Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

The seamen - a savage looking crew with their long hair still wild about them - the seamen cheered, a strangely happy sound as the frigate glided in towards those embattled ships: roaring shouts, the clash of bitter fighting clear and clearer over the narrowing sea.

He stepped to the wheel, his heavy sword dangling from his wrist by a strap and he took her shaving in, his heart beating high and his face gleaming, until her yards caught in the Alastor's shrouds and the ships ground together.

'Follow me, follow me,' he cried, leaping across, and on either side of him there were Surprises, swarming over with cutlasses, pistols, boarding-axes. Bonden was at his right hand, Awkward Davies on his left, already foaming at the mouth. The Alastors came at them with furious spirit and in the very first clash, halfway across the deck, one shot Jack's hat from his head, the bullet scoring his skull, and another, lunging with a long pike, brought him down.

'The Captain's down,' shrieked Davies. He cut the pikeman's legs from under him and Bonden split his head. Davies went on hacking the body as the Franklins came howling down and took the Alastors in the flank.

There was an extremely dense and savage melee with barely room to strike - cruel blows for all that and pistols touching the enemy's face. The battle surged forward and back, more joined in, forward and back, turning, trampling on bodies dead and living, all sense of direction lost, a slaughter momentarily interrupted by the crash of the Franklin's carronade, turned and fired at last, but misfired, misaimed so that it killed many of those it was meant to help. The remaining Alastors came flooding back into their own ship, instantly pursued by Pullings' men, who cut them down from behind while the Surprises shattered them from in front and either side, for they had all heard the cry 'The Captain's down - they've got the Captain' and the fighting reached an extraordinary degree of ferocity.

Presently it was no more than broken men, escaping below, screaming as they were hunted down and killed: and an awful silence fell, only the ships creaking together on the dying sea, and the flapping of empty sails.

A dozen black slaves were found shut in the Alastor's orlop, as well as a few wretched little rouged and scented boys; and they were put to throwing the dead over the side. Long before they reached his part of the deck Jack Aubrey heaved himself from beneath three bodies and one desperately wounded man. 'It was as bloody a little set-to as ever I have seen,' he said to Pullings, sitting by him on the coaming, trying to staunch the flow from his wound and dabbing at his bloody eye. 'How are you, Tom?' he asked again. 'And how is the ship?'

Chapter Six

'It would be only with the greatest reluctance that I should consent to leave you,' said Stephen, sitting there in the Franklin's cabin.

'It is most obliging of you to say so, replied Jack with a hint of testiness, 'and I take it very kindly; but we have been through this many times and once again I am obliged to point out that you have no choice in the matter. You must go into Callao with the others as soon as everything is ready.'

'I do not like your eye, and I do not like your leg,' said Stephen. 'As for the scalp-wound, though spectacular it is of no great consequence. I dare say it will hurt for some weeks and your hair will go white for an inch or two on either side; but I do not think you need fear any complications.'

'It still makes me stupid and fretful at times,' said Jack, and then with the slightly false air of one who is deliberately changing the subject, 'Stephen, should Sam come aboard - of course it is very unlikely - why should he indeed, or even still be in Peru? But should he come aboard, pray give him my love, tell him that I hope to bring the Franklin in, and that we should be very happy if he would dine with us. And for the moment, I mean if he should come, which I doubt, please ask him what we can do with the blacks we took in Alastor. They are not seamen in any sense of the term and they are really no use to us at all. But they were slaves, and Peru is a slave country; so I do not like to put them ashore, where they may be seized and sold. I particularly dislike it since having been aboard an English ship they are now, as I understand it, free men. Quite how this squares with the slave-trade I cannot tell, but that is how I understand the law.'

'Sure, you are right: there was that case in Naples, where some slaves came aboard a man-of-war and wrapped themselves in the ensign. They were never given up. And in any case Government abolished the trade in the year seven. The law may be disobeyed; slavers may still sail. But they do so illegally, since Government certainly abolished the vile traffic.'

'Did they indeed? I was not aware. Where were we in the year seven?' He pondered for a while on the year seven, tracing back voyage after voyage, and then he said, 'By the by, I am sending in the Frenchmen who do not choose to carry on with us and who are not seamanlike enough for us to keep - I promised to pay them off in Callao, you remember - and now I come to think of it there is one in this ship' - they were sitting in the cabin of the Franklin, to which Jack had removed - 'who was an apothecary's assistant in New Orleans. He wished to stay, and he might be of some use to you, short-handed as you are. Martin found him quite helpful, I believe.'

'Then you must certainly keep him,' said Stephen.

'No,' said Jack in a determined voice. 'Killick has looked after me, under your orders, ever since before the peace. This man's name is Fabien. I shall send him over.' Stephen knew that argument would be useless; he said nothing, and Jack went on, 'I shall be sending a whole parcel of them over, those who wish to go.'

'You would never be sending Dutourd, at all?' cried Stephen.

'I had thought of doing so, yes,' said Jack. 'He sent me a polite little note, asking leave to make his adieux, thanking us for our kindness and undertaking not to serve again.'

'From my point of view it might be impolitic,' said Stephen.

Jack looked at him, saw that the matter had to do with intelligence and nodded. 'Are there any others you would object to?' he asked. 'Adams will show you a list.'

'Never a one, my dear,' said Stephen, and he looked at the opening door.

'If you please, sir,' said Reade, 'Captain Pullings sends his compliments, and all is laid along.'

'The Doctor will be with you directly,' said Captain Aubrey.

'In five minutes,' said Dr Maturin. He lifted the bandage over Jack's eye: he looked at the pike-wound. 'You must swear by Sophie's head to suffer Killick to dress both these places with their respective lotions and pommades before breakfast, before dinner, and before retiring: I have given him precise instructions. Swear.'

'I swear,' said Jack, holding up his right hand. 'He will grow absolutely insupportable, as usual. And Stephen, pray give Martin my most particular compliments. It was noble of him to try to come on deck to bury our people: I have never seen a man look so like death: gaunt, grey, sunken. He could barely stand.'

'It was not only weakness: he has lost his sense of balance entirely. I do not think he will regain it. He must leave the sea.'

'So you told me. Leave the sea... poor fellow, poor fellow. But I quite understand; and he must certainly go home. Now, brother, your boat has been hooked on this age. You will be much better by yourself for a while. I am afraid I have been like a bear in a whore's bed these last few days.'

'Not at all, not at all: quite the reverse.'

'As for Dutourd, Adams will reply to his note saying it is regretted his request cannot be complied with and he is required to remain aboard the Franklin. Compliments, of course, and a civil word about accommodation. And Stephen, one last word. Have you any notion of how long your business will keep you on shore? Forgive me if I am indiscreet.'