Patrick O'Brian - The surgeon's mate

The staysail was sheeted home - it took thirty men to bring the sheet right aft - and the Ariel heeled another seven degrees.

'How strangely the floor is sloping,' said Jagiello. "'I can hardly sit in my chair. What do you suppose they are doing?'

'I cannot tell,' said Stephen. 'It is a melancholy reflection, that the passenger is a mere helpless, unhelpful parcel when the tempest roars.'

'Does not the Captain seek your advice, sir?'

'Not always,' said Stephen.

The rain had stopped. The Captain and the gunner had made a tour of the sloop's armament. Returning to the quarterdeck Jack said, The rain has stopped for the moment. Perhaps the Doctor would like to see how the sloop is coming along. Mr Rowbotham, pray jump below and tell him, with my compliments, that we are making twelve knots, and that if he would like to see, now is the time. It may come on to blow presently.'

'The Captain's compliments, sir,' said Rowbotham, 'and we are making twelve knots. Twelve knots, sir!'

'Why?' asked Stephen.

'To catch the Meduse, sir. She is on our starboard beam,' said Rowbotham. 'A French seventy-four, sir,' he added, seeing incomprehension before him, 'and we hope to trim her locks directly, with Jason's help. Jason is only two miles astern, and coming down like thunder.'

'Dear me, is there to be a battle?' cried Stephen. 'I had no idea at all.'

'A battle?' cried Jagiello, his torpor vanishing. 'May I come too?'

After a first wild flurry that would have flung them into the leescuppers, if not into the Atlantic, but for the powerful arm of the quartermaster at the con, they were made fast to stanchions on the. weather quarter, well out of the way.

'I thought you would like to see the position,' said Jack, and he outlined it in a mild roar. 'And I thought you would like to see what the ship can do when she is put to her shifts.'

'Sure this is speed itself,' cried Stephen, the foam flying past his face, 'the racing exhilaration of - ' He had been going to say 'of Icarus before his fall', but he checked himself, preferring 'a swooping elegance - an appearance of extreme danger just averted - a falcon's flight, so it is.'

'She is a sweet creature,' said Jack. 'I am glad you have seen her at her best. Now is the time, because we shall be busy in half an hour; and,' - nodding into the black, tormented west, a darkness shot through and through with hidden lightning - 'it will come on to blow tonight: Pellworm's blow, I dare say. We are forereaching on her, as you see, and we mean to haul our wind, shoot up, cross her stem, rake her, wear and rake her again, and fly for our lives before she can yaw: we are twice as nimble, you know, and with our carronades we can fire twice as fast.' He moved off to measure the angles with his sextant, and Jagiello said into Stephen's ear, 'That ship looks three times as large as the Ariel.'

'It is as I understand four times the size,' said Stephen. 'But the disproportion is not as great as you might suppose, since as you perceive their lower range of guns on this side are buried beneath the waves, because of her lean, or list; whereas ours are all raised well above the surface. I have known Captain Aubrey attack at even greater odds and succeed.'

'When will the battle begin?'

'In about half an hour, I am told.'

'I shall fetch my sword and my pistols.'

In fact it began far sooner. The Meduse suddenly bore up, as though to pass under the Ariel's stern and destroy her. Jack at once hauled his wind and the ships converged at a shocking speed under the low grey racing sky. He would still have just time to cross the Frenchman's stem if he were not knocked out first. Nearer, nearer, fine on the Meduse's larboard bow: nearer still, almost within reach of the carronades.

'Fire at the word. Fire high. Aim at her tops,' he called again down the tense line of waiting gun-crews.

The Meduse yawed to port at last and let fly with her upper-deck guns, a well-grouped broadside but a trifle high - they heard the scream of iron overhead, shriller than the wind, and then the huge thunder.

Nearer still. 'Fire,' said Jack and the Ariel's starboard carronades replied at the limit of their range: a staysail ripped loose aboard the Frenchman and tore to pieces, flapping down the wind: the Ariels cheered as they reloaded with furious speed. But now the Meduse's lower ports were opening and the great guns running out, free of the water on the upward roll as she came tearing down on the Ariel's beam.

'Fire,' cried Jack again. The two broadsides bawled out at the same moment and the Ariel's foretopmast went by the board, cut clean away. Her foreyard parted at the slings and she shot up into the wind, spinning fast on her heel.

'Larboard guns,' roared Jack, ignoring the chaos, the wild confusion of sailcloth and rigging and spars, and leaping for the nearest carronade himself: the quicker-witted men were with him and as the Meduse swept past they shattered her spanker-boom and blasted five cloths from her maincourse. Two minutes later and close on a mile away she answered with a careful, studied discharge from her after guns that sent solid water over the Ariel's deck and shattered the boats on the beams; then she was out of her range, still running fast, but by no means as fast as before.

They had only just managed to clear away the chief of the wreckage and get her head before the wind when the Jason came hurtling down in the Meduse's wake; she was already trying long shots with her bow-chasers, and she flew the signal Do you require assistance?

'Negative,' said Jack, and they cheered one another as she went by.

There followed a period of the most intense and strenuous work before the Ariel could haul to the wind again and stand on after the ships of the line, still visible in the south-east, and now steadily engaging at the extremity of their range. She had a spare main topgallant mast at the fore, swayed up by main force and the grace of God in an impossible sea, a crossjack yard for her forecourse, and her knotted rigging was an ugly sight; her speed of course was much reduced, but she held a good wind and she limped after the great ships with a fair chance of joining the action after they had mauled each other for a while. The Jason had already lost her spritsail yard - shot away or carried away they could not tell - and they knew what they had done to the Meduse: both the ships of the line were travelling far more slowly.

'We are well out of that,' said Jack, when at last he could come below in the twilight and drink a pot of tea. 'I never thought we should come off so easy. No killed or wounded, never a shot in the hull, only a few spars knocked away apart from the boats, and we clipped her locks finely. I thought she would blow us out of the water without so much as a by your leave, ha, ha, ha! If she had had a moment to spare she would certainly have done so. I have rarely been so pleased in my life as when I saw her run out of range, with her boom gone in the jaws.'

'What is your present intention, tell?' asked Stephen.

'Why, we must hang on their skirts as well as ever we can through the night, and if we cannot join in ourselves - which I don't despair of - we must try to bring down any ship within sight or hearing by blue lights and rockets and gunfire. There is a very fair chance of meeting with some of our cruisers, if not the Brest team itself.'

'And what of Pellworm's blow?'

'Oh damn Pellworm and his blow: we must cross that bridge when we come to it. For the moment our duty is to follow; but first I am going to have a bite. Will you join me in a cold leg of mutton?'

Following was easy enough in the first part of the night; not only did the Jason carry an unusually powerful toplight, but even when it was hidden by the rain and the low racing clouds, the gun-flashes showed where they were. The Ariel followed after them in an effulgence of blue lights, with frequent guns, and rockets twice at every bell, and at one time she was certainly gaining on them; this was at the beginning of the middle watch, when the whole south-eastern sky was lit not by the single flash of chasers but by the blaze of full broadsides, six times repeated, broadsides whose thunder reached them over the howling of the gale and reached them within two heartbeats of the blaze.