Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

He did, however, and at the first stroke he walked eagerly in, wiping his hands. 'I am so sorry if I have kept you, but I had to take that foot off after all: such a mass of comminuted bone. Pray tell me how we do.'

'Pretty well, I thank you. The American is ten miles astern, and I do not think he can possibly come within range before nightfall. Allow me to give you a piece of this fish, a cousin to the cod, it seems.'

'They tell me we have lost a mast. Will this impede our progress to any fatal degree - will it reduce our pace by say a third?'

'I hope not. When we are sailing large the mizen makes surprisingly little difference; and less than you might think close-hauled. With a side-wind the balance would be upset and she would fall off sadly: I should not like to be chased by a herring-buss in the open ocean with a strong side wind. But I hope that the westerlies or south-westerlies will go on blowing until some lingering notion of responsibility makes the captain of that frigate turn back to his convoy.'

'I do not believe those ships were his convoy: I believe there was a chance meeting in say the river Plate, no more. But it makes little odds, since I am convinced he will protect them now. My dear, you look sadly done up; and your appetite has failed you. Drink up another glass of wine and breathe as deeply as you can. I shall give you a comfortable dose tonight."

'No, Stephen: many thanks, but it would not do. I shall not turn in; nor I shall not heave to, neither. I dare not let that cove - a determined and bloody-minded cove if ever there was one -creep up on me in the night. Coffee is more the mark than a dose, however comfortable and kindly intended. Let us toy with these chops. I do love a dry chop, a really well-dried mutton chop, turned twice a day.'

The well-dried chops sustained him all that night, which he spent in the crow's nest, kept if not warm then at least preserved from death by a sequence of whalers and refreshed every other hour by the truly devoted Killick or his mate who came aloft in mittens, holding a villainous tin pot of coffee, slung by a loop, in their teeth.

A fairly clear night, particularly at ten or twenty feet above the surface; a moderate swell for these parts; and above all the blessed moon, only just past the full and as brilliant as extreme cold could make her. The watch on deck, muffled in their Magellan jackets, with flannel shirts over their heads, stood by to shove off floating slabs of ice with what spars the ship still possessed; and so, with the whalers advising what lanes to take, the Surprise groped her way cautiously eastwards and as far north of east as ever she could manage. In spite of the stout bow-grace and the zeal of those employed in shoving-off, she received some wicked strokes from thick, deep-swimming floes, and several times the high-perched Jack Aubrey trembled for his nest - literally trembled with extreme cold, weariness and the grave tension of guiding his ship through this potentially mortal maze: he was no longer a young man.

By the strange sunrise he was older still: a sun rising in a clear sky that presently grew light sapphire blue, while the sea took on a deeper tinge and the ice-islands showed at some points pure rosy pink and at others bright ultramarine. But there, at seven miles or less, considerably farther south, lay the dogged American. In this light her hull looked black; and she had already begun to set more sail.

Jack swung over the side of the crow's nest, and as he gripped the topmost shrouds his frozen hand slipped on the coat of ice: he would have fallen but that his legs, so long at sea, instantly whipped round the shroud below and held him for the vital moment.

On deck he said, 'Tom, when the hands have had their breakfast let us shake out our reefs and set the foretopgallant. Look at that fellow' - nodding southwards - 'he has studdingsails both sides, aloft and alow.'

'I dare say he has a clear stretch of water, for the moment; but I must say the ice-field looks right solid down there,' said Pullings hopefully, and they both staggered as the Surprise struck yet another heavy floe.

There was a hanging stove lit in the cabin, still more coffee, endless eggs and bacon, toast, a creditable Peruvian orange marmalade. Jack, stripped to his waistcoat, absorbed these things and the warmth; but he had little conversation, merely observing that he had seen an albatross, several seals, and a most prodigious whale. Stephen spoke, in a desultory fashion, about ice-islands, and the sudden change in colour at the point of cleavage when some great mass fell into the sea. 'This I have observed in a telescope,' he said, then paused, for Jack's head was sinking on his breast.

'If you please, sir,' cried Reade, bouncing in, alive with youthful joy, 'Captain Pullings says would you like to step on deck.'

'Eh?' asked Captain Aubrey.

Reade said it again and Jack heaved himself up, all seventeen stone. Reade led him blinking aft, passed him a telescope and said, 'There, sir: directly to windward.'

Jack gazed, changed the glass to his good eye, gazed again, his tired face lighting with a great smile; he stamped upon the frozen deck, and cried, 'He counted his chickens without his host, by God! Ha, ha, ha!' for the big frigate lay motionless, her sails brailed up; and she was getting her boats over the side. 'On deck, there,' hailed the lookout, one of the Surprise's whale-men. 'Sir, she's gone down a lane in the ice-field, a blind alley, like. A no-thoroughfare, ha, ha, ha. And she'll have to tow back three miles into the wind's eye, oh ha, ha, ha!' And in something of an undertone to his mate at the foremast head, 'Oh, won't he cop it, that poor bleeding sod of a lookout of theirs, ha, ha!'

The distant ship fired a gun to leeward, sending up a cloud of antarctic skuas from a dead and drifting whale.

'The enemy has fired a leeward gun, sir, if you please,' reported the signal midshipman.

'You astonish me, Mr Reade,' said Jack. 'And now, I perceive, she is throwing out a signal. Be so good as to read it.'

Norton stepped forward; Reade rested the telescope on his shoulder, focused, and said, 'Alphabetic, sir: our alphabet. H,A,P,P,Y R,E,T,U,R,N, sir.'

'Come,' cried Jack, 'that's handsome. Reply Same to you. Who is their president, Tom?'

'Mr Washington, I believe,' said Pullings, after some thought.

'Compliments to Mr Washington would be too long by far. No, leave it at that, Mr Reade; and give him a gun in return. Tom,' he went on, 'let us not crack on at all, but proceed east-north-east at a walking-pace until we are out of this infernal ice. Let us not rush upon our doom like a parcel of mad lunatics or gabardine swine. A walking-pace, Captain Pullings; and in the afternoon we will start work on a jury-mast.'

In his happy ease of heart he now went straight to sleep in the warm cabin, never moving until dinner-time, when he woke, fresh and clear-headed, aware that the ship had touched no ice for some hours; he took a turn on deck, observed that although the sky was murky in the north-east the sea was as open as the Channel except far, far to the south, where ice and the reflexion of ice could still be seen, with great islands cutting the horizon, and paced the quarterdeck until he heard his steward's shrewish, barely respectful, complaining voice: 'Which the cook says ain't he ever coming, what with everything going cold, spoilt and ruined?'

After dinner Jack, Pullings and Mr Bentley conferred about the jury-mizen; and now it was found just how grievous the loss of spars in the recent blow had been. Though the ship was heavy with prize-goods such as ambergris and cloth of gold taken from the Alastor, with specie, mostly chests of silver, and with provisions of a quantity and above all a quality to make a flagship stare, she had scarcely a stick to call her own.