Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

Yet although hawsers might secure the masts, holding them even more strongly to the hull, if the Worcester did not mind looking lumpish and untidy, what measures could secure the hull itself? As Jack listened below the oratorio, below the complaining of the masts, below the innumerable voices of the sea and the wind right down to the deep confused groaning of the timbers themselves, out of tune and unhappy, he reflected that if she could not be provided with new knees in the course of a thorough refit he might eventually have to frap her whole carcass, winding cable round and round until it looked like an enormous chrysalis. The idea made him smile, and smile all the wider since the choir forward had worked their way to their favourite chorus, and were now topping it the Covent Garden with all their might - with infinite relish, too.

'Halleluiah,' sang their Captain with them as a fresh sheet of rain struck the ship, drumming on the back of his hood, 'halleluiah,' until an unmistakable gunshot to leeward cut his note short and at the same moment the lookout hailed 'Sail ho! Sail on the larboard quarter.'

Jack plunged across the deck to the lee rail, helped on his way by the Worcester's roll and lurch: hammocks had not been piped up that soaking day and there was no barrier between him and the sea to the southward. Yet nothing could he make out: he and Mowett, who had the watch, stood there searching the thick grey squall of rain.

'Just abaft the mizen backstay, sir,' called Pullings from the maintop, where he too had been sheltering from Dr Maturin: and the veil parting both Jack and Mowett cried out 'Surprise!'

Surprise she was, far to leeward, so far and so directly to leeward that with all her fine sailing qualities she could never hope to join the squadron for a great while: but it was clear that she meant the squadron to join her, for as they watched she fired another gun and let fly her topsail sheets. At this distance and in this light and with this wind Jack could not make out the signal flying from her foremasthead, but he had no doubt whatsoever of its meaning. The French fleet was out: the frigate's entire appearance and all her behaviour said so in the loudest voice - her frightful press of sail (topgallants in this close-reef topsail breeze!), her wild conduct with her sheets and guns and now a blue light streaking away down the wind, could only mean one thing. The enemy was at sea, and the moment the signal reached the Admiral the line would wear round on to the starboard tack and bear up for the Surprise, to learn what more she might have to say.

'All hands to wear ship,' he cried: and the signal midshipman, who had had the wit not to take his eyes from the brig stationed outside the line to repeat signals from the almost invisible Orion, bawled 'Flag to squadron, sir: wear in succession: course south-east' over the roaring of the bosun. Hollar and his senior mate, who both loathed Handel, happened to be on the poop ladder at the moment of Jack's order: they now raced forward towards the unconscious choir, towards the vigorous crescendo, the one shouting 'Rouse out, you nightingales' and the other piping 'All hands wear ship' with such force as almost to burst his silver call.

Seconds later, in a strange blank silence, the nightingales came flooding aft to their appointed stations. All the right sailors among them had discarded their togas, but a few of the landsmen had not, while the cooper still had his crown on his head. It so happened that his place was at the foresheet and that two of the togaed figures clapped on just behind him: they were all men of slow comprehension and they looked amazed, aggrieved, and so ludicrous that Jack laughed aloud, they being in his field of vision as he looked beyond them for the first movement of Ocean's helm. His heart was bubbling high: that old splendid feeling of more, far more than common life.

The ships bore down on the distant frigate, packing on more sail as they went; and the moment the Worcester was settled on her new course Jack sent for the bosun, desired him to lay along the long-disused topgallantmasts - 'we shall need 'em soon, Mr Hollar, ha, ha, ha' - and explained his wishes about light hawsers to the mastheads. These wishes were not entirely new to the service: it was known that Lord Cochrane and Captain Aubrey and one or two other commanders had achieved surprising feats with these same hawsers: but the service as a whole was dead against them as innovations, ugly, untidy innovations, worthy of privateersmen or even, God forbid, of pirates. It needed very great authority or a peerage or preferably both to impose them on an old experienced bosun, and the Surprise was quite near at hand before Hollar moved off, at least outwardly convinced that the Worcester must disgrace herself in appearance if, during the probable chase of the French fleet, she were not to disgrace herself in performance. The bosun done with, Jack looked across the water at the Surprise, and he observed with satisfaction that this was not a sea in which a boat could be launched, while the wind would make signalling slow and difficult: word of mouth it would surely be, and those without scruples might perhaps overhear the exchange between the frigate and the flagship.

The squadron heaved to: the Surprise worked as close alongside the Ocean as she dared and delivered her information in a roar that could be heard by the ships, the openly listening ships, well ahead and astern.

Latham of the Surprise had a tremendous voice, and the Captain of the Fleet, speaking for the Admiral, an even louder one; but their brief conversation did not quite reach the Worcester. However, in this atmosphere of the utmost excitement, formality and even hard feeling went by the board, and as soon as the flag had signalled the new course together with the order Make all sail with safety to the masts, Wodehouse of the Orion appeared at the taffrail of his ship and hailed Jack, poised on the Worcester's starboard cathead: the French were out with seventeen of the line, six of them three-deckers, and with five frigates. They had still been steering south when Admiral Mitchell sent the Surprise away in search of the squadron while he continued dogging them in the San Josef, detaching other messengers from time to time. From the greater zeal with which the French frigates had chased her to eastward, Surprise believed that the French fleet meant to go either to Sicily or right up the Mediterranean for Egypt or Turkey; but on being pressed admitted that this was little more than a guess.

'What is all this I hear about the French being out?' cried Stephen, suddenly appearing on the crowded quarterdeck in the midst of the swaying-up of the topgallantmasts and the sending of hawsers aloft, two delicate, complex, dangerous manoeuvres that called for all the skilled hands in the ship, an immense quantity of ropes, thick and thin, and, in this strong breeze and awkward sea, very exact timing and instant obedience to orders.

Stephen did not address himself directly to Captain Aubrey, who was standing by the windward hances, his eyes fixed on the maintopmast crosstrees, for that would have been improper; but Captain Aubrey had no such inhibitions and instantly roared out 'Go below, Doctor. Go below directly.'

Quite shocked by the vehemence of his cry Stephen turned: but even as he turned a party of seamen ran the stiff end of a cablet into his side, thrusting him under the fiferail and calling out 'By your leave, sir, by your leave,' as they did so. And as he was disentangling himself from the belaying-pins he happened to loop a fancy-line about his ankle and walk off with it until his old friend Tom Pullings bawled 'Stop playing with that fancy-line, and go below' with a ferocity that might have daunted Beelzebub.

It was the edge of darkness before he ventured up again, and then only because of a kindly message: 'The Captain's compliments and if the Doctor should wish to take the air, all was now cleared away and coiled down.'