Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

'This very ship was struck by a levin-flash off Penedo in the Brazils,' observed Stephen, 'and she lost the mast, the spar, the thing in front - the bowsprout. I was asleep at the time, and for a moment I thought we were in the midst of a fleet action, the noise was so great.'

'Was there anyone killed, Doctor?' asked Grainger.

'There was not.'

'Ah,' said William Sadler, 'my cousin Jackson was carpenter's crew in the Diligent when she was struck by forked lightning near the Island of a Thursday. Which three hands were killed in the maintop; and he said their bodies stayed warm till Sunday after church, when they were obliged to be put over the side.'

'The Repulse was laying off Spain in the year ten,' said Pullings. 'It was a Thursday too, and all hands had washed clothes. Towards evening clouds began to gather thick, and the watch below, afraid their laundry would be rained upon when the things were nearly dry, jumped aloft to take it in. There was a single flash, and seven dropped down dead on deck, while thirteen more were horribly burnt.'

'When Prince William had the Pegasus,' said Jack, 'a single stroke utterly destroyed her mainmast.'

General considerations on lightning followed this - most frequent between the tropics - certain trees more liable to be struck than others: willows, ash, solitary oaks to be avoided -sultry, oppressive weather favourable - tolerably common in the temperate zone - unknown in Finland, Iceland and Hudson's Bay - presumably even more unknown nearer to either pole, probably because of the northern lights. But these remarks together with speculation on the nature of the electric fluid were interrupted by the appearance of a roast sucking-pig, borne in on a splendid Peruvian silver dish, the rescued merchants' present to the Surprise, and set down according to custom before Dr Maturin, whose skill as a carver was intimately known to many of those present. The talk grew more cheerful: pigs at home, how best dressed - pigs, wild, on a remote island in the South China Sea, that had nourished Captain Aubrey and his people for a great while - a little tame black sow at Pullings' father's farm on the edge of the New Forest that would find you a basket of trubs, or truffles as some called them, in a morning, winking and grinning at you with each trub, never eating a single one herself.

By the time they reached the port the conversation was more cheerful still, the words 'homeward bound' recurring very often, with conjectures about the delightful changes to be seen in children, gardens, shrubberies and the like.

'My grandfather,' said Grainger, 'was sailmaker's mate in the Centurion when Commodore Anson took the Acapulco galleon in forty-three: he had his share of the one million, three hundred and thirteen thousand, eight hundred and forty-two pieces of eight they found in her - a figure I always remember -and that made him right glad, as you may well suppose; but when he learnt that now they were to steer for home he used to say it made him happier still.'

'Ha, ha,' cried Wilkins, somewhat flushed with his wine, 'homeward bound is very well, but homeward bound with a pocketful of prize-money is better still. Huzzay for the Horn!'

There was a good deal of cheerful noise at this, and more chuckling among the mess-attendants than was either right or decent; but Jack, recovering his gravity, shook his head, saying, 'Come, gentlemen, do not let us tempt Fate; do not let us say anything presumptuous that may prove unlucky. We must not sell the bear's skin before we have locked the stable door. And locked it with a double turn.'

'Very true,' cried Pullings and Grainger. 'Very true. Hear him.'

'For my part,' Jack went on, 'I shall not repine if we meet nothing off the Horn. We have to pass that way in any case; and if our hurry makes us no richer, why, it carries us home the sooner. I long to see my new plantations.'

'I do not like the prospect of this Horn,' said Stephen in a low voice, 'or all this haste to reach it. This is in every way a most exceptional year - cranes have been seen flying north over Lima! - and the weather down there is sure to be more disagreeable than ever.'

'But you have wonderful sea-legs, Doctor,' said Adams. 'And if we crack on we shall - we may - reach the height of the Horn at a capital time for the passage: barely a ripple, I have been told, with picnics on the island itself.'

'It is my collection I am thinking of,' said Stephen. 'Whatever you may say, the sea around the Horn is bound to be damp, whereas my collections come from one of the driest parts of the whole terraneous globe. They need very careful attention, acres of oiled silk, weeks of calm, patient care in describing, figuring, packing. Once they are tumbled and tossed unprepared, on the gelid billows, all is lost - their pristine glory is gone for ever.'

'Well, Doctor,' said Jack, 'some weeks I think I can promise you. Your cranes may have lost their heads, but the trades, or rather the anti-trades, have kept theirs, and they are blowing as sweetly as ever our best friends could wish.'

The promised weeks they had, weeks of pure sailing, with the Surprise slanting cross the prevailing wind and often logging two hundred sea-miles between one noon observation and the next: weeks of close, satisfying work for Stephen, who was delighted with Fabien's exact and beautiful watercolours of the many specimens still in their full glory; weeks of ardent sailoring for Jack, with evenings full of music: fresh fish over the side, and penguins in constant attendance. And when at last the anti-trades faltered and left them, within a day the even more favourable westerlies took over.

Those were idyllic weeks; but how difficult it was to remember them, to call them vividly to mind as an experienced reality, a fortnight after the ship had sailed into the true antarctic, and more than antarctic stream, the haunt of the wandering albatross, mollymauks in all their variety, the great bone-breaking petrel, the stinkpot and the ice-bird - had sailed into that green water at fourteen knots under topsails, fore-courses and a jib, impelled by an almighty quartering wind. The change was not unexpected. Well before this ominous parallel the frigate's people had been engaged in shifting, packing and storing her light sails and replacing them with much heavier cloth, with storm-canvas trysails and the like for emergency. Many a watch had been spent in sending up preventer backstays, braces, shrouds and stays and in attending to new earings, robands, reef-points, reef-tackles for the courses and spilling-lines for the topsails, to say nothing of new sheets and clewlines fore and aft. Then again all hands had rounded the Horn at least once, some many times, and they took their long woollen drawers, their mittens and their Magellan jackets very seriously when they were served out, while most of those who had had any foresight dug into their chests for Monmouth caps, Welsh wigs or padded domes with flaps to protect the wearer's ears and strings to tie beneath his chin.

This serving-out happened on a Tuesday in fine clear weather, a pleasant topgallant breeze blowing from the north-west, and it seemed almost absurd: on Friday the ship was tearing eastwards with four men at the wheel, snow blurring both binnacles, hatches battened down, and the muffled watch on deck sheltering in the waist, dreading a call to grapple with the frozen rigging and board-stiff sails.

Presently, in this incessant roar of sea and wind, and in this continual tension, the vision of the warm and mild Pacific faded, leaving little evidence apart from Stephen's collections, neatly labelled, noted and wrapped in oiled silk and then sailcloth, carefully packed into thoroughly watertight casks set up by the cooper, and stowed in the hold; and apart from the remarkable store of provisions Mr Adams had laid in. He had had a free hand; he was not bound by the pinch-penny rules of the King's service, since in her present state the Surprise was run on the privateer's tradition of the ship's own money, her personal reserve to be laid out in marine stores, food and drink, a stated share of all the prizes - a very handsome sum after the sale of the Franklin, the Alastor and the whalers - and she was sailing eastwards deep-laden with provisions of the highest quality, enough to last another circumnavigation.