Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

They were already at the edge of the westerly current, and the breeze chopped up the pale surface; but there was nothing of a sea, nothing resembling the great rollers with the hills and dales that so favoured a heavier ship, and by noon the Leopard, setting all she could carry and steering south-west, had run the Waakzaamheid out of sight.

"May we cry Io triumphe ? 'asked Stephen at dinner. "It Is two hours since she vanished, wallowing in impotent rage.)

"I am not going to cry lo anything at all until we pick up our moorings in Simon's Bay,"cried Jack. "With Turnbull and Holles here, I did not like to say anything at breakfast, but I do not know that I have ever seen anything so shocking in all my life as that Dutchman at dawn, sitting there to the windward, between us and the Cape. It was exactly as though he had been leaning over my shoulder last night, while I worked out our course. And I am by no means easy in my mind about this morning's performance, neither. It was too far off to be certain, with the haze, but I had an ugly feeling he was not chasing wholehearted. No

skysails, as I dare say you remarked. Maybe his pole topgallantmasts will not bear 'em; but it seemed to me he was not so much eager to catch us as to drive us south, away to the leeward. In his place, and with his advantage in men, I should try to carry the ship by boarding, rather than batter her into matchwood and maybe have her sink on me: what a triumph to carry a sound fifty-gun ship with him to the Indies! And he may be waiting for his opportunity. However, I shall do all I can to cross his wake tonight, and if only I can get the weather-gage, with the wind anywhere east of south, I shall try a luffing match with him. We can lie closer to the wind, and those broad bottomed ships always sag to leeward more than we do. So in any sea where Leopard can stay, I believe we could leave him a great way astern by beating up, leave him for good and all; and I hope to be windward of him tomorrow."

A vain hope. Jack's plan of crossing the Dutchman's wake in the night was frustrated by a dead calm; and in the afternoon of the next day, while all hands were bending a fresh suit of heavy-weather sails, the Waakzaamheid was seen in the north-east, bringing up the breeze. She was a noble sight, with studdingsails aloft and alow, gleaming under the clouded sky - towering canvas that gleamed with a more than ordinary and as it were inward glow, for she too had shifted her suit in preparation for the winds to be expected farther south - but the Leopards could not admire her. They had all seen the spent ball that damaged the figurehead, and they all knew that behind the lowerdeck ports of the approaching Waakzaamheid lay a long tier of Dutch thirty-two-pounders, throwing metal nearly half as heavy again as their own guns. The best part of the Leopard's hull was heart of oak, so was the best part of her crew; but there was not a man aboard who concealed his delight when the breeze reached the Leopard too, filled her stout new canvas, and caused the water to gurgle under her counter as she gathered way. A little later the

capricious air began to fail the Waakzaamheid: she put down her helm and opened a distant cannonade that effectually killed what little wind there was.

Slow, deliberate fire, gun by gun from her upper tier: single shot with a heavy charge of powder; almost always short, but remarkably good practice; and some of the ricochets came aboard. He could not hope to accomplish a great deal at this distance - his twelve-pound upperdeck shot could not do half as much harm after the first graze as the Dutchman's twenty-four-pounders - but there was always the chance of carrying away a spar or cutting up the rigging, which would be all to the good with the Waakzaamheid five or six thousand miles from her nearest source of supply. And then a stray shot might hit a cartridge-box or a lantern between decks, starting a fire and even blowing up the magazine: it was long, long odds, but he had known it happen. Yet there were other, far more important considerations. Since her captain delighted in gunnery, and since he was well-to-do, the Leopard was exceptionally rich in powder and shot; and if Jack, by provoking the Waakzaamheid, could induce her to fire shot for shot, sending most of it into the sea, he would be relatively the gainer. Then he knew very well that even the most intrepid heroes did not much relish sitting mute, waiting to be fired at; and many of the Leopard's landsmen were not heroic at all. Furthermore, experience had taught him that no target on earth could excite such a zeal, such careful, deliberate aiming, as one's fellow men: this was a perfect opportunity for getting the best into his gun crews; the Leopard made the fullest use of it, and occasionally the fall of her shot would send water over the Dutchman's side, while twice, to rapturous cheers, the well-served number seven gun struck home, whereas the Waakzaamheid did nothing but send one spent ball into the Leopard's hammock-netting. Yet Jack had a growing, disagreeable conviction that his colleague over the water had exactly the same thing in mind, that he too was

profiting from the situation to work up his crew, his horribly numerous crew, to an even higher state of perfection. Jack could see him clearly through his telescope, a tall man in a light-blue coat with brass buttons, sometimes standing on his quarterdeck, smoking a short pipe at intervals of scrutinizing the Leopard, sometimes walking about among the upper-deck guns; and in spite of the cheering and pleasant spirit aboard, Jack was heartily pleased when another light air, neglecting the Waakzaamheid, enabled him to run out of range.

That night, the night of the new moon, they lay with very little movement until the morning watch, when cold rain came sweeping from the west, and a moderate swell made the Leopard pitch as she stood for the distant Cape, now considerably to the north as well as east.

No one had to wake the Captain this time. He was on the quarterdeck well before sunrise, muffled in a pilot jacket by the lee rail; as he had expected, the first light showed him the Waakzaamheid, far over between him and Africa,steering a course that would cut his own in a few hours' time. Jack brought the wind upon his starboard beam; the Dutchman did the same, but no more - he did not attempt to close. And so they ran all day through the rain, running parallel courses, south and south. Now and then a squall would hide one from the other, but every time it cleared, there was the Waakzaamheid, keeping station as faithfully as if she were the Leopard's consort, attending to her signals. Sometimes one would gain a mile or two, sometimes the other, but by nightfall they were at much the same distance apart, having run off a hundred and thirty miles by dead reckoning - no sight of the sun at noon, with all that driving cloud. After dark Jack began beating up, tack upon tack, both watches on deck, hoping to shake off the Waakzaamheid, which was not such a windward ship, and then to fetch a wide cast northwards, to cross her wake far out of sight. And so he might have done, had not the wind faHed him, leaving the Leopard

with little more than steerage-way, drifting westward on the current, so that once again the morning sun showed her that odiously familiar shape, exact to the rendezvous.

It was that night, after a day of manoeuvring in light airs that boxed the compass, that the Waakzaamheid made her attempt at boarding. The sun set clear in a sky that promised a true breeze in the morning; there was a fair amount of starlight before the young moon rose, and it showed the Dutchman ghosting nearer under skysails, although there was not a ripple on the long oily swell. The movement was scarcely perceptible at first, and only the successive disappearance of the lowest stars betrayed it to the lookout's watchful eye: the seventy-four must have picked up the first whisper of the air as it was born, and when it brought her within gunshot she heaved to and opened up with a most spectacular series of rippling broadsides. The Leopard was already at action-stations; the battle lanterns gleamed behind her open larboard ports; both tiers of guns peered out; the smell of burning match drifted along the decks; but until the ships were closer Jack would not give the order to fire. He stood on the poop, staring across the water with his night-glass; he did not wholly believe in this attack, and he was searching for the boats he would himself have launched. No sign, no sign at all: but then, when he had almost given up, he caught the flash of oars, very much farther from the ship than he had reckoned on. The Dutch captain had launched them on his blind side in. the dark, and had sent them off, crammed with men, at least half an hour ago. They were pulling fast in a wide arc to take the Leopard on the starboard side while, the Waakzaamheid engaged her with distant gunfire on the other. "The fox," said Jack, and he gave orders for boarding-netting, for the guns to be drawn and reloaded with grape, and for all the Marines to leave the guns for their muskets.