Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"Deck ho," called the lookout. "Ice island three points before the larboard beam. Maybe a league."

Jack stared over the sea, and there in the wafting mist loomed the island, half a mile across or so, with a tall triangular peak to one side. Noon was too close for any detaHed inspection: but he did see that it was surrounded by a mass of floating blocks. He made his way to his usual place, leant on the rail, gave Bonden his watch, took his sextant, and stared aloft. All the officers, all the young gentlemen did the same; if only the fog would clear in the north there was a fair chance of an observation, and it was thinning out fast. The pale sun at its height broke

through: a general 'Ha' of satisfaction, and Jack wrote his reading while Bonden gave him the time by the watch. Then came the ritual of noon, the acting master to the officer of the watch, the officer to the Captain, Jack's grave 'Make it so, Mr Byron', and the hands piped to dinner. On the assumption that Jack was quite restored the order was carried out with the usual hullabaloo. fie clapped his hand to his forehead, turned, stumbled on his game leg, and fell flat on the deck.

They ran to help him - small thanks for their pains and when he was upright, clinging to the rail, he said, "Mr Grant, when the hands have had their dinner, we will hoist out the jolly-boat and the red cutter to fetch ice from off that island."

"I beg your pardon, sir, but it will run on to your coat, said Grant. Indeed, the wound had opened, and the bandage was soaked already, the red blood dripping down his face.

Well, well," he said testily. "Bonden, give me your arm. Mr Babbington, get that hairy thing of yours out of the fairway.' He had meant to ask Grant and the midshipman to dine with him. fie was fully aware of the importance of the invulnerable, infallible commander, superior to all mortal ills, particularly with a crew like the Leopard's, with some indifferent officers and what was now so large a proportion of raw hands, and he had caught the atmosphere of intense, doubting curiosity; but suddenly he felt that he could not bear an hour of Grant's loud, metallic voice, and he decided to put it off until tomorrow.

Yet before his solitary meal, Stephen, having renewed the bandage, sat with him for a while; and to Stephen he said, "Here we are, do you see, in 42'45'E, 43'40'S. A good observation, and I checked the chronometers by a lunar only ten days ago, so we cannot be more than a minute out."

Stephen looked at the chart and said, "The Cape seems great way off."

"About thirteen hundred miles, give or take a score or so. Lord, how we did run off our casting, with the Devil at our heels."

"It will take longer, I presume, to run it in again, and bring us back to the Cape."

"There is little paint in going back to the Cape. It Is less than five thousand miles to Botany Bay, and down here in the forties, with the likelihood of fair winds all the way, we may run them off in under a month. As for hands, Mr Bligh or the Admiral are as likely to supply us as the Cape. Our stores have held out very well; so rather than beatback or run north and west, I mean to carry on, keeping to this parallel, or perhaps a little south."

"No Cape," said Stephen.

"No. Did you particularly wish to see the Cape again?"

"Oh, not at all,"said Stephen. And then, "But come, you poured all the water away. What do we drink, during this month of yours?"

"Dear Stephen," said Jack, smiling for the first time since the action, "there is as much fresh water a few miles to leewards as ever we could wish. If you had been on deck for the observation you would have seen it, a monstrous fine great island of ice, enough to last us ten times round the world. That is why I had the ship's head kept south-east. You always find these mountains floating about the high latitudes, though I had not hoped for them quite so soon, this being what they call summer."

Stephen may have missed the iceberg in the forenoon, when he was deep in Mrs Wogan's papers, she being walked by Herapath, but he was not going to miss it now. As soon as he was free he put on his comforter, a pilot jacket, and a woollen hat, borrowed Jack's common telescope - much as he loved Stephen, Jack would not let him have his best - and found a sheltered corner by the shivering hens. He sat upon a coop and stared at the towering ice with great satisfaction: far grander than he had imagined, a most enormous mass, fretted at its base into fantastic shapes - deep bays, caverns, lofty pinnacles, overhanging cliffs. An ancient island, he presumed, decaying fast in its northward drift. Great numbers of detached blocks floated at its foot, and some fell from the heights as he watched. A deeply gratifying spectacle. The Cape was a disappointment, particularly as both he and Mrs Wogan had relied upon it: her papers were almost ready, and only a few pages of Herapath's transcript remained to be encoded. By now she was much quicker at her task, though she still used the inky, often-folded key that he had copied on an earlier occasion to include in his own letter from the Cape - such a letter from an agent put out to grass! 'But still,"he said, shrugging, "Cape Town or Port Jackson, the end is much the same: though I do regret the loss of time. If the British boobies do provoke the Americans into a declaration of war, they may weep for these lost months.' Far over, where the boats were busy, a dark form hauled out on to the ice. He stared more intently still. "A sea leopard?" If only it would turn its head. "God damn this glass.' He wiped the lens, but with no good result: it was not the glass misting, but the fog that dimmed his view. A yellowish fog that presently increased, so that the spires of the island came and went, showing like floating castles made of glass.

The ice had been coming aboard at a fine pace, hoisted up with cam-hooks, and there was question of using the other cutter, perhaps the launch. From what little Stephen retained of the conversation on the quarterdeck as it flowed past his inattentive ears, the officers were in disagreement. Over and over again Babbington said that when he was in E, rebus north of the Banks he had noticed that the current always set in towards an ice island; and the larger the island the stronger the current - it was common knowledge in northern waters. Other voices maintained that this was all stuff; that everyone knew the current set eastward in these latitudes, regardless; the southern hemisphere was quite different; Babbington was

only showing away, with his Newfoundland Banks; he might keep-that for his Newfoundland dog, or tell it to the Marines.

The Leopard stood off and on for some time after Stephen had given up hope of seeing anything at a distance, and in spite of the apparently immobile fog her topgallantsails caught enough breeze up there to send her along at a comfortable pace, so that she came about easily at the end of each of her short boards. Babbington kept insisting, in an earnest voice, that something should be referred to the Captain; Grant that he should not be disturbed. The Captain was far too sick to be disturbed. Eventually Babbington came over to Stephen and said, "Doctor, do you think I can go into the cabin without doing any harm?"

"Certainly, if you talk in a reasonable tone, and not as though your interlocutor were seven miles off, and he deprived of hearing. You may find that answer in the wardroom, Mr Babbington, where people interrupt you before you have opened your lips; but it will not do in the cabin today. For you are to consider, that loss of blood renders the ears preternaturally acute."

Two minutes later Jack came out, leaning on Babbington's shoulder. He looked at the sea and the fog and said, "Where is the jolly-boat?"

"Between us and the island, sir, right on the larboard beam. I saw them not ten minutes ago."