OOC: canon: Jack and Stephen play piquet
Piquet was their game. The cards flew fast, shuffled, cut, and dealt again: they had played together so long that each knew the other’s style through and through. Jack’s was a cunning alternation of risking everything for the triumphant point of eight, and of a steady, orthodox defence, fighting for every last trick. Stephen’s was based upon Hoyle, Laplace, the theory of probabilities, and his knowledge of Jack’s character.
‘A point of five,’ said Jack.
‘Not good.’
‘A quart.’
‘To what?’
‘The knave.’
‘Not good.’
‘Three queens.’
‘Not good.’
They played. ‘The rest are mine,’ said Stephen, as the singleton king fell to his ace. ‘Ten for cards, and capot. We must stop. Five guineas, if you please; you shall have your revenge in London.’
‘If I had not thrown away my hearts,’ said Jack, ‘I should have had you on toast. What amazing cards you have held these last few weeks, Stephen.’
‘Skill enters into this game.’
‘It is luck, all luck! You have the most amazing luck with cards. I should be sorry, was you in love with anyone.’
The pause lasted no more than a second before the door opened and the horses were reported alongside, but its effect hung about them for miles as they trotted through the cold drizzle along the London road.
Post Captain
'That was very satisfactory,' said Jack. 'I should have been sorry to keep the matter hanging for any length of time.' And having written the invitation and sent it off he said, 'Since we cannot have our music, what do you say to a hand at piquet? It is years since we played.'
'I should be very happy.'
Happy in a sense, since he always, invariably, with the utmost regularity skinned Jack Aubrey, as he skinned most others at this game, and although the money was now of no significance, it was still a pleasure to see his point of five outdo Jack's by a single pip, his tierce major triumph over a tierce minor, and Jack's eagerly announced septième beaten down by the almost unheard-of huitième; yet in another sense unhappy - uneasy at the sight of all this luck slipping away in trivialities. For although there was skill in the game for sure, this kind of success was all luck; and if a man had only a given amount for his whole share, it was a shame to fritter away so much as a pugh.
'What is a pugh?' asked Jack, to whom he had made this observation.
'It is a physical term, a fair and just return for all your poops and garstrakes, and it means as much as you can pick up between your thumb and first two fingers: dried herbs and the like. Jesuits' bark, for example.'
'I have always heard that a Jesuit's bark is worse than his bite,' said Jack, his blue eyes slits of mirth in his fine red face.
- The Thirteen-Gun Salute