Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

'Port the helm,' he cried, partly to ease the sail but much more to change the Nutmeg's course, which was now carrying her diagonally across the Corn�e's path.

'She don't steer, sir,' shouted Fielding over the roar of the chasers. 'Tiller-rope shot away and a ball between rudder and sternpost.'

Jack hailed the forecastle. 'Spritsail course and topsail. Cast off the buoy.' Then turning, 'Mr Crown, relieving-tackles directly. Mr Seymour, clew up to windward: cut the leeward robans: bundle all you can into the top.' He ran into the cabin and as the starboard-chaser fired and recoiled said 'Check her inboard.' He leaned far out and there was Richardson in his nightshirt, slung over the stern, up to his chin every time a sea overtook her, prising furiously at the ball with a handspike. 'Dick,' he called, 'has it pierced or is it wedged?'

'Mostly wedged, sir, between the upper pintle-strap and...' a rising smother of foam cut him short.

Withdrawing, Jack said 'Bonden, give me a bight of rope fast to the munnion. Tell bosun to haul the helm hard a-starboard the moment the tackles are shipped. Pass me a crow. Mr White, carry on.'

A moment later he was in the white boil of the wake. The massive crowbar sank him but with a hearty kick he rose to what surface there was and seized the pendant-chain hook as the Corn�e began a rolling broadside. Swinging himself under the overhang Jack heard one ball strike the Nutmeg's hull and then Mr White's stern-chaser deafened him. With one foot on the ring-plate and his left arm round the rudder he stabbed his crow into the space beneath the half-buried ball and tried to force it out while Richardson levered it from the other side. Wave after wave drowned them in foam for the Nutmeg was gathering way, and it seemed hopeless: Jack's strength was going fast. He was near losing his grip on the iron when the whole rudder to which they were so intimately attached gave a groan and moved slightly to larboard. A last wrench and the ball fell free.

They exchanged a nod, mouths shut tight against the flying sea, and Jack, dropping his bar, tried to climb aboard. His arms refused their duty and he hailed his coxswain. They

hauled him up, cruelly scraped against the counter; and then came Richardson, his leg streaming red from an unnoticed wound. They both sat, sodden and gasping, and Jack said 'Run her up, Bonden.' The gun slammed against the port and almost instantly fired.

As the smoke cleared Jack saw Fleming race in bawling 'Mr Fielding says she steers, sir.' At the same moment he saw the Corn�e begin her turn to close the growing distance and he said 'Thank you, Mr Fleming. Desire him to put her before the wind and to send me one of the waisters.' Then to Richardson 'Dick, how do you find yourself? '

'Perfectly well, sir, I thank you; I never felt it at the time. I think the pendant-hook must have caught me.'

The waister came in: touched his forehead. 'Jevons, give Mr Richardson a hand below. Dick, get yourself bound up: tell thc Doctor we are before the wind: and if he says you are to stay below, then you stay below.'

Richardson's answer as the waister heaved him up was lost in the crash of guns and a savage cheering. 'Hulled her amidships, sir,' called Mr White. 'I saw the splinters fly.'

Staring through what gap there was Jack saw the frigate plain, lit by the sun through a gap in the clouded east, and now three quarters on; the light caught the stream jetting from her starboard chain-pump.

He stood up, flexed his hands and arms and swarmed up the ladder to the quarterdeck: a scene of apparent confusion under the troubled sky. 'We have cleared away a spare yard, sir,' said Fielding, 'and the topsail is passing down as you see, but Seymour says the mast is too much injured.'

'Cut half way through a foot from the crosstrees, sir.'

The bosun reappeared. 'New tiller-ropes shipped, sir,' he said.

'Very good, Mr Crown: stand by to bend a sail to the crossjack yard.'

The Corn�e opened with her bow-chasers again, the plume of one ball drenching them. 'Aye aye, sir,' said the bosun at last, more amazed by the order than the splash, hearty though -it was. He had never bent a crossjack in his life.

'Mr Fielding, sway up fore and mizen topgallant masts.' The orders came fast, with no emphasis but with great authority: as soon as this strange sail was set and drawing and hammocks piped up, hands were to go to breakfast by half-watches: four picked hands at the wheel with Fielding himself at the con.

All this while the chasers had been barking at one another with no greater effect than pierced sails and some cut rigging, but by the time the crossjack was giving its almost unknown and potentially very dangerous thrust the Corn�e had made up the distance lost during her broadsides and she was gaining fast. Jack altered course to bring the wind from right aft to near enough her quarter for the crossjack not to becalm the maincourse: she gathered way at once. After ten minutes of very close attention and the setting of two more jibs he decided that their speeds were as nearly equal as he could expect without a maintopsail, and he told Seymour, in charge of the aftermost larboard carronades, and his two midshipmen to stand by. The Nutmeg had fine round buttocks and these carronades, trained as far aft as possible, could be brought to bear by a turn of no more than two points from the Nutmeg's present course.

He called down through the companion, now a shattered remnant of wood with splinters of glass in parts of the frame, 'Mr White, run out your gun, make all fast and give the larboard smashers play: Mr Seymour, we are about to put the helm a-lee. Fire as they bear; fire high; fire quick.' Crouching under the foot of the crossjack, that anomalous, inconvenient sail, he took the wheel himself.

Round she came, easy, moving faster, the hands too anxious about the strange sail's sheet and tack to worry about the Corn�e's chasers: round: and the first carronade went off, followed by two simultaneously. As Jack had expected the Corn�e put her helm hard over and answered with a full broadside; and as he expected it was not nearly so accurate as her first deadly shooting. How many times Seymour's division fired he could not tell, so confused was the sequence, but at one time he heard them roaring like maniacs for round-shot, their racks and garlands running low. 'I think it was six apiece, sir,' said Adams, standing there with an inkhorn in his buttonhole and a watch in his hand, taking notes.

The Corn�e did not fire again but resumed the chase, with the loss of two cables' lengths; but still she was bringing up the wind and still she had the advantage of the faster ebb.

And so they ran, mile after mile, the Corn�e perfectly aware that the Nutmeg had but to sway up a new maintopmast to outpace her, and perfectly determined that she should not do so. Again and again she yawed, fired a broadside and came on; and whenever she had a little advantage, as when the Nutmeg's damaged mizen topsail split and carried away, she fired first from starboard and then from larboard, with all the guns she possessed, making a terrible noise. Indeed, their whole progress along the Passage was marked by great flights of sea-birds startled from their ledges on the cliffs.

The Nutmeg usually answered with a jig and an almost equally noisy discharge of carronades, run out in astonishingly rapid succession - almost as many balls on the one side as the other. Upon the whole the Corn�e's gunnery was far less accurate - 'and it is scarcely surprising,' observed Jack to Fielding as he stood peeling an orange over the taffrail, 'for if they have been pumping like this all night I wonder they can run up their guns at all, let alone point them straight' - but five minutes after this stupid remark (for which he cursed himself), at the moment when at last they were about to sway up the new topmast - all laid along - and when the far end of the Passage was opening, the Corn�e, well within range, yawed and fired two careful, slow, deliberate broadsides that did much damage, above all by cutting the toprope itself and its attendant tackle so that the half-hoisted mast plunged straight down, piercing the deck and wrecking its carefully worked heel and fid-hole.