Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

without dilly-dallying on the way - the wisdom of reefing topsails by night in such circumstances - the advantages of other modes of conduct - and suddenly he was brought up with a guilty start by being told, quite sharply, that 'these neat diagrams of the winds were all very fine and large, but he must not run away with the idea that nature copied books, or that as soon as the trades left off, the westerlies set in: above all in a year like this, when the south-easter did not reach nearly as far beyond the line as they had had a right to expect - there was no telling just what winds they should find a little farther east or south."

He said, "No, Jack: certainly not," and drifted away again - the melancholy fate of the sixty-seven-year old lieutenant - until he heard the question, "But is he the Dutchman at all? That is the whole point."

"Might you not go and look?" he asked.

"You are forgetting that he has the weather-gage of us, and was I to close him now, he would have a good chance of bringing on an action just as he chose."

"You do not mean to fight the Dutchman, so?"

"Good heavens, no! What a fellow you are, Stephen. Wantonly tackle a seventy-four, with thirty-two and twenty-four-pounders and six hundred men aboard? If the Leopard, half manned and with half the Dutchman's weight of metal, can slip past him to the Cape, then she must do so, with her tall between her legs. Ignominious flight is the order of the day. After the Cape, with a full complement, why, that might be another matter: though it would still be risky, risky . . . Still, after dinner, with only a few hours of daylight left, I shall edge away and see what I can make of him. He was ten miles off at dawn: he will be fourteen by now, with our wearing and standing on. If I close to within four or five, by crowding sail, in the afternoon watch, then even if he sails eight knots to our seven, he cannot get within range before dark: and there is no moon tonight.'After a long, considering pause he went on, "Lord, Stephen, how often I think of Tom Pullings. It

is not only that I could leave everything to him, action or no action, knowing he would do what we have always thought right, but I so often wonder how he does."

"Aye: it is much the same with me. But I believe our solicitude is misplaced. We landed him in a Catholic country."

"You mean he might be saved?"

"My concern is with his mortal part. What I mean is, that he will be nursed not by the hags of Haslar, but by Franciscans. Nursing is almost everything in these cases, and there is a world of difference between the mercenary and the religious. The good nuns will bear with Tom's nervous, fractious symptoms; he will thrive there, where a common hospital might kill him; and if he should be infected with a slight touch of genuflexion, sure it will do him no great harm in a service where the sense of rank is carried to such Byzantine extremes."

This should have been the Leopard's washing day, but no clothes-lines were rigged. Instead all hands were turned to chipping shot: the guns, apart from some honeycombing in the upper-deck number seven, were in an order as perfect as very close attention could make them, and Mr Burton had filled large quantities of powder; but deep in their lockers at the bottom of the hold, some of the round-shot had corroded, as usual. They were roused up by the hundred, so many to each gun, and the sh' p clicked and ticked from stem to stern as the crews carefully tapped off the bosses and flakes of rust, making the balls as round as they could be and then brushing them lightly with galley slush.

It was this noise that Stephen explained to Mrs Wogan as he exercised her in the afternoon watch, she wearing a warm spencer and half-boots, and looking remarkably pink and well, brimming with high spirits. "Oh, indeed," said she, "I imagined the whole ship had run mad, and turned tinker to a man. But pray, sir, why are they so eager to make them round?"

"So that they may fly straight and true, and strike the enemy in his vital parts."

"Heavens! Is there an enemy about?" cried Mrs Wogan. "We shall all be murdered in our beds.'She began to laugh, low, and then, unable to contain her mirth, fuller and rounder still. It was not loud, but it carried; and Jack, fixed in the main topgallant crosstrees these last hours, caught its ghost and smiled. Ile had had the strange sail in his glass much of this time, and he was as nearly certain as could be that she was the Waakzaamheid: the broadsterned, Dutch-built hull was unmistakable. There was just a chance that she might be one of the captured Dutch men-of-war, but it was most unlikely, since she was making as much southing as -ever she could, whereas a British ship would be three points off the wind, heading for the Cape. Close hauled for her southing under a fair spread of canvas; yet for all her topgallants she was not making much above six knots. Something of a slug, therefore, and slower than the Leopard on a wind. Unless . . . unless those bowlines were not as taut as they seemed, and her captain was something of a fox, happy to have the Leopard come up hand over hand.

"On deck, there," he hailed.

"Sir?" replied Babbington.

"Heave the log, and send me up a pea-jacket, my flask, and a bite."

"Oh, please, sir, please may I take it up?" whispered Forshaw.

"Silence," cried Babbington, cracking him on the head with his speaking trumpet. "Seven knots and three fathoms, sir.' And then, "Mr Forshaw, jump to the cabin, tell Killick pea-jacket, flask and bite, and run up to the crosstrees without taking breath, d'ye hear me?"

"Is it the Captain high up there?" asked Mrs Wogan.

"It is, child; and he has been viewing this strange, perhaps this wicked sail, for a great while now."

"He sounds like the voice of God,"said Mrs Wogan. Her

laugh began again, but she choked it back, and went on, "I must not be disrespectful, however. Is there really going to be a battle?"

"Never in life, ma'am. This is only what we term a reconnaissance. There will be no battle, at all."

"Oh," said she, rather disappointed: and after a while, "Do not you find it very cold, with only a cotton jacket on? My spencer is lined, but I protest it scarcely keeps me from shivering."

"This Jacket is silk, ma'am. The finest Recife silk, and impervious to the blast."

"There I must undeceive you, sir. It is cotton, twilled cotton, the kind we call jean; I am afraid the shopman of Recife had no conscience, the dog."

"It was a woman," said Stephen, in a low voice, looking at his sleeve.

"I shall knit you a comforter. Is that the ship out in front there? We were looking in the wrong direction."

There she lay, four or five miles off, hull-up from the Leopard's poop.

"Just so,"said Stephen. "Exactly where the Captain and I expected it."

"It looks very small, and a great way off. I wonder that they should make such a coil, hammering away like Gipsies. Tell me, how far are we from the Cape?"

"Something in the nature of a thousand miles, I take it."

"Lord, a thousand miles! You will certainly have your comforter before that."

Stephen thanked her, handed her below into the now not unwelcome fug, and returned to the quarterdeck. Everyone was quiet, and all eyes but the helmsman's were fixed on the strange sail, by no means so distant now. She was certainly a two-decker, certainly Dutch, and probably a seventy-four. She held steadily to her course, steering south-south -west with the wind at south-east by east a half east, not pointing up very close for her trim therefore, and sailing rather heavy.

Six knots to the Leopard's seven or rather better; though it was true that the Leopard had more sail abroad. At this rate a considerable time must pass before there was much likelihood of communication, unless the Dutchman heaved to or shortened sail. At present he showed no sign of doing either: ploughed steadily on, his bluff bows shouldering the swell, as though the Leopard did not exist. Combermere, a signal midshipman, had had little opportunity of exercising his skill this voyage; and he was now studying his book with frantic zeal by the open flag-locker, hoping that the yeoman at his side might know more than himself. Most of the other people on the leeward side of the quarterdeck were calm enough: they conversed in low voices, not to disturb the Captain over there, with his telescope poised on the hammocks in their netting. The ship was cleared for action, but this, or something very like it, happened every day at quarters, and there was little sense of extreme urgency. Those who had been in battle, particularly under Captain Aubrey, were rather quiet; those who had not were somewhat talkative. "Look, look," cried Mr Fisher, pointing to a fork-tailed petrel, "there is a swallow. What a good omen! And so far from land."