Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander

The officers of the Hannibal and the Sophie were on parole: that is to say, until they were exchanged for French prisoners of equal rank they were bound in honour to do nothing against France or Spain – they were merely prisoners in more agreeable surroundings.

The days that followed were singularly miserable and lonely – lonely, although he sometimes walked with Captain Ferris, sometimes with his own midshipmen and sometimes with Mr Daiziel and his dog. It was strange and unnatural to be cut off from the life of the port and the squadron at such a moment as this, when every able-bodied man and a good many who should never have got out of their beds at all, were working furiously to repair their ships – an active hive, an ant-hill down below, and up here on these heights, on the thin grass and the bare rock between the Moorish wall and the tower above Monkey's Cove, solitary self-communing, doubt, reproach and anxiety. He had looked through all the Gazettes, of course, and there was nothing about either the Sophie's triumph or her disaster: one or two garbled accounts in the newspapers and a paragraph in the Gentleman's Magazine that made it seem like a surprise attack, that was all. As many as a dozen promotions in the Gazettes, but none for him or Pullings and it was a fair bet that the news of the Sophie's capture had reached London at about the same time as that of the Cacafuego. If not before: for the good news (supposing it to have been lost – supposing it to have been in the bag he himself sank in ninety fathoms off Cape Roig) could only have come in a dispatch from Lord Keith, far up the Mediterranean, among the Turks. So there could not be any promotion now until after the court-martial – no such thing as the promotion of prisoners, ever. And what if the trial went wrong? His conscience was very far from being perfectly easy. If Harte had meant this, he had been devilish successful; and he, Jack, had been a famous greenhorn, an egregious flat. Was such malignity possible? Such cleverness in a mere horned scrub? He would have liked to put this to Stephen, for Stephen had a headpiece; and Jack, almost for the first time in his life, was by no means sure of his perfect comprehension, natural intelligence and penetration. The Admiral had not congratulated him: could that conceivably mean that the official view was…? But Stephen had no notion of any parole that would keep him out of the naval hospital: the squadron had had more than two hundred men wounded, and he spent almost all his time there. 'You go a-walking,' he said. 'Do for all love go walking up very steep heights – traverse the Rock from end to end -traverse it again and again on an empty stomach. You are an obese subject; your hams quiver as you go. You must weight sixteen or even seventeen stone.'

'And to be sure I do sweat like a mare in foal,' he reflected, sitting under the shade of a boulder, loosening his waist-band and mopping himself. In an attempt at diverting his mind he privately sang a ballad about the Battle of the Nile:

We anchored alongside of them like lions bold and free. When their masts and shrouds came tumbling down, what a glorious sight to see!

Then came the bold Leander, that noble fifty-four, And on the bows of the Franklin she caused her guns to roar;

Gave her a dreadful drubbing, boys, and did severely maul;

Which caused them loud for quarter cry and down French colours haul.

The tune was charming, but the inaccuracy vexed him: the poor old Leander had fifty-two guns, as he knew very well, having directed the fire of eight of them. He turned to another favourite naval song:

There happened of late a terrible fray, amp;gun upon our St James's day, With a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, Thump, thump a thump, thump.

An ape on a rock no great way off threw a turd at him, quite unprovoked; and when he half rose in protest it shook its wizened fist and gibbered so furiously that he sank down again, so low were his spirits.

'Sir, sir!' cried Babbington, tearing up the slope, scarlet with hailing and climbing. 'Look at the brig! Sir, look over the point!'

The brig was the Pasley: they knew her at once. The hired brig Pasley, a fine sailer, and she was crowding sail on the brisk north-west breeze fit to carry everything away.

'Have a look, sir,' said Babbington, collapsing on the grass in a singularly undisciplined manner and handing up a little brass spyglass. The tube only magnified weakly, but at once the signal flying from the Pasley's masthead leapt out clear and plain – enemy in sight.

'And there they are, sir,' said Babbington, pointing to a glimmer of topsails over the dark curve of the land beyond the end of the Gut.

'Come on,' cried Jack, and began labouring up the hill, gasping and moaning, running as fast as he could for the tower, the highest point on the Rock. There were some masons up there, working on the building, an officer of the garrison artillery with a splendid great telescope, and some other soldiers. The gunner very civilly offered Jack his glass: Jack leant it on Babbington's shoulder, focused carefully, gazed, and said, 'There's the Superb. And the Thames. Then two Spanish three-deckers one's the Real Carlos, I am almost sure: vice-admiral's flagship, in any event. Two seventy-fours. No, a seventy-four and probably an eighty-gun ship.'

'Argonauta,' said one of the masons.

'Another three-decker. And three frigates, two French.'

They sat there silently watching the steady, calm pro. cession, the Superb and the Thames keeping their stations just a mile ahead of the combined squadron as they came up the Gut, and the huge, beautiful Spanish first-rates moving along with the inevitability of the sun. The masons went off to their dinner: the wind backed westerly. The shadow of the tower swept through twenty-five degrees.

When they had rounded Cabrita Point the Superb and the frigate carried straight on for Gibraltar, while the Spaniards hauled their wind for Algeciras; and now Jack could see that their flagship was indeed the Real Carlos, of a hundred and twelve guns, one of the most powerful ships afloat; that one of the other three-deckers was of the same force; and the third of ninety-six. It was a most formidable squadron – four hundred and seventy-four great guns, without counting the hundred odd of the frigates – and the ships were surprisingly well handled. They anchored over there under the guns of the Spanish batteries as trimly as though they were to be reviewed by the King.

'Hallo, sir,' said Mowett. 'I thought you would be up here. I have brought you a cake.'

'Why, thankee, thankee,' cried Jack. 'I am devilish hungry, I find.' He at once cut a slice and ate it up. How extraordinarily the Navy had changed, he thought, cutting another: when he was a midshipman it would never in a thousand years have occurred to him to speak to his captain, far less bring him cakes; and if it had occurred to him he would never have done so, for fear of his life.

'May I share your rock, sir?' asked Mowett, sitting down. 'They have come to fetch the Frenchmen out, I do suppose. Do you think we shall go for 'em, sir?'

'Pompйe will never be fit for sea these three weeks,' said Jack dubiously. 'Caesar is cruelly knocked about and must get all her new masts in: but even if they can get her ready before the enemy sail, that only gives us five of the line against ten, or nine if you leave the Hannibal out – three hundred and seventy-six guns to their seven hundred odd, both their squadrons combined. We are short-handed, too.'

'You would go for them, would not you, sir?' said Babbington; and both the midshipmen laughed very cheerfully.

Jack gave a meditative jerk of his head, and Mowett said, 'As when enclosing harpooners assail, In hyperborean seas the slumbering whale. What huge things these Spaniards are. The Caesars have petitioned to be allowed to work all day and night, sir. Captain Brenton says they may work all day, but only watch and watch at night. They are piling up juniper-wood fires on the mole to have light.'