Patrick O'Brian - The surgeon's mate

This Draper did, to the wail of pipes, with something like a tear in his eye, and his glum companions mute in the boat; and the moment it was decently clear and pulling for the shore Jack called 'Away aloft. Trice up and lay out.'

The topmen raced up the shrouds, ran out along the yards, cast off the gaskets and stood poised there holding the sails. 'Let fall. Sheet home, sheet home. Man the halliards: haul, haul. Belay.' The yards rose, the sheets were tallied aft, the billowing sails stood taut, and the Ariel, surging ahead, plucked her anchor from the ground. The hands at the capstan ran the remaining fathoms of cable in as briskly as the tierers could handle it, and the small bower was catted and fished just as she shaved past the Indomitable, a biscuit's toss to windward, passed between her and her next ahead, and headed out to sea on the tail of the ebb.

'She cast pretty,' said the master of the Indomitable.

'It was damned impertinence to go to windward of us,' said the first lieutenant. 'She would have ruined my fresh paint, with the least hint of a check to the anchor.'

A few minutes later the Ariel dropped her topgallantsails and Jack said, 'Lay me for the Mouse, Mr Grimmond. There is always some garbage there, at slack water.'

Up until this time Stephen, Jagiello, and the King's Messenger had been standing meekly out of the way, like parcels, by the ensign-staff. Jack called the first lieutenant, introduced him, and said 'Mr Hyde, we must bestow these gentlemen as well as we can. Dr Maturin can share my cabin, but you will have to find room to swing two more cots somewhere below.'

Hyde looked more anxious still. With a deferential mirthless smile he said that he should do his best, but the Ariel was a flush-decked ship.

If Jack had not already noticed that she lacked anything but a theoretical quarterdeck and forecastle - that her deck ran without a break from stem to stern so that although beautiful she was decidedly cramped - he noticed it immediately afterwards, when he led his charges below. Long experience had taught him to bend between decks, and without taking thought he ducked as he entered the cabin. Jagiello was not so fortunate: he struck his head against a beam with such shocking force that although he protested that it was nothing - he felt nothing - his face turned deathly white, so that the blood running down it showed even more distinctly. They sat him down on a locker - even the Messenger displayed a glimmering of humanity - and while Stephen mopped him, Jack called for grog, told him that it might happen to anyone, and that he should always watch out for low beams in unrated ships, particularly in French unrated ships. Captain Aubrey did not sit with them long, however: as soon as it became apparent that Jagiello would survive he went on deck again.

The squadron at the Nore was already far astern, Sheerness no more than a looming blur. The Ariel was slipping easily through the calm slack water, making a good five knots with the gentle breeze, her wake as straight as a well-drawn furrow.

He took half a dozen turns on the little quarterdeck, looking aloft, looking over her side, getting the feel of her. It was much as he had expected, the feel of a well-built, well-rigged ship, fast, weatherly, and easy in hand. He knew her well, having chased her twice without success when she was still a French corvette and having seen her often after she was captured, one of the few French ship-rigged corvettes that the Admiralty had not ruined by adding a superstructure, though as usual they had over-gunned her, cutting an extra port a side, which probably dulled her fine point of sailing and certainly brought her a little by the stern. A trim little ship, a frigate in miniature, but with a purer unbroken line; a formidable little ship too, with her sixteen thirty-two pounder carronades and her two long nines - formidable, that is to say, at close range, a match for anything of her own class, so long as she could get near enough.

From the moment she had been mentioned in Whitehall he had been confident that the Ariel, well handled, would do anything he asked her, within sea-reason: what he did not know was the capacities of those who were to do the handling. There were obviously some prime seamen among them; they had unmoored creditably and everything on deck was shipshape and Bristol-fashion except for that stray slab-line forward; but the Ariel was obviously short-handed, perhaps twenty below her complement of a hundred and twelve, and there was an undue proportion of boys. Yet the main question was not so much whether they could sail the ship as whether they could fight her guns. He knew nothing of the young men who had had her during the last two years, nothing of their standards of gunnery; and since tomorrow might find him at grips with a Dutchman out of the Scheldt, to say nothing of possible French or American privateers farther ahead and very probable Danish gunboats in the Belt, he wanted to know what he should expect, and in view of that knowledge, what tactics he should adopt.

'Come up the sheets half a fathom, Mr Grimmond,' he said to the master, who had the watch. 'We do not want to get there too soon. And perhaps we might have that slab-line belayed.' Another couple of turns, and he felt the Ariel slacken her pace, like a soft-mouthed mare gently checked by her rider. The Mouse was still quite a fair distance ahead.

'Pass the word for the gunner,' he said. And to the bright-eyed, round-headed young gunner he said, 'Master gunner, tell me the state of your stores.'

The Ariel was not very rich, but she was not destitute either: he could afford two or three broadsides, using a couple of half-barrels of the inferior white-mark powder. This would exhaust his Admiralty practice-allowance for the next eight months, but as soon as he touched at Carlscrona, where he was to join the Commander-in-Chief, Baltic, he would fill her magazines and shot-lockers out of his own pocket, as did most captains who could afford it and who were deeply convinced that accurate, rapid gunfire was the best way of beating the enemy at sea.

'Very well,' he said, as three bells struck, three bells in the last dog-watch. 'Mr Hyde, we will beat to quarters, if you please.'

'Beat to quarters,' cried the first lieutenant. But there followed a most horrid pause. Nothing of the kind had been expected so late in the day; the drummer was in the head, his breeches down; the drum could not be found, still less made to roar. However, encouraged by the bosun and his mates, all hands ran to their action-stations, and some moments later Jack was gratified with the ludicrous spectacle of the drummer, his shirt-tail hanging out, thundering madly to a motionless ship's company.

'Vast drumming,' roared Mr Hyde, shaking his fist at the unhappy man; and then turning to Jack he said in a quiet, respectful tone, 'All present and sober, sir, if you please.'

'Thank you, Mr Hyde,' said Jack, and he stepped forward to the imaginary line that separated the imaginary quarterdeck from the imaginary waist. The Mouse bank was coming near, and though the light was nearly gone he could still make out the long line of floating rubbish that gathered there between tides.

'Silence fore and aft,' he cried. There was not the least need: the entire ship's company was perfectly mute and the only sound was that of the breeze sighing in the rigging, the creak of blocks and the lap of the water down her side. But this was understood by all to be the only right beginning to the martial litany that ran on 'Cast loose your gun - level your gun - out tompion - run out your gun.' No surprise at all in this: but amazement when the Captain broke the ritual sequence by saying to the master at the con, 'Lay me within half musket-shot of that cask to leeward, Mr Grimmond,' and then in a louder voice, 'Prime your gun. The crate on the starboard bow is your mark. From forward aft, fire as it bears.'