Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

'Sir,' called Bonden. 'Two sail of ships on the larboard beam. No. A brig and a ship.'

'Where away?' asked Jack. His injured eye was now watering extremely in the icy breeze, blurring the sight of both.

'Which I've lost them now, sir,' said Bonden. 'The ship seemed a fair size: topsails and I think forecourse: but they come and go. Sometimes you would say a ship of the line, sometimes only a sloop.'

Silence. Blankness: grey trails of mist wafted through the rigging, leaving ice-crystals on every strand. Jack whipped a handkerchief over his poor eye, and he was still knotting the ends when an eddy tore something of a window in the fog. The China ships, all three of them now, could be seen quite plain: they had cleared the islands and they were well to the south of them, exactly where reason had foretold. But illogically the newcomers, though closer to, indeed between the Surprise and her quarry, were much vaguer, mere looming shapes.

Yet they were clear enough for Awkward Davies to bawl out, 'Now there are five of the poor unfortunate buggers. Five!' in an exulting roar, instantly suppressed; and Jack had a fleeting glimpse of gun-ports on the large vessel before they both merged in the grey ness once more, slightly darker forms that soon vanished entirely.

There followed a long period of total uncertainty, with the fog thickening, clearing, thickening again, and both lookouts confusing the object they reported, sometimes taking the brig for the ship or the other way about - the two vessels were moving quite fast in relation to one another - while even the experienced Bonden varied strangely about their size.

Jack saw virtually nothing. It seemed to him that these were almost certainly Spaniards, merchantmen bound for Valparaiso and to the northward; the larger one, if she was really as large as she sometimes seemed to be, a thousand tons and more, possibly for the Philippines. The row of gunports was neither here nor there: even if they were real that did not mean there were any guns behind them. Most merchantmen had a full array, real or painted, as some sort of a deterrent.

'Sail ho. Sail on the starboard bow, sir,' called Norton. Jack whipped round, saw the towering whiteness loom through the mist, thinning over there, and heard Norton cry, 'Oh no, oh no, sir. I'm sorry. It's an ice-island.'

Yes. And there was another beyond it, with more appearing in the south and the east as the fog grew patchy; and now the particular chill of a breeze blowing off ice was far more pronounced.

By this time the Surprise was perfectly well placed for her attack on the China ships. They were well beyond the islands, moving steadily a little south of west, and with the present breeze she could cross their wake under a moderate press of sail within an hour or so. The misty newcomers lay between the Surprise and her prey - she would probably pass within hail -and as he contemplated those vague forms, now remarkably large and even doubled by the odd reflexion from frozen mist particles coupled with what dim shadows they were capable of casting, it occurred to him that the ship might conceivably be a Spanish man-of-war sent to deal with the Alastor, news of her depredation having reached Cadiz. 'If that is the case,' he reflected, 'I shall ask Stephen to have a civil word with her.'

He leant over, meaning to tell Pullings to wear the ship round on to her new westward course, but even as he gathered his breath he heard that never-to-be-forgotten sound of falling ice as a mass the size of a parish church broke from the nearest island and plunged a hundred feet into the sea, sending up an immense turmoil of spray and leaping water, and he changed the order to that for tacking, a quicker operation altogether though much less economical in wear and tear and effort. "The sooner we are out of this the better,' he reflected, glancing astern at the huge forms moving steadily northwards through the fog, although they were already much further to the north than they had any right to be at this time of the year.

The ship was round on her new tack and gathering way; all had been coiled down and hands were laying out on the fore-topgallantyards when the brig showed dim on the larboard beam, then plainer and plainer.

'The brig ahoy,' hailed Jack in his powerful voice, now from the quarterdeck. No reply, but in the rapidly clearing air a great deal of activity could be made out.

'Colours,' said Jack to Reade, the signal midshipman; and then louder, very much louder, as the colours broke out, 'What ship is that? Que barco esta?'

'Noah's Ark, ten days out of Ararat, New Jersey,' replied the brig, with a cackle of maniac laughter. Her big fore-and-aft mainsail was hauled right aft, she heeled violently to leeward, her stern-chaser went off, sending a ball through the Surprise's forestaysail, and she vanished into the mist.

The Surprise replied at random. The crack of the single gun, a forecastle carronade, was still echoing to and fro between the curtains of fog when a second dark form heaved up on the starboard bow, grew rapidly distinct, and lit the remaining mist between them with a thundering broadside, eighteen crimson flashes. The guns had been fired on the downward roll and most of the shot fell short, but some hit the Surprise by ricochet, breaking through the hammocks in the netting and rolling across the deck: eighteen pound roundshot. The smoke swept to leeward, much of the mist with it, and clear and plain Jack saw a heavy American frigate, a thirty-eight-gun ship with a three hundred and forty-two pounds broadside, apart from her chasers and carronades.

The Surprise was hopelessly outgunned and with her small privateer's crew hopelessly outmanned; while there was also the brig-of-war ready to infest her disengaged side or rake her from astern. 'Fire as they bear,' cried Jack. He bore the helm up: the ship's head fell off from the wind: her starboard guns bore in succession and fired, each with accurate deliberation.

She had a surprising amount of way on her and in a quick aside Jack said, 'Tom, I am going to put her about if ever she will stay: do what you can.' Then aloud, 'Larboard guns: one round as they bear. Sail-trimmers away.' He put the helm over; the good ship responded, turning, turning, turning, dead into the wind. If she missed stays, if she fell off, all was lost. She turned yet, turning just beyond the crucial point, with hands madly flatting-in forward to help her, filled her jib and head staysails on the other tack and she was round: and the larboard guns were bearing, at point-blank range. The moment the last was fired and made fast the gun-crews all leapt to brace round and to haul aft the sheets that had been let go and to clear the horrible apparent confusion.

Jack gave the course east-north-east a half east, hoping to weather the nearest iceberg on his starboard bow, the only way out of this impossible encounter; and as soon as there were a few hands free he called, 'Topgallants and weather studding-sails,' while he and those he could gather together attended to the unloaded guns.

Although he was somewhat taken aback by this shockingly improper going-about, a manoeuvre that had brought the Surprise so close to his larboard bow that quite apart from the terrible effect of her round-shot, fragments of glowing wad had come aboard, lighting a spilt cartridge and causing an explosion, the American captain brought his ship round, spreading canvas at an extraordinary rate and steering a parallel course, somewhat to leeward, close-hauled to the strengthening wind, now at north-west.

Obviously he had made his turn later than Jack, which set him close on a mile behind and almost as much farther east; yet even so he thought he too might weather the ice-island, although it was moving steadily northwards. This particular island - for there were many others in sight, south and east - could now be seen as a whole in the increasing light, full two miles across, rising in steep crags and spires, green in general but ice-blue in the towering middle regions; and its northwestern point, the point which the Surprise must weather if she were to have any chance of escaping destruction, and the point for which the American was steering with such energy, ended in a sheer ice-cliff, much worn, fretted into pinnacles.