. It was there, he had discovered clear evidence of Wilkinson's betrayal, that he was in direct contact with the Spanish authorities in order to acquire the last third of the coast, allowing a rival set of states, of French and Spanish settlers to abut the potentially smaller states ending at the Mississipi river.

"Please," Jefferson said, gesturing to the door of the White House, nodding to his house servant as he went in. "There is no small measure in the intelligence you have provided me, and to our country. Lewis is happy to guide you through the trail he and Clark took, for they will return to continue their expedition." He bent his head to Maturin. "I do hope this brings you the information you need for your commission."

And Dr. Stephen Maturin enjoyed a dinner of wildfowl and French brandy, knowing that, in that once chance encounter, he had gleaned more of Wickham than he could ever have known, had he kept Baudin's animal specimens to himself, had he never returned to the north coast of South America, had he never, with such determination, willed himself to finish his commission and be accepted into the Royal Society, a state of affairs which he desired above all things.

For, as well as copious amounts of gold as reward, that Jefferson had given to him in a modest leather bag in the grounds of the White House, Adams' successor had also let go of another secret, a secret which, even without Lewis's help, meant he would have to head west, anyway in order to prevent catastrophe.

Because Wickham and Jefferson had a plan of their own: Isiah Watt and John Paul Jones were just the start. William Wickham, already a traitor to his country, was now circumnavigating the world in order to challenge Britain at home, and with Thomas Jefferson's aid, in money and resources, was aiming to conjure nothing short of a full-scale invasion.

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"HMS Suprise

28 Guns

197 Souls

SW Coast Ceylon

Admiralty Orders

To Capt. J. Aubrey

Intercept American Privateer Liberty operating as a Slave Ship and Black Marketeer in the Intent on Carrying the War into those Waters. Sink, Burn or Take her a Prize."

Jack Aubrey looked at the long superceded orders, and rewrote them, to his fancy. A clap on the back, and a shake of the hand were the last things Admiral Edward Pellew had given him as Tom Pullings took Jack's place.

The Emilia had been lost just off the Bengal coast, though, considering the rebellion there against the East India company, the loss to the mission was light. Pullings' crew had been split evenly between the seven remaining ships, Halcyon, Honourable, Indefatigable, Maria Josephine, Star, Emilia, and Surprise. And, on the news that he had received before they departed, Pellew offered another gleam of kindness.

A letter had come, just as Tom had stepped aboard. Jack had had to read it twice before the idea of what it was telling him began to penetrate his skull: he was now destitute, having lost all of his money in the downturn in banking. All the prize money he had laid down from the Acheron, Trafalgar and Strachan's action had been lost.

But there was worse to come: Jack was in now in debt and because of this, he had been struck off the Navy list, unable to access even a basic half-pay pension because of the debt.

Barings.

What had caused the bank to be brought so low? A loan had been taken out by a foreign power - before the underwriters had ascertained its providence it was too late.

He was low, very low. But Pellew had taken an interest in William Godwin's chronometer and through the man's kindness gave Jack a way out. The timepiece, which had run perfectly and had enabled the Surprise to catch the Indefatigable - would now Pellew's, in exchange for the lifeline, a line which could keep him afloat and give Jack Aubrey a chance to regain his fortune and his place as post-captain.

A Letter of Marque underwritten by Admiral Edward Pellew of the Indefatigable.

So, like Cicely before him, Jack Aubrey was now a private citizen, Tom Pullings as captain, and they were now sailing out from Hong Kong. The spice blockade out of China has been broken, and Suprise, as with the rest of the ships was now heading away from the South China Sea.

Most of Pellew's shops were heading to back India, to assist with the East India Company's interests, back from whence they had come, whence Jack had learned of the collapse of his fortune.

No. Not most. All. All were heading west, past Indonesia, through the Philippines and would be in the Indian Ocean within a fortnight, Indefatigable and Star, who they had met at Sao Paolo and had followed round the Horn and into the Pacific.

All except Surprise.

She was heading east.

Owayii.

It was a den of thieves and pirates, of prostitution, drunkenness and corruption. Any man with nefarious purposes ended up at Owayii; any man with an intent to be outside the law of not only his - but any country - washed up there.

"Set a course, east south east," he heard Pullings say to Barret Bonden. Without Maturin's voice of reason, without his friend interrogating his intentions, Aubrey felt low. He missed Stephen, missed his company, his musical partnership and his intellectualism. Stephen was a better judge of money than he was - a better everything, except for being a seaman - Jack had often thought how good his life would be if he could replicate his luck on board ship into his real life. He had even had to sell his gold medal for Trafalgar in Hong Kong to keep going.

So if he were to regain his fortune, it was to that island that Surprise must sail.

With a hmph, and a shove to the shoulder of a topman about to scale the rigging, he jumped to it and replaced the man, watched as he climbed by Pullings, who marvelled at his former captain's seamless incorporation of himself into the new iteration of the crew of HMS Surprise.

It was ignominious to have to hunt for traitors, to bring them to New Holland, or whatever the new place Britain had chosen to send its convicts was now called. But it had to be done - if he was sent to debtor's prison Jack knew that he could never face Sophie again.