Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

At his side Adams looked like a drowned rat - they all looked like drowned rats: there was no point in putting on so much as a sou'wester in this milk-warm flood. 'Sir,' said Adams into his inclined ear, 'I beg pardon, but Mr Fielding said I might speak to you, seeing it was a special case. The gunner is to make up his books, and he is sadly troubled about the crow lost overboard: does not like to ask, but would esteem it a favour, was you to give him a certificate, countersigned by yourself as purser and master, and then by Mr F.'

A wholly extravagant triple peal with a reek of sulphur intervened, but when it was over Jack said quite mildly 'Put me in mind of it when I am signing papers.'

This prodigious clap was the end of the squall. The thunder passed away to leeward, a distant rumble; the rain thinned, cleared, and there, five hundred yards ahead, was the Surprise lying-to, bright in the clean-washed air. But she lay-to alone. In the broad sunlit Passage there was no other ship at all: the coast to larboard, the horizon ahead and to starboard, and no other ship on the sea.

His astonishment lasted hardly long enough to name it. All those boats around the Surprise, more than any one frigate could carry, and the fact that she was taking men in by the score on either side and by the stern ladder meant that the Corn�e had foundered. The telescope showed him men being slung up, almost inanimate - uniformed men.

'Mr Seymour, lower down a boat, any boat that will swim,' he said and hurried below, calling out for some kind of a decent coat, hat, breeches. And recalling that the Surprise was after all Stephen's private property, he sent to ask whether he chose to go across, adding that 'at present the sea was rather rough'. The midshipman came back with Dr Maturin's compliments, but at the moment he and Mr Macmillan were engaged on an urgent task. 'They were going at it with a saw, sir,' said Bennett, still pale and queasy.

The only boat undamaged after the long cannonade was the small cutter: it carried him across the sea to the side and the steps he knew so well. The Surprise had already shipped man-ropes and white-gloved side-boys; she received him in style, and there was a spontaneous, disorganized but hearty cheer as he ran up to the gangway, where Tom Pullings greeted him with an iron grip. 'She foundered, sir,' he said. 'We saw her getting her boats over the side as we came out of the squall: she was up to her port-sills, and as they pulled away she put her bows under a head-sea and slid down like she was sailing. We picked up a rare lot swimming about and clinging to hen-coops. But here is her commanding officer, sir: succeeded his captain in the action. He speaks English and I told him he. was to surrender to you.'

He turned with a gesture of introduction and there among the group of officers, British and French, over to leeward, was Jean-Pierre Dumesnil; he came forward pale and almost dead with fatigue, offering his sword.

'Jean-Pierre!' cried Jack, advancing to meet him, 'By God, I am so happy to see you. I was afraid that... No, no. Keep your sword and give me your hand.'

Chapter Seven

"No, no. Keep your sword and give me your hand," I said; and perhaps that may sound rather like Drury Lane, when the fellow in pink breeches and a plumed helmet raises his fallen enemy and the still-room maid is found to be the Duke's daughter, but at the time I do assure you it came quite natural. I was so very glad to see him. If you have had the long letter that Raffles promised to put aboard the next Indiaman you will know who I mean, Jean-Pierre Dumesnil, the nephew of that Captain Christy-Palliere who captured me when I had the Sophie and who treated me so well - the nephew I met in Pulo Prabang, changed from a little fat midshipman to a tall thin young officer, second of the Corn�e. I thought him a fine young fellow then, and I think him an even finer fellow now. (I beg you will look in the bottom right-hand drawer of the black scrutoire and find the direction of his Christy cousins: I think they live in Milsom Street. He went to Dr Hall's school in Bath during the peace and he often stayed with them -desires his duty and most affectionate greetings; and you will tell them he is quite unhurt.) During the engagement one of our thirty-two pounders played Old Harry on the Corn�e's quarterdeck, leaving Jean-Pierre in command, and another caused her to spring a butt low down in her bows. She made so much water that pumping day and night they could only just keep her free, even with a following wind. Yet for all that, and in spite of being short-handed, he fought his ship nobly. He might even have had us, if we had not met the Surprise in the mouth of the Passage with four ships in company - Tom Pullings had heard the sound of gunfire long before daylight and had come tearing down from his station well to the north. The four came into sight round a headland first, wearing

American colours, and I said "Why, Jack, you are between the Devil and the deep blue sea," meaning the Corn�e's devilish eighteen-pounders behind me and the concentrated fire of an American squadron in front and no sea-room to manoeuvre. But then I saw the dear Surprise appear - Lord, what joy! -and I threw out the signal to chase to the north-west.

'Clearly, five against one was not fair odds, so Jean-Pierre hauled his wind in the hope of getting away behind one of the islands to the south under cover of a squall. But his people had scarcely been able to keep pace with the leak even when they had the wind well abaft the beam, and now with a head-sea and all hands utterly exhausted she could no longer swim. He just had time to get his boats clear before she settled. The Surprise recovered them - some could barely stand, and had to be hauled aboard in slings - and when the Nutmeg came up and I went across he surrendered to me.

'Then, the Passage being but an uneasy place to lie in, we proceeded eastwards to this sheltered road, anchored in sixty-fathom water and made acquaintance with the other ships. The Triton is a heavy letter of marque, almost as large as the Surprise; she is commanded by Horse-Flesh Goffin, whose court-martial for a false muster you will probably remember, and they had been cruising together for some time. The others were splendid American prizes they had taken, all the more splendid because they contained the cargoes of several other vessels too small to be worth a prize-crew. One of them is crammed with furs, sea-otter and the like, much demanded in China, where both ships were bound. Upon the whole the Surprise seems to have had an unusually successful cruise even before these two big merchant-men, capturing Nantucket and New Bedford whalers and sending them into South American ports, but I do not know exactly - we have so much to say to one another and there was so much to do in the poor battered Nutmeg that I do not know half what there is to know.' He was sitting at the starboard extremity of the line of sash lights that filled the great cabin with sunshine reflected from a dappled sea, a window that was more familiar to him than any he had known on land, and looking out he saw the Nutmeg, trim again after a surprisingly short stay in this road, with the carpenter and his crew over the side, putting the last touches to the stern gallery. He glanced along the table to the other end of the range; but seeing that Stephen was writing busily, with a contentious look on his face, he let his gaze wander over the table itself, which had been set, quite exceptionally, in the great cabin, to seat fourteen men in comfort; and he saw not without a certain complacency that it was set with uncommon magnificence. This was the sort of occasion that Killick loved more than his soul, and Jack's silver, preserved through all the vicissitudes of the voyage, blazed and twinkled in the shifting light.

Stephen scratched steadily on, though now his look was more benign as he wrote... and so, having demolished Baker on the economy of the solitary bee, I shall only add that I am heartily tired of being a solitary bee myself. I have no words to express my longing to hear from you again, to learn that you, and perhaps our daughter, are recovered, well and happy. And so far as material things affect happiness, it may increase yours as it has increased mine, to know that if these prizes reach port, our economy may be somewhat less sparse, pinched, anxious, grey.'