Patrick O'Brian - The Yellow Admiral

They listened, and even down here the rumbling grumble of the French seventy-fours, the Ramillies and the Naiad made the bottles tremble; while a little later the poor hard-hit Aboukir, lifting to the tide, brought her broadside to bear and returned the enemy fire with all the pent-up fury of a ship that has been punished without being able to reply.

But their own battle, the Bellona's rippling broadsides they had heard so often during the great-gun exercise, did not begin, and tense expectation was drooping even to the point of discontent when, with a wholly different and immediate sharpness, her bow-chasers fired, followed by the foremost guns of her starboard broadside, deep-voiced guns, loud and clear, firing well-spaced, carefully-aimed deliberate long shots.

'It has started,' cried Smith, who had seen no action; and as if in reply a spent, harmless round-shot hit the Bellona's side. Smith gazed at his colleagues with a wild enthusiasm.

'What is it, Mr Wetherby?' asked Stephen, seeing the boy come in.

'Captain's compliments, sir, if you please, and Aboukir's surgeon would be most grateful for a hand with his casualties. There is a cutter alongside, if you please to come with me.'

'We are to expect no more action, I collect?' asked Stephen: he began filling a basket with instruments, bandages, pledgets, tourniquets, splints, laudanum.

'Not at present, sir, I am afraid. The Frenchmen are running for home.'

It would have been temerity carried to a criminal pitch if the Frenchmen had not done so, when they were confronted with a resuscitated Aboukir, a largely intact Ramillies, a thirty-eight-gun frigate, and now two perfectly fresh and untouched two-deckers, particularly as one of the French ships of the line had had seven ports beaten into one and several guns dismounted by the explosion. Yet it was disappointing. 'Call that an action?' asked Mr Meares, addressing his mates. 'I call it a fart in a blind alley. A genteel fart in a blind alley, is what I call it. And after all our hurry and preparation - all hands day and night, then cartridges filled without so much as a hot dinner, screens shipped, decks sanded and wetted and who for God's sake needed any more water on a God-damned day like this?'

'It was disappointing,' said Jack, as Stephen joined him for what had to pass for breakfast. 'But there was no help...'

'Come, sir, if you please,' said Killick, with a bucket of hot water, soap, towel, dressing-gown. He guided Stephen into the quarter-gallery, leaving him with the words, 'You know the Captain can't bear the sight of blood, and there you are soaked, fair soaked, from head to foot and what poor Grimble and I shall do to the floorcioth with all them nasty footprints, I don't know. Now take off everything, sir, shirt, drawers, stockings and all and throw them into that there bucket. I will keep your coffee hot: his honour will not mind waiting.'

Neither Captain Aubrey nor Dr Maturin was an outstandingly meek or patient man, yet such was Killick's total conviction, his moral superiority, that the one waited for his longed-for coffee without complaint and the other not only washed obediently but would have shown both hands, front and back, if required.

'Yes, it was disappointing,' said Jack. 'But there was no help for it. The Frenchmen were hopelessly outnumbered, so of course as soon as they made out our full force and as soon as Aboukir had lifted they spread all the sail they could - unhappily they lost no more than a mizen topmast between them in the action; and that don't signify, since now they have a leading wind.'

'They could not be pursued, with this same leading wind, I presume?'

'Certainly they could be pursued, and by steady fire, yawing now and then for a broadside, we might well knock away a few spars and even conceivably take them, right up in the Goulet, before they reach their friends in the inner bay. But how do you propose to bring them out with the wind in the west, the powerful tide against us too, and the fog lifting with the sun so that we are exposed to the batteries?'

They heard a boat alongside reply 'Ramillies' to the sentinel's hail and Jack hurried on deck to receive Captain Fanshawe. 'Come and have a cup of coffee,' he said, and brought him into the cabin. 'You know Dr Maturin, I believe?'

'Of course, of course: long since. How do you do, sir? And so you have real coffee? We have been down to grains of barley, roasted and ground, these many weeks. How I should love a single draught of right Arabian mocha. Heavens, Jack, you were a welcome sight, you and poor old Grampus, heaving up out of the murk. I had a horrible feeling it was more Frenchmen coming to join their friends - a rendezvous - and we were in a wretched posture to receive them, with Aboukir hard and fast... but, however, now the tables are turned, ha, ha ha - What glorious coffee - Turned as pretty as you could wish.'

'Turned indeed: and the Doctor wants us to bring them out in triumph'

'If we had some of those vessels that are said to sail against wind and tide, we might do so,' said Fanshawe, looking affectionately at Stephen 'But as we are only simple ships of the line I believe we must return to our dreary blockade, sending word to the Admiral that Aboukir will probably have to go into Cawsand Bay.'

This they did, patching up the Aboukir as well as the assembled carpenters and sailmakers could manage, although eastwards they heard remote but quite unmistakable and heavy gunfire, borne on the still westerly breeze.

'No,' said Fanshawe, 'our orders are to patrol the bay, which implies preventing the enemy from coming out or getting in and above all from joining forces. If you like I will send Naiad and your tender to see if either of them can find the flag and ask for orders, but that is as far as I can go. Our clear duty, as I see it, is to go up and down this vile bay until we are told to stop.'

'You always was a pig-headed brute, Billy,' said Jack; but this was a totally unofficial aside (they were alone in the cabin) and it was taken as such: in point of fact Captain Aubrey and all the rest continued to go up and down that vile bay, blockading the port of Brest and growing steadily hungrier - up and down until a little before two bells in the afternoon watch of Friday, a brisk topsail breeze at southwest, the weather clear, a moderate southern swell, when the Bellona's masthead and every other masthead belonging to the inshore squadron reported a sail four points on the larboard bow. As they were then heading for St Matthews, the sail was clearly from Ushant: and since she was travelling fast, with a favourable breeze, further details came down at quite short intervals. 'On deck, there: a three-decker, sir.' 'On deck, there: a brig and a ship in her wake - store-ship, I believe.' 'On deck there: the Charlotte, sir.'

Well before that awe-inspiring (but scarcely unexpected) name, the captains' servants began titivating their masters' best uniform against the almost inevitable signal Captains repair aboard the flag and the first lieutenants hurried about anxiously looking for imperfections that might bring discredit on the ship. Unhappily there was no time for blacking the yards, but at least everything that should be taut was tautened with tackles, Spanish buttons or just plain heaving staves, while the dirtier midshipmen were sent below to wash, while all were desired to brush their hair, change their shirts and put on gloves.

Aboard the Bellona every urgent measure had been taken and they were beginning the fine-work, such as whitening lanyards, when with real concern they saw the flagship round to and at once begin to lower down her barge. Captain Fanshawe was the senior captain present and his ship, the Admiral's natural victim, was seized with a renewed frenzy of zeal, her people hurrying about like ants in an overturned ant-hill: but they were mistaken. Very soon it became apparent that the barge was heading for Bellona, whose Royal Marine officers now conducted the most rapid and thorough-paced reviewof their 120-odd men in the history of the corps, finishing only when the barge, in answer to the wholly superfluous hail, replied 'Flag', and hooked on.