Patrick O'Brian - The surgeon's mate

A wild turmoil, in which Jack received two kicks and one blow from a rope's end - the first since his voice had broken - and the Diligence was under plain sail, the strain on her wounded mast reduced, order restored. Mr Dalgleish handed over the wheel, and he and Jack inspected the Liberty at their leisure: she had run straight on to ice with all her force, impaling herself and, since she was already very much by the head, apparently shearing away her stem below the waterline. Her people were trying to get her boats over the side, and the other schooner was standing towards her, directly away from the packet, losing an hour's gain in five minutes. After another board northwards the packet put before the wind and the schooners dropped astern. 'Will the single vessel continue to pursue us, do you think?' asked Stephen.

'No, sir,' said Dalgleish, yawning. 'You can go to your cot and sleep easy: I am sure I shall. She will cram all Mr Henry's men aboard, if she possibly can -look at the vast number of them going across, for God's sake - there is a silly bugger has thrown himself into the sea, ha, ha, ha! It is as good as a play. Then she will go home. And a weary time they will have of it, beating to the eastward day and night; they will be eating their belts and their shoes before they see Marblehead again, with all those hands aboard, and no stores saved out of the Liberty.'

'There is something in the misfortunes of others that does not altogether displease us,' said Stephen, but nobody heard him in the general cry of 'There she goes' as the now distant Liberty slipped beneath the grey surface of the ocean.

'No, sir,' said Mr Dalgleish again, 'you can sleep easy now. And so can Mrs - so can your betrothed, your financy. I forget the lady's name. I hope she has not been disturbed by all the banging and calling out."

'I doubt it,' said Stephen, 'but I will go down and see.'

He was mistaken. Diana was very much disturbed indeed. The first discharge of artillery had wiped out her already waning seasickness; she had misinterpreted the later gunfire and the uproar on deck, and Stephen found her dressed, sitting on a locker with a cocked pistol in either hand, looking as fierce as a wild cat in a trap.

Put those pistols down at once,' he said coldly. 'Do not you know it is very rude to point a pistol at a person you do not mean to kill? For shame, Villiers. Where were you brought up?'

'I beg your pardon,' she said, quite daunted by his severity. 'I thought there was an action - that they had boarded.'

'Not at all, not at all. The most inveterate privateer, the Liberty, has undone herself entirely; she ran upon ice and sank not five minutes since; and the other, loaded like Noah's ark, is going home. Give you joy of your escape, my dear. You are looking better, I find,' he said, taking her pulse. 'Yes: you are far better. Should you like to take some fresh air, and see the discomfiture of our enemies?'

Stephen led her on deck, a deck still full of wild hilarity - no sense of hierarchy at all - and her appearance was greeted with a spontaneous, friendly cheer. Busy hands supported her to the rail, pointed out the distant schooner, now standing west; tight against her elbow the cook gave her a detailed account of the movements since sunrise in a hoarse whisper, almost drowned by the explanations of the two mates and a little stunted boy who wished her to know that he had foreseen it all from the start. Mr Dalgleish came up, took off his hat, and welcomed her with some ceremony: 'We are all very happy to see you on deck, ma'am,' he said, 'and hope we may be so honoured every day for the rest of the passage, when fine. Not that there will be so many days, if this wind holds true: those villains pushed us east so fast and far, I should not be surprised to raise Rockall on Wednesday.' And seeing that Rockall meant nothing to her he said, 'I should not be surprised if we were to make the quickest passage ever known, bar Clytie's in ninety-four. And how glad they will be to see us, ma'am, with the news we bring. I fairly laughed aloud when first I heard the Shannon had took the Chesapeake.'

CHAPTER FOUR

Having sent up the new topmast at last, the Diligence headed south and west with as fair and sweet a breeze as a sailor could pray for; it came in over her starboard quarter, often bringing rain, but always steady and strong, as constant as the Trades day after day, and although strictly it was a topgallant breeze, Mr Dalgleish spread his royals as well at the least slackening, for he was determined not to lose a yard of its thrust. In spite of their lying-to on the Banks there was every likelihood of their making an extraordinarily rapid passage, the privateers having pushed them eastwards so fast and far; he was perfectly convinced that the Diligence must be a very great way ahead of the dull-sailing Nova Scotia on her southern route - that they would be the first home - and like every soul aboard he was bursting to tell the news.

The wind held true; Dalgleish cracked on; the packet logged 269 sea-miles from one noon to the next; on the seventeenth day out of Halifax they struck soundings; and in the chops of the Channel he told his news to a homeward-bound Guineaman, bawling 'Shannon has taken Chesapeake' through the driving western rain as he passed to windward, leaving her cheering like a ship of fools. He told it to a Cornish pilchard-boat and a pilot-cutter off the Dodman, to a frigate near the Eddystone, and to some others, mostly outward-bound.

By all sound reasoning the news, if it had reached England at all, should have been confined to the south-western tip of that damp island; and in any case the Diligence, racing up the Channel with a screeching south-wester and a following tide for the last stretch to Portsmouth, should certainly have outpaced it. But not at all. She was standing in with the signal for dispatches flying, Haslar on her larboard bow, Southsea Castle on her starboard beam, when the Admiral's barge, double-banked and pulling hard, came out to meet her. 'Is it true?' cried the flag-lieutenant.

'Yes it is,' answered Humphreys, one foot already on the quarterladder, the dispatch buttoned into his bosom. The barge rounded to, he made a spring, lost his hat in the breeze, landed asprawl, and was borne off laughing to the post-chaise and four that was to whirl him up to the Admiralty at ten miles an hour - a post-chaise hastily adorned with oak-branches, laurel having been in short supply since the beginning of the American war, for want of demand.

Yet even now that the news was public the packet did not moor in any atmosphere of anticlimax: the rumour's confirmation rather served to heighten the excitement, to strengthen the furious desire to know every detail. The passengers had to endure the eager questioning, though not the inspection, of the customs officers; and when at last they came ashore they were surrounded by people who begged to be told how, where, and when. The streets were crowded; work was at a stand, with all Portsmouth hurrying out of doors; and on the Common Hard liberty-men and dockyard mateys were already piling up the material for an enormous bonfire. Shopkeepers and their apprentices pushed through the mob to add crates, barrels, and strange offerings such as a three-legged sofa and a one-wheeled gig to the heap; there was cheering in every public-house - it was as though Portsmouth had just heard the news of a great fleet-action, a victorious fleet-action.

It was of course a measure of the country's profound dismay, of its painful astonishment, frustration and resentment at the series of defeats inflicted by the Americans, and perhaps of its love for the Royal Navy; yet even so Jack found it somewhat excessive. For one thing, it delayed him in the tedious round of formalities that he had to make before he was his own master: he was all alive with a lover's desire to see his wife, he longed to be in his own house and to see his children and his horses, and these obstacles brought a superficial annoyance over his deep happiness. The spirit of contradiction formed no great part of his character, but what there was of it came to life as he shouldered his way along to the port-admiral's office: the sailors might bawl and roar as much as ever they pleased - they knew what such a battle meant -but the triumphant civilians did not please him, nor did their shouting about the 'Yankees - we'll thump them again and again.' As he passed the Blue Posts a band of excited girls obliged him to step into the gutter, and there he found himself face to face with a pawnbroker by the name of Abse, a greasy acquaintance from very early days, when first Mr Midshipman Aubrey had anything worth pawning. Abse had scarcely changed; still the same pendulous cheeks like ill-shaved Bath chaps, still the same bulbous nose; and now both cheeks and nose had an unnatural purple flush. He recognized his old customer at once and cried 'Captain, have you heard the news? The Shannon has taken the Chesapeake." They were borne past one another, but Jack still heard him call out 'We'll thump them again and again!'