Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

This was just as well, for after a few days of the first icy blow, when the deathly chill had worked right into the whole ship from keelson to cabin, all hands began to eat with far more than usual eagerness. Their hunger persisted, since the roaring westerly storm had sent the ship a great way, at great speed, south and east into the high fifties, a cold region at the best and now even colder in this unusual year, even without a wind: frequent rain; even more frequent sleet and snow; most hands wet most of the time; all of them always cold.

In such very thick weather observation was impossible for days on end, and in spite of his chronometers and well-worn sextant, and of the presence of three other expert navigators aboard, Jack could not be sure of his longitude or latitude, dead-reckoning in such wind and seas being wonderfully uncertain. He therefore reduced sail, and the frigate moved eastwards at an average of no more than three knots, sometimes under bare poles or with a mere scrap of sail right forward to give her steerage-way when the wind blew a full gale from the west. Yet there were also those strange antarctic calms, when the albatrosses (and half a dozen followed the Surprise, together with some Cape pigeons and most of the smaller petrels) sat on the heaving sea, unwilling or unable to rise; and during two of these the drum beat to quarters, as it had done all the way south from Valparaiso, and the gun-crew exercised their pieces, housing them warm, dry and new-charged, with the touch-hole covered and the tompions doubly waterproofed with grease, ready for instant service.

It was after the second of these exercises - two fine rippling broadsides, almost up to the old Surprise's astonishing accuracy and speed - that the sky cleared and Jack had a series of perfect observations of first the sun, then Achernar, and later Mars himself, positions that were confirmed by the other officers and that showed that in spite of this dawdling their initial zeal had brought them almost to the rendezvous far too soon. The China ships intended to pass south of Diego Ramirez with the full moon, and in her present stage she was only three days old: that would mean a great deal of beating to and fro in the most inhospitable seas known to man, with no more than a passable likelihood of success after all. Quite apart from the unpredictable winds, foul weather or fair, state of the sea and so on, merchantmen on such a voyage never attempted any great accuracy of movement.

'We shall have to stand off and on until well past the full,' said Jack at supper - fish soup, a dish of sweetbreads, Peruvian cheese, two bottles of Coquimbo claret - 'The full of the moon, of course.'

'An uninviting prospect,' said Stephen. 'Last night I was unable to control my 'cello because of the erratic jerking of the floor, and this evening most of my soup is spread on my lap; while day after day men are brought below with cruel bruises, even broken bones, and are falling from the frozen ropes above or slipping on the icy deck below. Do you not think it would be better to go home?'

'Yes. It often occurs to me, but then my innate nobility of character cries out, "Hey, Jack Aubrey: you mind your duty, d'ye hear me there?" Do you know about duty, Stephen?'

'I believe I have heard it well spoken of.'

'Well, it exists. And apart from the obvious duty of distressing the King's enemies - not that I have anything against Americans: they are capital seamen and they treated us most handsomely in Boston. But it is my duty. Apart from that, I say, we also have a duty to the officers and the foremast jacks. They have brought the barky here in the hope of three China ships, and if I call out, "Oh be damned to your three China ships" what will they say? They are not man-of-war's men; and even if they were..."

Stephen nodded. The argument was unanswerable. But he was not quite satisfied. 'As I was stuffing a green Andean parakeet this afternoon,' he said, 'another thought came to me. As you say, the Americans are capital seamen: they beat us hollow in the Java, and carried us prisoners away. Do you not feel that attacking three of their China ships is somewhat rash? Does it not smack of that pride which goeth before destruction?'

'Oh dear no. These are not solid great Indiamen, these are not thousand-ton Company's ships that you could take for men-of-war, nor anything like it. They are quite modest private merchantmen with a few six-pounders and swivels and small-arms, just to beat off the pirates of the South China Sea: they have nothing like the very heavy crew of a man-of-war, above all an American man-of-war, and they could not fire a full broadside even if they carried the guns, which they don't. No. In the unlikely event of their keeping all together and manoeuvring just so, they must still fall victims to even a quite small frigate capable of firing three well-directed hundred and forty-four-pound broadsides in under five minutes.'

'Well,' said Stephen. And then, 'If we must wait for your more or less mythical Chinamen, if we must wait until your sense of duty is satisfied, may we not go just a little way south, just to the edge of the ice? How charming that would be.'

'With all due respect, Stephen, I must tell you that I utterly decline to go anywhere near any ice whatsoever, however thin, however deeply laden with seals, great auks, or other wonders of the deep. I hate and despise ice. Ever since our mortal time with the ice-island in the horrible old Leopard, I have always sworn never to give it any countenance.'

'My dear,' said Stephen, pouring him another glass of wine, 'how well a graceful timidity does become you.'

** *

Stephen Maturin had little room to prate about timidity. In the relatively tranquil forenoon watch of the following day Captain Aubrey caused a crow's nest, in the whaler's manner, to be set up on the main topmast head, a crow's nest stuffed with straw, so that the lookout should not freeze to death. Dr Maturin having publicly expressed a wish to see farther to the south in case, on this clear day, ice might be visible, Jack, in the presence of his officers and several hands, invited him to take a view from this eminence: Stephen looked at the masts (the ship was rolling twenty-one degrees and pitching twelve) and blenched, but he lacked the moral courage to refuse and within minutes he was rising through the maze of rigging, rising on a double whip with several turns about his person and a look of contained horror on his face. Bonden and young Wedell steered him through the shrouds and backstays and their reinforcements, Jack preceded him by foot, and between them they got him safe into the nest.

'Now I come to think of it,' said Jack, who had meant no harm at all, 'I do not believe you have ever been aloft with the ship a little skittish. I hope it don't make you uneasy?'

'Not at all,' said Stephen, glancing over the edge at the absurdly distant white-streaked sea immediately below on the starboard roll and closing his eyes again. 'I like it of all things.'

'I am afraid you will not see much in the south,' said Jack. He pointed his telescope and kept it fixed while the mast upon which he was poised went through its gyrations, swinging his pigtail left and then right and then straight out behind.

Watching it as he lay there coiled in the straw, Stephen asked, 'How much do you suppose we move, at all?'

'Well,' said Jack, still sweeping the southern rim of the world, 'we are rolling about twenty degrees and pitching let us say twelve: so at this height the roll should carry us some seventy-five feet and the pitch forty-five. And we describe a tolerably angular ellipse. Are you sure it don't worry you?'

'Never in life,' said Stephen, bringing himself to look over the edge again: and having looked, 'Tell me, brother, do people ever come this way voluntarily? I mean, apart from those that ply up and down the American coast?'