Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"Would you still obey orders, Mr Grant?" asked Jack with a smile.

"I will obey orders, sir," said Grant, deadly earnest. "No man shall ever accuse me of mutiny. All lawful orders. But, sir, is it lawful to order men to their death, with no enemy at hand, no battle? I respect your decision to stay with your ship, but I beg you to consider those of another way of thinking. I believe the ship must founder. I believe the boats can reach the Cape."

"I hear what you say, Mr Grant," said Jack. He reflected: the discontented men would do nothing from this moment on - they certainly knew Grant's mind; there would be no point in putting down the mutiny, if mutiny this could be called, even if he could rely on the Marines. "I hear what' you say. I think that you are probably mistaken, and that the Leopard will swim. But swim or not, I stay with her. Each man must do what he thinks right. If you think it right to go off in the boats, you may do so, and God speed you well. But you must see them provisioned. What now, William?" he said, looking up.

It was Babbington, looking old, yellow, and destroyed. "The bosun -has come aft with a party of men, sir. I said I thought you would see them," he said, with a significant look. "Shall I ask Captain Moore to step in?"

"No. I will see them."

They wanted the boats, they said: they meant no disrespect - they believed they had done their duty but the barky was sinking - they wanted to chance their luck in the cutters and the launch.

"Yes," said Jack. "You have done your duty; no man could ask more. And it is true, the ship is in a very sad way. But I believe she has a better chance than the boats. At all events, I stay with her. I tell you again, I tell you fair, I believe she may swim. If you and your mates will go back and pump, while we fother her again, I promise you I will give Mr Grant orders to prepare the boats; they will be there and ready, if there is no hope for the ship.

"There you are, Mr Grant," he said when they were alone, "that will give you some hours to provision them.

Launch and prepare both cutters: leave the jolly-boat - it will be no use to you. Take what you need; but for God's sake do not let the hands get into the spirit-room."

They would go: he was certain of that. Go even before he had tried a new sail. Some of these men were mad for escape, even into open boats with thirteen hundred miles of sea between them and the Cape, and soon there would be no controlling them by any means short of death; and there was nothing to be gained by killing men at this juncture. When Stephen came in he said, "Stephen, the boat will soon be away, probably some time before nightfall. If you choose to go, pray dress up warm and take my waterproof cloak. They will take you, I know."

"They? You do not go?"

"No. I stay with the ship. But I do not wish you to feel the least obligation to remain, if you had rather not."

"It is a matter of principle with you?" Jack nodded. "Listen, will you lay it plain before me, now? I speak for some papers I have, not for myself. Principles aside - for I know your views on what is right in a captain - which is the better course?"

"I may be wrong, but I still think the ship. Yet the launch may get through. Bligh took his boat farther, and Grant is an excellent seaman: he will certainly be in the launch."

"Then I shall give him what I can copy. Forgive me now, Jack, I must work as fast as I can. The ship is all on a buzz with this talk of the boats, and there are some fellows may break out in no time at all."

Jack hobbled out on to the quarterdeck. There was still a fair semblance of order. A man stood by the useless wheel: the glass had been turned; the pumps were working steadily. The wind had lessened, and with it the sea; the Leopard, strangely low in the water, moved steadily on, her trim keeping the breeze on the beam. He called for the bosun and gave orders for the launch to be hoisted out, then the cutters. The Jolly-boat was not to be touched. A

long task, but efficiently carried out, the men working with a will: and all the time he was conscious of furtive looks darting at him from the men and boys on the quarterdeck. When it was done he told Grant to see them provisioned and went below to write to the Admiralty and to Sophie. It was when he came to this that the shift between himself and the present broke down, vanished entirely. It had been with him ever since that remote day of the Waakzaamheid, this sense of observing the world from a distance, and of moving, functioning, more through duty than intimate concern; and the moment of its breaking, of his coming wholly to life, was exquisitely painful.

At the same time, below him, down on the orlop with the water washing about his shins, Stephen wrote like a man possessed: a summary that nevertheless covered page after page in close-written code.

They were both of them jerked from their writing by a bawling, hallooing, rioting din. What Jack feared most had happened: getting aft, uncontrolled, for provisions, some hands had forced the spirit room door. Some were roaring drunk already. Others were following their example. At much the same time the larboard chain-pump broke down at last, choked with the coal that had washed into the well; at once its team hurried aft; and at once the leak began gaining faster still. This was the end.

In the event the boats' parting was not a clear-cut division between those who wanted to go and those who, from duty or loyalty to their captain and trust in his powers, chose to stay: it was a period of very ugly confusion, panic in some, drunken madness in others, a period in which cabins were looted, boxes broken open, so that waisters appeared in laced coats and hats and two pairs of trousers, and men were killed or drowned as they tried to crowd into the boats. Some tried to launch the jolly-boat, but Bonden and a score of his friends would not let them. The division had a good deal to do with men's

ability to hold drink, and some good hands who would have stayed an hour earlier now went over the side. Yet still, roughly speaking, it followed the line of attachment to the Captain, although there were some surprising, sober departures.

But with the spirit-room open the final stages were so squalid, so saddening, that Jack would not look on at all. Having shaken Grant's hand, having given him the packets for England, and having wished him all that a sailor could hope for, he retired to his charts and his drawing of a jury-rudder.

Stephen stayed by the rail to the end: sometimes they called to him to come into one boat or another, but he only shook his head. He saw the launch hoist a lug-sail and stand away to the north: the red cutter, unable to step its mast, rowed after it, while the blue pulled back to the ship, catching crabs, falling about, and then ramming the side. They had already lost their sails, and they bawled out for more. Someone flung a bundle of canvas into the boat, and perhaps a score of men with second thoughts or with none at all jumped from the ship'sgunwale and chains. The last the Leopard saw of them as they went astern was the dark struggling mass in the icy water as those in the sea fought to get into the boat and those in the boat fought to keep them out.

CHAPTER NINE

"Wednesday, 24 December. Course estimated E 15'S. Latitude estimated 46'30'S. Longitude 49'45'E. First part, fresh breezes at WNW, latter parts calm and fine. People employed pumping and thrumming spritsail to fother ship.Water one and a half foot above orlop beams forward, one foot amidship and aft.

"Thursday, 25 December. Course estimated E 10'S. Latitude observed 46'37'S. Longitude estimated 50'15'E. Winds light and variable with haze and rain. Sea calm with several small blocks of ice. PM hauled up foresail, veered out stop-water to check ship's way, and passed fothering-sail forward from abaft the sternpost, bowsing it taut from the fashion-pieces to the mizen chains. The sail answered and the pumps gained five foot in the day."