Patrick O'Brian - The Ionian mission

'I am sure he can,' said Stephen.

'For example, the Admiral could order every other ship to pass through and so double up the Frenchman's van, two of ours engaging each one of his on either side, destroying or taking them before his rear division can come up, and then serving them the same way - not a single one to be left unsunk, unburnt, untaken! And you would fling all this away just for the satisfaction of being there first? It is rank treason.'

'I only threw out the remark,' said Stephen. 'I am no great naval strategist.'

'Sometimes I wonder whether you have really grasped that it is the wind alone that moves us. You have often suggested that we should charge to the right or the left as the case might be, just as though we were flaming cavalry, and could go where we chose. I wonder_you have not improved your time at sea better; you have, after all, seen a certain amount of action.'

'It may be that my genius, though liberal, is more of the land-borne kind. But you are also to consider, that whenever there is a battle, I am required to stay below stairs.'

'Yes,' said Jack, shaking his head, 'it is very unfortunate, very unfortunate indeed,' and in a gentler tone he asked whether Stephen would like to hear of a battle, ideal in all its stages - remote approach, inception, prosecution, and termination - the kind of battle the squadron might engage in tomorrow if the Admiral had guessed right about the Frenchmen's direction and if the wind remained true - 'for you must understand that everything, everything at sea depends on the wind.'

'I am fully persuaded of it, my dear; and should be happy to hear of our ideal encounter with Monsieur Emeriau.'

'Well then, let us suppose that the wind holds true and that we have calculated our course and our speed correctly - I may say that Mr Gill and I came to the same answer independently, give or take two miles -and that we have done the same for the French, which is probable, since they have two or three dull sailers with them, Robuste, Boree and maybe Lion, whose performance we know very well; and their squadron can sail no faster than the slowest. So we stand on all night in this loose formation, keeping our eyes fixed most religiously upon the Admiral's toplight when he hoists it; then at first light one of the frigates out ahead, and I do hope it will be dear Surprise - look, she is moving up to take her station now. She refitted at Cadiz, and they did wonders for her - brand-new knees, stringers, cant-pieces ... how she flies.'

'She seems to be coming dangerously close to us,' observed Stephen, having stared for a while.

'I dare say Latham has thought of something witty to say about our hawsers and the Irish pennants. He has been peering at us through his glass this last hour and more, and cackling with his officers,' said Jack. 'Lord, how he does crack on! She must be making a clear thirteen knots off the reel - look at the feather she throws, Stephen.' He gazed fondly at his old command as she came racing through the gloom, all white sails, white bow-wave, white wake against the greyness; but the look of loving admiration vanished when she drew alongside, taking the wind out of the Worcester's sails and checking her pace with a started sheet just long enough for Captain Latham to make an offer of his bosun's services, in case Worcester should wish to deal with all those Irish pennants.

'From the look of your rigging, I should never have thought you had a single seaman aboard, let along a bosun,' replied Jack with the full force of his lungs.

The Worcesters uttered a triumphant roar at this, and anonymous voices from open ports below begged to know whether they might favour Surprise with any ewes - an obvious and wounding reference to a recent court-martial in which the frigate's barber was sentenced to death for bestiality.

'That settled Latham's hash, I believe,' said Jack with quiet satisfaction as the Surprise, having run out of wit, filled and shot ahead.

'What did he mean with his Irish pennants?' asked Stephen.

'Those untidy flakes and wefts of hemp on the hawsers. They would be intolerably slipshod in regular rigging -there, do you see, and there. We call them Irish pennants.'

'Do you, indeed? Yet they are utterly unknown in Irish ships; and when they are perceived in others, they are universally termed Saxon standards.'

'Call 'em what you like, they are damned ill-looking uncouth objects and I knew very well the squadron would laugh and come it the satirical; but I will be bled if I have a topmast carry away and so miss all the fun, and I will be damned if the Admiral throws out our signal to make more sail. And with a wall-sided, weak-kneed ship what can you ... There goes his toplight, by the way.' Jack cocked his ear to the poop: he heard the utterly reliable Pullings' voice say 'Bear a hand now, and wipe Orion's eye,' and the golden effulgence of the Worcester's three stern lanterns lit the mizen topsail and the maincourse several seconds before those of any other ship in the squadron.

'You were telling me of your ideal battle, with a view to illustrating naval strategy,' said Stephen.

'Yes. The frigates tell us that the enemy is there under our lee - for the wind has stayed true, do you see - preferably straggling over a couple of miles of sea in two or three untidy heaps, as foreigners do, with the land no great way off to hamper their movements and to make it even easier for Admiral Thornton to decide the moment for the action. My bet is that he will instantly make a dash for it, before they can form their line - bear down immediately, forming our own as we go, double on his weakest part and so work up, taking, burning or sinking as we go. For it will take them a great while to make an orderly line, whereas we do so every day, and we practise the manoeuvre from the dispersed positions at least twice a week. Every man will slip into his place; and since the Admiral has explained his plans for half a dozen situations every man will know just what he is to do. There will be little signalling. The Admiral dislikes it except in the greatest emergency, and the last time he spoke to the captains he said that if any one of us was puzzled or could not make out the order of battle because of the smoke, he might take it upon himself to engage the nearest Frenchman yardarm to yardarm. But there are fewer of us, and since we must be able to compel a perhaps unwilling enemy to accept battle just when and where it suits us, all this, you understand, depends on our having the weather-gage: that is to say, that the wind shall blow from us to them. Lord, Stephen, I shall not be satisfied with anything under twenty prizes, and a dukedom for the Admiral.'

'Sure, I take your point about the wind,' said Stephen in a sombre voice. Although he longed for the final overthrow and destruction of Buonaparte and his whole system, the immediate prospect of huge slaughter depressed him extremely - apart from anything else his duties during battle and after it brought him to be intimately acquainted with war's most hideous side and with young men maimed; he did not mention this, however, but after a pause he asked 'Twenty? That is more than Monsieur Emeriau has with him."

Jack had named the impossible number by way of conjuring fate: in fact he expected a very severe encounter indeed, for although from want of keeping the sea the French were often slow in manoeuvring, their gunnery was sometimes deadly accurate, and their ships were solid, well-found and new; but he was aware of what was in his friend's mind and he was about to pass his twenty off as a slip of the tongue when the Renown, quarter of a mile away on the Worcester's starboard bow, hoisted a string of coloured lanterns to tell the Admiral that she was overpressed with sail.

'Overpressed with sail,' said Jack. 'And she will not be the only one. We shall see a good many topgallants gone in the morning, if the breeze keeps freshening like this, working up an ugly sea.'