Patrick O'Brian: The Thirteen Gun Salute

Certainly there was more to it than Jack had supposed. 'To begin with, sir,' said Welby, 'it is always wise to be both on rising ground and to have a good supply of fresh water within your lines if it is at all possible; and it would be strange if this sloping stretch of grass did not kill two birds with one stone. By that, sir, I mean it might on the one hand house all our people on its upper right-hand face, and on the other, give them a well at no great depth - there has certainly been a watercourse in the middle, long ago. The position would not answer against artillery, but for an ordinary surprise you could hardly ask better. A square with a moderate breastwork and a stockade would leave a fine open space between itself and the forest on three sides, and command the landing-place on the fourth. With a carronade at each corner it would make a very neat little post, even without re-entering angles or ravelines or anything ambitious like that.'

Jack could best survey the broad sweep, a green triangle thrust uphill into the swarming forest, from a central mound, now covered by the Diane's livestock, sheep, goats, pigs, geese, poultry, grazing on a particularly sweet grass shoulder to shoulder. 'Baker,' he called, 'drive them over to the far side.'

'I can't, sir,' replied Baker. 'They won't follow anyone but Jemmy Ducks and young Pollard; and the hogs bite, if shoved.'

It was the old story. Even the most recent animals, influenced by the older inhabitants, were already too tame to be driven; they could only be led by those they liked. The next step would be their conversion into holy cows that could not possibly be slaughtered, cut up and served out. 'Then pass the word for Jemmy Ducks and Pollard,' said Jack, making a mental note to tell Fielding to move Pollard to other duties; detachment was easy enough where poultry was concerned, but the four-legged stock required a frequent change of keeper.

'Yes, I think it should do very well,' he said, when he could see the whole extent. 'I was not really thinking so much of defence as of neatness, so I believe we scarcely need a breastwork or stockade, far less covered ways or outworks; but we must have a well, and we should like a trim square for tents and stores, where purser, bosun, carpenter and gunner can lay their hands on what they need. So if you would be so good as to sink your well and then trace out the lines according to the rules of the art, I will have a word with the sailmaker and set tents in hand.'

'Perhaps just a little ditch for drainage, sir, in case of rain, with the earth thrown up outside?'

'As you please, Captain Welby,' said Jack, walking off. 'But nothing elaborate.'

'The sergeant and I will pace it out and break ground as soon as we can get out picks and shovels from the ship, sir,' called Welby after him.

At the landing-place he learnt that Stephen had last been seen making his way into the extraordinarily tangled forest with a cutlass sharpened for him by the armourer and a large pair of tendon-cutters, so he took Bonden and Seymour in the skiff to survey what he could of the island before nightfall. Richardson was engaged in sweeping for the lost anchors or Jack would have taken him too, an excellent surveyor's mate.

It was as well that the skiff was light, for their voyage was pulling all the way; the breeze had dropped away shortly after Fox and his company dipped below the horizon, and although an unusually strong current swept them along the southern shore, from the western point right along the island's high straight north face they had to pull very hard indeed, and as Bonden observed, if the tide had been running with the current they could not have stemmed it at all. The island was more or less rectangular, like a battered book set down on the sea at an angle, the southern side awash, the northern an almost sheer rise, a couple of hundred feet high in places, with caves in it, some of them deeply recessed, with small beaches to them.

As they rowed along they heard a shrill halooing from one of the cliffs, and looking up they saw Dr Maturin, waving a handkerchief. He called out when he saw they had seen him, but although the air was so still and the sea so calm all they could make out was the word soup.

Between taking his angles and recording depths, Jack turned this over in his mind, but he could make nothing of it until after sunset, when they reached the ship, her great stern window glowing its full width and Stephen sitting there in the restored cabin, his cello between his knees. He smiled and nodded, carried the phrase, part of his own Saint Cecilia's Day, through to its end, and said, 'Did you see our streeted camp?'

'Only a glimmer of white from the sea. Surely it is not finished already?'

'Finished to Welby's satisfaction, no; but much is standing and even more is marked out to the exact inch and degree. I have rarely seen a man take more pleasure in what he was about. Though I may say I believe I took even more delight in my afternoon than Welby. I found the edible-nest swallow! Hirundo esculenta, the bird's-nest soup swallow! Colonies of them, several thousand strong, on those cliffs from which I saw you. In the depths of those caves their nests lie in rows. Little small grey birds they are, not three inches long, but true swallows and even swifter than ours; and their nests are almost white. I hope you will come and see them tomorrow.'

'Certainly, if work permits. Was it very difficult to get through the forest?'

'Tolerably so, because of the lianas; yet there are boars in plenty, and by crouching one can follow their paths fairly well. There are some other paths too, though much overgrown; people must come here from time to time - the animals are by no means tame.'

Jack fetched his violin and while Stephen gave him a short account of the island's flora and fauna he tuned it lovingly. 'So much for the ring-tailed ape,' said Stephen at last, and with one accord they swept into his Saint Cecilia. After that, and after a visit from Fielding to report, they ate their customary toasted cheese and played on and on, the music echoing the length of the almost empty ship with quite another resonance.

Jack turned in late and he slept deep, although his cot moved no more than if it had been slung in the Tower of London; yet he woke uneasy. Of course any man commanding a King's ship that is poised on a reef with several days before he can hope to float her off must wake uneasy, even when expert opinion has told him that the fine weather will continue and when he knows for certain that Thursday's high-water will be as high as that during which she struck, while the full springtide on Sunday will be higher by far - will necessarily raise her free. But this was an uneasiness of another nature, closer to superstitious or instinctive dread.

Washing, shaving, and then a hearty breakfast dispelled some of it; a most encouraging tour of the hold with the carpenter - Mr Hadley's repairs meant that now the pumps were in action for only half a glass in each watch - did away with more; and after a visit to Welby's encampment he was almost himself again. The encampment, with its exact earthwork (for Welby had interpreted ditch very freely), its trim lines, its store-tent in the middle, and its well with three and a half feet of water already, was a joy to behold; and so was the pleasure of the Marines, now for once the experts, aware that they had astonished the foremast jacks.

But at low tide he took a small party to buoy the guns; the men were the ship's few swimmers and three or four were competent divers too; he went in, and down, with them, and there was something indefinably wrong about the water: not only too warm to be at all refreshing but also in some way unclean. They buoyed the guns neatly, but the uneasiness returned, and although at dinner he told Stephen how reasonable it was to expect the ship to lift off on Thursday without any cruel dragging over the remaining length of reef and how nearly certain it was on Sunday, with the sun and the new moon both pulling the spring tide to its fullest height, at least half a fathom more, he had no appetite, and leaving both wine and pudding he went on deck to look at the sea and the sky.