Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

'Very well,' said Jack, looking round. 'Make signal twenty-three with two guns to leeward. Mr Marshall, we will set the main and fore stays'ls, and as soon as you see that pink coming up with the rest of the convoy, set the royals. Mr Watt, let the sailmaker and his party get to work on the square mainsail directly, and send the new hands aft one by one. Where's my clerk? Mr Dillon, let us knock these watch-bills into some kind of a shape. Dr Maturin, allow me to present my officers… 'This was the first time Stephen and James had come face to face in the Sophie, but Stephen had seen that flaming red queue with its black ribbon and he was largely prepared. Even so, the shock of recognition was so great that his face automatically took on a look of veiled aggression and of the coldest reserve. For James Dillon the shock was far greater; in the hurry and business of the preceding twenty-four hours he had not chanced to hear the new surgeon's name; but apart from a slight change of colour he betrayed no particular emotion. 'I wonder,' said Jack to Stephen when the introductions were over, 'whether it would amuse you to look over the sloop while Mr Dillon and I attend to this business, or whether you would prefer to be in the cabin?'

'Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to look over the ship, I am sure,' said Stephen. 'A very elegant complexity of…' his voice trailed away.

'Mr Mowett, be so good as to show Dr Maturin everything he would like to see. Carry him into the maintop -it affords quite a visto. You do not mind a little height, my dear sir?'

'Oh no,' said Stephen, looking vaguely about him. 'I do not mind it.'

James Mowett was a tubular young man, getting on for twenty; he was dressed in old sailcoth trousers and a striped Guernsey shirt, a knitted garment that gave him very much the look of a caterpillar; and he had a marlinspike dangling round his neck, for he had meant to take a hand in the making of the new square mainsail. He looked attentively at Stephen to make out what kind of a man he was, and with that mixture of easy grace and friendly deference which comes naturally to so many sailors he made his bow and said, 'Well, sir, where do you choose to start? Shall we go into the top directly? You can see the whole run of the deck from there.'

The whole run of the deck amounted to some ten yards aft and sixteen forward, and it was perfectly visible from where they stood; but Stephen said, 'Let us go up then, by all means. Lead the way, and I will imitate your motions as best I can.'

He watched thoughtfully while Mowett sprang into the ratlines and then, his mind far away, slowly hoisted himself up after him. James Dillon and he had belonged to the United Irishmen, a society that at different tunes in the last nine years bad been an open, public association calling for the emancipation of Presbyterians, dissenters and Catholics and for a representative government of Ireland; a proscribed secret society; an armed body in open rebellion; and a defeated, hunted remnant. The rising had been put down amidst the usual horrors, and in spite of the general pardon the lives of the more important members were in danger. Many had been betrayed – Lord Edward Fitzgerald himself at the very outset – and many had withdrawn, distrusting even their own families, for the events had divided the society and the nation most terribly. Stephen Maturin was not afraid of any vulgar betrayal, nor was he afraid for his skin, because he did not value it: but he had so suffered from the incalculable tensions, rancour and hatreds that arise from the failure of a rebellion that he could not bear any further disappointment, any further hostile, recriminatory confrontation, any fresh example of a friend grown cold, or worse. There had always been very great disagreements within the association; and now, in the ruins of it, it was impossible, once daily contact had been lost, to tell where any man stood.

He was not afraid for his skin, not afraid for himself: but presently his climbing body, now half-way up the shrouds, let him know that for its own part it was in a state of rapidly increasing terror Forty feet is no very great height, but it seems far more lofty, aerial and precarious when there is nothing but an insubstantial yielding ladder of moving ropes underfoot, and when Stephen was three parts of the way up cries of 'Belay' on deck showed that the staysails were set and their sheets hauled aft. They filled, and the Sophie heeled over another strake or two, this coincided with her leeward roll, and the rail passed slowly under Stephen's downward gaze, to be followed by the sea -a wide expanse of glittering water, very far below, and directly underneath His grip on the ratlines tightened with cataleptic strength and his upward progress ceased he remained there spreadeagled, while the varying forces of gravity, centrifugal motion, irrational panic and reasonable dread acted upon his motionless, tight-cramped person, now pressing him forward so that the checkered pattern of the shrouds and their crossing ratlines were imprinted on his front, and now plucking him backwards so that he bellied out like a shirt hung up to dry.

A form slid down the backstay to the left of him: hands closed gently round his ankles, and Mowett's cheerful young voice said, 'Now, sir, on the roll. Clap on to the shrouds -the uprights – and look upwards. Here we go.' His right foot was firmly moved up to the next ratline, his left followed it; and after one more hideous swinging backward lunge in which he closed his cyes and stopped breathing, the lubber's hole received its second visitor of the day. Mowett had darted round by the futtock-shrouds and was there in the top to haul him through.

'This is the maintop, sir,' said Mowett, affecting not to notice Stephen's haggard look. 'The other one over there is the foretop, of course.'

'I am very sensible of your kindness in helping me up,' said Stephen. 'Thank you.'

'Oh, sir,' cried Mowett, 'I beg… And that's the mainstays'l they just set, below us. And that's the forestays'l for'ard: you'll never see one, but on a man-of-war.'

'Those triangles? Why are they called staysails?' asked Stephen, speaking somewhat at random.

'Why, sir, because they are rigged on the stays, slide along them like curtains by those rings: we call 'em banks, at sea. We used to have grommets, but we rigged banks when we were laying off Cadiz last year, and they answer much better. The stays are those thick ropes that run sloping down, straight for'ard.'

'And their function is to extend these sails: I see.'

'Well, sir, they do extend them, to be sure. But what they are really for is to hold up the masts – to stay them for'ard. To prevent them falling backwards when she pitches.'

'The masts need support, then?' asked Stephen, stepping cautiously across the platform and patting the squared top of the lower mast and the rounded foot of the topmast, two stout parallel columns – close on three feet of wood between them, counting the gap. 'I should scarcely have thought it.'

'Lord, sir, they'd roll themselves overboard, else. The shrouds support them sideways, and the backstays – these here, sir – backwards.'

'I see. I see. Tell me,' said Stephen, to keep the young man talking at any cost, 'tell me, what is the purpose of this platform, and why is the mast doubled at this point? And what is this hammer for?'

'The top, sir? Why, apart from the rigging and getting things up, it comes in handy for the small-arms men in a close action: they can fire down on the enemy's deck and toss stink-pots and grenadoes. And then these futtock-plates at the rim here hold the dead-eyes for the topmast shrouds – the top gives a wide base so that the shrouds have a purchase the top is a little over ten foot wide It is the same thing up above There are the cross-trees, and they spread the topgallant shrouds You see them, sir? Up there, where the look-out is perched, beyond the topsail yard'