Patrick O'Brian - H.M.S. Surprise

Fine on the port bow he could see the last of the Marengo’s guns running out. They were waiting for the roll, He glanced round his sparse quarterdeck before he turned in his walk. Bonden and Carlow at the wheel, Harrowby behind them, conning the ship; Stourton calling out an order at the hances - sail-​trimmers to the foretopsail bowline - over to leeward the signal midshipman, then Callow with his bandaged head to run messages, and young Nevin, the clerk, with his slate in his hand; Etherege watching the Indiamen through his little pocket-​glass. All the Marines, apart from the sentry at the hatchway, were scattered among the gun-​crews.

The crash of the broadside, and of the bow-​gun, and of the twenty shot hitting her, came in one breath - an extreme violence of noise. He saw the wheel disintegrate, Harrowby jerked backwards to the taffrail, cut in two; and forward there was a screaming. Instantly he bent to the speaking-​tube that led below, to the men posted at the relieving-​tackles that could take over from the wheel. ‘Below there. Does she steer?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Thus, very well thus. Keep her dyce, d’ye hear me?’

Three guns had been dismounted, and splinters, bits of carriage, bits of rail, booms, shattered boats littered the decks as far aft as the mainmast, together with scores

of hammocks torn from their netting: the jibboom lurched from side to side, its cap shot through: cannon-​balls, scattered from their racks and garlands, rumbled about the heaving deck: but far more dangerous were the loose guns running free - concentrated, lethal weight, gone mad. He plunged into the disorder forward - few officers, little co-​ordination - catching up a bloody hammock as he ran. Two tons of metal, once the cherished larboard chaser, poised motionless on the top of the roll, ready to rush back across the deck and smash its way through the starboard side: he clapped the hammock under it and whipped a line round the swell of its muzzle, calling for men to make it fast to a stanchion; and as he called a loose 36 lb shot ran crack against his ankle, bringing him down. Stourton was at the next, a carronade still in its carriage, trying to hold it with a handspike as it threatened to plunge down the fore hatchway and thence through the frigate’s bottom: the coamings round the hole yielded like cardboard: then the forward pitch took off the strain - the gun rolled towards the bows, and as it gathered speed they tripped it, throwing it over on to its side. But the same pitch, the same shift of slope, working upon the loose gun amidships, under the gangway, sent it faster and faster through the confused group of men, each with his own notion of how to stop it, so that it ran full tilt against the side abaft the fore-​chains, smashed through and plunged into the sea. Oh for his officers! - high discipline did away with the men’s initiative - but those he had left were hard at their duty: Rattray out on the perilous bowsprit already with two of his mates, gammoning the jibboom before it carried away; Etherege with half a dozen Marines tossing the balls over the side or securing them; Callow and his boat’s crew heaving the wreckage of the launch free of the guns.

He darted a look at the Marengo. All but two of her guns were run out again: ‘Lie flat,’ he roared, and for the space of the rising wave there was silence all along the deck, broken only by the wind, the racing water, and an odd ball grumbling down the gangway. The full broadside and the howl of grape tearing over the deck; but too high, a little hurried. Rattray and his mates were still there, working with concentrated fury and bawling for ten fathom of two-​inch rope and more handspikes. The Surprise was still on her headlong course, her way only slightly checked by the loss of her outer jib and the riddling of her sails: and now the rear Indiamen opened fire from half a mile. There were holes in the Marengo’s foretopsails. And he doubted she would get in another broadside before the Surprise was so close on her bow that the broadside guns would no longer bear - could not be trained far enough forward to reach her. If the Marengo yawed off her course to bring the Surprise into her fire, then Linois’s plan was defeated: at this speed a yaw would carry the two-​decker east of the unbroken line.

He limped back to the quarterdeck, where young Nevin was on his hands and knees, being sick. ‘All’s well, Bonden?’ he asked, kneeling to the tube. ‘Below there. Ease her half a point. Another half. Belay.’ She was steering heavy now.

‘Prime, sir,’ said Bonden. ‘Just my left arm sprung. Carlow copped it.’

‘Give me a hand with t’other, then,’ said Jack, and they slid Harrowby over the taffrail. Away astern, beyond the splash of the body, six of the Indiamen were already round: they were coming down under a fine press of sail, but they were still a long way off. Wide on the port bow the Marengo was almost within his reach at last. ‘Stand to your guns,’ he cried. ‘Hard for’ard. Do not waste a shot. Wait for it. Wait for it.’

‘Five foot water in the well, sir,’ said Stourton.

Jack nodded. ‘Half a point,’ he called down the pipe again, and again the ghostly voice answered ‘Half a point it is, sir.’ Heavy she might be, heavy she was; but unless she foundered in the next minute he would hit the Marengo, hit her very, very hard. For as the Surprise came closer to crossing the Marengo’s bows, so her silent broadside would come into play at last, and at close range.

Musketry crackling on the Marengo’s forecastle: her Marines packed into her bows and foretop. Another hundred yards, and unless Marengo yawed he would rake her:

and if she did yaw then there they would lie, broadside to broadside and fight it out.

‘Mr Stourton, some hands to clew up and to back the foretopsail. Callow, Lee, Church, jump along for’ard.’ Closer, closer: the Marengo was still coming along with a splendid bow-​wave; the Surprise was moving slower. She would cross the Marengo at something under two hundred yards, and already she was so near the two-​decker that the Indiamen had stopped firing from fear of hitting her. Still closer, for the full force of the blow: the crews crouched tense over their pointed guns, shifting them a trifle for the aim with a total concentration, indifferent to the musket-​balls.

‘Fire,’ he said, as the upward roll began. The guns went off in a long roar: the smoke cleared, and there was the Marengo’s head and forecastle swept clean - ropes dangling, a staysail flying wild.

‘Too low,’ he cried. ‘Pitch ‘em up; pitch ‘em up. Callow, Church - pitch ‘em up.’ There was no point in merely killing Frenchmen: it was rigging, spars, masts that counted, not the blood that now ran from the Marengo’s bow scuppers, crimson against her streak of white. The grunting, furious work of running in, swabbing, loading, ramming, running out; and number three, the fastest gun, fired first.

‘Clew up,’ he shouted above the thunder. ‘Back foretop-​sail.’ The Surprise slowed, lost her way, and lay shrouded in her own smoke right athwart the Marengo’s bows, hammering her as fast as ever the guns could fire. The third broadside merged into the fourth: the firing was continuous now, and Stourton and the midshipmen ran up and down the line, pointing, heaving, translating their captain’s hoarse barks into directed fire - a tempest of chain. After their drubbing the men were a little out of hand, and now they could serve the Frenchmen out their fire was somewhat wild and often too low: but at this range not a shot flew wide. The powder-​boys ran, the cartridges came up in a racing stream, the gun-​crews cheered like maniacs, stripped to the waist, pouring with sweat, taking their sweet revenge; thumping it into her, cramming their guns to the muzzle. But it was too good to last. Through the smoke it was clear that Linois meant to run the Surprise aboard - run the small frigate bodily down or board her.