Patrick O'Brian - The surgeon's mate

'Mr Nuttall,' he said to the gunner, 'single round-shot, and pitch it beyond them.'

The gunner laid his piece: fired: the ball struck fifty yards beyond the boat, in a true line, and went skipping across the sea in a series of enormous bounds. The boat rowed on.

'Again,' said Jack.

This time the smoke obscured the fall of the shot, but as it cleared there was the boat, still heading for the shore. 'Full on, Mr Hyde,' said Jack in a harsh voice: it was a sickening business but his carronades would not reach much farther and no single gun could be perfectly relied upon. He must get it over at once. The ship was broadside on, the gun-crews poised about their carronades. 'From forward aft,' he said, 'deliberate fire; wait for the smoke to clear. Fire one.' The first shot pitched a little wide; the second rocked the boat, and in the eddying smoke he saw a man stand up. Was he waving a handkerchief? In the split second of his thought the third gun fired, striking the boat fair and square. Planks flew up, and something like an arm. A savage cheer all along the deck, and the gun-crews turned their beaming faces, clapping one another on the back.

'House your guns,' said Jack. 'Cutters away. Mr Fenton, see if there are any survivors. Mr Hyde, take possession of the prize, and make the master lighten her at once. Anderson will interpret for you. Mr Grimmond, a light in the maintop to guide the Humbug, and rouse out an eight-inch hawser. We must heave her off at once; there is not a minute to be lost.'

Every minute was indeed irreplaceable, yet they flowed away by the score and by the hundred. The Minnie would not move. The channels were so narrow, the navigation so intricate, that a vessel of Ariel's draught could not move with any freedom, could not take up a proper station; with infinite labour they laid out anchors by means of the launch, dragging the heavy cables behind them, and every time the capstan turned, taking the full strain and transmitting it to the Minnie, the anchors came home again.

The situation was already difficult by the time Fenton returned with the one survivor, a youth of about seventeen, wounded in the leg and head, unconscious. It was far more complicated some time later, when Stephen came up from the sick-bay, there were ropes leading in every direction, stretching out into the darkness; in the glow of the lantern the faces of the men at the capstan-bars looked worn and jaded, all excitement gone. Jack had just finished a roared series of instructions to some distant boat when Stephen appeared. 'How does he come along?' he asked in a hoarse voice.

'I believe we may save him,' said Stephen. 'The ligature seems to hold, and the young are wonderfully resilient. You seem in a sad way, brother?'

'Tolerably so, tolerably so. Her after-bitts gave way, and we have lost our small bower, parted at the ring; but it could be worse, and I dare say Humbug will be here presently. She don't draw more than a few feet.' He sounded cheerful, and in fact the incessant activity kept the surface of his mind from brooding on the prospect of the hours ahead; but at no great depth he was aware that dirty weather was brewing in the north, that the Humbug, creeping over the shoals from the other side, creeping over the far extremity five miles away, had missed the channel and had already grounded twice; and that if anything of a sea got up he should be obliged to slip his cables and run, abandoning the Minnie and perhaps the whole enterprise, so promising not long ago. 'Were you able to get anything out of him?'

'I was not,' said Stephen. 'He is in a deep coma. But I am afraid his uniform has nothing of the aide-de-camp's glory about it at all; and his letters are those of an ordinary subaltern. Besides, such a wild dash was surely the act of boys rather than of sober, reflecting senior officers.'

'I don't know,' said Jack. 'If I had command of a place like Grimsholm, I think I might have tried it; I think I might have tried for a horse on shore - it is not many hours ride. But I am very certain that I should have pulled away on the blind side for a mile or two. What is it, Mr Rowbotham?'

'If you please, sir, the spare anchor is new-puddened.'

'Very good, very good: then bend the bitter-end to it. The bitter-end, Mr Rowbotham.'

'Oh yes, sir: the bitter-end it is.'

The second lieutenant came for fresh instructions, and while the urgent technical talk flowed past his ears Stephen watched the lights far over the bank, the lights of all Ariel's and Minnie's boats busy about the radiating arms of rope that were to pull her off: of all the boats except the gig, which was carrying Pellworm away to the distant Humbug, to bring her in through the devious channels.

A small dismal rain began to fall, veiling the lights. Fenton ran aft, and Stephen said, 'But if I may have a word with the Minnie's captain, we may learn all there is to be learnt. I must speak to him in any event, to hear what he has to say about Grimsholm. I understand that the Minnie goes there from time to time.'

'As soon as we have a boat free I will send for him,' said Jack, and raising his voice he called, 'Mr Hyde, tell the Minnie's master to stand by to come across in the next boat. He is to bring the ship's papers, too.'

'Sir,' came Hyde's reply out of the wet darkness, 'the Frenchmen pistolled him. Shall I send his mate?'

Two dim wet figures came to report; an unseen boat hailed to say that the warp was entangled in a sunken wreck.

'Never fret your spirit now, my dear,' said Stephen. 'It would advance us nothing at this stage to know whether General Mercier is living or dead; tomorrow morning would answer very well, so it would.'

A violent rending sound, a confusion of voices in the darkness, and Jack disappeared. Stephen waited, and then, the rain increasing, he went down to his cot, where he lay staring at the candle-flame in his lantern, his hands behind his head. Physically he was tired and his body relaxed throughout its entire length: his mind was in much the same state, floating free, detached, as though he had taken his old favourite, the tincture of laudanum. He felt no particular anxiety. The attempt must either succeed or fail: he hoped with all his heart for success, but 'all his heart' did not amount to a great deal now that some essential part of its core seemed to have died. Yet on the other hand he felt more able to command success in that it meant no less to him - to command it with a strength that arose not indeed from a fundamental indifference to his own fate but from something resembling it that he could not define; it had a resemblance to despair, but a despair long past, with the horror taken out of it.

The Humbug came through the fairway late in the middle watch, having had to fetch a long cast to windward, beating up tack upon tack; she brought the growing breeze with her and the threat of a dirty end to the night. The lantern swung wider in the small silent cabin: Stephen slept on.

For the next hour and more the hermaphrodite laid out anchors and buoys; the ablest seamen in all three vessels spliced cables end to end. The cables ran through the hawse-holes until there were none left in the tiers; and gradually the whole series of purchases designed either to pluck the Minnie from her bed or to tear her guts out took form.

Stephen woke to the sound of a familiar voice raised high, so high that it pierced the deck, for now the whole system was to be put to the test, and now the strain was on - a strain divided between four anchors, nearly a mile of cables and hawsers, and all concentrated on the Ariel's capstan. 'Stamp and go,' cried Jack to the hands at the bars, 'stamp and go. Heave, heave her round. Heave hearty there.' By now most of the men were Minnies, pressed into the present service; though they might not understand the actual words the gist was plain enough. They could scarcely gain an inch as they heaved and the brisk clicking of the pawls faded steadily to no more than a click a minute; and then to none. Now the full force was on; the cable between the two ships showed never a curve as it vanished into the faint but growing light. 'Heave and rally. Heave, heave and rally. Bosun, start that man. Heave and pawl. Well fare ye, my lads. Now heave with a will.'