Patrick O'Brian: The Wine-Dark Sea

'Perhaps we shall,' said Jack. 'We should have steerage-way in about five minutes. But there is no hurry. She has few hands on deck, and those few cannot be called very brisk. I had much rather bear down fully prepared, so that there can be no argument, no foolish waste of life, let alone spars and cordage.'

Six bells, and Stephen said, 'I must go below.'

Jack gave him a hand as far as the ladder, and having urged him 'to clap on for dear life' asked whether they should meet for breakfast, adding that 'this unnatural hell-fire sea would go down as suddenly as it had got up.'

'A late breakfast? I hope so indeed,' said Stephen, making his way down by single steps and moving, as Jack noticed for the first time, like an old man.

It was after this late breakfast that Stephen, somewhat restored and by now reconciled to the fact that the dead marine animals were too far altered by heat, battering and sometimes by great change of depth to be valued as specimens, sat under an awning watching the Franklin grow larger. For the rest, he and Martin contented themselves with counting at least the main genera and rehearsing all that Dr Falconer had said about submarine volcanic activity, so usual in these parts; they had little energy for more. The wind had dropped, and a squall having cleared the air of volcanic dust, the sun beat down on the heaving sea with more than ordinary strength: the Surprise, under forecourse and main topsail, bore slowly down on the privateer, rarely exceeding three knots. Her guns were loaded and run out; her boarders had their weapons at hand; but their earlier apprehensions had died away entirely. The chase had suffered much more than they had; she was much less well equipped with stores and seamen; and she made no attempt to escape. It had to be admitted that with scarcely three foot of her main and mizen masts showing above deck and the foremast gone at the partners her condition was almost desperate; but she could surely have done something with the wreckage over the side, still hanging by the shrouds and stays, something with the spars still to be seen in her waist, something with her undamaged bowsprit? The Surprises looked at her with a certain tolerant contempt. With the monstrous seas fast declining the galley fires had been lit quite early, and this being Thursday they had all eaten a pound of reasonably fresh pork, half a pint of dried peas, some of the remaining Moahu yams, and as a particular indulgence a large quantity of plum duff; they had also drunk a quarter of a pint of Sydney rum, publicly diluted with three quarters of a pint of water and lemon-juice, and now with full bellies and benevolent minds they felt that the natural order of things was returning: the barky, though cruelly mauled, was in a fair way to being shipshape; and they were bearing down upon their prey.

Closer and closer, until the capricious breeze headed them and Jack steered south and west to run alongside the Franklin on the following tack. But as the Surprise was seen to change course a confused bawling arose from the Franklin and a kind of raft was launched over her side, paddled by a single man with a bloody bandage round his head. Jack let fly the sheets, checking the frigate's way, and the man, heaved closer by the swell, called, 'Pray can you give me some water for our wounded men? They are dying of thirst.'

'Do you surrender?"

The man half raised himself to reply - he was clearly no seaman - and cried, 'How can you speak so at such a time, sir? Shame on you.' His voice was harsh, high-pitched and furiously indignant. Jack's expression did not change, but after a pause in which the raft drifted nearer he hailed the bosun on the forecastle: 'Mr Bulkeley, there. Let the Doctor's skiff be lowered down with a couple of breakers in it.'

'If you have a surgeon aboard, it would be a Christian act in him to relieve their pain,' said the man on the raft, now closer still.

'By God..." began Jack, and there were exclamations all along the gangway; but as Stephen and Martin had already gone below for their instruments Jack said no more than 'Bonden, Plaice, pull them over. And you had better pass that raft a line. Mr Reade, take possession.'

Ever since this chase began Stephen had been considering his best line of conduct in the event of its success. His would have been a delicate mission in any event, since it presupposed activities contrary to Spanish interests in South America at a time when Spain was at least nominally an ally of the United Kingdom; but now that the British government had been compelled to deny the existence of any such undertaking it was more delicate by far, and he was extremely unwilling to be recognized by Dutourd, whom he had met in Paris: not that Dutourd was a Bonapartist or in any way connected with French intelligence, but he had an immense acquaintance and he was incurably talkative - far too talkative for any intelligence service to consider making use of him. Dutourd was the man on the raft, the owner of the Franklin, and the sequence of events that had brought about their curious proximity, separated by no more than twenty feet of towline, was this: Dutourd, a man of passionate enthusiasms, had like many others at the time fallen in love with the idea of a terrestrial Paradise to be founded in a perfect climate, where there should be perfect equality as well as justice, and plenty without excessive labour, trade or the use of money, a true democracy, a more cheerful Sparta; and unlike most others he was rich enough to carry his theories into something like practice, acquiring this American-built privateer, manning her with prospective settlers and a certain number of seamen, most of the people being French Canadians or men from Louisiana, and sailing her to Moahu, an island well south of Hawaii, where with the help of a northern chief and his own powers of persuasion, he hoped to found his colony. But the northern chief had misused some British ships and seaman, and the Surprise, sent to deal with the situation, destroyed him in a short horrible battle immediately before the Franklin sailed in from a cruise, a private ship of war wearing American colours. The chase had begun in what seemed another world; now it was ending. As the crowded boat rose and fell, traversing the last quarter of a mile, Stephen derived some comfort from the fact that during his earlier years in Paris he had used the second half of his name, Maturin y Domanova (Mathurin, spelt with an h but pronounced without it, having ludicrous associations with idiocy in the jargon of that time) and from the reflexion that it was much easier to feign stupidity than wisdom - although it might be a mistake to know no French at all he did not have to speak it very well.

'Bring the raft against the chains,' called Reade.

'Against the chains it is, sir,' replied Bonden; and looking over his shoulder he pulled hard ahead, judging the swell just so. The raft lurched against the Franklin's side, and she was so low in the water that it was no great step for Dutourd to go aboard directly. Two more heaves and Bonden hooked on. Dutourd helped Stephen over the shattered gunwale with one hand while with the other he swept off his hat, saying, 'I am deeply sensible of your goodness in coming, sir.' Stephen instantly saw that his anxiety had been quite needless: there was no hint of recognition in the earnest look that accompanied these words. Of course, a public man like Dutourd, perpetually addressing assemblies, meeting scores, even hundreds of people a day, would not remember a slight acquaintance of several years ago - three or four meetings in Madame Roland's salon before the war, at a time when his republican principles had already caused him to change his name from du Tourd to Dutourd, and then two or three dinners during the short-lived peace. Yet himself he would have known Dutourd, a curiously striking man, more full of life than most, giving the impression of being physically larger than he was in fact: an animated face, an easy rapid flow of speech. Upright: head held high. These thoughts presented themselves to his mind while at the same time he registered the desolation fore and aft, the tangle of sailcloth, cordage and shattered spars, the demoralization of the hands. Some few were still mechanically pumping but most were either drunk or reduced to a hopeless apathy.