Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

Two or three hundred she has. We’ll be at it again directly.

Hurry, Stephen, I cannot wait. We must knot and splice.

How many have you here?’

‘Thirty or forty,’ said Stephen, fastening the tourniquet. ‘Boy, you will do very well: lie quiet. Jack, show me your arm, your head.’

‘Another time. A couple of lucky shots and we disabled him.’

A lucky shot. How he prayed for it - every time he laid his gun he prayed for it. ‘The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ But in the failing wind the smoke lay thick and heavy all round the Bellone - he could see nothing, and he had only two guns firing now. Number one’s breeching had gone at the first discharge, wounding two Lascars and a midshipman, and the gun was lying on its side, precariously wedged behind a cask. His crews had thinned - the whole deck had thinned - and the Lord Nelson’s fire had slackened to a gun a minute, while the Bellone kept up a steady thunder fifty yards to windward. The deck, when he had time to look aft, showed no more than a sparse line of men - no crowded knots at every gun. Some had been wounded, others had run below -the hatches had not been laid - and those that were left were drawn, ashy, weak, their forces drained: they fought without conviction. For a long moment Hill had vanished, but he was back now, laying number three. Jack rammed down the wad, felt behind him for the shot. No shot. That damned powder-​boy had run. ‘Shot! Shot!’ he cried, and there was the boy, waddling from the mainhatch with two heavy balls clasped in his arms - a new boy, absurdly dressed in shore-​going rig, new trousers, blue jacket, pigtail in a ribbon. A fat boy. ‘Take them from for’ard, you poxed son of a whore,’ said Jack into his mute, appalled face, snatching one and thrusting it down the barrel. ‘From for’ard, from number one. There’s a dozen there. At the double, at the double!’ The second wad, rammed hard into the scorching gun. ‘Run her up! Run her up!’

Painfully, straining, they forced the great weight up against the roll: one little blue Lascar was vomiting as he heaved. The Bellone’s broadside bawled out, all in one; grape and chain, from the shrill scream overhead as they lay to the tackles. He fired, saw Hill snatch the boy from the recoil, and instantly ran forward through the smoke to number three. That damned boy was underfoot. He picked him up, said kindly, ‘Stand clear of the guns. You’re a good boy - a plucked ‘un. Just bring one at a time,’ pointing to the forecastle, ‘but look alive. Then cartridge. Bear a hand. We must have cartridge.’

The cartridge never came. Jack fired number five, caught a glimpse of topsails towering overhead, saw the Bellone’s foreyards glide into the Lord Nelson’s shrouds, and heard an enormous cheering, roaring of boarders behind him, behind him. The privateer’s boats had slipped round unseen in the smoke and there were a hundred Frenchmen coming up the unprotected starboard side.

They filled the Lord Nelson’s waist, cutting the quarterdeck off from the forecastle, and the press of men coming in over the bows through the chain-​torn netting was so great they could not fight. Faces, chests, arms, so close to him he could not get his long bar free, a little devilish man clinging round his waist. Down, trampled upon, a passing kick. Up and facing them, hitting short-​arm blows - a stab. The crowding force, the weight of men. Back, back, step by step, tripping on bodies, back, back. And then a falling void, an impact faintly, faintly heard, as though from another age.

The swinging lantern. He watched it: perhaps for hours. And gradually the world began to fall into place, memory coming back layer by layer, to reach the present. Or nearly so. He could not recall the sequence after the busting of poor Haynes’s gun. Haynes, of course: that was his name. A forecastle-​man, larboard watch, in the Resolution, rated quarter-​gunner when they were off the Cape. The rest was darkness: this often happened with a wound. Was he wounded? He was certainly in the cockpit, and that was Stephen moving about among the low, crowded, moaning bodies. ‘Stephen,’ he said, after a while.

‘How then, my dear?’ said Stephen. ‘How do you find yourself? How are your intellectuals?’

‘Pretty well, I thank you. I seem all of a piece.’

‘I dare say you are. Limbs and trunk are sound. Coma was all I feared these last few days. You fell down the forehatch. You may take an Almoravian draught, however. The dogs, they did not find half my Almoravian draught.’

‘We were taken?’

‘Aye, aye, we were taken. We lost thirty-​six killed and wounded; and they took us. They plundered us cruelly - stripped to the bone - and for the first few days they kept us under hatches. Here is your draught. However, I extracted a ball from Captain Dumanoir’s shoulder and looked after their wounded, and now we are indulged with taking the air on deck. Their second captain, Azéma, is an amiable man, a former King’s officer, and he has prevented any gross excess, apart from the plundering.’

‘Privateers,’ said Jack, trying to shrug. ‘But what about those girls? What about the Miss Lambs?’

‘They are dressed as men - as boys. I am not sure that they are altogether pleased with the success of their deception.’

‘A fair-​sized prize-​crew?’ asked Jack, whose mind had flown to the possibility of retaking the Indiaman.

‘Huge,’ said Stephen. ‘Forty-​one. The Company’s officers have given their parole; some of the Lascars have taken service for double wages; and the rest are down with this Spanish influenza. They are carrying us into Corunna.’

‘Don’t they wish they may get us there,’ said Jack. ‘The chops of the Channel and to westward are alive with cruisers.’

He spoke confidently; he knew that there was truth in what he said; but limping about the quarterdeck on Tuesday, when Stephen allowed him up, he surveyed the ocean with a feeling of despair. A vast great emptiness, with nothing but the trim Bellone a little to windward: not a sail, not the smallest lugger on the world’s far rim, nor, after hours of unbroken watching, the least reason why any should appear. Emptiness; and somewhere under the leeward horizon, the Spanish port. He remembered coming from the West Indies in the Alert, sailing along the busiest sea-​route in the whole Atlantic, and they had not seen a living soul until they were in soundings off the Lizard.

In the afternoon Pullings came on deck, pale Pullings, supported by a Miss Lamb on either side. Jack had already seen Pullings (grape-​shot in the thigh, a sword-​cut on the shoulder and two ribs stove in), just as he had seen Major Hill (down with the influenza) and all the other men under Stephen’s hands, but this was the first time he had seen the girls. ‘My dear Miss Lamb,’ he cried, taking her free hand, ‘I hope I see you well. Quite well?’ he said earnestly, meaning ‘not too much raped?’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Miss Lamb, looking conscious and strange - quite another girl, ‘my sister and I are perfectly well.’

‘Miss Lambs, your most devoted,’ said Captain Azéma, coming from the starboard side and bowing. He was a big dark loose-​built man, tough, capable, a sailor - a man after Jack’s own heart. ‘Misses are under my particular protection, sir,’ he said. ‘I have persuaded them to carry robes, to resume the form divine,’ - kissing his fingers ‘They

do not risk the least impertinence. Some of my men are villain buggers indeed, impetuous like one says, but quite apart from my protection, not one, not one, would want of respect for such heroines.’

‘Eh?’ said Jack. -

‘That’s right, sir,’ cried Pullings, squeezing them. ‘Copper-​bottomed heroines, trundling shot, running about like mad, powder, match when my flint flew off, wads !! Joan of Arcs.’