Patrick O'Brian: Master & Commander

'This is no place for a prisoner,' reflected Jack, and with a parting look of particular consideration at Captain Palliиre, he hurried down on to the quarter-deck. He saw Babbington and young Ricketts standing doubtfully at the hances and called out, 'Get below, you two. This is no time to come it the old Roman – proper flats you would look, cut in half with our own chain-shot' – for chain was coming in now, shrieking and howling over the sea. He shepherded them down into the cable-tier and then made his way to the wardroom quarter-gallery – the officers' privy: it was not the safest place in the world, but there was little room for a spectator between the decks of a man-of-war in action, and he desperately wanted to see the course of the battle.

The Hannibal had anchored a little ahead of the Caesar, having run up the line of the French ships as they lay pointing north, and she was playing on the Formidable and the Santiago battery: the Formidable had almost ceased firing, which was as well, since for some reason the Pompйe had swung round in the current – her spring shot away, perhaps and she was head-on to the Formidable's broadside, so that she could now only engage the shore-batteries and the gunboats with her starboard guns. The Spencer was still far out in the bay: but even so there were five ships of the line attacking three – everything was going very well, in spite of the Spanish artillery. And now through a gap in the smoke torn by the west-north-west breeze, Jack saw the Hannibal cut her cable, make sail towards Gibraltar and tack as soon as she had way enough, coming down close inshore to run between the French admiral and the land, and to cross his hawse and rake him. 'Just like the Nile,' thought Jack, and at that moment the Hannibal ran aground, very hard aground, and brought up all standing right opposite the heavy guns of the Torre del Almirante. The cloud closed again; and when at last it lifted boats were plying to and fro from the other English ships, and an anchor was carrying out; the Hannibal was roaring furiously at three shore-batteries, at the gunboats and, with her forward larboard guns and bow-chasers, at the Formidable. Jack found that he was clasping his hands so hard that it needed strong determination to unknot them. The situation was not desperate – was not bad at all. The westerly air had fallen quite away, and now a right breeze was parting the heavy powder-fog, coming from the north-east. The Caesar cut her cable, and coming down round the Venerable and the Audacious she battered the Indomptable, astern of the Desaix, with the heaviest fire that had yet been heard.-Jack could not make out what signal it was she had abroad, but he was certain it was cut and wear, together with engage the enemy more closely: there was a signal aboard the French admiral too – cut and run aground – for now, with a wind that would allow the English to come right in, it was better to risk wrecking than total disaster: furthermore, his was a signal easier to carry out than Sir James', for not only did the breeze stay with the French after it had left the English becalmed, but the French already had their warps out and boats by the dozen from the shore. -

Jack heard the orders overhead, the pounding of feet, and the bay with its smoke and floating wreckage turned slowly before his eyes as the Desaix wore and ran straight for the land. She grounded with a thumping lurch that threw him off his balance, on a reef just in front of the town: the Indomptable, with her foretopmast gone, was already ashore on Green Island, or precious near. He could not see the French flagship at all from where he was, but she would certainly have grounded herself too.

And yet suddenly the battle went sour. The English ships did not come in, sweep the stranded Frenchmen clean and burn or destroy them far less tow them out; for not only did the breeze drop completely, leaving the Caesar, Audacious and Venerable with no steerage-way, but almost all the surviving boats of the squadron were busy towing the shattered Pompйe towards Gibraltar. The Spanish batteries had been throwing red-hot shot for some time, and now the grounded French ships were sending their excellent gun-crews ashore by the hundred. Within a few minutes the fire of the shore guns increased enormously in volume and in accuracy. Even the poor Spencer, that had never managed to get up, suffered cruelly as she lay out there in the bay; the Venerable had lost her mizen topmast; and it looked as though the Caesar were on fire amidships. Jack could bear it no longer: he hurried up on deck in time to see a breeze spring up off the land and the squadron make sail on the starboard tack, standing eastwards for Gibraltar and leaving the dismasted, helpless Hannibal to her fate under the guns of the Torre del Almirante. She was firing still, but it could not last; her remaining mast fell, and presently her ensign came wavering down.

'A busy morning, Captain Aubrey,' said Captain Palliere, catching sight of him.

'Yes, sir,' said Jack. 'I hope we have not lost too many of our friends.' The Desaix's quarter-deck was very ugly in patches, and there was a deep gutter of blood running along to the scupper under the wreckage of the poop-ladder. The hammock-netting had been torn to pieces; there were four dismounted guns abaft the mainmast, and the splinter-netting over the quarter-deck bowed and sagged under the weight of fallen rigging. She was canted three or four strakes on her rock, and the least hint of a sea would pound her to pieces.

'Many, many more than I could have wished,' said Captain Palliиre. 'But the Formidable and the Indomptable have suffered worse – both their captains killed, too. What are they doing aboard the captured ship?'

The Hannibal's colours were rising again. It was her own ensign, not the French flag: but it was the ensign reversed, flying with the union downwards. 'I suppose they forgot to take a tricolour when they went to board her and take possession,' observed Captain Palliиre, turning to give orders for the heaving of his ship off the reef. Some time later he came back to the shattered rail, and staring out at the little fleet of boats that were pulling with all their might from Gibraltar and from the sloop Calpe towards the Hannibal, he said to Jack, 'You do not suppose they mean to retake the ship, do you? What are they about?'

Jack knew very well what they were about. In the Royal Navy the reversed ensign was an emphatic signal of distress: the Calpe and the people in Gibraltar, seeing it, had supposed the Hannibal meant she was afloat again and was begging to be towed off. They had filled every available boat with every available man – with unattached seamen and, above all, with the highly-skilled shipwrights and artificers of the dockyard. 'Yes,' he said, with all the open sincerity of one bluff seaman talking to another. 'I do. That is what they are about, for sure. But certainly if you put a shot across the bow of the leading cutter they will turn round – they imagine everything is over.'

'Ah, that's it,' said Captain Palliиre. An eighteen-pounder creaked round and settled squarely on the nearest boat. 'But come,' said Captain Palliere, putting his hand on the lock and smiling at Jack, 'perhaps it would be better not to fire.' He countermanded the gun, and one by one the boats reached the Hannibal, where the waiting Frenchmen quietly led their crews below. 'Never mind,' said Captain Palliиre, patting him on the shoulder. 'The Admiral is signalling: come ashore with me, and we will try to find decent quarters for you and your people, until we can heave off and refit.'

The quarters allotted to the Sophie's officers, a house up at the back of Algeciras, had an immense terrace overlooking the bay, with Gibraltar to the left, Cabrita Point to the right and the dim land of Africa looming ahead. The first person Jack saw upon it, standing there with his hands behind his back and looking down on his own dismasted ship, was Captain Ferris of the Hannibal. Jack had been shipmates with him during two commissions and had dined with him only last year, but the post-captain was hardly recognizable as the same man – had aged terribly, and shrunk; and although they now fought the battle over again, pointing out the various manoeuvres, misfortunes and baffled intentions, he spoke slowly, with an odd uncertain hesitation, as though what had happened were not quite real, or had not happened to him.