Patrick O'Brian - The Thirteen Gun Salute

He heard Pullings say, 'I have had the bow-guns cleared away, sir, in case you would like to try a random shot before it gets dark.'

'Well, Tom,' said Aubrey, considering the range with narrowed eyes and stroking the larboard chaser, a beautiful brass long nine, 'I have been thinking of it, naturally: and with luck we might knock away a spar or two and kill some of her people, though the distance is so great and the ship is behaving more like a rocking-horse than a Christian. But I do hate battering a prize, particularly a small one. Apart from anything else it takes so much time, what with repairing and towing and perhaps having to send her in with a prize-crew we have to wait for. No. What I should like best would be to range up alongside and offer her a full broadside if she don't strike: nobody but a mad lunatic would refuse - we carry five times her weight of metal. Then without any slaughter or repairing or fuss we carry her into the nearest port and so proceed to Lisbon, where we are likely to be uncommon late in any case, after such a run.'

'To be sure,' said Pullings, 'there is not much likelihood of our losing her tonight, with the moon so near the full; and to be sure, we have the weather-gage - could not have it more. But I was only thinking that if we do not check her in some way, at this pace it will be a great while before we can show her our broadside clear and close; and by then we may have run almost the whole length of the Irish Sea; and beating into a south-wester off Galloway is tedious work.'

They discussed a variety of possibilities; and then, breaking off, Jack said, 'Where is the Doctor?'

'I believe he went aft some minutes ago,' said Pullings. 'How dark it has grown.'

Maturin had indeed gone aft, aft and below to the orlop, where he sat on a three-legged stool by the medicine-chest, staring at the candle in the lantern he had brought with him: he was more likely to be alone here than anywhere in the ship, alone and in silence, for although there was the ship's own voice and the tumultuous roar of the sea echoing down here in a general confusion of sound, it was an unceasing noise and could be set aside in time, forgotten, quite unlike the spasmodic cries and orders, the footsteps and clashing that would break in upon his thoughts if he were to sit in the coach.

He had long since accepted that Gough was now of no real importance and that in view of the disastrous outcome of all the attempted French landings hitherto it was extremely unlikely that they would in fact ever launch another, whatever promises Gough might be carrying. His loss would not weaken Bonaparte's machine to any perceptible degree. Yet although Maturin could and did look upon this as axiomatic, it in no way affected his determination not to be associated with Gough's arrest and his mind had now been turning for some considerable time on possible ways of dealing with the situation.

Yet so far his mind had produced little; it turned and turned, but the turning, though arduous, was sterile. Some great man had said, 'A thought is like a flash between two dark nights': at present Stephen's nights were running into one uninterrupted darkness, lit by no gleams at all. The coca-leaves he chewed had the property of doing away with hunger and fatigue, giving some degree of euphoria, and making one feel clever and even witty; he certainly had no appetite and he did not feel physically tired, but as for the rest he might have been eating hay.

There was of course Pratt's magnet. A ship's compass would deviate from the north in the presence of a magnet and the helmsman would be misled: the ship would wander from her true course. But how much would the compass deviate, and how near was the required presence? He knew nothing whatsoever about either point. Nor did he know the ship's position, except that she was in the Irish Sea; and in such a state of general ignorance he could not form any useful opinion about the danger of casting her and his friends away on some rocky shore.

He put the instrument into his pocket and made his way to the quarterdeck, stopping to put the lantern on its hook in the coach. Although the bight coming through the companion should have warned him, he was still astonished by the brilliance of the moonlit night. Though the colours were subtly different it might almost have been day; there was not the least question of his failing to recognize the four men at the wheel, Davis and Simms, old Surprises, and Fisher and Harvey, from Shelmerston, or the quartermaster at the con, old Neave. Nor was there the least question of his approaching the binnacle and observing the variation of the compass as he moved the magnet, for not only did West, who had the watch, at once come over and ask him whether he had not turned in, but it was perfectly obvious that the ship was not steering by compass at all. The wind had now increased to a stiff gale, and at the last change of watch the Surprise had taken another reef in her topsails and forecourse and had furled the spritsail, so there, right ahead, lay the chase; and it was by the chase that the frigate was steering, her bowsprit pointing directly at the long moonlit wake, both ships tearing through the sea with extreme urgency.

'The distance seems about the same,' observed Stephen.

'I wish I could think so,' said West. 'We had gained a cable's length by two bells, but now she has won it back and even more. Still, the tide will change against the wind in an hour or so, and that should chop up a nasty head-sea for her.'

'Has the Captain gone to bed?' asked Stephen, cupping his hands to make his voice, curiously hoarse and weak at present, carry over the roar of sea and wind.

'No. He is in the cabin, pricking the chart. We had a very fine fix with Vega and Arcturus just now.'

That, of course, would be the simplest way of dealing with at least one side of his ignorance. If he were to walk into the cabin there he would see the ship's position marked on the chart with all the accuracy of an expert navigator. Doing so would not be elegant however; and as well as being inelegant it would be in direct contravention to his particular morality, the private set of laws which for him separated the odious practice of spying from the legitimate gathering of intelligence.

'I beg your pardon,' he said, having missed everything of West's last remark but for the fact that he had spoken or rather bellowed something about fire.

'I was only saying they must be burning heather or furze over there in Anglesea,' said West, pointing to a distant orange serpent on the starboard beam.

Stephen nodded, reflected for a moment and then crept backwards down the companion-ladder meaning to walk forward along the waist. Most of the starboard watch were sheltering under the break of the quarterdeck, and Barret Bonden left the group to shepherd him along past the double-breeched guns and under the double-griped boats on the skid-beams, past the galley and so by the hooked steps in the Surprise's broad top-tackle scuttle to a place as nearly comfortable, safe and dry as so bleak a station could afford.

It was quieter here in the bows, in the lee of the foremast and the topsail-sheet bitts, and they talked for a while about the progress of the chase, the snow there before them clear and sharp, a mile ahead, tearing along and throwing the water wide. Bonden knew the Doctor was upset, and in case it should be something to do with this prize, with the frigate's relatively poor performance, or with what a landsman might consider the Captain's want of enterprise, he very delicately offered a few points for consideration: at the beginning of a very long voyage, no captain would risk masts, spars and cordage unless he were up against an enemy man-of-war, a national ship, or at least a very important privateer; at the beginning of a very long voyage the ship, low and sluggish with all her stores, could not be driven really hard, as she could be driven when she was riding light and homeward-bound, with supplies only a few days ahead - the Doctor would remember how the barky wore topgallants in a close-reef topsail breeze, and not only topgallants but foretopmast and lower studdingsails too, when they were chasing the Spartan on their way home from Barbados. If they were to do that now, the barky would fall to pieces, and they would have to swim home, those that were not provided with wings.