Master & Commander a-1

by Patrick O'Brian

'Make the private signal, Mr Pullings. Mr Marshall, begin to edge away. Mr Day, stand by for the gun.'

  The red flag soared up the foremast in a neat ball and broke out smartly, streaming forwards, while the white flag and pendant Hacked overhead at the main and the single gun fired to windward.

  'Blue ensign, sir,' reported Pullings, glued to his telescope. 'Red pendant at the main. Blue Peter at the fore.'

  'Hands to the braces,' called Jack. 'South-west by south a half south,' he said to the man at the wheel, for that signal was the answer of six months ago. 'Royals, lower and tops'l stuns'ls. Mr Dillon, pray let me know what you make of her.'

  James hoisted himself into the crosstrees and trained his glass on the distant ship: as soon as the Sophie had steadied on her new course, bowing the long southern swell, he compensated for her movement with an even pendulum motion of his far hand and fixed the stranger in the shining round. The flash of her brass bow-chaser winked at him across the sea in the afternoon sun. She was a frigate sure enough: he could not count her gun-ports yet but she was a heavy frigate: of that there was no doubt. An elegant ship. She, too, was setting her lower studdingsails; and they were having difficulty in rigging out a boom.

  'Sir,' said the midshipman of the maintop as he made his way down, 'Andrews here thinks she's the Dйdaigneuse.'

  'Look again with my glass,' said Dillon, passing his telescope, the best in the sloop.

  'Yes. She's the Dйdaigneuse,' said the sailor, a middle-aged man with a greasy red waistcoat over his bare copper-brown upper half. 'You can see that new-fangled round bow. I was prisoner aboard of her a matter of three weeks and more: took out of a collier.'

  'What does she carry?'

  'Twenty-six eighteen-pounders on the_ main deck, sir, eighteen long eights on the quarter-deck and fo'c'sle, and a brass long twelve for a bow-chaser. They used to make me polish 'un.'

  'She is a frigate, sir, of course,' reported James. 'And Andrews of the maintop, a sensible man, says she is the

  Dйdaigneuse. He was a prisoner in her.'

  'Well,' said Jack, smiling, 'how fortunate that the evenings are drawing in.' The sun would, in fact, set in about four hours' time, the twilight did not last long in these latitudes, and this was the dark of the moon. The Dйdaigneuse would have to sail nearly two knots faster than the Sophie to catch her, and he did not think there was any likelihood of her doing so – she was heavily armed, but she was no famous sailer like the Astrйe or the Pomone. Nevertheless, he turned the whole of his mind to urging his dear sloop to her very utmost speed. It was possible that he might not manage to slip away in the night – he had taken part in a thirty-two-hour chase over more than two hundred miles of sea on the West Indies station himself – and every yard might count. She had the breeze almost on her larboard quarter at present, not far from her best point of sailing, and she was running a good seven knots; indeed, so briskly had her numerous and well-trained crew set the royals and studdingsails that for the first quarter of an hour she appeared to be gaining on the frigate.

  'I wish it may last,' thought Jack, glancing up at the sun through the poor flimsy canvas of the topsail. The prodigious spring rains of the western Mediterranean, the Greek sun and piercing winds had removed every particle of the contractor's dressing as well as most of the body of the stuff, and the bunt and reefs, showed poor and baggy: well enough before the wind, but if they were to try a tacking-match with the frigate it could only end in tears – they would never lie so close.

  It did not last. Once the frigate's hull felt, the full effect of the sails she spread in her leisurely fashion, she made up her loss and began to overhaul the Sophie. It was difficult to be sure of this at first – a far-off triple flash on the horizon with a hint of darkness beneath at the top of the rise – but in three-quarters of an hour her hull was visible from the Sophie's quarter-deck most of the time, and Jack set their old-fashioned spritsail topsail, edging away another half point.

  At the taffrail Mowett was explaining the nature of this sail to Stephen, for the Sophie set it flying, with a jack-stay clinched round the end of the jib-boom, having an iron traveller on it, a curious state of affairs in a man-of-war, of course; and Jack was standing by the aftermost starboard four-pounder with his eyes recording every movement aboard the frigate and his mind taken up with the calculation of the risks involved in setting the topgallant studdingsails in this freshening breeze, when there was a confused bellowing forward and the cry of man overboard. Almost at the same moment, Henry Ellis swept by in the smooth curving stream beneath him, his face straining up out of the water, amazed. Mowett threw him the fall of the empty davit. Both arms reached up from the sea to catch the flying line: head went under – hands missed their hold. Then he was away behind, bobbing on the wake.

  Every face turned to Jack. His expression was terribly hard. His eyes darted from the boy to the frigate coming up at eight knots. Ten minutes would lose a mile and more: the havoc of studdingsails taken aback: the time to get way on her again. Ninety men endangered. These considerations and many others, including a knowledge of the extreme intensity of the eyes directed at him, a recollection of the odious nature of the parents, the status of the boy as a sort of guest, Molly Harte's protйgй, flew through his racing mind before his stopped breath had begun to flow again.

  'Jolly-boat away,' he said harshly. 'Stand by, fore and aft. Stand by. Mr Marshall, bring her to.'

  The Sophie flew up into the wind: the jolly-boat splashed into the water. Very few orders were called for. The yards came round, her great spread of canvas shrank in, halliards, bunt-lines, clew-lines, brails racing through their blocks with scarcely a word; and even in his cold black fury Jack admired the smooth competence of the operation.

  Painfully the jolly-boat crept out over the sea to cut the curve of the Sophie's wake again: slowly, slowly. They were peering over the side of the boat, poking about with a boat-hook. Interminably. Now at last they had turned; they were a quarter of the way back; and in his glass Jack saw all the rowers fall violently into the bottom of the boat. Stroke had been pulling so hard that his oar had broken, flinging him backwards.

  'Jesus, Mary…' muttered Dillon, at his side.

  The Sophie was on the hover, with some way on her already, as the jolly-boat came alongside and the drowned boy was passed up. 'Dead,' they said. 'Make sail,' said Jack. Again the almost silent manoeuvres followed one another with admirable rapidity. 'Too much rapidity. She was not yet on her course, she had not reached half her former speed, before there was an ugly rending crack and the foretopgallantyard parted in the slings.

  Now the orders flew: looking up from Ellis' wet body, Stephen saw Jack utter three bouts of technicalities to Dillon, who relayed them, elaborated, through his speaking-trumpet to the bosun and the foretopmen as they flew aloft; saw him give a separate set of orders to the carpenter and his crew; calculate the altered forces acting on the sloop and give the helmsman a course accordingly; glance over his shoulder at the frigate and then look down with a sharp attentive glance. 'Is there anything you can do for him? Do you need a hand?'

  'His heart has stopped,' said Stephen. 'But I should like to try.… could he be slung up by the heels on deck? There is no room below.'

  'Shannahan. Thomas. Bear a hand. Clap on to the burton-tackle and that spun-yarn. Carry on as the Doctor directs 'you. Mr Lamb, this fish…

  Stephen sent Cheslin for lancets, cigars, the galley bellows; and as the lifeless Henry Ellis rose free of the deck so he swung him forwards two or three times, face down and tongue lolling, and emptied some water out of him. 'Hold him just so,' he said, and bled him behind the ears. 'Mr Ricketts, pray be so good as to light me this cigar.' And what part of the Sophie's crew that was not wholly occupied with the fishing of the sprung yard, the bending of the sail afresh and swaying all up, with the continual trimming of the sails and with furtively peering at the frigate, had the inexpressible gratification of seeing Dr Maturin draw tobacco smoke into the bellows, thrust t
he nozzle into his patient's nose, and while his assistant held Ellis' mouth and other nostril closed, blow the acrid smoke into his lungs, at the same time swinging his suspended body so that now his bowels pressed upon his diaphragm and now they did not. Gasps, choking, a vigorous plying of the bellows, more smoke, more and steadier gasps, coughing. 'You may cut him down now,' said Stephen to the fascinated seamen. 'It is clear that he was born to be hanged.'The frigate had covered a great deal of sea in this time, and now her gun-ports could be counted without a glass. She was a heavy frigate – her broadside would throw three hundred pounds of metal as against the Sophie's twentyeight – but she was deep-laden and even in this moderate wind she was making heavy weather of it. The swell broke regularly under her bows, sending up white water, and she had a labouring air. She was still gaining perceptibly on the Sophie. 'But,' said Jack to himself, '1 swear with that crew he will have the royals off her before it is quite dark.' His intent scrutiny of the Dйdaigneuse's sailing had convinced him that she had a great many raw hands aboard, if not a new crew altogether – no uncommon thing in French ships. 'He may try a ranging shot before that, however.'

  He looked up at the sun. It was still a long way from the horizon. And when he had taken a hundred counted turns from the taffrail to the gun, from the gun to the taffrail, it was still a long way from the horizon, in exactly the same place, shining with idiot good humour between the arched foot of the topsail and the yard, whereas the frigate had moved distinctly closer.

  Meanwhile, the daily life of the sloop went on, almost automatically. The hands were piped to supper at the beginning of the first dog-watch; and at two bells, as Mowett was heaving the log James Dillon said, 'Will I beat to quarters, sir?' He spoke a little hesitantly, for he was not sure of Jack's mind: and his eyes were fixed beyond Jack's face at the Dйdaigneuse, coming on with a most impressive show of canvas, brilliant in the sun, and her white moustache giving an impression of even greater speed.'Oh, yes, by all means. Let us hear Mr Mowett's reading; and then by all means beat to quarters.'

  'Seven knots four fathoms, sir, if you please,' said Mowett to the lieutenant, who turned, touched his hat and repeated this to the captain.

  The drum-roll, the muffled thunder of bare feet on the hollow, echoing deck, and quarters; then the long process of lacing bonnets to the topsails and topgallants; the sending-up of extra preventer-backstays to the topgallant mastheads (for Jack was determined to set more sail by night); a hundred minute variations in the spread, tension and angle of the sails – all this took time; but still the sun took longer, and still the Dйdaigneuse came closer, closer, closer. She was carrying far too much sail aloft, and far too much aft: but everything aboard her seemed to be made of steel – she neither carried anything away nor yet (his highest hope of all) broached to, in spite of a couple of wild yawing motions in the last dog-watch that must have made her captain's heart stand still. 'Why does he not haul up the weather skirt of his mainsail and ease her a trifle?' asked Jack. 'The pragmatical dog.'

  Everything that could be done aboard the Sophie had been done. The two vessels raced silently across the warm kind sea in the evening sun; and steadily the frigate gained.

  'Mr Mowett,' called Jack, pausing at the end of his beat. Mowett came away from the group of officers on the larboard side of the quarter-deck, all gazing very thoughtfully at the Dйdaigneuse. 'Mr Mowett…' he paused. From below, half-heard through the song of the quartering wind and the creak of the rigging, came snatches of a 'cello suite. The young master's mate looked attentive, ready and dutiful, inclining his tube-like form towards his captain in a deferential attitude continually and unconsciously adapted to the long urgent corkscrewing motion of the sloop. 'Mr Mowett, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me over your piece about the new mainsail. I am very fond of poetry,' he added with a smile, seeing Mowett's look of wary dismay, his tendency to deny everything.

  'Well, sir,' said Mowett hesitantly, in a low, human voice; he coughed and then, in quite another, rather severe, tone, said, 'The New Mainsail', and went on -'The mainsail, by the squall so lately rent,

  In streaming pendants flying, is unbent:

  With brails refixed, another soon prepared,

  Ascending, spreads along beneath the yard.

  To each yardarn the head-rope they extend,

  And soon their earings and their robans bend.

  That task performed, they first the braces slack,

  Then to the chesstree drag th'unwilling tack:

  And, while the lee clew-garnet's lowered away,

  Taut aft the sheet they tally and belay.'

  'Excellent – capital,' cried Jack, clapping him on the shoulder. 'Good enough for the Gentleman's Magazine, upon my honour. Tell me some more.'

  Mowett looked modestly down, drew breath and began again, 'Occasional Piece':

  'Oh were it mine with sacred Mam's art, To wake to sympathy the feeling heart, Then might I, with unrivalled strains, deplore, Th 'impervious horrors of a leeward shore.'

  'Ay, a leeward shore,' murmured Jack, shaking his head; and at this moment he heard the frigate's first ranging shot. The thump of the Dйdaigneuse's bow-chaser punctuated Mowett's verse for a hundred and twenty lines, but no fall of shot did they see until the moment the sun's lower limb touched the horizon, when a twelve-pound ball went skipping by twenty yards away along the starboard side of the sloop, just as Mowett reached the unfortunate couplet,

  'Transfixed with terror at th 'approaching doom Self-pity in their breasts alone has mom.' and he felt obliged to break off and explain 'that of course, sir, they were only people in the merchant service.'

  'Why, that is a consideration, to be sure,' said Jack. 'But now I am afraid I must interrupt you. Pray tell the purser we need three of his largest butts, and rouse them up on to the fo'c'sle. Mr Dillon, Mr Dillon, we will make a raft to carry a stern lantern and three or four smaller ones; and let it be done behind the cover of the forecourse.'

  A little before the usual time Jack had the Sophie's great stern-lantern lit, and himself he went into the cabin to see that the stern-windows were as conspicuous as he could wish: and as the twilight deepened they saw lights appear on the frigate too. What is more, they saw her main and mizen royals disappear. Now, with her royals handed, the Dйdaigneuse was a black silhouette, sharp against the violet sky; and her bow-chaser spat orange-red every three minutes or so, the stab showing well before the sound reached them

  By the time Venus set over their starboard bow (and the starlight diminished sensibly with her going) the frigate had not fired for half an hour:' her position could only be told by her lights, and they were no longer gaining – almost certainly not gaining any more.

  'Veer the raft astern,' said Jack, and the awkward contraption came bobbing down the side, fouling the studdingsail booms and everything else it could reach: it carried a spare stern-lantern on a pole the height of the Sophie's taifrail and four smaller lanterns in a line below. 'Where is a handy nimble fellow?' asked Jack. 'Lucock.'

  'Sir?'

  'I want you to go on to the raft and light each lantern the very moment the same one on board is put out.'

  'Aye aye, sir. Light as put out.'

  'Take this darky and clap a line round your middle.'

  It was a tricky operation, with the sea running and the sloop throwing the water about; and there was always the possibility of some busy fellow with a glass aboard the

  Dйdaigneuse picking out a figure acting strangely abaft the Sophie's stern; but presently it was done, and Lucock came over the taffrail on to the darkened quarter-deck.

  'Well done,' said Jack softly. 'Cast her off.'

  The raft went far astern and he felt the Sophie give a skip as she was relieved of its drag. It was a creditable imitation of her lights, although it did bob about too much; and the bosun had rigged a criss-cross of old rope to simulate the casement.

  Jack gazed at it for a moment and then said, 'Topgallant stuns'ls.' The topmen vanished upwards,
and everyone on deck listened with grave attention, unmoving, glancing at one another. The wind had lessened a trifle, but there was that wounded yard; and in any case such a very great press of canvas.

  The fresh sails were sheeted home; the extra preventer-back-stays tightened; the rigging's general voice rose a quarter-tone; the Sophie moved faster through the sea. The topmen reappeared and stood with their listening shipmates, glancing aft from time to time to watch the dwindling lights. Nothing carried away; the strain eased a little; and suddenly their attention was wholly shifted, for the Dйdaigneuse bad begun to fire again. Again and again and again; and then her lit side appeared as she yawed to give the raft her whole broadside – a very noble sight, a long line of brilliant flashes and a great sullen roar. It did the raft no harm, however, and a low contented chuckle rose from the Sophie's deck. Broadside after broadside – she seemed in quite a passion – and at last the raft's lights went out, all of them at once.

  'Does he think we have sunk?' wondered Jack, gazing back at the frigate's distant side. 'Or has he discovered the cheat? Is he at a stand? At all events, I swear he will not expect me to carry straight on.'

  It was one thing to swear it, however, and quite another to believe it with the whole of his heart and head, and the rising of the Pleiades found Jack at the masthead with his night-glass swinging steadily from north-north-west to east-north-east; first light still found him there, and even sunrise, although by then it was clear that they had either completely outsailed the frigate or that she had set a new course, easterly or westerly, in pursuit.

  'West-north-west is the most likely,' observed Jack, stabbing his bosom with the telescope to close it and narrowing his eyes against the intolerable brilliance of the rising sun. 'That is what I should have done.' He lowered himself heavily, stiffly down through the rigging, stumped into his cabin, sent for the master to work out their present position and closed his eyes for a moment until he should come.

  They were within five leagues of Cape Bougaroun in North Africa, it appeared, for they had run over a hundred miles during the chase, many of them in the wrong direction. 'We shall have to haul our wind – what wind there is