Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

To begin with the American, with his full man-of-war's complement of hands, had been able to spread more canvas in spite of the damage and slaughter of that brief point-blank engagement and to make up some of the lost distance; but now that the Surprises had set their gun-deck in order they evened the difference and both ships raced through the frigid sea with everything their masts could bear, bowlines twanging taut, both firing chasers as they ran.

Jack left the gunnery to Pullings and Mr Smith. He stood at the con, sailing the ship, getting every inch of windward distance out of the wind's thrust, calculating leeway, gazing at the fatal cliff with his good eye, feeling the pain in his heart as the bows and cutwater hit drifting ice, a terribly frequent sound and sometimes very dangerous. He dared not ship a protective bow-grace: he could not risk the slightest diminution of the frigate's speed.

It was with the horror of a nightmare that he saw the calm, doom-like motion of the ice-island. The vast bulk moved with the apparent ease of a cloud and the slight expanse of safe water to the windward of its tip was narrowing, narrowing every minute.

'Sir,' said Wilkins, 'the brig has altered course.'

Certainly: Jack had expected it. These turns and her own manoeuvres had brought the brig to the westward of both ships, on the Surprise's quarter and somewhat nearer to her than the heavy frigate; and for the last two miles she had been losing steadily. Now, in answer to a signal, she was bearing up with the evident intention of crossing the Surprise's stern and raking her, firing a broadside that would run the whole length of the ship. It was a bold move, since Jack had only to make a slight turn to larboard to bring his own broadside to bear and quite possibly sink her. But the time taken by even a slight turn, by the discharge and the falling off again to her true course would almost certainly make the Surprise lose her race against the iceberg's movement.

'My compliments to Captain Pullings,' he said, having looked fore and aft, 'and beg he will direct all his attention to the brig's foremast and yard.'

The stern-chase guns in the cabin below increased their rate of fire. Eight shots in rapid succession, and there was a triumphant roar. Jack turned, saw the brig shoot up into the wind, her square foresail down on deck, her fore-and-aft mainsail swinging her helplessly out of control. He nodded, but the real essence of the matter lay ahead: not half a mile ahead. With his good eye he could now gauge his leeway exactly against a long fissure in the ice. It would be a near-run thing, a damned near-run thing. He had the wheel under his hands, easing her very gently to the rise of each swell, urging her a trifle and still another trifle to windward, to the thin lane at the cliff's very foot itself. Not two cables now, and they were running at eight knots. There was no turning back.

'Sir,' said Wilkins again, 'the frigate ports her helm.' Again Jack nodded. She had been to the leeward of the Surprise from the beginning: now she had no chance whatsoever of weathering the point and she meant to hit the Surprise as hard as ever she could, crippling her before she was out of reach. He shrugged: his course was wholly committed now, and again he eased the helm, his eyes as intent upon the lane of green water as they might have been on a tall hedge with God knows what beyond, and he galloping towards it. He was aware of the whiter surf rising on the white ice at the cliff's foot, of a still whiter albatross crossing the swell, and even before he heard the American's broadside he was stunned and deafened by the enormous crash of ice falling from the cliff itself; he felt the ship's hull tremble and then grate on the iceberg's submerged outer shelf, and saw the mizenmast, shot through in two separate places, sway, break and go slowly over the side.

'Axes, axes," he roared. 'Cut all away. Cut clear, cut clear." Shrouds, backstays, rigging all whipped free; the ship ran past the ice-cliff, her mainyard scraping, past and beyond into the open water: sea-room and to spare for a good three miles. Ice-islands thick beyond.

She answered her helm perfectly: she was an entirely living ship: and there was a prodigious mass of ice between her and the enemies' guns. Jack was aware of some confusion in his mind: just in what order had things happened? Not that it signified. The ship was swimming in clear water. He sent Reade to ask the carpenter to sound the well and then looked for the destruction here on deck. There was surprisingly little. The mizen had gone as clean as a whistle, and the bosun, together with his mates, was knotting and splicing.

'What damage did it do among the people?" he asked Wilkins.

'None this last bout, sir. The ice missed us by a shaver.'

Pullings came aft, smiling, curiously talkative, a marline-spike in his hand. 'Give you joy of our passage, sir,' he said. 'At one moment I did not think she could do it, and my heart was fairly in my mouth. And then when the ice came down I said, "All up with you, Pullings, old cock" But, however, it missed.'

'You saw what happened?'

'Why, yes, sir. I had just put my head over the top of the ladder when the Yankee opened fire: deliberate shots at first -one hit the mizen below the hounds - and then when we were weathering the point and running clear, all her remaining guns at once, and some of their shots hit the ice, or perhaps it was just the concussion: anyway a thundering great steeple came down, a thousand ton, I dare say. I never seen the like nor heard it. Plunged into our wake, soaked one and all; and some odd fragments spoilt the gingerbread work on the taffrail.'

Jack perceived that he was indeed deeply soaked behind; and perhaps still somewhat shattered by the fantastic uproar. He said, 'How I regret the mizen. But a moment's attempt at saving it would have brought us right on the ice. As it was we scraped most horribly, and I tremble for our copper. Yes, Mr Reade?'

'If you please, sir, Chips says..."

'What was that, Mr Reade?'

'Beg pardon, sir. Mr Bentley says two inches in the well, no more.'

'Very good. Tom, we must put before the wind or close on until we can ship a jury-mizen. Pick our oldest whale-men and send them into the crow's nest one after another to pick us a way through the ice: there is a terrible quantity to leeward. Let a stout bow-grace be prepared; and since we are not likely to see that big fellow' - nodding westwards - 'until he has gone about twice, let the galley fires be lit and all hands fed.'

'He may consider it his duty to hurry back and protect his convoy,' said Pullings.

'Let us hope he has a very strong sense of duty, an overwhelming sense of duty," said Jack.

** *

In fact the big American did not round the point until well on in the afternoon. The devoted brig had not only lost her yard, shot through in the slings, but had also stopped a nine-pounder ball just under the waterline and sprung a butt: water and pieces of ice were pouring into her. By this time the Surprise, keeping the wind one and two points on her starboard quarter as far as the ice allowed it, had travelled ten miles in a straight line -more of course when her deviations to avoid icebergs and close-packed ice-fields were counted - and it was from this distance, the fog having largely cleared, that at last her lookout saw the big American. Yet she too would have to thread those devious channels and circumvent the same islands, and Jack sat down to his belated dinner with as easy a mind as was compatible with the loss of a mast, the presence of an active and enterprising enemy, and of an unconscionable amount of ice ahead in the form of floating islands or massive floes.

He had already been down to the sick-berth to see the very moderate casualties - two splinter wounds, one of them the invariably unfortunate Joe Plaice; one man struck into a coma by a falling block but not despaired of; one man with toes and metatarsals crushed by a recoiling gun - and he had told Stephen that dinner would be ready by eight bells, adding, 'Four o'clock, you know,' in case he did not.