Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

But the likelihood was that the leak was in the stern, where the rudder had received its blow, and they cut the deck to reach the breadroom right aft, hoisting up everything that could lighten the ship and throwing it from the wardroom window; for once the breadroom was clear they could cut lower still and perhaps find the leak, down in the Leopard's run. At the same time they worked on another fothering-sail, since the first had had little or no effect. And all through these hours the pumps worked on as strongly as ever; never a pause for a broken chain, never the least slackening of the general effort,although by now the seas were making a clean breach over the gunwale and soaking the hands as they worked. Each pump was discharging a ton a minute, a splendid gush; yet all the time the water mounted in the well. Seven feet, eight feet, ten feet.

It was when Mr Gray reported ten feet in the well that the starboard pump chain broke and the poor old man had to turn to and unship the casing to get at the link - hours of work in the darkness after his spell at the winch. And then as soon as it was repaired the small-coal, swilling about in the water below, choked it.

Stephen had now lost count of time. It seemed to pass round him, or over him, in a perpetual muddle and hurry, or at least with so many things going on at once that he could not keep track of them, though he was aware that some guiding intelligence directed the obscure movements in the darkness. The only thing that was clear in his mind - the centre of his physical and mental activity except on those occasions when he was called away to dress a wound - was the pump, and the plain, direct, urgent task of heaving it round so that the ship should not sink.

Now, with the team standing idle while it was being repaired, he stared stupidly for a while, and then followed them aft to the wardroom. Men had now been pumping so long and so furiously in this bitter rain and sleet that the moment they had a pause in the shelter they fell asleep as soon as they had eaten, or even while they were eating.

Hours passed. The pump was repaired and the midshipman in charge of it roused them all out. Another spell, and the heaving soon became mechanical again, the wind and the rain hardly noticed. Relief: deep and apparently momentary sleep: and they were called out again.

After an indefinite period Stephen noticed that they had prepared another sail for fothering the ship, and that they were going through the same laborious motions of passing it under her bottom, a long, tedious operation with innumerable orders roaring over the grind of the pumps. Being an animate cog in the machine was hard enough, the hardest, most prolonged physical exertion he had ever performed: he did not envy the man who had to command the whole, adding extreme mental exertion to all the rest.

With great labour the sail was passed aft and bowsed taut. The leak still gained. Jack had been at the pumps all the time he could spare from the lightening of the ship and all the fothering: his leg had not allowed him to move about nearly as much as he wished and he had had to rely on Grant for much of the work and many of the instant decisions; and Grant had behaved extremely well. His heart warmed to the man: Grant knew his calling through and through - a real seaman.

He was pleased with the Leopard's people too. They had worked nobly; discipline had held after the initial panic - it was true that he and his officers had taken the greatest care that they should not get at anything stronger than the thin grog in the wardroom. They had tolled on and on, soaked in the wicked cold with nothing to cheer them but one false report, in a ship that already looked very like a wreck never had he seen pumps worked round so fast for so many hours together.

But after his last visit to the well, and the report that he heard there, he wondered how long they would hold out against the discouragement, the biting wind, and the physical exhaustion. Hitherto he had been able to tell the men at the pumps something that he at least partly believed, and that heartened them: now, returning for another spell, all he could produce was the old 'Huzzay, heave round. Heave round, huzzay!"

Grant relieved him, with the same cry, and he stumped to the wardroom for a bite. Here he found Stephen and Herapath, dressing a number of wounds - crushed fingers and the like among the men employed in getting the casks of flour up from the breadroom - and the women. He saw the women without surprise; by now the water was above the orlop. Above the orlop: the hold quite full: and everyone knew it.

Byron and three of the youngsters were down here too: in five minutes they would be rousing out the men of their divisions. Most of them had behaved well, as far as he had had time to see, carrying messages and co-ordinating the labours of the crew, though he had noticed some absences. One little boy was sobbing convulsively, but this was mere exhaustion: Jack had seen him on deck five minutes ago, running with a great load of cable-junks. Byron silently passed him a piece of cheese. He took it, put it in his mouth, and dropped into a sleep, if such a stupor could be called sleep. But he jerked into consciousness when the relief was called, and returned through the darkness to the starboard pump on Bonden's arm. There were fewer men at their duty now - more and more were hiding - and these worked silently, with much less strength: hope was fading, if it was not entirely dead. He called out, "Huzzay, heave round," mechanically, and as he did so he forced his mind to work out fresh ways of coming at the leak, and of steering the ship once it was stopped; Pakenharn had made a rudder from spare topmasts . . .

How he got through that night he could not tell, but after a stretch of darkness in which time had no meaning there was Bonden half leading, half carrying him back to the cabin. Before they reached it, the heat of hard pumping was all gone, and the cold reached through to his heart. Here Stephen dressed his wound and made him lie down, swearing to wake him within the hour.

"Sit on the locker, Bonden," said Stephen, "and drink some of this coffee. Tell me, now, how much longer will they hold out?" He had already heard much of the muttering, the frightened, exhausted men calling for the boats, for anything but pumping for ever in a ship that must surely sink - that might sink at any minute, drawing them all down. He had felt the panic dread of that mortal plunge, the Dutchman's fate, and many a time he had heard the words 'unlucky ship'.

"I doubt they'll last out today,"said Bonden. "I mean the hands that don't know the Captain. They say the boats should have been got out right away - they say Mr G knows these waters and will take 'em back to the Cape - they say the Captain's not right in the head. I crowned one bugger for that - beg pardon, sir, and in course they all know she's an unlucky ship.' Bonden's head drooped forward: from his sleep he murmured, "They say Mr G said something to Turnbull but no more.

Jack was awake, grey but alive, with Killick's good breakfast dispelling the cold, when Grant came to him, reported the water over the top of the well and gaining fast, and the parting of the new fothering-sail at the clews. "So there we are, sir. We have done all we can by the ship. We cannot pass a new sail before she settles. Shall I provision the boats? I presume you will go in the launch."

"I do not intend leaving the ship, Mr Grant."

"She is sinking under us, sir."

"I am not sure of that. We may save her yet - fother the leak - fashion a rudder with a spare topmast.,

"Sir, the hands have wrought hard, very hard, ever since the moment we struck. We cannot in honesty give them any more hope. And if I may speak plain, I doubt they would come to their duty, with the water deep in the orlop. I doubt they would still obey orders."