Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

"Cobb, Cobb!" he cried, seeing the whaler and dragging him to the side. "What is that? Tell me, what is that?" An acre or so of monstrous back could still be seen, moving slowly through the shrimps.

"Oh, he's only a blue finner,"said Cobb. "You don't want to take any notice of him."

"But it was a hundred feet long! It stretched from here to there!"

"I dare say," said Cobb. "But he's only a blue finner, a nasty, spiteful thing. You plant a harpoon in his side, and what does he do? He rushes on you like a thunder-clap and beats the boat to splinters and then runs out a thousand fathom of line. You don't want to take notice of him. Now by your leave, sir, I must go aloft. There's Moses Harvey

looking down quite old-fashioned, for to be relieved."

Chilled through and through, Stephen cast a lingering glance over the sea and went below: he looked at Mrs Boswell's stitches with great satisfaction and then made his way to the store that now served as a sickbay. Herapath was waiting for him, and together they inspected their only patient, the Turkish eunuch. This being Ramadan, the Turk refrained from food and drink throughout the daylit hours; and as he also refrained from pork by night he was now In a very feeble state. They had tried to delude him with artificial darkness, but some inner clock frustrated them. "The new moon alone will cure this case," said Stephen, and they talked about the general health of the ship, most astonishingly good in spite of the long absence of fresh provisions and in spite of the incessant toll. This Stephen attributed to the great reduction in numbers, so that when the men slept, they slept with plenty of space about them, and no vitiated air; to the bracing cold; and above all to the sense of crisis, that left no time for hypochondria. "And to this same sense of imminent disaster," said he, "we no doubt owe the singular harmony, the quasi-unanimity with which the work of the ship is carried on. No harsh words, no vehement rebukes are heard; the rattan canes, the knotted ends of rope no longer encumber the lictors' hands. A cheerful compliance, even an anticipatory zeal, does away with the fretful exercise of authority; and upon this, perhaps more than upon any other factor but the Captain's skill in navigation, we may rely for our eventual salvation. And no doubt it was providential that we got rid of the discordant element, of those whom he might term the awkward sods . . . "

"We got rid of the Jonah, is all that matters," said the Turk, to their astonishment. "All's well, now no Jonah."

Stephen walked over and looked down at the wasted yellow glabrous face: the Turk closed one knowing eye, and said, "No Jonah now," closed the other, and spoke no more.

"It is true, sir," said Herapath, after a pause. "I have heard it all over the ship - my former messmates all the lower deck. They were convinced Mr Larkin was a Jonah: that was why he drank so much, they said, because he believed it himself. They were very pleased when he tried to get into the boat in the last rush, and," he added in a whisper, "I think some of them helped him over the side."

Stephen nodded: likely enough. He would have offered some observations on the power of faith, had not the cry of 'Land ho' transfixed him as they formed.

On deck they followed the pumpers' staring eyes, and there, on the larboard beam, a snowy peak showed and vanished among the clouds some ten or fifteen miles to the north. Stephen, Herapath, the few remaining landsmen and convicts, were jubilant; they would have cheered, cappred, tossed their hats into the air, had it not been for the reserve, the anxious questioning looks of the sailors.

To these it was clear that everything depended on the steering-oar. If it could bring the Leopard up to the wind so that she could stay and lie close hauled on either tack, all was well. If it could even bring the west wind one point forward of the beam, the ship might make the land on the larboard tack alone, so long as the operation was carried out within the hour, before she had been driven still farther to the cast. But if the oar could not bring her up, or if it could not bring her even half up precious soon, she was condemned to travel on and on, with nothing between her pierced bottom and the antarctic sea but a piece of worn sailcloth that could not last much longer.

Once again the ship broke into the most intense activity. Few could help in the long and complex rigging of the oar, but once the sails were so trimmed as to bring her head as far north of east as possible, they could all set to the pumps, they could all lighten the ship, so that she would answer her helm the quicker, when she had a helm to answer to.

"Huzzay, heave round," they cried, and again the water

gushed out in a stiff, prodigious let. Stephen stood between Moore and his remaining sergeant, both of them experienced theoretical seamen, and in gasps they kept him informed of the progress aft. It was maddeningly slow: they kept glancing at the mountain, clearer now that the clouds had dissolved in rain, and saying that the ship was not to leeward, no not by a mile and more. It was plain, from their talk of preventer-guys, double-rove, and the like, that the Captain was leaving nothing to chance: that was wisdom, no doubt, vet a huge impatience welled up, a violent longing for the oar to be tried, perfectly rigged or not.

An hour passed by: the rain beat on the pumpers' steaming backs; and at last some hands were called away to the poop. Those at the pumps saw the head of the oar rise to its place just abaft the mizenmast; they saw the tackles tighten; and after a pause in which the rain turned to sleet, they heard the cry, "Stand by, starboard: handsomely now, handsomely, and half a fathom. Larboard ease away.' The Leopard's motion changed perceptibly. Still heaving the winches round like fury, the pumpers tended their faces to the wind, felt it come full abeam, and then a little forward. They heard the familiar call of the men at the bowlines, "Heave one, heave two, heave belay," that meant the ship was sailing on a wind a call they had not heard for weeks. One point free: but no farther. In spite of all the orders from the poop, all the movements of the enormous oar, the Leopard would not lie closer. Jack could not set the driver, and all their recent labour to get the ship by the stern so that she would wear prevented her from coming up, or at least from coming up with any headway still on her.

"Still," said Moore, "she will do. A near-run thing, but she will do.' And indeed Stephen, looking forward, saw that the Leopard was heading not straight for the island, but a very little to the windward of it.

* * *

Now began a long series of operations carried out with extraordinary speed: yards were braced, jibs hauled down, set again and flatted in, staysails flashed out, hands sent to the larboard side of the forecastle and head so that their weight might help - every conceivable manoeuvre to get the ship a few yards to windward, to overcome her natural leeway, the effect of the waves that kept knocking her head off the wind, and that of the powerful current perpetually setting east. At first Moore explained these one by one, but presently he fell silent; and as Stephen watched the island he saw it gradually move from the right of the bowsprit to a point where the bowsprit bisected the peak, and at last, when it was within a mile, well to the left. lie had never seen leeway more clearly exemplified: all this time the Leopard had been pointing due north, vet all the time she had slipped a little sideways in a sea that .~as itself in motion, moving bodily away to the east, so that with the two the island itself appeared to travel west.

Although the light was fading fast by now - a growing purple low in the south west - the rocky shores were well in sight, with clouds of sea-birds over them, and the minute forms of penguins, crowds of penguins, standing on the beaches or emerging from the sea. And what is more, there was a small sheltered bay, clear of surf, just under the lee of an outward-running spur.