Patrick O'Brian - The Thirteen Gun Salute

So it was; but the astonishment of the brilliant blue, the sunshine and the light-filled sails quite took the sense of cold away. 'There you are, Doctor,' cried Jack, who was wearing an antique Monmouth cap as well as a pilot-jacket, 'Good morning to you, and a very pretty one it is, upon my word. Harding, jump down to the cabin and ask Ahmed to give you a comforter to wrap round the Doctor's head: he will lose his ears else.'

'Heavens, what glory,' said Stephen, gazing about.

'Yes, ain't it?' said Jack. 'The wind hauled right aft in the morning watch, so we were able to spread more canvas. As you see, we have maintopsail, forecourse and spritsail; I hope for foretopgallant if it eases a little...'

The explanations continued, with some valuable remarks on scandalizing the foretopsail yard, but Stephen was taken up with piecing the elements of this stupendous scene into a whole. First there was the sky, high, pure and of a darker blue than he had ever seen. And then there was the sea, a lighter, immensely luminous blue that reflected blue into the air, the shadows and the sails; a sea that stretched away immeasurably when the surge raised the frigate high, showing an orderly array of great crests, each three furlongs from its predecessor, and all sweeping eastwards in an even, majestic procession. As each approached the Diane's stern its high white-marbled face reared to the height of the crossjack.yard, threatening destruction; then the stern rose, rose, the deck tilting forward, the force of the wind increasing, and the crest passed smoothly along the side. A few moments later the ship sank into the valley between the waves, her view confined, her sails growing limp. To these there was added the sun, unseen for so long and unseen even now, since the topsail hid it, but filling the world with an almost tangible light. It flashed on the wings of an albatross that came gliding into the wind so close to the quarterdeck rail that it could very nearly be touched.

'There is our old friend,' said Stephen as the bird turned, heeling right over at ninety degrees and showing a gap in his right-wing primaries.

'Yes. He joined company just at daybreak. Lord, Stephen, such a sun-rise!'

'I am sure; and what a scene for the sun to rise upon! There are no less than six albatrosses and one giant petrel. Should we not tell Mr Fox and his secretary?'

'Oh, I sent to let them know and they came on deck for awhile; but I am sorry to say a flaw in the wind brought a packet of sea aboard. It soaked them through and through, and they are gone below to shift their clothing. I doubt we see them again.'

Stephen observed a discreet general smile from one end of the quarterdeck to the other - discreet but for one ship's boy with a bucket of tow and sawdust for the helmsmen's hands who uttered a great horse-laugh and fled - and once more he reflected that the envoy had not succeeded in conciliating the Dianes' good will in spite of his admitted virtues: he had never at any time complained when the ship was cleared for action at quarters, really cleared, for Jack Aubrey was one of the few captains who insisted on a clean sweep fore and aft, which meant that his and Fox's cabins vanished, their contents being struck down below; and he had shown keen interest in the great-gun exercise, cheering the successful shots with real enthusiasm. But the seaman's traditional disregard for the landlubber, his scorn and even contempt, was here unmodifled: possibly increased.

Cold it was, but he had known it colder south of the Horn; and presently the sun crept round the topsail, giving a perceptible warmth as well as the brilliance that transformed this blue sky and ocean into a perpetually renewed miracle. He watched the albatrosses as they glided effortlessly down the ship's side, crossed her wake, occasionally picking something from the surface, swept diagonally across the face of the advancing wave and so shot forward again at immense speed, breaking quarter of a mile ahead and turning to begin again. He stayed there entranced, sometimes beating his arms, sometimes exchanging a few words with the master, bell after bell, until the busy movement and the gathering of all the young gentlemen told him that the sun was about to cross the meridian and that those bearing quadrants or sextants were now going to take his height.

The ceremony followed its invariable course: Warren the master reported noon and 46�39'S to Richardson the officer of the watch; Richardson stepped aft from the bulwark, took off his hat and said, 'Noon and 46�39'S, if you please, sir,' his hair streaming forward in the wind.

'Make it twelve, Mr Richardson,' said Jack.

'Make it twelve, Mr Seymour,' said Richardson to the mate of the watch.

'Strike eight bells,' said Seymour to the quartermaster, who turned to the sentry at the cabin door and called out in a voice pitched to carry through the gale, 'Turn the glass and strike the bell.'

The Marine turned the half-hour glass, which he had been privately nudging from time to time to persuade the grains of sand to run faster, thus shortening his spell, and ran forward to the belfrey, helped by the wind. He struck the four double strokes and at the last Richardson said to Crown the bosun, 'Pipe to dinner.'

Now, from a silence as profound as the shriek of the wind in the rigging, the general omnipresent roar of the waters and the more immediate working of the ship would allow, there burst out a sound equal in volume to that of the lions in the Tower when about to be fed - loud coarse hoots of merriment, a rushing of feet to the mess-deck, a clashing of plates, kids and blackjacks on the hanging tables, and a bawling of mess-cooks waiting for their turn at the galley.

This Bedlam was so familiar to Jack Aubrey that it acted as an aperitif, the more so as for the earliest, hungriest years of his naval life he, as a young gentleman, had also dined at this hour. His stomach gave a slight premonitory heave; his mouth watered: but these signs were cut short, abolished, by a cry from the lookout, humanely encased in a straw-lined cask at the masthead: 'On deck there...' The rest of his words were lost until the ship subsided into the trough of the wave, and then they came down clear: 'Mountain of ice on the starboard bow.'

Jack borrowed Richardson's telescope. As the ship rose he searched the south-eastern sea, and when the Diane was near the height of the rise he caught the ice quite near: nearer than he had expected and very much larger, a lofty mass with two peaks radiant green in the sun towering above the surf that broke to such an astonishing height on the western side.

He studied it for a while, altered course, not indeed to close the iceberg but to come within a mile, and passed the glass to Stephen, who, having stared hard for the space of three great upward heaves, most reluctantly handed it back again. 'I must go,' he said. 'I promised Mr Macmillan to be with him at noon; I am already late, and we have a delicate little undertaking in hand.'

'I am sure you will succeed,' said Jack. 'But even if you are delayed, I trust we shall meet at dinner.'

The only guest in the cabin that day was Richardson, and in his company Jack did not scruple to speak of the ship and her affairs. 'I believe we must edge away, once we have had a good look at the ice island,' he said. 'Perhaps I am mistaken, but it does not seem to me old ice at all. It may have come from behind Kerguelen, which is no great way off, and it may have a good many followers. We are well inside the northern limit. You have heard the drift-ice, Stephen, I am sure?'

'Would it be that rap, rap, rap?'

'Ay. There it is again.'

'I noticed it in the forenoon and I supposed it was the cooper or the carpenter or both; but then it occurred to me that they would hardly be working at dinner-time unless the ship were almost sinking, God forbid.'