Patrick O'Brian: The Truelove

'If you please, sir,' said Reade, 'Mr West says the tide is on the turn.'

They waited until the gentle current had grown to a stream that gurgled round their stern and tightened the hawsers from ship to shore so that they rose above the surface, almost straight, in a low dripping curve, and the palm-trees, which acted as bollards, leant still more. 'Let go,' called Jack, and the two ships moved smoothly out through the narrows.

The wealth of precautions - tow-line to the launch anchored out in the bay to heave her head to windward if she sagged, hands poised to fend her off the rock, a complication of lines to the Truelove - proved unnecessary: they both passed through with ten yards to spare and instantly flashed out topsails to gather way enough to go about on their first leg. The Surprise had a remarkably clean bottom, even now, and she had always been brisk in stays; she came round easily. But Jack, watching the deep-laden bluff-bowed Truelove, had a horrible feeling that she was not going to manage it; and that since there was no room to box off, still less to wear, Tom Pullings would have to club-haul her: a perilous manoeuvre with an unknown crew. The critical moment passed, and with it his extreme anxiety: she filled on the starboard tack - she was round, and the Surprises would have joined the Trueloves' cheer - she was an uncommonly valuable prize - if Davidge's body had not been lying there, sewn up in a hammock with four cannon-balls at his feet and an ensign over him.

The next tack took them clear of the harbour, though the Truelove was within biscuit-toss of the headland. Tapia's sweetheart, who had kept pace in her canoe, said goodbye and he took the ship along the landward side of the reef and so through the dog-leg passage, the Truelove following. Here in the fading light they both heaved to the kind and steady wind. Aboard the Surprise the ship's bell tolled; Martin said the proper, deeply moving words; men from Davidge's division fired three volleys; and his body slid over the side.

They filled again, passed two small islands with their attendant reefs - Tapia pointed out their bearings against the dark peaks of Moahu - and then they were in the open sea.

Oakes took the first watch, and while he was on duty Stephen came on deck to breathe: the air of the sick-berth, in spite of the wind-sails, was uncommonly fetid. Apart from the heat and the numbers, two of the rescued Trueloves had shockingly neglected and mortifying wounds. Clarissa was sitting there in the light of the stern lantern and for a while they talked about the extraordinary phosphorescence of the sea -the wake stretched away in pale fire until it joined the Truelove's bow-wave - and the brilliance of the stars in the black black sky. Then she said 'Oakes was very deeply grieved not to be one of the landing-party; and I am afraid Captain Aubrey was sadly upset by - by the casualties.'

'He was indeed; yet you are to observe that if fighting-men, accustomed to battle from their youth, were to mourn for their companions as long as they might in civil life, they would run melancholy mad.'

Oakes came aft: he said 'Give you joy of our prize, Doctor. I have scarcely seen you since we took her. It is true that the Truelove's guns were all spiked?'

'So I understand: all but one. Tapia told me that Captain Hardy and his mates were spiking the last when the Frenchmen killed them.'

'How do you spike a gun?' asked Clarissa.

'You drive a nail or something of that kind down the touch-hole, so that the flash of the priming don't reach the charge. You can't fire the gun till you get the spike out,' said Oakes.

'It appears that they used steel spikes, which the Franklin's gunner could not deal with. He was going to try drilling new touch-holes when they went off in chase of the ship they are still pursuing,' said Stephen.

Two bells. 'All's well' called the lookouts round the ship, and Oakes went forward to receive the quartermaster's report of 'Six knots, sir, if you please' and to chalk it on the log-board. Coming back, he said 'I know it ain't genteel to talk about money, sir, but I must say the prize could not have come at a better moment for Clarissa and me.' He spoke with a touching earnestness, and by the light of the stern-lantern Stephen caught a look of tolerant affection on her face. 'All the hands are busy reckoning their shares. The Truelove's merchant's clerk told them the worth of the cargo to the last penny, and Jemmy Ducks says the little girls may get close on nine pounds apiece - they walk about scarcely touching the deck, and thinking of presents. You, sir, are to have a blue coat lined with white, whatever it may cost.'

'Bless them,' said Stephen. 'But I did not know they formed part of the ship's company.'

'Oh yes, sir. The Captain rated them boys, third class, long ago, so that Jemmy might have their allowance, to ease his spirits.'

'Oh!' cried Clarissa. 'What, what is this?' She held up a writhing viscous object.

'A flying squid,' said Stephen. 'If you count, you will find he has ten legs.'

'Even if he had fifty, he would have no business spoiling the front of my dress,' she said quite mildly. 'Fly off, sir' - tossing it over the rail.

With the breeze steady on their larboard quarter they went easily along under single-reefed topsails, sitting in their island of lantern-light surrounded by darkness, and talking in a desultory, amiable fashion bell after bell, while the wind sang in the rigging, the blocks creaked rhythmically and the ritual cries were repeated at their due intervals.

Half-way through the watch Oakes left them. 'I am happy to have this chance of speaking to you,' said Stephen, 'because I should like to ask you whether you would welcome the opportunity of going home - of returning to England."

'I have hardly thought about it,' said Clarissa. 'My only wish was to get away from New South Wales, away rather than to anywhere. I have not really thought at all. The present, with all its inconveniences, seemed to me the natural present; and if I had not with great perseverance contrived to make myself so generally disliked I could think of nothing better than sailing on and on and on.'

'Dear Clarissa, collect yourself. I must be back in the sick-berth very soon. Suppose Captain Aubrey were to send this prize away under the command of Mr Oakes, would you rejoice at the thought of seeing England again?'

'Dear Doctor, pray consider: of course I should like to be in England again, but I was transported, and if I were to return before my time I might be taken up and sent back again, which I could not bear.'

'Not, I believe, as a married woman; and if you were to keep away from St James's Street, the likelihood of your being recognized is less than that of your being struck by a thunderbolt. And even in that case I have connexions who are as it were lightning-conductors. I am speaking to you in this fashion, Clarissa, because I believe that you are a discreet and honourable woman, one. who has a friendship for me as I have a friendship for her, one who understands the value of silence. If you return, I will give you a letter to a friend of mine who lives in Shepherd Market, a good, decent man who would like to hear all that you told me and more and who would certainly protect you in the extraordinarily unlikely event of your being taken up.'

After a long silence Clarissa said 'To be sure, I had rather be in England than anywhere else. But what could I do there? As you know, a midshipman has no half-pay; and I could not go back to Mother Abbott's: not now.'

'No, no, never in life. There is not the least question of that, at all. Captain Aubrey has considerable influence with the Admiralty; my friend more still; and if between them they did not get Oakes a ship at once, he having passed for lieutenant, you would set up house with him for a while. If they succeed, why sure, you might feel lonely, as perhaps my wife does when I am at sea, and you might stay with her. She has a vast great house in the county - whatever county it is behind Portsmouth. Far too big for a woman and she alone apart from our little Brigid and a few servants and the horses. She breeds Arabians.' He spoke a little at random; Clarissa was clearly troubled, and she probably did not attend.