Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

stronger in the west: lightning flickered on the far horizon - far, but not so very far. The feeling of the day had changed.

These and many more were decisions that only he could take. Collective wisdom might do better, but a ship could not be a parliament: there was no time for debate. The situation was changing fast, as it often did before an action, when a whole carefully worked-out plan might have to be discarded in a moment, and new steps decided upon. This rested on him alone, and rarely had he felt more lonely, nor more fallible, as he saw the headland advancing towards him, and with it the moment of decision. The lack of sleep, the pain, the confusion of day and night for weeks on end, had told upon him; his head was thick and stupid; yet a mistake in the next hour might cost the ship her life.

The swell was increasing, and the wind. He knew very well that once it came on to blow, to blow as the wind could blow in the forties, the clouds in the west would cover the sky with extraordinary speed and this seemingly sweet day would turn into a howling darkness, full of racing water. A visit to the cabin showed him the glass lower still: sickeningly low. And back on the poop he saw that he was by no means the only one to have noticed the mounting sea - an oddly disturbed sea, as if moved by some not very distant force; white water too, and a strange green colour in the curl of the waves and in the water slipping by. lie glanced north-west, and there the sun, though shining still, had a halo, with sun-dogs on either side. Ahead, the aurora had gained in strength: streamers of an unearthly splendour. Below him, the pumps churned on and on: but both down there and here on the poop he caught an atmosphere of growing apprehension. Stiff though she was, the Leopard was heeling now so that her larboard cathead plunged deep on the leeward swell. And now the surf was rising higher on the icebergs and on the weather face of the headland on the bow. The howl in the

rigging was louder and higher by far, and growing fast: a dangerous, dangerous note.

The broad expanse of water between the Leopard and the cape showed far more white than green; and inshore, where there had been smooth water not half an hour ago, there was the ugly appearance of a tide-rip, a long narrow stretch of pure white that raced eastwards from the headland and that must grow longer, broader, and fiercer by far as the tide reached its full flow.

The situation had changed indeed; but worse was coming, and coming very fast. A grey haze overspread the sky with the speed of a curtain being drawn, and it was followed by tearing cloud: the lightning increased on the starboard beam, much nearer now. And right ahead, a white squall, the forerunner of the full almighty gale, swept over the mile or two of the sea northward of the cape, veiling the land entirely.

It was no longer a question of where and how he should negotiate the tide race, but of whether he should be able to approach the cape at all, or whether he should be obliged to put the ship before the ever increasing wind and run before it. Speed was everything: in five or ten minutes at this rate of increase there would be no alternative - he would either have to put before the wind or perish. Or put before the wind and perish: the people could not pump for ever - they were already very near their limit even with this encouragement - and in any case the Leopard would almost surely founder in the kind of seas that would build up before nightfall.

The tide-race was cutting up higher still, as nasty a race as ever he had seen: yet the Leopard must go through it, whether or not. Go through or run; and running could only mean the end, somewhat delayed.

"Whether or no, Tom Collins,"said Jack to himself, and raising his voice to the full to be heard over the wind, "Jib and forestaysail. Mr Byron, give her half a point."

He had made his decision: it had formed clear-cut in his

mind and now he was quite calm and lucid, somewhat detached. Speed was all, and the only question was whether the sails and masts could drive the waterlogged hull hard enough without giving way, whether the Leopard could race the western gale across that mile of sea before it reached its full force and either flung her on her beam-ends or forced her to run due east. It was a desperate choice: if any sail abaft the foremast gave, if the oar should yield, or any upper mast, then all was lost: but at least the choice was made, and he believed it was the right one. He only reproached himself for not having driven her faster, sooner: for having lost minutes earlier in the day.

With the greater speed she gave a cumbrous great leap forward, like a carthorse spurred, and ploughed on faster still. The wind was now abaft the beam and she buried her larboard bow so that green seas swept the forecastle. She was madly overpressed, but so far she could just bear it; and now she was racing through the tall waves, their white crests tearing head high across her waist. A gust on the rise laid her over so that her lee-rail vanished in the foam. He gave her another point - he could afford it and now she tore towards the terrible zone where the gale screamed round the headland with redoubled force and Joined the tide-rip.

At this point the adverse forces reached their highest pitch: the likelihood of being dismasted was very great.

A quarter of a mile to go, the gale rising every second. "Main topgallant," he said, and she gave an appalling lee-lurch as it was sheeted home. A moment's pause, like the suspension of life before a fall, and then she hit the tide-rip: she staggered as though she had struck ice. All round them the roar of breaking water and an intolerable wind; bursting seas on either hand, and a knock-down blow as the counter-eddy took her full aback; a confusion of water, green and white, sprav covering her entirely, and as it settled she was through, rocking in the smooth water under the lee of the high land.

The transition was unbelievably abrupt. At one moment the Leopard was among bursting seas, furious winds howling upon her, the next she was gliding along in silence beneath the shelter of an enormous cliff, her masts still swaying like inverted pendulums from the momentary counterblast that had knocked her captain into the scuppers.

He picked himself up, glanced aloft - the upper masts had held, though the main topgallantsail had blown from its boltropes - and then leant far out over the rail to view the land. From the cape it trended westward, westward, towards a bay whose narrow mouth was almost closed with islands.

"Bosun's party away: Allan, carry on, and look alive. Mr Byron, get the lead going, if you please," he said.

"No ground with this line,"came the cry, strangely loud - no other sound against it, apart from the water lipping along the side and the cry of seabirds.

"Pass along the deep-sea line, and let it be armed. Pumps, there! What the bloody hell are you thinking off cried Jack, but quite mildly: he would have stopped heaving himself, at such a time. The long, stunned pause stretched on and on: the hands at the pumps heaving mechanically, staring about them as though amazed: the ship was still running fast of her own momentum through deep green water under the shadow of the monstrous cliff. A desolate land, black rock topped with snow to the right-hand; to the left an island-studded sea; high overhead the wrack of a full western gale, with thunder in the clouds; down here, an unnatural calm, as though the world were deaf.

"Forecastle, there," called Jack, breaking the silence, "how are those hawsers coming along?"

"All off of the foremast, sir, and stretched along."

The solemn splash of the heavy deep-sea line. "Heave away, watch, watch! Bear away, veer away," they cried; then, "Fifty fathom, sir," and after a short pause, "Grey

sand and shell."