Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

'Never you mind the bloody covers,' said Jack, suddenly so angry with extreme weariness that it cowed even Killick. 'You and Grimshaw jump forward to the cabin next the bosun's: get a bed from Mr Adams, sling a hammock, and lay him in it. And have his sea-chest lighted along, d'ye hear me, there?'

Extreme weariness: it pervaded both ships, evening out the gloom of the defeated and the elation of the conquerors. Both sets of men would have resigned prize-money or freedom to be allowed to go below and take their ease. But it was not to be: the few able-bodied prisoners had to pump steadily to keep their ship clear, or haul on a rope at the word of command; and in both ships it was all hands on deck until enough canvas could be spread to allow them at least to lie to in something like safety if it came on to blow; for the glass was far from steady, and neither the midday nor the present evening sky was at all certain.

The only apparently idle hands in either ship were the medical men. They had returned to the frigate some time before; they had made the rounds of the sick-berth and its extensions and now they were waiting for a pause in the general activity, when someone would have time to pull Martin, who was to spend the night in the Franklin, across the lane of choppy water that separated the ships. Although both medicoes could row, after a fashion, neither could afford to have inept, clumsy fingers with so strong a likelihood of further surgery.

They were watching the extraction of the Franklin's broken lower masts and their replacement by a jury-rig, and from time to time Stephen explained the various operations. 'There, do you see,' he said, 'those two very long legs joining at the top with a pair of stout pulleys at the juncture and their feet resting on planks either side of the deck, are the sheers I was speaking about. See, the men haul them upright by a rope, perhaps even a hawser, running through yet another pulley, or block as I should say, to the capstan; while at the same time any undue motion is restrained by the - Mr Reade, what is the name of those ropes fore and aft and sideways?'

'Guys, sir; and those at the bottom of the sheers are tail-tackles.'

'Thank you, my dear. Let me advise you not to run in that impetuous manner, however.'

'Oh sir, if I did not run in this impetuous manner..."

'Mr Reade, there. Have you gone to sleep again?' called Pullings, very hoarse, very savage.

'Now, as you see, Martin, the sheers are quite upright: they let down the lower pulley - the bosun attaches it to the broken mast by a certain knot - he bids them heave, or haul - he encourages them with cries - with blows. Those must be the idle prisoners. The stump rises - it is detached, cast off - they bring the new spar -I believe it is one of our spare topmasts - they make it fast -up it rises, up and up and up until it dangles over the very hole, the partners as the mariner calls it - and yet with the motion of the ship how it wanders! - Mr Bulkeley seizes it - he cries out -they lower away and the mast descends - it is firm, pinned no doubt and wedged. Someone - it is surely Barret Bonden - is hoisted to the trestle-trees to place the rigging over the upper end in due order.'

'If you please, sir,' said Emily, 'Padeen says may Willis have his slime-draught now?'

'He may have it at the third stroke of the bell,' said Stephen. She ran off, her slim black form weaving unnoticed through gangs of seamen intent upon a great variety of tasks, too weary to be jocular, and Stephen said, 'If one, then all; and we have mere chaos.'

He had often said this before, and Martin only nodded. They watched in silence as the sheers moved forward to the stump of the Franklin's mainmast, fitting to it a curious object made up of yet another spare topmast and a hand-mast, the two coupled athwartships by two lower caps and a double upper cap above the refashioned maintop.

Stephen did not attempt to explain the course of this particular operation, which he had never seen before. Until now neither had spoken of West's death apart from their brief exchange in the sick-berth, but during a short pause in the hammering behind them and the repeated shouts from the Franklin Stephen said, 'I am of opinion that there was such damage to the brain that an even earlier, more skilful intervention would have made no difference.'

'I am certain of it,' said Martin.

'I wish I were," thought Stephen. 'Yet then again, what is gratifying to self-love is not necessarily untrue.'

The arduous fitting of the double cap went on and on: they watched in stupid, heavy-headed incomprehension.

'Such news, sir,'cried Reade, flitting by. 'The Captain is going to send up a lateen on her mizen. What a sight that will be! It will not be long now.'

The sun was nearly touching the horizon, and both over the water and in the Surprise the people could be seen coiling down and clearing away; the carpenters were collecting their tools; Stephen, sunk in melancholy thought, recalled his motions with that singular clarity which comes with certain degrees of tiredness and in some dreams. He could feel the vibration of his trephine cutting through the injured skull, an operation he had carried out many, many times without failure, the raising of the disk of bone, the flow of extravasated blood.

They were both far away in their reflexions and Stephen had almost forgotten that he was not alone when Martin, his eyes fixed on the prize, said, 'You understand these things better than I do, for sure: pray which do you think the better purchase for a man in my position and with my responsibilities, the Navy Fives or South Sea stock?'

Stephen was called out only twice that night; and his third sleep was of the most delicious kind, changing, evolving, from something not unlike coma to a consciousness of total relaxation, of mental recovery and physical comfort; and so he lay, blinking in the early light and musing on a wide variety of pleasant things: Diana's kindness to him when he was ill in Sweden; goshawks he had known; a Boccherini 'cello sonata; whales. But a steady, familiar, discordant noise pierced through this amiable wandering: several times he dismissed his identification as absurd. He had known the Navy for many years; he was acquainted with its excesses; but this was too wild entirely. Yet at last the combination of sounds, grinding, scrubbing, bucket clashing, water streaming, swabs driving the tide into the scuppers, bare feet padding and hoarse whispers just over his head could no longer be denied: the larboard watch and the idlers were cleaning the deck, getting all the volcanic dust and cinders from under gratings, gun-carriages and such unlikely places as the binnacle drawers.

Yet as his conscious mind accepted this so yesterday came flooding back, and the extravagance of the sailors' activity disappeared. Mr West had died. He was to be buried at sea in the forenoon watch, and they were seeing to it that he should go over the side from a ship in tolerably good order. He was not an outstandingly popular officer; nor was he very clever, either, and sometimes he did tend to top it the knob, being more quarterdeck than tarpaulin; but he was not in the least ill-natured - never had a man brought up before the Captain as a defaulter - and there was no question at all of his courage. He had distinguished himself when the Surprise cut the Diane out at St Martin's, while in this last affair at Moahu he had done everything a good, active officer could do. But above all they were used to him: they had sailed with him for a great while now: they liked what they were used to; and they knew what was due to a shipmate.

If there had been any danger of Stephen's forgetting, then the appearance of the deck when he came up into the sparkling open air and the brilliant light after his long morning round would have brought it all to mind. Quite apart from the fact that the waist of the ship, the part between the quarterdeck and the forecastle, where ordinarily he saw a mass of spare masts, yards and spars in general covered with tarpaulins on the booms, the boats nestling among them, was now quite clear, the spars nearly all used and the boats either busy or towing astern, which gave her a singular clean-run austerity - quite apart from this there had been an extraordinary change from the apparent confusion and real filth of yesterday to a Sunday neatness, falls flemished, brass flaming in the sun, yards (such as there were) exactly squared by the lifts and braces. But there was an even greater change in the atmosphere, a formality and gravity shown at one end of the scale by Sarah and Emily, who had finished their duties in the sick-berth half an hour before and who were now standing on the forecastle in their best pinafores looking solemnly at the Franklin, and at the other by Jack Aubrey, who was returning from her in the splendour of a post-captain, accompanied by Martin and rowed with great exactness by his bargemen.