Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

The fair copy of the Sophie's log was written out in David Richards' unusually beautiful copperplate, but in all other respects it was just like every other bog-book in the service. Its tone of semi-literate, official, righteous dullness never varied; it spoke of the opening of beef-cask no. 271 and the death of the loblolly-boy in exactly the same voice, and it never deviated into human prose even for the taking of the sloop's first prize.

Thursday,June 28, winds variable, SE,by S, course S5OW, distance 63 miles. – Latitude 42°32'N, longitude 4°17'E, Cape Creus S76°W 12 leagues. Moderate breezes and cloudy PM. at 7 in first reef topsails. AM d° weather. Exercising the great guns. The people employed occasionally.

Friday, June 29, S and Eastward… Light airs and clear weather. Exercising the great guns. PM employed worming the cable. AM moderate breezes and clouds, in third reef maintopsail, bent another foretopsail and close reefed it, hard gales at 4 handed the square mainsail at 8 more moderate reefed the square mainsail and set it. At noon calm. Departed this life Henry Gouges, loblolly-boy. Exercising the great guns.

Saturday, June 30, light airs inclinable to calm. Exercised the great guns. Punished Jno. Shannahan and Thos. Yates with 12 lashes for drunkenness. Killed a bullock weight 530 lb. Remains of water 3 tons.

Sunday, July 1. Mustered the ship's company by divisions read the Articles of War performed Divine Service and committed the body of Henry Gouges to the deep. At noon d° weather.

Ditto weather: but the sun sank towards a livid, purple, tumescent cloud-bank piled deep on the western horizon, and it was clear to every seaman aboard that it was not going to remain ditto much longer. The seamen, sprawling abroad on the fo'c'sle and combing out their long hair or plaiting it up again for one another, kindly explained to the bandmen that this long swell from the south and east, this strange sticky heat that came both from the sky and the glassy surface of the heaving sea, and this horribly threatening appearance of the sun, meant that there was to be a coming dissolution of all natural bonds, an apocalyptic upheaval, a right dirty night ahead. The sailormen had plenty of time to depress their hearers, already low in their spirits because of the unnatural death of Henry Gouges (had said, 'Ha, ha, mates, I am fifty years old this day. Oh dear,' and had died sitting there, still holding his untasted grog) – they had plenty of time, for this was Sunday afternoon, when in the course of nature the fo'c'sle was covered with sailors at their ease, their pigtails undone. Some of the more gifted had queues they could tuck into their belts; and now that these ornaments were loosened and combed out, lank when still wet, or bushy when dry and as yet ungreased, they gave their owners a strangely awful and foreboding look, like oracles; which added to the landmen's uneasiness.

The seamen laid it on; but with all their efforts they could scarcely exaggerate the event, for the south-easterly gale increased from its first warning blasts at the end of the last dog-watch to a great roaring current of air by the end of the middle watch, a torrent so laden with warm rain that the men at the wheel had to hold their heads down and cup their mouths sideways to breathe. The seas mounted higher and higher: they were not the height of the great Atlantic rollers, but they were steeper, and in a way more wicked; their heads tore off streaming in front of them so as to race through the Sophie's tops, and they were tall enough to becalm her as she lay there a-try, riding it out under a storm staysail. This was something she could do superbly well: she might not be very fast; she might not look very dangerous or high-bred; but with her topgallantmasts struck down on deck, her guns double-breeched and her hatches battened down, leaving only a little screened way to the after-ladder, and with a hundred miles of sea-room under her lee, she lay to as snug and unconcerned as an eider-duck. She was a remarkably dry vessel too, observed Jack, as she climbed the creaming slope of a wave, slipped its roaring top neatly under her bows and travelled smoothly down into the hollow. He stood with an arm round a backstay, wearing a tarpaulin jacket and a pair of calico drawers: his streaming yellow hair, which he wore loose and long as a tribute to Lord Nelson, stood straight out behind him at the top of each wave and sank in the troughs between – a natural anemometer – and he watched the regular, dreamlike procession in the diffused light of the racing moon. With the greatest pleasure he saw that his forecast of her qualities as a sea-boat was fulfilled and, indeed, surpassed, 'She is remarkably dry,' he said to Stephen who, preferring to die in the open, had crept up on deck, had been made fast to a stanchion and who now stood, mute, sodden and appalled, behind him.

'She – is – remarkably – dry.'

Stephen frowned impatiently: this was no time for trifling. -

But the rising sun swallowed up the wind, and by half-past seven the next morning all that was left of the storm was the swell and a line of clouds low over the distant Gulf of Lions in the north-west; the sky was of an unbelievable purity and the air was washed so clean that Stephen could see the colour Of the petrel's dangling feet as it pattered across the Sophie's wake some twenty yards behind. 'I remember the fact of extreme, prostrating terror,' he said, keeping his eye on the tiny bird, 'but the inward nature of the emotion now escapes me.'

The man at the wheel and the quartermaster at the con exchanged a shocked glance.

'It is not unlike the case of a woman in childbirth,' went on Stephen, moving to the taffrail to keep the petrel in view and speaking rather more loudly. The man at the wheel and the quartermaster looked hastily away from one another: this was terrible – anybody might hear. The Sophie's surgeon, the opener (in broad daylight and upon the entranced maindeck) of the gunner's brainpan – Lazarus Day, as he was called now – was much prized, but there was no telling how far he might go in impropriety. 'I remember an instance…

'Sail ho!' cried the masthead, to the relief of all upon the Sophie's quarter-deck.

'Where away?'

'To leeward. Two points, three points on the beam. A felucca. In distress – her sheets a-flying.'

The Sophie turned, and presently those on deck could see the distant felucca as it rose and fell on the long troubled sea. It made no attempt to fly, none to alter course nor yet to heave to, but stood on with its shreds of sail streaming out on the irregular breaths of the dying wind. Nor did it show any answering colours or reply to the Sophie's hail. There was no one at the tiller, and when they came nearer those with glasses could see the bar move from side to side as the felucca yawed.

'That's a body on deck,' said Babbington, full of glee.

'It will be awkward lowering a boat in this,' remarked Jack, more or less to himself. 'Williams, lay her along, will you? Mr Watt, let some men stand by to boom her off. What do you make of her, Mr Marshall?'

Why, sir, I take it she's from Tangiers or maybe Tetuan – the west end of the coast, at all events…

'That man in the square hole died of plague,' said Stephen Maturin, clapping his telescope to.

A hush followed this statement and the wind sighed through the weather-shrouds. The distance between the vessels narrowed fast, and now everyone could see a shape wedged in the after-hatchway, with perhaps two more beneath it; an almost naked body among the tangle of gear near the tiller.

'Keep her full,' said Jack. 'Doctor, are you quite sure of what you say? Take my glass.'

Stephen looked through it for a moment and handed it back. 'There is no possible doubt,' he said. 'I will just make up a bag and then I will go across. There may be some survivors.'