OOC: first half of Maturin entry in "Persons, Animals, Ships and Cannon"
Maturin, Stephen (often referred to by his full Spanish name of Don Esteban Maturin y Domanova and occasionally by the French version of his name, Etienne Maturin; also very often simply 'the Doctor ')
Master and Commander opens late in the evening of 18th April 1800. Stephen Maturin is sitting next to Lieutenant Jack Aubrey during a Locatelli concert at the Governor's House in Port Mahon, Minorca: the pair quarrel and appear to be intent on a duel the following day (M&C 1). Before the encounter can be arranged, Jack receives promotion to Commander of HMS Sophie, reconciles himself to Stephen and invites him to celebrate the joyous news over dinner (M&C 1,2). Stephen, an Irish physician (who had trained at Trinity College, Dublin --RM 7; LM 6 -- and later in Paris -- RM 5; WDS 3; COM 1), accepts the post of surgeon on his new friend's command, revealing that he was returning from Ireland to his boyhood home of Catalonia in the hope -- thwarted by sudden impoverishment -- of pursuing his passion for natural history (M&C 2). He soon learns that one of his new shipmates is to be a fellow-countryman, Lieutenant James Dillon (M&C 2), with whom he had once been active in the United Irishmen, a political society, dedicated to Catholic emancipation and Irish self-rule, that had staged an unsuccessful armed rebellion in 1798 against English dominance (M&C 3,5). Stephen, never in favour of revolutionary violence, had distanced himself from the subsequent, awful events but both he and James - who had been absent at the crucial time -- are deeply affected by the resulting turmoil in their country (M&C 5; Stephen had also somehow lost *Mona, his first love, in the rebellion: TGS 4). James' confusion and unhappiness spill over into his relationships with the assertively English Jack Aubrey and Stephen -- a Catholic by upbringing (strongly suggested in, e.g., M&C 5; confirmed in PC 3,10) -- spends much time trying to mediate between the two (M&C 5-10). In Sophie the Doctor receives - from William Mowett - the first of many long and detailed lessons in what will always remain to him the impenetrable mysteries of the seaman's craft (M&C 3). Yet he is also the first to alert the distracted Jack to the attack on a merchant convoy by an Algerine galley and, in the ensuing action, treats his first-ever wounded, naval patients (M&C 4). After the battle, he trepans the ship's gunner, Mr Day, for a depressed fracture of the skull, an operation that firmly establishes his reputation in the fleet as a medical miracleworker: Admiral Lord Keith even personally signs the warrant formally appointing him a Royal Navy surgeon (M&C 4). Stephen, whilst ashore for a spell in mainland Catalonia, learns from friends that frustrated merchants have engaged the frigate Cacafuego to hunt down Sophie (M&C 7,8) and, when Jack later attacks and captures the much larger Spanish ship, Stephen is at the British sloop's helm (M&C 10; as was *Cochrane's surgeon, Mr Guthrie, in the action upon which O'Brian bases his tale). Sophie is soon captured by the French Desaix, with whose surgeon, Dr Ramis, Stephen strikes up a professional friendship (M&C 11,12; NB. much later Stephen claims to have participated in the Battle of Algeciras, which in truth he could only witness from his captivity: IM 3). When the British crew are exchanged on parole, Stephen gives evidence at the court-martial of Jack -- by now his firm friend -- for the loss of his ship (M&C 12).
Post Captain opens in late 1802 with Stephen and Jack taking passage back to England. En route they hear that a peace treaty between France and England has just been signed (PC 1; the Peace of Amiens was agreed in October 1801 and signed in March 1802 - O'Brian conflates these dates and then delays the signing until October 1802). The pair take a house in Hampshire and soon meet their neighbours, the beautiful -- and moderately wealthy -- Sophie Williams and her equally beautiful -- but rather poor -- widowed cousin, Diana Villiers (PC 1,2). Stephen admires Sophie and encourages her and Jack as partners. He himself falls for Diana but she too, though certainly reciprocating his friendship with her customary dashing spirit, sees Jack as having the better of the two sets of prospects and commences some sort of affair with him, causing Stephen great distress and confusion, turning him to laudanum for relief (PC 2,3; the start of his series-long affair with the narcotic). Another cause, of a different but no less passionate kind, is revealed as close to Stephen's heart, that of Catalan independence. We learn that he is -- and has been for some time -- a valued, volunteer intelligence adviser to Sir Joseph Blaine of the Admiralty (PC 3; Stephen had a Catalan mother and an Irish father, an officer in the service of Spain -- e.g., HMS 1; RM 1,5; WDS 1 -- and, throughout the series, loathes what he sees as *Buonaparte's brutal tyranny over Europe; see also *Somerville, John). During a peace-time visit to France with Jack, he is able to engage in a little spying in partnership with his old medical friend, Dr Ramis, now revealed as another Catalan nationalist (PC 3). When war again suddenly breaks out (May 1803) Stephen and Jack escape on foot to Spain, there taking refuge for a while in Stephen's own large, though dilapidated, family estate (PC 4) before returning to England (PC 5). Here Stephen again strikes up his tortured friendship with Diana Villiers -- and also her wealthy, Jewish merchant friend, Canning -- before taking to the sea again in Jack's new HMS Polychrest (PC 6,7. Stephen is by now a naval doctor of great renown: PC 3,6. Yet he never acquires any great skill at ship-board dentistry: FSW 2).
Service in home waters enables both Stephen and Jack to keep up their troubled relationships with Sophie and Diana but their mutual desire for the latter eventually results in a furious quarrel and, for the second time in their short friendship, an arrangement to fight (PC 8,10). Soon however, Stephen, out of a sense of both professional obligation and residual amity, feels compelled to warn Jack that the Polychrests are on the point of mutiny. Jack's answer is to take the ship straight into action and the glory of his subsequent victory, together with some severe wounds in the fight, facilitate a silent reconciliation between the two friends (PC 11). Jack's long-awaited promotion into the frigate HMS Lively enables him -- after much dithering -- to make an offer of sorts to Sophie, thus in theory leaving a clearer path to Diana's affections. Yet, to his dismay, Stephen finds her both gone from home and now the scarcely concealed mistress of Canning (PC 12-14). Stephen's intelligence affairs are faring better, for he has learnt that Spain is to join France in her war against England. With Blaine, he arranges for Jack and others to intercept one of her valuable treasure squadrons, heading homewards from the New World colonies (PC 14). He himself is awarded a secret, temporary Post Captaincy in order that he may share in the valuable prize money certain to be won as the Spaniards are taken. The book ends (October 1804) with Stephen nominally wealthy and successful, yet broken-hearted (PC 14). As HMS Surprise opens, the action against Bustamente's squadron should have made both Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin wealthy men. Yet, events turn out otherwise, for the pair are denied prize money, the battle having occurred just before war with Spain was formally declared (HMS 1). Even worse, at an Admiralty Board meeting Stephen is inadvertently revealed as an important intelligence agent (HMS 1), a leak that soon leads, whilst he is on a further mission to Minorca, to his capture and torture by the French (HMS 2; the island having been handed to Buonaparte under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens). Not far from death, he is rescued by Jack and a raiding-party from HMS Lively (HMS 3). Both wanting and needing to get away from Europe, Stephen now joins Jack's new HMS Surprise for a voyage to India (HMS 5+), during which passage he learns to swim (HMS 5), teaches Bonden to write (HMS 6), famously brings aboard a Brazilian sloth (HMS 6) and reveals his continuing, passionate attachment to Diana Villiers (HMS 6). Their complex friendship is renewed in Bombay, where she is now living openly if uneasily with Richard Canning, and Stephen soon asks for her hand in marriage, an offer over which she prevaricates (HMS 7). Here too Stephen meets the lively street-urchin, Dil, but his ill-considered gift to her of silver bangles immediately results in her murder by thugs: Stephen has then to arrange her immolation (HMS 7). A little later -- by now in Calcutta -- Stephen and Diana are found kissing by Canning, resulting in a furious quarrel and pistol-duel. Canning badly injures Stephen with the opening shot but is, in turn, dropped dead by the second despite Stephen's intention to miss or merely wound (HMS 10). The Doctor now operates on himself to remove his opponent's ball and is then briefly nursed by the shocked and penitent Diana before the pair take separate passage home to England (HMS 11). Before they part, Stephen gives his beloved a ring, although it is clear to neither party exactly what mutual obligations, if any, have been exchanged. To Stephen's shock, the 'engagement' lasts scarcely any' time at all, the ring being returned by letter when Diana runs off to the USA with a rich new lover, Harry Johnstone (HMS 11).
The Mauritius Command opens some years later (probably in mid-1809): Stephen has recently returned to England from Spain (TMC 1) and we see him examining the new Aubrey babies (for Jack and Sophie have married), revealing that, in his student days, he had delivered many infants (TMC 1; curiously, in DI 7 he denies such experience). Continuing as an advisor to the Admiralty on political issues, he is able to use his influence to obtain for Jack the command of the expedition to Mauritius, using -- perhaps misusing -- his medical authority to confine the previously chosen, but somewhat ailing and in any case unsuitable, Captain Loveless to England (TMC 1). Accompanying the mission as surgeon in Jack's HMS Boadicea, Stephen is confirmed at the Cape by Admiral Bertie as official political advisor to the campaign (TMC 3). On the next stage of the voyage he treats Lord Clonfert, one of Jack's junior commanders, for violent stomach cramps, coming to the view that his illness lies more in the mind than the body (TM C 4); in his diaries he goes on to analyse subtly Clonfert's extreme need for reassurance and esteem (TMC 5+). In the political role, Stephen lays plans to suborn the loyalty of the strongly Catholic inhabitants of French Mauritius (TMC 5) and, much to the disappointment of the army Colonel Keating and his officers, arranges the surrender of the nearby island of Reunion before a set piece battle is necessary (TMC 6). Following a close brush with death by drowning whilst attempting to board HMS Nereide, he resumes his laudanum habit (TMC 7). Present during the disastrous Battle of Port South East, Stephen witnesses what he later reports to Jack as Clonfert's initial gross folly and comes to regard Pym, the senior Captain present, as deficient in leadership (TMC 7,8). As the battle ends, Stephen escapes to Reunion by launch, carrying the news of the heavy British defeat (TMC 7,8). He successfully continues his job of the subversion of Mauritius (TMC 8-10) but later reveals to his colleague Dr McAdam his current lack of zest for life: although Diana Villiers is mentioned only once by name in the book --and then only as a past love (TMC 7) -- it is clear that her abandonment of him left a deep wound (TMC 10).
Desolation Island opens (sometime in 1811) with Stephen now both a distinguished author and activist on the improvement of naval health (DI 3,9; see also TH 1) and an active, if jaded, intelligence agent (DI 2). He visits the Aubreys at Ashgrove Cottage to examine, with other leading physicians, the hypochondriac Mrs Williams (DI 1). Parr of his emotional unease lies in renewed rejection by Diana Villiers, whom he has recently met in London (DI 1,2), and his consequent slipping back into laudanum abuse (DI 1+). Indeed Stephen has recently operated on a friend, the naturalist John Deering, whose death under the knife he hints may have been partly due to his clouded judgement (DI 1). Although at first Stephen does not intend to travel with Jack Aubrey and his HMS Leopard to the penal colony in Australia, he is persuaded to do so by Sir Joseph Blaine in order secretly to interrogate the convicted American spy, Louisa Wogan, during the voyage (DI 1,2). As ship's doctor, and still a friend to the cause of Irish independence (DI 4; as well as his activities in the United Irishmen (e.g. M&C 2+) Stephen had spent his boyhood as a native Irish speaker (NC 10) in Cahirciveen (PC 10), he wins her unwitting confidence (DI 3+), not only discovering further details of spies in London but achieving the coup of passing false intelligence to her, via her lover Michael Herapath, and effecting her 'escape' back to the USA from Desolation Island, where Leopard has been wrecked (DI 7,10). During the voyage, Stephen deals with an horrific outbreak of fever in the ship (DI 4,5) and tends to the birth of Leopardina Boswell by caesarian section (DI 8), curiously stating that he has no great experience of midwifery (DI 7; but see TMC 1).
At the opening of The Fortune of War (in early 1812) Stephen has remained in HMS Leopard all the way from Desolation Island to Java. Here he meets his intelligence colleague, Wallis, on whom he had performed an adult circumcision some time previously (FW 1). Eager to return to Catalonia, where he sees fresh opportunities to discomfort the French, he accompanies Jack Aubrey on his return to England in HMS La Fleche, but not before demonstrating an entertaining confusion between the rules of English cricket and Irish hurling (FW 1,2). When La Fleche takes accidental fire, Stephen escapes with Jack and other colleagues in a small boat: eventually picked up by HMS Java, they soon after experience her defeat and destruction by USS Constitution (FW 2,3). Taken prisoner, Stephen loyally accompanies the sick and wounded Jack to Boston: yet he approaches the USA with some considerable misgivings, arising from his
recent intelligence coup against Louisa Wogan (FW 4; see DI 7,10). Furthermore, he reveals to the American surgeon, Evans, that, although he was indeed once a republican who cheered the fall of the Bastille (see also WDS 3), he is now a good, British monarchist, if only on pragmatic grounds (FW 4). In Boston Harry Johnson (see HMS 11; the spelling of his name has changed), now the lover of both Louisa Wogan and Diana Villiers, tries to recruit Stephen to serve American interests, thinking that it is Jack rather than the Doctor who is the dedicated British intelligence agent. Stephen soon sees that Johnson himself is very closely connected with both American and French secret networks, especially through the sinister agents Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil (FW 5,6). To complicate matters further, Stephen has again encountered Diana, again fallen hopelessly in love with her and again turned to laudanum (FW 6). This time she agrees to his proposal of marriage, an arrangement that, although initially intended simply to help her to escape from both the USA and Johnson, soon takes a mutually heartfelt turn (FW 6,9). Eventually the American and French agents see Stephen for the spy he is and try to abduct him. He saves himself by fleeing and hiding in Diana's bed while she goes to summon help from Jack Aubrey; during her absence Stephen is forced to kill btrh Pontet-Canet and Dubreuil, still hot on his trail (FW 7). All three friends then escape by small boat to the British frigate HMS Shannon, conveniently cruising just outside the harbour, but not before Stephen has seized many of Johnson's private intelligence records (FW 8; also SM 4). The Doctor soon asks Shannon's Captain Broke to perform a shipboard marriage between himself and Diana but the great battle with USS Chesapeake, and Broke's own severe wounding at the moment of victory, prevent the ceremony from ever taking place (FW 9; this action took place in June 1813).
(NB. all books from this point in the series until The Yellow Admiral remain notionally set in the second half of 1813, even though each occupies about one calendar year.) The Surgeon's Mate finds Stephen in Canada, attending the celebrations of HMS Shannon's great victory. He reveals that he has been invited to address the Institut in Paris, purely in his capacity as a naturalist of international reputation (SM 1; in IM 1 Stephen is confirmed as being long-standing fellow of both the Royal Society and Royal College of Surgeons). Returning to England in the mail packet Diligence, Stephen, Jack Aubrey and Diana Villiers narrowly escape capture by Harry Johnson's determined privateers (SM 3,4). Diana, having found herself to be pregnant by her former lover, has now refused to marry Stephen whilst carrying another man's child (FW 8; SM 1,2). He in turn rejects the suggestion of an abortion, suggesting she accompany him to Paris and remain there for her confinement (SM 2-5). The pair arrive in France, where Stephen prepares for his lecture, rejecting all the while many requests to carry secret messages back to the Bourbon exile court in England. The address is well attended by the great and good but Stephen suffers such bad stage-fright that its impact is somewhat dulled (SM 4,5). Learning immediately afterwards that the Catalan patriot Ponsich has been killed during an English-sponsored secret mission to the Baltic, Stephen hurries back to London to offer his services as a replacement (SM 4,5,6). He tells Sir Joseph Blaine that, as the Commandant of the Catalan troops holding the island of Grimsholm is his own godfather, Casademon, he believes that he will easily be able to subvert their allegiance from France to England. He will then persuade them to abandon their fortress, provided always that Casademon and his troops can be offered free passage to Spain, there to join Wellington's army (SM 6,7). The mission is accomplished without great difficulty and Stephen and his Catalans sail southwards on Jack Aubrey's HMS Ariel (SM 7,8,9; see the entry for *Casademon for a note on the origin of these events). However, when Ariel is wrecked on the French coast, the Doctor is taken prisoner and escorted to Paris, together with Jack Aubrey and their dashing new colleague, the Lithuanian cavalryman Jagiello, by the secret policeman Duhamel (SM 9,10). Here, Stephen is interrogated over his past activities by members of various French intelligence services (SM 10,11) and soon learns that his immediate safety has been secured both by an enormous bribe paid by Diana Villiers (using her 'Blue Peter' diamond) to an influential politician, and by his being in the immediate hands of Prince Talleyrand, a man who wants to make use of the Doctor in contacting the Bourbon exiles (SM 10,11). Just as Harry Johnson arrives in Paris to denounce Stephen, and just as Jack Aubrey's gaol-break plans are coming to fruition, all three prisoners are released by Talleyrand's man Duhamel. They are joined in their flight to the coast by Diana, who has recently miscarried her baby (SM 11). On the cartel ship, HMS Oedipus, Stephen and Diana are now married by their old friend Commander William Babbington, with Jack and Jagiello in attendance (SM 11).
At the opening of The Ionian Mission, Stephen and Diana have agreed to maintain separate dwellings in London in order to accommodate their rather different social habits (IM 1). The Doctor wishes to add to their ship-board, civil marriage a Catholic ceremony -- for in the eyes of his Church he remains a bachelor -- but Diana steadfastly refuses (IM 1). Stephen now plans to travel to the Mediterranean in Jack Aubrey's HMS Worcester, both to visit Barcelona and to conduct intelligence operations in Southern France (IM 1+). Painfully injured en-route in a short action with the French Jemmapes (IM 2), he takes again to laudanum in order to aid his recovery (IM 3). Having visited Spain (IM 3), Stephen is soon delivered by Jack to the southern coast of France (IM 7) where, when his rendezvous with royalists is aborted in chaos, he comes across a wounded British intelligence agent, Professor Graham, and effects his rescue (IM 7). With Graham, Stephen is appointed as an advisor to Jack on HMS Surprise's mission to the Ionian Sea (1M 9-1I). En route he takes a swim, finds himself left behind in Surprise's wake, but fortunately is spotted by an alert seaman and rescued, somewhat embarrassed (IM 9). Stephen plays little active part in the Ionian adventure but is present at the great victory over the rebel Turkish frigates, Torgud and Kitabi (IM 11). During the course of events, Stephen comes to suspect that Diana may be pregnant (IM 1) but is later told by his wife that he was mistaken (IM 5). He is also told, in an anonymous letter, that Diana and Jagiello are lovers, an allegation that he dismisses out of hand (IM 5).
Treason's Harbour opens with Stephen now in Malta, wary of the attentions paid to him by Laura Fielding, the pretty Sicilian wife of Lieutenant Charles Fielding, a prisoner-of-war in France (TH 1+). He immediately suspects a plot, soon confirmed by the distraught Laura herself, who is a victim of blackmail by the French intelligence agent Lesueur; Stephen then makes use of Laura to feed false information to his enemy (TH 3+). In the meantime, the Doctor's natural science interests are concentrated on his new Halley diving-bell, in which he makes a descent with his friend, Captain Heneage Dundas (TH 3). Soon Stephen is sent to the Red Sea as an advisor to Jack Aubrey on his Mubara expedition (TH 4). There the Halley device is used to recover supposed treasure chests from a galley sunk by Jack's hired ship, Niobe, but only lead ingots are recovered, together with a note indicating that the mission has been betrayed from the outset (TH 6). Back in Malta, it becomes widely, though wrongly, thought that Stephen and Laura Fielding are lovers: crucially, Lesueur also accepts the rumour (TH 8+). The Doctor now travels in HMS Surprise to Trieste, learning here that Laura's husband, Charles, has escaped from captivity and been rescued by HMS Nymphe. Indeed Stephen even operates on him for an old wound, discovering that the Lieutenant in fact believes a service rumour that his wife is Jack Aubrey's lover (TH 9). Realising that Fielding's escape spells doom for Laura - Lesueur now having no power over her, and she able to identify him and his colleagues - Stephen returns to Malta and snatches her from immediate danger, taking her to safety aboard Jack's Surprise. Although entirely innocent, neither Jack nor Stephen now relish a further meeting with Laura's husband once he arrives home in Malta (TH 10). Before this can happen, Surprise is dispatched to the African port of Zambra in order to resolve difficulties with the rebellious Dey of Mascara (TH 10) but, once again, the mission is betrayed and, following a brisk battle with a waiting French squadron, Stephen advises Jack to withdraw to Gibraltar for consultation and reinforcements. At no point does the Doctor suspect that the traitor is Andrew Wray, a senior British administrator with intelligence responsibilities (TH 2,10; N.B., Stephen, in TH 1, curiously understates his knowledge of the earlier dispute between Jack *Aubrey and *Wray over cards, for he himself warned Jack of the first cheating incident and had a direct account from his friend of the second: DI 1,2. Stephen's own gaming expertise comes from a period of his youth when he endured a long spell in a Spanish prison for debt, there sharing a cell with *Jaime, a cardsharp from whom he had learnt many useful techniques of discovery and deception: TH 8).
In The Far Side of the World Sir Joseph Blaine, in view of the mixed intelligence triumphs and fiascos in the Mediterranean, arranges for Stephen to accompany Jack Aubrey and HMS Surprise on a relatively minor mission to the South Atlantic. They are also under orders to pursue and take the marauding American frigate, USS Norfolk (FSW 1+). Before leaving Gibraltar, Stephen again receives an anonymous letter about Diana and Jagiello and himself sends a letter to her via Andrew Wray -- still unsuspected as a traitor -- refuting the rumours of his own supposed affair with Laura Fielding (FSW 1,2). The political element of the new journey is soon accomplished when Jack re-takes the mail-packet Danae from the Americans. Hidden on board is an enormous fortune, intended for the subversion of governments in South America, of which Stephen takes reluctant custody (FSW 5). With his new friend and colleague Nathaniel Martin, he has an extended opportunity during the long voyage to indulge their passion for natural history whilst at sea, during a stop in Brazil (FSW 5) and off the Galapagos Islands (FSW 7). Stephen also now swops his long-time laudanum habit for the chewing of coca leaves (FSW 4,5). Once in the Pacific, Stephen manages to fall into the warm sea whilst leaning far out of the stern windows in order to net sea organisms by night. Jack follows, in order to rescue his friend, but Surprise stands on, blithely unaware of events in the great cabin (FSW 7). The pair are eventually picked up by a South Seas pahi crewed entirely by women warriors and narrowly escape emasculation and death (FSW 7). Eventually abandoned on a desert island, they are rescued by HMS Surprise's searching launch (FSW 7,8). Soon, during a storm, Stephen receives a severe concussion in a fall and, in order to stabilise his friend's condition, Jack sails Surprise to the remote Old Sodbury Island, here discovering the crew of the long-sought Norfolk, rheir ship wrecked on the reef (FSW 9). On dry land, Stephen awakes from his coma - just before an intended brain operation by Martin and the American surgeon, Mr Butcher - and makes a rapid recovery (FSW 9). However, Surprise is forced away from the island by sudden bad weather, leaving her shore party in near-open warfare with the Americans. Just as matters come to an ugly head, the ship re-appears in hot pursuit of an American whaler, which she then easily takes (FSW 10).
The Reverse of the Medal opens a little while later with Stephen safely back on board HMS Surprise, now arriving at Barbados on the way home to England. On the Caribbean island he strikes up a friendship with Jack Aubrey's natural, black son, Sam Panda, who wishes to become a Catholic priest (RM 1). Stephen, newly rich from an inheritance (RM 4,7; also LM 1. The inheritance is from his mother's Spanish connections; on his father's Irish side Stephen is a Fitzgerald from the wrong side of the blanket: RM 5), is anxious to return to his wife Diana, hoping that the letter he sent to her via Andrew Wray (FSW 1,2) has assured her that rumours of his supposed affair with Laura Fielding were unfounded (RM 2-4). However, on arrival in London, he discovers that Diana has already run off to Sweden with Jagiello, never having received his explanation (RM 5). He again takes to his laudanum bottle (RM 8). Stephen also finds the political situation at home much changed, for he and Sir Joseph Blaine are being treated with increasing disrespect -- Stephen assaults a particularly insolent official -- and there is a plot afoot to lure him into a trap in France, a scheme in which Wray seems to play a role (RM 5). When Stephen receives the sudden news of Jack Aubrey's arrest for fraud, he uses his contacts and wealth to try and unearth exculpatory evidence, but to no avail. Yet he and Blaine do discover that Jack is the innocent victim of a deeper, traitorous conspiracy (RM 7,8). Seeing that Jack's Royal Navy career is doomed, Stephen uses all his remaining influence to secure approval for a scheme to send them both on a private mission in support of the independence movement in Chile and Peru, a voyage for which Stephen buys Surprise from the service (RM 7-10). Whilst she is fitting out, he receives a note from the disillusioned French agent Duhamel indicating that Diana's 'Blue Peter' diamond (see SM 10,11) may yet be restored to them. Stephen meets Duhamel, obtains the gem and learns that Andrew Wray, together with his Treasury colleague Ledward, are the long-sought traitors, news he urgently communicates to Blaine (RM 10).