Patrick O'Brian - Desolation island

In another mile the Leopard had almost lost steerageway. The sky was now as low as the higher cliffs, and a thin drizzle floated down. Her sails hung limp, but from the mist of rain up there it was clear that a small breeze, a back-breeze, drew in with the land. They set the remaining topgallants to take it, and so she glided on.

"How are those hawsers now?" called Jack again.

"Four fore and aft, sir," replied Allan from the break Just under him, where he and Faster Doudle were longsplicing like men possessed.

The bottom shelved steadily, always with the same good shelly sand, and now, as she approached a passage through the islands that closed the mouth of the bay, the hand-lead was going fast: 'By the mark, seventeen; by the deep Sixteen; and a half sixteen; by the deep eighteen . . ."

A clear deep-water passage, and beyond the islands they could see right into the bay, a purse-like bay opening wide from its narrow mouth, a deep inlet sheltered on three sides.

Jack stared intently at the nearer island; its foot rose sheer, and from the motion of the spume and the current rounding over the black rock it was plain that the tide was making still. "Man the braces," he said, limping forward. He did not mean to run her on a shoal if care could prevent it, and this tide was moving her uncommon fast.

"Sir, sir,"cried Babbington, running after him. "There is a flagstaff at the bottom of the bay."

Jack took his eyes from the surface for a moment, saw that the bottom of the bay divided into two lobes, each with a strand at the foot of the cliff, and that on the height above one of them there stood an upright pole. "Dear me," he said, "so there is. Allan!"

"Sir?"

"How are you come along?"

"Hawser's knit, sir, and pointed from the gunroorn port."

Nearer and still nearer in, with seals staring up on every

hand, some of monstrous size: one of the countless seabirds dropped filth on him - oh such good luck and with his eye fixed on a small island near the shore and his ear following the cry of the lead, he called, "All hands to bring the ship to an anchor."

A long pause while she ghosted still farther in, and then, "Down with the helm.' Her head came round: hands flew to the halliards, braces, sheets and clewlines, hove the mizen topgallantsail aback, and he said, "Let go.' The anchor and its carronades splashed down, and the hawser ran out as the Leopard went astern.

"Stopper," he said.

"Stopper it Is, sir," replied Allan: and indeed the Leopard stopped, brought up with a mild jerk that nevertheless staggered them as they stood. The hawser rose, and straightening took the full strain; and this was the crucial moment. Would the anchor hold? The anchor held, yes, yes, the anchor held; the hawser, though still taut with the tide thrusting on the ship, sank into a gentle curve, and the Leopard's seamen breathed out a general sigh. Yet still, the turning tide, and God alone knew how fast it ran in these seas, could swing her, wrench the anchor from its hold, and fling her on the islands close at hand.

"Jolly-boat away,"said Jack. "Mr Babbington, be so good as to proceed to those rocks between us and the shore, carrying out a line bent to the hawser from the gunroorn port. Haul the hawser to the rock, and make all fast. You may have the spare iron horse, if you choose, and a grapnel; you will take particular care to make all fast, Mr Babbington, and then, perhaps," he said, grasping the wooden knighthead, "we may sleep tight tonight."

CHAPTER TEN

And tight they slept indeed, so tight that Stephen, roused out At three in the morning for his spell at the starboard chain-pump, was first unable to find his way to that familiar post until the drooping midshipman whom he was to relieve led him there by hand, and then powerless to reconstitute the events of yesterday until he had been heaving for half an hour - until the exercise and the steady halffreezing rain had dispelled the fumes of that trancelike sleep.

I believe those were sea-elephants that we saw on entering the bay," he said to Herapath, his neighbour. "Foster states that the sea-elephant boasts an external scrotum: or do I confuse him with the eared seal Otaria gazella?"

Herapath had no views on this or any other kind of seal. He was fast asleep, pumping as he stood. But that very night the pumps, though languid, gained five feet upon the leak: with her hull no longer worked upon by the motionof the sea nor the straining of her masts, the Leopard made no more water than a single watch could deal with. They pumped her dry, or at least no more than very damp - for real dryness had little meaning on Desolation, where it rained almost without a pause - and began the long task of emptying the holds to reach the leak and to ship a rudder.

At first they had nothing but the jolly-boat for all the hundreds of tons that had to be removed, but this was soon joined by a raft, worked by a system of windlasses that sent it to and fro across the still waters of the inlet, untroubled even at the beginning of their stay, when the storm blew with such shocking violence high overhead

that even the albatrosses stayed within. The bay was of course affected by the tides that made their way through the many islands, but they delayed the work far less than the intense curiosity of the penguins. Most of these birds were breeding, but even so they found time to stand in dense crowds on the flagstaff strand, and to hurry to watch the unloading, getting between men's legs, sometimes bringing them down, always hindering their movements. Some of the seals were quite as bad, and harder to remove: many a privy nip and kick did they receive from exasperated seamen; but no more than this, for strict orders had been given that the landing-place was to be considered holy ground. No blood was to be shed there, whatever might happen afar off.

For the first few days Jack let the Leopards take it easy, mounting no more than an anchor-watch, so that they might take their fill of sleep, which by this time had become almost as important to them as food. Where food itself was concerned, there was no difficulty: fresh meat lay there at hand, for the taking. And taken it was, often in bloody excess, for this was almost virgin land, and the creatures did not fear the men: not quite virgin, however, for a bottle at the foot of the broken studdingsail boom they called the flagstaff contained a paper stating that the brig General Washington of Nantucket, Wm Hyde master, had been there, and that if Reuben should come in for cabbages, he was to tell Martha that all was well, and that Wm reckoned he might be home before the fall, with a tidy lading.

After this period of rest, with all hands recovered, fat and greasy from their four meat-meals a day, Jack set them to work, and the stores piled up on Flagstaff Beach: neatly squared arrays, covered with sailcloth, heaps so high and wide that long before even half the after hold was cleared it seemed impossible that any single ship should have contained

so much. The work was steady, even quite severe upon occasion, but the summer days were long and the men had plenty of time to wander off, murdering sea-elephants, seals, albatrosses, giant petrels, small petrels, Cape pigeons, terns, any of the tame creatures that lay or nested in their path. Stephen was perfectly aware that these creatures too lived by incessant carnage, that the skuas wreaked perpetual havoc among eggs and chicks of every kind, that the sea-leopards ate anything warm blooded they could catch, and that none of the birds showed the smallest mercy to a fish; but at least they respected a certain established hierarchy in their killing, whereas the sailors respected none, slaughtering indiscriminately. He reasoned with them; they listened gravely and carried straight on, only keeping somewhat more out of sight, rambling farther afield, up to the great albatross colonies on the higher slopes or the seal rookeries in the neighbouring cove. lie knew that his words did not carry full conviction, since he himself spent all the daylit hours collecting specimens of everything from the sea-elephant to the very small wingless flies and the fresh-water tardigrades, and much of the night dissecting them or ranging eggs, bones and plants. He knew that some of the killing had real point, and that the barrels of penguins, young albatrosses, and seal-flesh could be justified; but it sickened him, and after some weeks he withdrew to an island in the bay, an island forbidden to all but the Leopard's surgeon.