Patrick O'Brian - The far side of the world

When Stephen came up on to the steeply-sloping deck quite late in the day - he had been woken by the fife playing Nancy Dawson for the hands' noontime grog - he had an impression of all-pervading blueness: blue sky with a few high white clouds after all these days of low grey; a darker blue white-flecked sea; even blue air in the great shadowed convexities of the straining sails. 'Good afternoon to you, Doctor,' called Jack - blue coat and bright blue eyes gleaming - 'Come and take a look at our chase.'

Stephen slowly made his way aft, handed along by the jolly Marines and all the seamen who, having no immediate task in hand, were lining the weather rail so that their weight should make the ship a little stiffer, and as he went he felt the total change of mood: the people's hearts and minds were wholly set on the pursuit, intent, eager, cheerful, the past and even the events of yesterday left behind, far behind with the long-vanished wake.

'There she lays,' said Jack, nodding over the larboard beam, where the whaler could be seen standing south-east under topgallantsails with her starboard tacks aboard.

'But you are going almost directly from it,' cried Stephen. 'What kind of chase is this, at all?'

'Why, she is very much concerned with her southing, do you see,' said Jack, 'and she wears about every two hours or so: she is on the starboard tack now, as you see. Yet wearing ship takes time, and in any case I do not care to arouse her suspicions; so we do not go about - we sail as nearly south as we can, but on the other tack. I believe she is innocent as a babe unborn: takes us for a Spaniard. We put all that filth up there to encourage her to think so.' Stephen peered up, and after some searching he saw a little piece of dimity, about the size of a moderate tea-tray, fluttering at the junction of two ropes, and a few untidy reefpoints. 'But next time she wears we shall be on what look like parallel courses, though in fact they will be converging, since we lie much closer as well as sailing faster; and I reckon that if all goes well - if we carry nothing away - then in four more of her boards and one or perhaps two of ours we should have the weather-gage.'

'You mean to take her, I collect?'

'That is the general idea.'

'What makes you suppose she is lawful prize?'

'She is British-built to begin with, and then although her commander sails her tolerably well he does not sail her as a man who had had her for a year or so would sail her. A weak crew, too, whereas whalers' crews are strong; they take a great while wearing. You shall watch through my glass next time they make a leg. Everything points to her being a prize, probably the ship that worthy Spaniard spoke of, the Acapulco.'

'When do you hope to come up with her, so?'

'Come,' said Jack, 'do not let us tempt fate. I only say that if all goes well - if we carry nothing away, and the breeze is freshening, as you see...'

'It is already far more like a tempest than any breeze.'

then we might, with luck, speak her before dark.'

Here the drum beat for the gunroom dinner and they parted, for Jack meant to stay on deck, eating sandwiches brought by Killick. The dinner was a hurried meal, with most of the officers, including the American lieutenant, bolting their food so that they should miss not a moment of the chase: yet there was some conversation, from which it appeared that the Surprise did not set royals at about three bells, when the whaler spread her topgallantsails, partly from fear of losing them, but much more so that she should not appear to be chasing - that the whaler certainly had a dirty bottom: she sagged horribly to leeward - that the people who sailed her were no phoenixes - and that nothing made Mowett happier than remembering the days they had so wisely spent at Juan Fernandez, heaving the barky down as far as possible and cleaning her copper as far as ever they could reach, painful at the time but wonderfully pleasant in the recollection.

Presently the purser, the chaplain and the surgeon were left to themselves with the greater part of a long grey pudding, made with sea-elephant suet and studded with Juan Fernandez berries, and Stephen observed, 'I have seen many examples of the seaman's volatility, but none equal to this. When you recall the last week, culminating in the events of yesterday - no longer ago than yesterday itself - when you recall the silent, anxious and I might almost say haunted faces, the absence not only of the usual laughter but even of quips and small-wit, and the collective sense of impending, ineluctable doom, and when you compare that with today's brisk gaiety, the lively eye, the hop, skip and jump, why, you are tempted to ask yourself whether these are not mere irresponsible childish fribbles .

'Fribble yourself,' murmured the gunroom steward the other side of the door, where he was finishing the officers' wine with Killick.

or weathercocks. But then you reflect that these same people circumnavigate the entire terraqueous globe, sometimes in trying circumstances, which argues a certain constancy.'

'I have heard their levity put down to there being no more than a nine-inch plank between them and eternity,' said Martin.

'Nine-inch?' said the purser, laughing heartily. 'Why, if you are given to levity with nine inches under you, what must you be in a little old light-built frigate? A flaming gas-balloon, no doubt. God - dear me, there are parts of Surprise's bottom where you could push a penknife through with ease. Nine-inch! Oh lord, ha, ha, ha!'

'Sir, sir,' cried Calamy, running in and standing by Stephen's chair, 'the whaler's taken in her topgallantsails - we are to go about any minute now, and we'll overhaul her by the end of the watch, as sure as eggs is eggs. Please sir' - with an affectionate look - 'may I have a slice of pudding? Chasing is desperate hungry work.'

As it happened the Surprise overhauled her well before the end of the watch. The whaler, the unlucky Acapulco, wholly deceived by the Spanish ensign that Jack hoisted when they were a couple of miles apart, backed her foretopsail and lay to while the captive American sailors stood in silent agony as the Surprise took up a raking position across the Acapulco's bows, ran out her broadside guns in one brisk movement, replaced the false colours with the true, and called upon her to surrender.

There was not the least possibility of resistance, and her commander came across without any fuss, a disconsolate young man with spectacles. His name was Caleb Gill, and he was nephew to the Norfolk's captain, who had captured so many whalers that in spite of having burnt several he was hard pressed for officers to take the others in.

The Surprises were very kind to Mr Gill, as well they might be, since he had done them no sort of harm, while his trusting nature had, with no great pains on their part, delivered them a prize, deep-laden with white-oil and spermaceti, mostly from other ships, that Mr Allen reckoned at a hundred thousand dollars.

'That is very fine, to be sure,' said Jack Aubrey, smiling at his report, 'and Heaven knows I am not one to fling a hundred thousand dollars in a gift-horse's teeth; yet in a way the carpenter and the bosun have even better news - the Acapulco is stuffed, stuffed, with spars, cordage and sailcloth, enough for a three-year cruise; she has only been out six months, and has hardly used anything at all.'

The gunroom was kind to Mr Gill, and the other Surprises were kind to his crew, which included some of the Acapulco's men, who, anxious to avoid the accusation of foreign enlistment or comforting the King's enemies, told all they had learnt about the Norfolk's movements, past and to come; but it was Caleb Gill who gave the information that relieved Jack's mind from a most gnawing anxiety. Gill was a reading man, nearer akin to Martin and Stephen than to most of the other sailors. His interests however had more to do with men, primitive men, and less with botany or brute-beasts than theirs; he was fascinated by the idea of the noble savage and had travelled far among the native Americans, learning all he could of their social order in peace and war, their laws, customs and history; and one afternoon, when the Surprise was still stripping the Acapulco of everything that could possibly be crammed between decks and Mr Lawrence was dining with Jack, the three of them lingered in the gunroom over a bottle of madeira. 'I was of course exceedingly mortified at being taken prisoner,' he observed, 'yet in a purely personal and private way I had been perhaps even more deeply mortified by being ordered to take command of that unfortunate Acapulco, since from the very beginning of the voyage my whole heart had been bent on beholding the Marquesas: your upas-tree, sir, your two-toed sloth, dodo, solitary-bird, were hardly more for you than the Marquesas were for me, particularly the island Huahiva, which my uncle has always represented as a Paradise.'