Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

the risk of hauling north. I dare not carry a press of sail tonight, for fear of floating ice; but in the morning, wind and weather permitting - and there is a big word, Stephen - I mean to put the ship's head south. I have not said anything before this, partly because I could not fix our position, and partly not to raise the people's hopes; they could not stand out against another disappointment like the Crozets. But I thought you would like to know. You might choose to say a prayer or two. My old nurse always said there was nothing like Latin, for prayers."

Prayers or no, the morning broke fair and clear. And secrecy or no, there was already a certain eagerness abroad. The pumps turned somewhat faster, and if the spirit of the crew could be measured by the Jet, it had risen by some ten to twelve per cent. The lookouts mounted to the masthead not indeed at a run, but with none of the languor of the day before: almost at once one cried out for a sail far down on the southern horizon, and although this was dismissed as only another ice-mountain - there were two monsters a mile to windward, and in the night the blessed moon had allowed them to avoid two more the hall brought a new kind of liveliness. And when with infinite care the ship's head was brought due south, and more sail set, this life increased surprisingly, overcoming the immense fatigue that weighed upon the ship's company like a pall of lead - no man or boy had had more than four hours' sleep on end between the spells of heavy pumping for as long as he could remember.

"Good day to you, ma'am,", said Stephen, opening Mrs Wogan's door. "I believe you may take some air at last. The sky is clear, the sun shines bright with a surprising warmth, and although our poop is now the scene of strange activity, the gangway remains, the windward, or weather gangway, ma'am. And we had best profit by the morning while it lasts."

"Lord, Dr Maturin, that would be Paradise. I have not seen the sky, nor you, this age. We have been a gaggle of

women all together, knitting without a moment's pause and trying to keep warm; however, a baby is a great subject for conversation. Is it true we are going to the antarctic pole? Is there land at the pole? I suppose there must be, or they would not call it the pole: nor, indeed, would they want to go there. Pray try this mitten, for the size. Dear me, your hand is grown horny to a degree - the perpetual pumping, I presume. Land! Of course, we can scarcely hope for shops; but I dare say there will be the equivalent of Esklmoes, with furs for sale. How I yearn for fur, a deep, deep bed of fur, and a fur nightgown too!"

"I cannot answer for the Eskimoes, but I can guarantee the fur," said Stephen, yawning. "These are the seas from which the sealskin comes, the darling of our modern age. I am credibly informed, that the pole itself is ringed with seals three deep; and this morning alone I myself have seen enough to make a cargo for a ship of moderate size, or emplacement, as we say; seals of three several kinds, besides four and twenty whales, and a plethora of birds, including, to my astonishment, a small duck, not unlike a teal, and what may well have been a shag. I am infinitely obliged to you, ma'am, for your kind thought of mittens."

All day they sailed, and all day the glass in Jack's cabin sank. It had foretold full gales in the Channel and the Bay, the wicked mistral in the Mediterranean, a hurricane off Mauritius, but rarely had it dropped so fast. When he had taken what few precautions the case would admit, he kept to the poop, watching the western sky out there on the windward beam; and all the while the sun shone bright, the deck gay with drying clothes, among them Leopardina's pink socks and caps. The Leopard heeled pleasantly on the fine blue swell, and Stephen walked Mrs Wogan on the gangway below, pointing out not only the kinds of seal that might make her bed, but those that would not, and eighteen whales, together with so many birds that a less good-humoured woman might have rebelled.

From time to time Jack looked at the masthead; he did

not wish to go up there himself, for fear of raising hopes that might be dashed, but with all his force he willed the man to hall the deck. fie was in as high a state of tension and anxiety as he had ever experienced, and Mrs Wogan's gurgling laugh sent a let of anger through his mind; however, he paced on and on and on, his hands clasped behind his back, from the taffrail to the hances and back again, showing no emotion of any sort. And when the hall did come at last, he still paced on for a while before taking his best telescope to the foretopgallant lacks.

Yes, there it lay, high land, black rock beneath the snow, broad on the larboard bow. Even with the Leopard's leeway and the current setting east at what he judged to be close on two miles in the hour, he could still fetch well to the windward of the land. Farther south and east mountain peaks heaved up, a great way off; and in the lie of the land he recognized the Frenchman's description of Desolation Island. He had no doubt of it: this was the landfall that he had prayed for.

With a sober, contained triumph he climbed down, steadily packed on sail after sail until the Leopard's masts complained in spite of their extraoardinary supports. To his surprise - water being but a shifting ballast at the best - she was astonishingly stiff, and once all her vast mass had gathered its momentum, the Leopard ploughed fast across the sea.

He called young David Allan, the remaining bosun's mate and now the acting bosun, and with him he told over what the ship possessed in the way of anchors and massive cordage. They had done this before the sad day off the Crozets, and the sum was still much the same, amounting to the kedge alone and just enough cablets and hawsers to veer out a reasonable scope. But since then two carronades, intended not for the Leopard but for the settlement of Port Jackson and therefore carried in the hold, had been located and brought within reach of the main hatchway: these, made fast to the kedge, would give them an anchor

not far from the weight of the small bower, enough for her to ride at single anchor, given good holding ground and a moderate tide. "And for the rest, sir?" asked Allan.

"For the rest, as soon as we are well in with the land, we shall reduce sail. You will have the hawsers from the mastheads, splice 'em end to end, point 'em out of the gunroom port, and then we shall proceed as circumstancesmay require."

Allan looked a little blank, but the Captain's placid assumption that such a task was well within his powers impressed him; and when he was told that he should have all the forecastle-men and quartermasters in the ship, the pumps be damned, he went off cheerfully enough.

Nearer and nearer, still with the land on the larboard bow. Before dinner the most northerly shore was visible from the deck, right down to the white line where it met the sea. And after that meal had been gulped down it was clear that this land was a bold cape running northwards from the mass. Nearer still: Jack paced up and down the poop with a quicker step; and although he had a crocodile's digestion, the lumps of ancient beef that he had swallowed dwelt there, under his rigid midriff, as firm and solid as when they had left the galley cauldron. Growing cloud in the west; and in the pale sky southwards the beginnings of an aurora, a shimmering curtain that wavered high up there, over a quarter of the sky, faint prismatic streams perpetually falling yet always in the same place. Three huge ice islands to windward, one of them four miles long and perhaps two hundred feet in height, and several smaller masses scattered about the long even swell, sometimes flashing as they rolled.

When should he begin to reduce sail, to let the bosun get at the precious hawsers? Could he ask the exhausted people to strike the topgallantmasts down on deck against the expected blow, and then call upon them for unknown exertions when it came to securing the ship? How did the tides run in these uncharted waters? The threat grew