Patrick O'Brian - The Nutmeg of Consolation

The fleeing Dyaks stopped halfway down and gathered to mock and challenge the camp with marks of scorn.

'Forward carronade,' called Jack. 'Fire into the brown.'

The flint failed at the first pull of the laniard - a frightful anticlimax - but it fired on the second and the carronade uttered a flat poop, scattering a gentle shower of grape among the Dyaks, who howled with laughter, capered and leapt into the air. Some of them waved their penises at the English, others showed their buttocks; and the powerful reinforcement from the trees came running out to join them for a charge in deadly earnest.

'After carronade,' said Jack: and his voice was instantly followed by a great solemn crash and a cloud of orange-lined smoke. While the echoes were still going to and fro the cloud swept to leeward, showing the awful swathe the grape had cut. There was a headlong flight to the slip, and although some came back, creeping low, to help their wounded friends back down the hill, they left at least a score of dead.

Now there followed a long period with no action, well on into the afternoon, but it soon became clear that the Dyaks and their Malay friends (for they were a mixed crew) had not lost heart. There was a great deal of movement down by the slip and between the slip and the proa; and from time to time they fired the swivel-gun. At noon they lit their fires for a meal: the camp did the same.

All this time Jack had been watching the enemy with the closest attention and it was clear to him and his officers that old Green Headcloth was certainly in command down there. The Dyak chief watched the English with equal care, often standing on the bank with shaded eyes; and a good hand with a rifle, having an earthwork to lean on, could certainly bring him down. Stephen could do it, he was sure; but he knew with equal certainty that Stephen never would: in any case both medicos were busy with the wounded - several men had been hurt in the fighting on the breastwork. Nor would he do it himself, not in cold blood and at a distance: although he was not displeased when a broadside cleared an enemy quarterdeck, there was still something illogically sacred about the person of the opposing commander, and some perceptible but indefinable difference between killing and murder. Query: did it apply to a man appointed as a sharpshooter? Answer: it did not. Nor did it apply in even a very humble m�e.

Captain Aubrey, his officers and David Edwards, the envoy's secretary, ate their dinner on trestled planks laid this side of the breastwork, which had sandbags on its top to protect their heads from the not infrequent swivel-gun, whose layer made remarkably good practice, hitting the embankment or skimming just over it almost every time - such good practice that the moment they saw the flash all hands dropped to their knees, out of direct range. Their genuflexion did not always save them, however, and twice during the meal Dr Maturin was called away to deal with the more sluggish.

Dinner today was informal, so much so that Richardson might without impropriety peer between the sandbags with his telescope and say 'It is my belief, sir, that the enemy are entirely out of water. I see three parties trying to make holes in what they take to be the watercourse; and Green Headcloth is blackguarding them like a fishfag.'

'They expected to be drinking out of our well by now,' said Welby, smiling. 'Though mark you, they may do so yet,' he added as a sop to Fate.

'The odds are more even now,' observed the purser. 'And if it goes on at this rate we shall soon have the advantage.'

'If that should come about they will surely sail away and come back three times as strong,' said the master. 'Sir, would it be foolish to suggest destroying their proa out of hand? It is frail past belief - no metal in its whole construction and a ball in either hull or better still at the junction between 'em would knock it to pieces.'

'I dare say it would, Mr Warren,' said Jack. 'But that would leave us with better than two hundred thirsty villains eating us out of house and home. The Doctor says there are barely a score of pigs left, and only a few days' ration of ring-tailed apes. No. There is nothing I should like better than seeing them weigh and set off for reinforcements. Almost all our long-sawing is done, and very fortunately poor dear Mr Hadley had left several of his most important tools up here for sharpening and resetting; working double-tides I believe we can launch the schooner and be on our way to Batavia before they come back. Their home port is certainly in Borneo.'

'Oh,' cried the purser, as though he had been struck by a new idea: but he said no more. The swivel-gun and the gingall both hit the sandbag immediately opposite, ripping it and covering both him and the table with its contents. When they picked him up he was dead. Stephen opened his shirt, put his ear to his chest and said 'Heart, I am afraid: God be with him.'

During the hot still hours that followed Jack, Fielding and the gunner overhauled the powder, all that had been found, scraped from barrels, withdrawn from flasks and bandoliers, signal cartridges and even rockets. 'We have a charge for each of the carronades and the nine-pounder, with just enough over to leave the Doctor half a flask for his rifle,' said Jack. 'Master gunner, it might be well to load them now, while the metal hardly bears touching: the heat will make the powder brisk. And let the nine-pounder ball be very carefully chipped -indeed, oiled and polished.'

'Aye aye, sir. Grape for the carronades, I do suppose?'

'Case is your real slaughter-house charge at close quarters, but I am afraid we have none?'

The gunner shook his head with a melancholy air. 'All on that fucking reef, sir, pardon me.'

'Then grape, Mr White.'

'Sir, sir,' cried Bennett, 'Captain Welby says they are sending men up through the forest.'

'Perhaps, sir,' said Welby when Jack, joined him at his look-out point, 'it would be prudent not to direct your glass: they might think we had smoked them. But if you watch the open ground to the left of that great crimson-flowering tree at eleven o'clock from the flagstaff, you will see them slip across, their spearheads held low and wrapped in leaves or grass.'

'What do you think they are at?'

'I believe they are a forlorn hope, a storming-party sent to attack the camp from behind, where the silver is. They are to catch up a chest or two and run off into the broken country behind while their friends amuse us with a false attack in front.'

'They cannot know what the back of the camp is like. We can hold it with half a dozen men: there is a shocking great drop where the landslide swept the earth away.'

'No, sir. And as the young person came in by the west gate and left by the south, she would not have seen the drop either. No doubt it is all their general's theory; but still I am sure he thought he could rely on surprise.'

'How many men did you reckon?'

'I counted twenty-nine, sir, but I may well have missed a few.'

'Well, I think we can deal with that - Mr Reade, stop that goddam fool pointing at the trees. Stop it at once, d'ye hear me there? You and Harper can pick up the biggest stones you can carry and take them to the north wall steps at the double. Mr Welby, I think we can afford a round apiece to your eight best marksmen. A quarter of your people down before you start your attack is discouraging. It will be uncommon brave men that go on, with such a rise in front of them.'

Almost at once the diversion began. The swivel-gun and the gingall fired as fast as they could; large bodies of men raced diagonally across and across the broad open slope between the camp and the building-slip, hallooing as they ran or howling like gibbons, and presently there was a furious discharge of crackers along the inner border of the forest. Jack had to shout to make himself heard. 'Mr Seymour, there is a forlorn hope about to make a dash for the silver by way of the north wall. Take Killick and Bonden and the eight Marines Mr Welby has told off together with whatever other men you need to line the wall and deal with the situation while we watch their attempt at amusing us and make sure it don't turn ugly.'