Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

'Mr Dillon,' he said, 'be so good as to bear up and set the square mainsail. South by west a half south.'

'Aye aye, sir. Double-reefed, sir?'

'No, Mr Dillon, no reef,' said Jack with a smile, and he resumed his pacing. There were orders all round him, the trample of feet, the bosun's calls: his eyes took in the whole of the operation with a curious detachment – curious, because his heart was beating high.

The Sophie paid off smoothly. 'Thus, thus,' cried the master at the con, and the helmsman steadied her: as she was coming round before the wind the fore-and-aft mainsail vanished in billowing clouds that quickly subsided into the members of a long sailcloth parcel, greyish, inanimate; and immediately afterwards the square mainsail appeared, ballooning and fluttering for a few seconds and then mastered, disciplined and squared, with its sheets hauled aft. The Sophie shot forward, and by the time Dillon called 'Belay' she had increased her speed by at least two knots, plunging her head and raising her stern as though she were surprised at her rider, as well she might have been. Dillon sent another man to the wheel, in case a fault in the wind should broach her to. The square mainsail was as taut as a drum.

'Pass the word for the sailmaker,' said Jack. 'Mr Henry, could you get me another cloth on to that sail, was you to take a deep goring leach?'

'No, sir,' said the sailmaker positively. 'Not if it was ever so. Not with that yard, sir. Look at all the horrible bunt there is now – more like what you might call a hog's bladder, properly speaking.'

Jack went to the rail and looked sharply at the sea running by, the long curve as it rose after the hollow under the lee-bow: he grunted and returned to his staring at the mainyard, a piece of wood rather more than thirty feet long and tapering from some seven inches in the slings, the middle part, to three at the yard-arms, the extremities.

'More like a cro'jack than a mainyard,' he thought, for the twentieth time since he first set eyes upon it. He watched the yard intently as the force of the wind worked upon it: the Sophie was running no faster now, and so there was no longer any easing of the load; the yard plied, and it seemed to Jack that he heard it groan. The Sophie's braces led forward, of course, she being a brig, and the plying was greatest at the yard-arms, which irked him; but there was some degree of bowing all along. He stood there with his hands behind his back, his eyes set upon it; and the other officers on the quarter-deck, Dillon, Marshall, Pullings and young Ricketts stood attentively, not speaking, looking sometimes at their new captain and sometimes at the sail. They were not the only men to wonder, for most of the more experienced hands on the fo'c'sle had joined in this double scrutiny – a gaze up, then a sidelong stare at Jack. It was a strange atmosphere. Now that they were before the wind, or very nearly – that is to say, now that they were going in the same direction as the wind – nearly all the song had gone out of the rigging; the Sophie's long slow pitching (no cross-sea to move her quickly) made little noise; and added to this there was the strained quietness of men murmuring together, not to be heard. But in spite of their care a voice drifted back to the quarter-deck: 'He'll carry all away, if he cracks on so.'

Jack did not hear it: he was quite unconscious of the tension around him, far away in his calculations of the opposing forces – not mathematical calculations by any means, but rather sympathetic; the calculations of a rider with a new horse between his knees and a dark hedge coming.

Presently he went below, and after he had stared out of the stern-window for some time he looked at the chart. Cape Mola would be on their starboard now – they should raise it very soon – and it would add a little greater thrust to the wind by deflecting it along the coast. Very quietly he whistled Deh vieni, reflecting, 'If I make a success of this, and if I make a mint of money, several hundred guineas, say, the first thing I shall do after paying-off is to go to Vienna, to the opera.'

James Dillon knocked on the door. 'The wind is increasing, sir,' he said. 'May I hand the mainsail, or reef at least?'

'No, no, Mr Dillon… no,' said Jack, smiling. Then reflecting that it was scarcely fair to leave this on his lieutenant's shoulders he added, 'I shall come on deck in two minutes.'

In fact, he was there in less than one, just in time to hear the ominous rending crack. 'Up sheets!' he cried. 'Hands to the jears. Tops'l clewlines. Clap on to the lifts. Lower away cheerly. Look alive, there.'

They looked alive: the yard was small; soon it was on deck, the sail unbent, the yard stripped and everything coiled down.

'Hopelessly sprung in the slings, sir,' said the carpenter sadly. He was having a wretched day of it. 'I could try to fish it, but it would never be answerable, like.'

Jack nodded, without any particular expression. He walked across to the rail, put a foot on to it and hoisted himself up into the first ratlines, the Sophie rose on the swell, and there indeed lay Cape Mola, a dark bar three points on the starboard beam 'I think we must touch up the look-out,' he observed 'Lay her for the harbour, Mr Dillon, if you please Boom mainsail and everything she can carry. There is not a minute to lose.'

Forty-five minutes later the Sophie picked up her moorings, and before the way was off her the cutter splashed into the water, the sprung yard was already afloat, and the boat set off urgently in the direction of the wharf, towing the yard behind like a streaming tail

'Well, there's the fleet's own brazen smiling serpent,' remarked bow oar, as Jack ran up the steps. 'Brings the poor old Sophie in, first time he ever set foot on her, with barely a yard standing at all, her timbers all crazy and half the ship's company pumping for dear life and every man on deck the livelong day, dear knows, with never a pause for the smell of a pipe And he runs up them old steps smiling like King George was at the top there to knight him'

'And short time for dinner, as will never be made up,' said a low voice in the middle of the boat.

'Silence,' cried Mr Babbington, with as much outrage as he could manage.

'Mr Brown,' said Jack, with an earnest look, 'you can do me a very essential service, if you will. I have sprung my mainyard hopelessly, I am concerned to tell you, and yet I must sail this evening – the Fanny is in. So I beg you to condemn it and issue me out another in its place. Nay, never look so shocked, my dear sir,' he said, taking Mr Brown's arm and leading him towards the cutter. 'I am bringing you back the twelve-pounders – ordnance being now within your purview, as I understand – because I feared the sloop might be over-burthened.'

'With all my heart,' said Mr Brown, looking at the awful chasm in the yard, held up mutely for his inspection by the cutter's crew. 'But there is not another spar in the yard small enough for you.'

'Come, sir, you are forgetting the Gйnйreux. She had three spare foretopgalantyards, as well as a vast mound of other spars; and you would be the first to admit that I have a moral right to one.'

'Well, you may try it, if you wish; you may sway it up to let us see what it looks like. But I make no promise.'

'Let my men take it out, sir. I remember just where they are stowed. Mr Babbington, four men. Come along now. Look alive.'

''Tis only on trial, remember, Captain Aubrey,' called Mr Brown. 'I will watch you sway it up.'

'Now that is what I call a real spar,' said Mr Lamb, peering lovingly over the side at the yard. 'Never a knot, never a curl: a French spar I dare say: forty-three foot as clean as a whistle. You'll spread a mainsail as a mainsail on that, sir.'

'Yes, yes,' said Jack impatiently. 'Is that hawser brought to the capstan yet?'