Patrick O'Brian: The Thirteen Gun Salute

'It might answer, especially if one could direct the force, and make out the path of entry. If Jack is not stirring in seven minutes' - booking attentively at his watch - 'I shall call for coffee and breakfast by myself: perhaps a lightly boiled egg. Perhaps two lightly boiled eggs. In the meantime I shall put Pratt's object in the medicine-chest.'

Emerging from the medicinal smell of his part of the orlop, he became aware both of the eddying smell of coffee (which had in fact roused the Captain) and of a confused noise and excitement on deck. As he reached the gunroom door he met Standish, recognizable by his bandaged head; he was carrying a cup of tea and he cried, 'Doctor, they were quite right. The Captain has hit the very place. Come and see. You can make her out even from the quarterdeck.'

They climbed two ladders and they reached the quarterdeck, Standish still carrying his cup of tea unspilled, and there in that golden morning were all the officers at the leeward rail - leeward, but only just, so gentle was the moving air. West, as officer of the watch, was dressed with some formality; the others were in trousers and shirt; they all, like the hands along the gangway and on the forecastle, were gazing fixedly to the north-east; and the dew dripped on them from the yards and rigging.

Martin took the telescope from his one eye, and offering Stephen the glass he said with a beaming smile, 'Just below where the horizon ought t�e. You can make her out quite clear when the haze shifts. I never said good morning,' he added. 'How rude I am - greed reduces man to a very brutal state, I am afraid. Forgive me, Maturin.'

'So you think she is a lawful prize?'

'I have no notion at all,' said Martin, laughing happily.

'But everyone else seems sure of it - all the seasoned mariners. And what small part of her ballast is not silver is pure double refined gold in bars.'

'Masthead, there,' called Jack, drowning any conversation around him. 'What do you make of her now?'

It was Auden, a middle-aged experienced Shelmerstonian, who was up there; and after a moment he replied, 'No. She's not one of ours. I'll take my davy on that, sir. It is my belief she is a Frenchman. Most uncommon massy yards. She is gathering her boats as quick as ever they can pull. A very guilty conscience there, I fear. Oh, conscience does make cowards of us all.'

Standish looked up at the masthead with some surprise, and Stephen said, 'Auden is what would be called a lay-preacher among the Sethians, I believe.' He then returned to his examination of the distant vessel. On this sea so calm that whole stretches were glassy and even the smallest air made ripples, it was easy to hold a telescope still; and now that the sun was gaining strength - warm, even hot through their shirts- the air grew so clear that he could distinguish the flash of the separate oars as the boats raced home, and even, he thought, the net of silver fishes passing up the side.

'Good morning, gentlemen,' said Jack, turning. 'Have you seen the snow?'

He spoke in perfectly good faith; he had not the least intention of astonishing the poor unfortunate landlubbers; but he had so often felt put down by their literary remarks that now it quite pleased him to see the look of utter stupidity on all three faces.

He was less pleased however when Standish, the first to recover his wits, replied, 'Oh yes, sir; and I was thinking of going to fetch my greatcoat'.

Pullings frowned, West and Davidge looked away; this was not the tone in which a new-joined purser should answer the Captain; the mere fact of having been pulled out of the sea did not warrant this degree of familiarity.

Jack said, 'Snow is the term we use for vessels of that kind, which carry a trysailmast abaft the main.' Turning to Stephen he said, 'Auden, who understands these things if any man does, swears she is not a West-Country smuggler or privateer. So I think we must look a little closer; the breeze may strengthen with the sun. Poor souls, they had a fine bank of codlings about half a mile astern, and they were hauling them in hand over fist when first they saw us.'

'They would never be innocent fishermen, at all?'

'With yards like that, and all built for speed? And pierced for five guns aside, her decks full of men? No. I believe she is a French privateer, and probably new off the stocks. Captain Pullings, we have sweeps aboard, have we not?'

'Yes, sir,' said Pullings. 'I arranged it myself at Dock: they come out of the old Diomede, and they just happened to be laying by.'

'Very good: capital. It would scarcely be worth sweeping at this point, unless she starts doing so, for I am reasonably confident' - touching a wooden belaying-pin - 'that we shall have a breeze from the south-west in time; but let them be cleared away and the ports made ready. In the meanwhile, Mr West, let us take advantage of what little air may see fit to move. Doctor, what do you say to breakfast?'

It was most unusual for a ship as large and heavy as the Surprise to use sweeps, so unusual that the little oar-ports were deeply encrusted with generations of paint, and had to be opened by the carpenter with a heavy persuader and a fid; but since so much of the forenoon had passed without a breath of air she ran them out at four bells - dinner was to be taken watch by watch - and began to creep across the smooth surface like some vast long-legged inefficient water-creature. The snow instantly did the same.

'Will you take your stand by the cooper, sir, you being quite tall?' said Pullings to Standish; and seeing his questioning look he added, 'There is an old saying in the service, when very hard work is to be done, "the gentlemen hale and draw with the mariners". Presently you will see the Captain and the Doctor take their spell.'

'Oh, certainly,' cried Standish. 'I should be very happy - I should like to have an oar in my hand again.'

The gentlemen haled and drew with the mariners, and although for the first quarter of a mile there was some confusion, with one monstrous crab sending half a dozen men tumbling into their shipmates' laps, they soon found their rhythm; and once she had gained her impetus the long cumbrous sweeps moved the ship along so that the water ran whispering along her side. There was no lack of zeal, advice - 'Stretch out, sir, and keep your eyes in the boat' - and merriment: it was a pretty example of a good ship's company at work, and when the log was heaved it showed that the Surprise was making two knots and a half.

Unhappily the snow made three or even more. She was much lighter; her people were far more accustomed to sweeping; and being so much nearer the surface they could use their oars with greater effect. At the end of his first spell of rowing Jack fixed her with his come-up glass, which showed him that the chase was gaining; and in an hour this was evident to every man aboard - even in that light-filled immensity of sea and sky a mile could still be made out. The laughter died away, but not the determination, and with grave, set faces the rowers lunged forward, dipped and pulled hour after hour, their reliefs stepping in at the first sound of the bell so neatly that barely a stroke was lost.

The sun was well past the zenith, the snow had merged with the horizon, almost hull-down, far, far ahead, and there was silence aboard, apart from the rowers' grunting heave, before the longed-for air began to breathe from the south-south-west. It rounded the upper sails first and rippled the sea quite far ahead; already the ship had a fresh life, and when the topgalbarns were drawing Jack cried, 'Lay on your oars.'With anxious delight he and all the ship's company listened to the breeze in the rigging and the bow-wave shearing on either side.

Topsails filled and then courses, and with the yards exactly trimmed Jack had the sweeps brought inboard; many a man stood bending and cherishing his arms and legs or rubbing the small of his back, but a moment later they ran eagerly and fairly nimbly aloft to spread the cloud of sail the frigate was used to. The strengthening breeze had settled half a point west of its origin; she had it well abaft the beam and she was able to set a most imposing array of royals and skysails, as well as weather studding-sails from top to bottom, spritsail, spritsailtopsail and a host of staysails, an array so beautiful that Standish, coming up for fresh air from tepid mutton soup and his first encounter with the larger kind of weevil called bargemen and seeing all this with the sun shining through and across all its curves, convexities and infinite variety of brilliantly lit or delicately shadowed white, cried out in admiration.