Gigi Sinclair

A great tortoise.

That was what Stephen Maturin had promised to name after Jack Aubrey, but the more Stephen regarded the captain, the less apt the choice seemed.

After all, tortoises, even those species Stephen had identified on the Galapagos Islands, were exclusively vegetarian, while Jack was anything but.

"Do I wish to know what the dear doctor is thinking?" Jack asked, glancing up from his ham. The slight slur to the captain's speech indicated the glass of wine before him was not his first, but Stephen had not for a moment suspected it might be.

"I'm thinking you eat too much, drink to excess and will need a casket the size of Henry the Eighth's when you finally depart this world," Stephen replied.

A flicker of hurt passed over Jack's face, before he returned to his meal. "Have I told you how much I appreciate your candour? It's quite refreshing."

Stephen smiled. "That was not the only thought to cross my mind."

"No?" Jack answered, gamely. "What other philosophical whimsies are floating around that head of yours?"

Stephen toyed with his fork, then lay it over the remnants of his meal and looked at Jack. "That you are quite possibly the most courageous soul I know, and these men would follow you anywhere. And that I was perhaps too hasty when I accused you of pride."

Jack put down his cutlery and wiped his mouth on a napkin. "You weren't hasty, Stephen. You were, as always, the voice of reason to my erratic humour."

Stephen snorted inelegantly at the thought that Jack Aubrey, the steadiest man in His Majesty's Navy, could ever be considered erratic. "As for courage," Jack continued, ignoring Stephen, "I am not the one who extracted a bullet from my own gut."

Stephen was no fresh-faced lieutenant or prepubescent cabin boy, but looking at the captain, he felt he could succumb into fawning admiration as easily as they did.

For a man in his position, that kind of devotion was dangerous. "Of course not," Stephen scoffed, trying to recover his composure. "You could barely stand to be in the same room when I did it." But Stephen had asked Jack to be there anyway, had insisted upon it, because he'd known that Jack's face was the one image that could distract him from the pain and the fear of what he had trusted no one else to do.

"A most unpleasant experience it was," Jack agreed happily. "Not one I am likely to forget. I suppose that is what is meant by loving someone too well for one's own good."

Jack's words, while said in the same hale-and-hearty tone he used to congratulate the cook on an excellent meal or to order his midshipmen to their positions, struck a chord deep inside Stephen, echoing as they did the sentiment he had felt just moments earlier.

Stephen stood quickly, nearly overturning the table. "Steady on, man," Jack complained, as he caught his wineglass in the nick of time. "Are you all right?"

Stephen certainly was not. "Yes."

"Perhaps we could play a piece or two when I've finished," Jack suggested, "While I am still slender enough to fit the violin beneath my chin."

A look passed between them, and Stephen couldn't help but laugh. When he said, "Nothing would please me more," it was God's honest truth.

He personally may have been a stick insect in surgeon's clothing, Stephen decided, but Jack was a lion disguised as a tortoise.

And who knew, Stephen thought as he watched Jack finish his meal. The wonders of the Galapagos had taught him anything was possible in the natural world. Somewhere on Earth, there had to be a place where stick insects and lions were permitted to cohabit peacefully, without a thought for the greater concerns of the world.

If anyone could lead them to that place, Stephen knew it would be Jack.