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

The ship’s company was in the highest training now: their action had had its great cementing effect, but long before that the hands had settled down to a solid understanding, and an order was hardly given before it was carried out. The wind stood fair until they were far below Capricorn; day after day she logged her two hundred miles; pure, urgent sailing, all hands getting the last ounce out of her - the beautiful way of naval life that half-​pay officers in their dim lodgings remember as their natural existence.

Outward-​bound they had not seen a sail from the height of the Cape to the Laccadives; this time they sighted five and spoke three, an English bark-​rigged privateer, an American bound for the China seas, and a storeship for Ceylon; each gave them news of the Lushington, whose lead, according to the storeship, was now little more than seven hundred miles.

The warm sea grew cooler, almost cold; waistcoats appeared in the night-​watches, and the northern constellations were no longer to be seen. Then, in fifty fathom water not far from the Otter shoal, they were startled by the barking of penguins in the mist, and the next day they reached the perpetual westerlies and the true change of climate.

Now it was pea-​jackets and fur caps as the Surprise beat up, tack upon tack, boring into the wind under storm-​canvas, or flanked away southwards in search of a kinder gale, or lay a-​try, fighting for every mile of westing against the barrier of violent air. The petrels and the albatrosses joined company: the midshipmen’s berth, then the gunroom, and then the cabin itself was down to salt beef and ship’s bread again - the lower deck had never left it - and still the wind held in the west, with such thick weather that there was no observation for days on end.

The tortoise had been struck down into the hold long since; he slept on a padded sack through the long, long rounding of the Cape; his master did much the same, eating, gaining strength, and sorting his respectable Bombay collections, and his scraps - alas, too hurried - from other lands. He had little to do: the inevitable sailors’ diseases the men had brought with them from Calcutta had been dealt with by M’Allister before he was recovered, and since then the ship, awash with the pure juice of limes, had been remarkably healthy: hope, eagerness and merriment had their usual effect - and the Surprise was not only a happy ship but a merry one. He had dealt with the coleoptera and he was deep in the vascular cryptogams before the frigate turned her head north at last.

Five days of variable winds and light airs, warmer by far, in which the Surprise sent up her topgallant masts for the first time in weeks, and then on a temperate, moonlit night, when Stephen was sitting by the taffrail with Mr White, watching him draw the fascinating pattern of the rigging - black shadows on the ghostly deck, pools of darkness - a waft heeled the ship, upsetting the Indian ink, and the phosphorescent water streamed along her larboard side. The heel increased: the hissing bubbles rose to a continual song.

‘If this is not the blessed trade,’ said Pullings, ‘I am a Dutchman.’

No Dutchman he. It was the true south-​east trade, gentle but sure, hardly varying a point. The Surprise set a noble spread of canvas and glided on for the tropic line: the days grew warmer and warmer; the hands recovered from their battle with the Cape, and now there was singing on the forecastle, and the sound of the hornpipe called The Surprise’s Delight. But there was no heaving to for any thought of a swim this bout, even when they were so far beyond Capricorn once more that jack said, ‘We shall raise St Helena in the morning.’

‘Shall we touch?’ asked Stephen.

‘Oh no,’ said he.

‘Not even for a dozen bullocks? Are not you tired of junk?’

‘Not I. And if you think there is any device, any ruse, that can take you ashore to collect bugs, pray think again.’

And there in the brilliant dawn a black point broke the horizon, a black point with a cloud floating over it. Presently it showed clearer still, and Pullings pointed out the principal charms of the island: Holdfast Tom, Stone Top, and Old Joan Point - he had landed several times, and he did wish he could show the Doctor the bird that haunted Diana’s Peak, a cross between an owl and a poll-​parrot, with a curious bill.

The frigate made her number to the tall signal-​station and asked, ‘Are there orders for Surprise? Is there any mail?’

‘No orders for Surprise,’ said the signal-​station, and paused for a quarter of an hour. ‘No mail,’ it said at last. ‘Repeat: no orders, no letters for Surprise.’

‘Pray ask if the Lushington has passed by,’ said Stephen.

‘Lushington called: left for Madeira seventh instant: all well aboard,’ said the station.

‘Bear up,’ said Jack, and the frigate filled and stood on.

‘Muffit must have been lucky round the Cape. He will beat us to the Lizard, and make his voyage in under six months. Did he risk the Mozambique Channel, the dog?’

Another dawn, of the exquisite purity that is frightening- the perfection must break and fade. This time it was the cry of a sail that brought all hands tumbling up faster than a bosun’s pipe. She was standing southwards on the opposite tack: a man-​of-​war, in all probability. Half an hour later it was certain that she was a frigate, and that she was edging down: All hands stood by to clear for action, and the Surprise made the private signal. She replied, together with her number: Lachesis. The tension died away, to be replaced by a pleasant expectancy. ‘We shall have some news at last,’ said Jack; but as he spoke another hoist broke out, ‘Charged with despatches,’ and she hauled her wind. She might not heave to, not even for an admiral.

‘Ask her if she has any mail,’ said Jack; and with his glass to his eye he read the answer before the signal-​midshipman: ‘No mail for Surprise.’

‘Well, be damned to you for a slab-​sided tub,’ he said as they drew rapidly apart: and at dinner he said, ‘You know what it is, Stephen, I wish we did not have that parson aboard. White is a very good fellow; nothing against him personally; I like him, and should be happy to serve with him in any way, ashore. But at sea it is always reckoned bad luck to carry parsons. I am not in the least superstitious myself, as you know, but makes the hands uneasy. I would not have a chaplain in any ship of mine if I could help it. Besides, they are out of place in a man-​of-​war: it is their duty to tell us to turn the other cheek, and it don’t answer, not in action. I did not care for that ill-​looking bird that crossed our bows, either.’

‘It was only a common booby - from Ascension, no doubt. This grog is the vilest brew, even with my cochineal and ginger in it: how I long for wine again. . . a good full-​bodied red. Will I tell you something? The more I know of the Navy, the more I am astonished that men of a liberal education should be so weak as to believe in bugaboos. In spite of your eagerness to be home, you declined sailing on a Friday, with your very pitiful excuse about the capstan. You will advance the plea that it is for the sake of the men; and to that I will reply, ha, ha.’

‘You may say what you please, but these things work:

I could tell you tales that would raise the wig off your head.’

‘All your sea-​omens are omens of disaster; and of course, with man in his present unhappy state, huddled together in numbers far too great and spending all his surplus time and treasure in beating out his brother’s brains, any gloomy foreboding is likely to be fulfilled; but your corpse, your parson, your St Elmo’s fire is not the cause of the tragedy.’

Jack shook his head, unconvinced; and after chewing on his wooden beef for some time he said, ‘As for your liberal education, I, too, can say ha, ha. We sailors are hardly educated at all. The only way to make a sea-​officer is to send him to sea, and to send him young. I have been afloat, more or less, since I was twelve; and most of my friends never went much beyond the dame’s school. All we know is our profession, if indeed we know that - I should have tried the Mozambique channel. No: we are not the sort of men that educated, intelligent, well-​brought-​up young women cross a thousand miles of sea for. They like us well enough ashore, and are kind, and say Good old Tarpaulin when there is a victory. But they don’t marry us, not unless they do it right away - not unless we board them in our own smoke. Given time to reflect, as often as not they marry parsons, or clever chaps at the bar.’