Patrick O'Brian: The Wine-Dark Sea

The groaning from a man against the side grew almost to a scream. 'Oh, oh, oh. Forgive me, mates; I can't bear it. Oh, oh, oh, oh..."

'Mr Martin, pray see what you can do," said Stephen. 'Sarah, my dear, give me the silk-thread needle.'

As she passed it Sarah said in his ear, 'Emily is frightened.'

Stephen nodded, holding the needle between his lips. He was not exactly frightened himself, but he did dread misplacing an instrument or-probe. Even down here the ship was moving with a force he had never known: the lantern swung madly, with no sort of rhythm now; and he could scarcely keep his footing.

'This cannot go on,' he murmured. But it did go on; and as he and Martin worked far into the night that part of his mind which was not taken up with probing, sawing, splinting, sewing and bandaging heard and partly recorded what was going on around him - the talk between the hands treated or waiting for treatment, the news brought by fresh cases, the seamen's interpretation of the various sounds and cries on deck.

'There's the foretopmast gone.'

A long discussion of bomb-vessels and the huge mortars they carried: agreement: contradiction.

'Oh for my coca-leaves,' thought Stephen, who so very urgently needed a clear sharp mind untouched by sleep, and a steady hand.

The maintop was broken, injured or destroyed; but the half-heard voices said they should have had to get the topmast down on deck anyhow, with such a sea running and the poor barky almost arsy-versy every minute... poor sods on deck... it was worse than the tide-race off Sumburgh Head... 'This was the day Judas Iscariot was born,' said an Orkneyman.

'Mr Martin, the saw, if you please: hold back the flap and be ready with the tourniquet. Padeen, let him not move at all.' And bending over the patient, 'This will hurt for the moment, but it will not last. Hold steady.'

The amputation gave place to another example of these puzzling lacerated wounds; and Reade came below followed by Killick with a covered mug of coffee.

'Captain's compliments, sir,' said Reade, 'and he thinks the worst may be over: stars in the south-south-west and the swell not quite so pronounced.'

'Many thanks, Mr Reade,' said Stephen. 'And God bless you, Killick.' He swallowed half the mug, passing Martin the rest. 'Tell me, have we been severely pierced? I hear the pumps have been set a-going, and there is a power of water underfoot.'

'Oh no, sir. The masts and the maintop have suffered, but the water is only the ship working, hauling under the chains so her seams open a little. May I ask how Mr West comes along, and Wilcox and Veale, of my division?'

'Mr West is still unconscious. I believe I must open his skull tomorrow. We took Wilcox's fingers off just now: he never said a word and I think he will do well. Veale I have set back till dawn. An eye is a delicate matter and we must have daylight.'

'Well, sir, that will not be long now. Canopus is dipping, and it should be dawn quite soon.'

Chapter Two

A reluctant dawn, a dim blood-red sun; and although the sea was diminishing fast it was still wilder than most sailors had ever seen, with bursting waves and a still-prodigious swell. A desolate ocean, grey now under a deathly white, rolling with enormous force, but still with no life upon it apart from these two ships, now dismasted and tossing like paper boats on a millstream. They were at some distance from one another, both apparently wrecks, floating but out of control: beyond them, to windward, a newly-arisen island of black rock and cinders. It no longer shot out fire, but every now and then, with an enormous shriek, a vast jet of steam leapt from the crater, mingled with ash and volcanic gases. When Jack first saw the island it was a hundred and eighty feet high, but the rollers had already swept away great quantities of the clinker and by the time the sun was clear of the murk not fifty feet remained.

The more northern of the ships, the Surprise, was in fact quite well in hand, lying to under a storm trysail on her only undamaged lower mast, while her people did all that very weary men could do - it had been all hands all night - to repair her damaged maintop and to cross at least the lower yard. They had the strongest motives for doing so, since their quarry, totally dismasted and wallowing gunwales under on the swell, lay directly under their lee; but there was no certainty that helpless though she seemed she might not send up some kind of a jury-rig and slip away into the thick weather with its promise of blinding squalls.

'Larbolines bowse,' cried Captain Aubrey, watching the spare topmast with anxious care. 'Bowse away. Belay!' And to his first lieutenant, 'Oh Tom, how I hope the Doctor comes on deck before the land vanishes.'

Tom Pullings shook his head. 'When last I saw him, perhaps an hour ago, he could hardly stand for sleep: blood up to the elbows and blood where he had wiped his eyes.'

'It would be the world's pity, was he to miss all this,' said Jack. He was no naturalist, but from first light he had been very deeply impressed not only by this mineral landscape but also by the universal death all round as far as eye could see. Countless fish of every kind, most wholly unknown to him, lay dead upon their sides; a sperm whale, not quite grey, floated among them; abyssal forms, huge squids, trailing half the length of the ship. And never a bird, never a single gull. A sulphurous whiff from the island half-choked him. 'He will never forgive me if I do not tell him,' he said. 'Do you suppose he has turned in?'

'Good morning, gentlemen,' said Stephen from the companion-ladder. 'What is this I hear about an island?' He was looking indescribably frowzy, unwashed, unshaved, no wig, old bloody shirt, bloody apron still round his waist; and it was clear that even he felt it improper to advance to the holy place itself.

'Let me steady you,' said Jack, stepping across the heaving deck. Stephen had dipped his hands but not his arms, and they looked like pale gloves against the red-brown. Jack seized one, hauled him up and led him to the rail. 'There is the island,' he said. 'But tell me, how is West? And are any of the others dangerously hurt?'

'West: there is no change, and I can do nothing until I have more light and a steadier basis. As for the others, there is always the possibility of sepsis and mortification, but with the blessing I think they will come through. So that is your island. And God help us, look at the sea! A rolling, heaving graveyard. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Whales: seven, no eight, species of shark: scombridae: cephalopods... and all parboiled. This is exactly what Dr Falconer of the Daisy told us about - submarine eruption, immense turbulence, the appearance of an island of rock or cinders, a cone shooting out flames, mephitic vapours, volcanic bombs and scoriae - and I never grasped what was happening. Yet there I had the typical lacerated wounds, sometimes accompanied by scorching, and the evidence of heavy globular objects striking sails, deck, masts, and of course poor West. You knew what was afoot, I am sure?'

'Not until we began knotting and splicing at first light,' said Jack, 'and when they brought me some of your bombs - there is one there by the capstan must weigh fifty pound - and showed me the cinders the rain had not washed away. Then I saw the whole thing plain. I think I should have smoked it earlier if the island had blazed away good and steady, like Stromboli; but it kept shooting out jets, quite like a battery of mortars. But at least I was not so foolishly mistaken about the Franklin. There she lies, right under our lee. You will have to stand on the caronnade-slide to see her: take my glass.'

The Franklin was of infinitely less interest to Dr Maturin than the encyclopaedia of marine life heaving on the swell below, but he climbed up, gazed, and said, 'She is in the sad way altogether, with no masts at all. How she rolls! Do you suppose we shall be able to catch her? Our sails seem somewhat out of order.'