Patrick O'Brian - Post captain

‘That is why you are cleaning your pistols, I presume. But I am glad to hear what you tell me, about these sails. Perhaps now we shall hear less of selvagees and booms -the inner jib, the outer jib - nay, to crown all, the jibs of jibs, God forbid. Your mariner is an honest fellow, none better; but he is sadly given to jargon. Those are elegant, elegant pistols. May I handle them?’

‘Pretty, are they not?’ said Macdonald, passing the case. ‘Joe Manton made them for me. Do these things interest you?’

‘It is long since I had a pistol in my hand,’ said Stephen. ‘Or a small-​sword. But when I was younger I delighted in them - I still do. They have a beauty of their own. Then again, they have a real utility. In Ireland, you know, we go out more often than the English do. I believe it is the same with you?’

Macdonald thought it was, though there was a great difference between the Highlands and the rest of the kingdom; what did Dr Maturin mean by ‘often’? Stephen said he meant twenty or thirty times in a twelvemonth; in his first year at the university he had known men who exceeded this. ‘At that time I attached a perhaps undue importance to staying alive, and I became moderately proficient with both the pistol and the small-​sword. I have a childish longing to be at it again. Ha, ha - carte, tierce, tierce, sagoon, a hit!’

‘Should you like to try a pass or two with me on deck?’

‘Would that be quite regular? I have a horror of the least appearance of eccentricity.’

‘Oh, yes, yes! It is perfectly usual. In the Boreas I used to give the midshipmen lessons as soon as I had finished exercising the Marines; and one or two of the lieutenants were quite good. Come, let us take the pistols too.’

On the quarterdeck they foined and lunged, stamping, crying ‘Ha!’ and the clash and hiss of steel upon steel seduced the midshipmen of the watch from their duty until they were banished to the heights, leaving their happier friends to watch the venomous wicked dart and flash entranced.

‘Stop, stop! Hold - belay, avast,’ cried Stephen, stepping back at last. ‘I have no breath - I gasp - I melt.’

‘Well,’ said Macdonald, ‘I have been a dead man these ten minutes past. I have only been fighting speeritually.’

‘Sure, we were both corpses from very early in the battle.’

‘Bless us all,’ said Jack, ‘I had no notion you were such a man of blood, dear Doctor.’

‘You must be uncommon deadly when you are in practice,’ said Macdonald. ‘A horrid quick murdering lunge. I should not care to go Out with you, sir. You may call me pudding, and I will bear it meekly. Do you choose to try the pistols?’

Jack, watching from his side of the quarterdeck, was wholly amazed: he had no idea that Stephen could hold a sword, nor yet load a pistol, still less knock the pips out of a playing-​card at twenty paces: yet he had known him intimately. He was pleased that his friend was doing so well; he was pleased at the respectful silence; but he was a little sad that he could not join in, that he stood necessarily aloof - the captain could not compete - and he was obscurely uneasy. There was something disagreeable, and somehow reptilian, about the cold, contained way Stephen took up his stance, raised his pistol, looked along the barrel with his pale eyes, and shot the head off the king of hearts. Jack’s certainties wavered; he turned to look at his new bentincks, smoothly filled, drawing to perfection. Finisterre would be under their lee by now, some sixty leagues away; and presently, about midnight, he would alter course eastward - eastward, for Ortegal and the Bay.

Just before eight bells in the first watch Pullings came on deck, pushing a yawning, bleary-​eyed Parslow before him.

‘You are a good relief, Mr Pullings,’ said the master. ‘I shall be right glad to turn in.’ He caught the yawn from the midshipman, gaped enormously and went on, ‘Well, here you have her. Courses, main and fore tops’ls, forestays’l and jib. Course nor-​nor-​east, to be altered due east at two bells. Captain to be called if you sight any sail. Oh, my dear cot, how she calls. A good night to you, then. That child could do with a bucket of water over him,’ he added, moving towards the hatchway.

Deep in his sleep Jack was aware of the changing watch - sixty men hurrying about in a ship a hundred and thirty feet long can hardly do so in silence - but it did not stir him more than one point from the deepest level of unconsciousness; it did not bring him half so near the surface as the change of course, which followed one hour later. He swam up, between sleeping and waking, knowing that his body was no longer lying in the same relationship to the north. And that the Polychrest was going large: the quick nervous rise and fall had given way to a long, easy glide. No roaring or calling out on deck. Pullings had put her before the wind with a few quiet remarks: all wool and no cry: how fortunate he was to have that good young fellow. But there was something not quite right. The sails had been trimmed, yet feet were pattering about at a great rate: through the open skylight he caught quick excited words, and he was fully awake, quite prepared for the opening of his door and the dim form of a midshipman beside his cot.

‘Mr Pullings’ duty, sir, and he believes there is a sail on the larboard bow.’

‘Thank you, Mr Parslow. I shall be with him directly.’

He reached the glow of the binnacle as Pullings came sliding down a backstay from the top, thump on to the quarterdeck. ‘I think I picked ‘un out, sir,’ he said, offering his telescope. ‘Three points on the larboard bow, maybe a couple of mile away.’

It was a darkish night: an open sky, but hazy at the edges, the great stars little more than golden points and the small ones lost; the new moon had set long ago. When his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he could make out the horizon well enough, a lighter bar against the black sky, with Saturn just dipping now. The wind had veered a trifle northerly; it had strengthened, and white water flecked the rise of every swell. Several times he thought he had the topsails of a ship in his glass, but every time they dissolved, never to reappear.

‘You must have good eyes,’ he said.

‘She fired a gun, sir, and I caught the flash; but I did not like to call you till I had made certain sure. There she is, sir, just under the sprits’l yard. Tops’ls: maybe mizen t’garns’l. Close-​hauled, I take it.’

‘By God, I am getting old,’ thought Jack, lowering the glass. Then he saw her, a ghostly flash that did not dissolve - vanished, but reappeared in the same place. A whiteness that the glass showed as a pale bar - topsails braced up sharp so that they overlapped. And a hint of white above:

the mizen topgallant. She was on the starboard tack, close hauled on the fresh north-​westerly breeze, probably heading west-​south-​west or a little south of it. If she had fired a gun, just one gun, it meant that she had consorts - that she was tacking and that they were to do the same. He searched the darkness eastward, and this time he saw one, perhaps two, of those dim but lasting wafts. On this course their paths would intersect. But for how long would the remote unknown hold on to his present tack? No great while, for Cape Ortegal lay under his lee, an iron-​bound coast with cruel reefs.

‘Let us haul our wind, Mr Pullings,’ he said. And to the helmsman, ‘Luff up and touch her.’

The Polychrest came up and up; the stars turned, sweeping an arc in the sky, and he stood, listening intently for the first flutter of canvas that would mean she was as close to the wind as she would lie. The breeze blew on his left cheek-​bone now; a dash of spray came over the rail to wet his face, and forward the leech of the foretopsail began to shake.