Desolation island

by Patrick O'Brian

  Once the extreme measures had been taken the hands were relieved at regular intervals, and they trooped aft to the wardroom, where the purser and his steward had thin grog, biscuit, cheese and sausage laid out on the table. They all ate together, worn and exhausted by the toll at the heavy pump winches and even more by the icy wind and the rain, but still hopeful, still cheerful, as though this were an unpleasant, long-lasting dream that would come to an end in time.

  The slow grey morning showed a troubled, broken sea, a strong and rising wind: the Leopard, low and heavy, had lost her main topsail and her foretopgallant. Hands could not be spared from the pumps to furl them, and they had blown to ribbons. Shortly after, the foretopsail followed them. Yet now the studdingsail that was to stop the leak was over the side, and men with ropes on either gangway were working it along the bottom. The great question was to find the leak, for since the ship had first struck the ice stern-on and had then turned, hanging on her keel, there was no telling where it might be. Grant was right out on the jibboom in spite of the heavy sea - it very nearly killed him twice - but he could make out no damage to the bows; and in the close-packed hold, deep in water, it was of course impossible to come at her bottom or her sides.

  But the likelihood was that the leak was in the stern, where the rudder had received its blow, and they cut the deck to reach the breadroom right aft, hoisting up everything that could lighten the ship and throwing it from the wardroom window; for once the breadroom was clear they could cut lower still and perhaps find the leak, down in the Leopard's run. At the same time they worked on another fothering-sail, since the first had had little or no effect. And all through these hours the pumps worked on as strongly as ever; never a pause for a broken chain, never the least slackening of the general effort,although by now the seas were making a clean breach over the gunwale and soaking the hands as they worked. Each pump was discharging a ton a minute, a splendid gush; yet all the time the water mounted in the well. Seven feet, eight feet, ten feet.

  It was when Mr Gray reported ten feet in the well that the starboard pump chain broke and the poor old man had to turn to and unship the casing to get at the link - hours of work in the darkness after his spell at the winch. And then as soon as it was repaired the small-coal, swilling about in the water below, choked it.

  Stephen had now lost count of time. It seemed to pass round him, or over him, in a perpetual muddle and hurry, or at least with so many things going on at once that he could not keep track of them, though he was aware that some guiding intelligence directed the obscure movements in the darkness. The only thing that was clear in his mind - the centre of his physical and mental activity except on those occasions when he was called away to dress a wound - was the pump, and the plain, direct, urgent task of heaving it round so that the ship should not sink.

  Now, with the team standing idle while it was being repaired, he stared stupidly for a while, and then followed them aft to the wardroom. Men had now been pumping so long and so furiously in this bitter rain and sleet that the moment they had a pause in the shelter they fell asleep as soon as they had eaten, or even while they were eating.

  Hours passed. The pump was repaired and the midshipman in charge of it roused them all out. Another spell, and the heaving soon became mechanical again, the wind and the rain hardly noticed. Relief: deep and apparently momentary sleep: and they were called out again.

  After an indefinite period Stephen noticed that they had prepared another sail for fothering the ship, and that they were going through the same laborious motions of passing it under her bottom, a long, tedious operation with innumerable orders roaring over the grind of the pumps. Being an animate cog in the machine was hard enough, the hardest, most prolonged physical exertion he had ever performed: he did not envy the man who had to command the whole, adding extreme mental exertion to all the rest.

  With great labour the sail was passed aft and bowsed taut. The leak still gained. Jack had been at the pumps all the time he could spare from the lightening of the ship and all the fothering: his leg had not allowed him to move about nearly as much as he wished and he had had to rely on Grant for much of the work and many of the instant decisions; and Grant had behaved extremely well. His heart warmed to the man: Grant knew his calling through and through - a real seaman.

  He was pleased with the Leopard's people too. They had worked nobly; discipline had held after the initial panic - it was true that he and his officers had taken the greatest care that they should not get at anything stronger than the thin grog in the wardroom. They had tolled on and on, soaked in the wicked cold with nothing to cheer them but one false report, in a ship that already looked very like a wreck never had he seen pumps worked round so fast for so many hours together.

  But after his last visit to the well, and the report that he heard there, he wondered how long they would hold out against the discouragement, the biting wind, and the physical exhaustion. Hitherto he had been able to tell the men at the pumps something that he at least partly believed, and that heartened them: now, returning for another spell, all he could produce was the old 'Huzzay, heave round. Heave round, huzzay!"

  Grant relieved him, with the same cry, and he stumped to the wardroom for a bite. Here he found Stephen and Herapath, dressing a number of wounds - crushed fingers and the like among the men employed in getting the casks of flour up from the breadroom - and the women. He saw the women without surprise; by now the water was above the orlop. Above the orlop: the hold quite full: and everyone knew it.

  Byron and three of the youngsters were down here too: in five minutes they would be rousing out the men of their divisions. Most of them had behaved well, as far as he had had time to see, carrying messages and co-ordinating the labours of the crew, though he had noticed some absences. One little boy was sobbing convulsively, but this was mere exhaustion: Jack had seen him on deck five minutes ago, running with a great load of cable-junks. Byron silently passed him a piece of cheese. He took it, put it in his mouth, and dropped into a sleep, if such a stupor could be called sleep. But he jerked into consciousness when the relief was called, and returned through the darkness to the starboard pump on Bonden's arm. There were fewer men at their duty now - more and more were hiding - and these worked silently, with much less strength: hope was fading, if it was not entirely dead. He called out, "Huzzay, heave round," mechanically, and as he did so he forced his mind to work out fresh ways of coming at the leak, and of steering the ship once it was stopped; Pakenharn had made a rudder from spare topmasts . . .

  How he got through that night he could not tell, but after a stretch of darkness in which time had no meaning there was Bonden half leading, half carrying him back to the cabin. Before they reached it, the heat of hard pumping was all gone, and the cold reached through to his heart. Here Stephen dressed his wound and made him lie down, swearing to wake him within the hour.

  "Sit on the locker, Bonden," said Stephen, "and drink some of this coffee. Tell me, now, how much longer will they hold out?" He had already heard much of the muttering, the frightened, exhausted men calling for the boats, for anything but pumping for ever in a ship that must surely sink - that might sink at any minute, drawing them all down. He had felt the panic dread of that mortal plunge, the Dutchman's fate, and many a time he had heard the words 'unlucky ship'.

  "I doubt they'll last out today,"said Bonden. "I mean the hands that don't know the Captain. They say the boats should have been got out right away - they say Mr G knows these waters and will take 'em back to the Cape - they say the Captain's not right in the head. I crowned one bugger for that - beg pardon, sir, and in course they all know she's an unlucky ship.' Bonden's head drooped forward: from his sleep he murmured, "They say Mr G said something to Turnbull but no more.

  Jack was awake, grey but alive, with Killick's good breakfast dispelling the cold, when Grant came to him, reported the water over the top of the well and gaining fast, and the parting of the new fothering-sail at the clews. "So there we are, sir. W
e have done all we can by the ship. We cannot pass a new sail before she settles. Shall I provision the boats? I presume you will go in the launch."

  "I do not intend leaving the ship, Mr Grant."

  "She is sinking under us, sir."

  "I am not sure of that. We may save her yet - fother the leak - fashion a rudder with a spare topmast.,

  "Sir, the hands have wrought hard, very hard, ever since the moment we struck. We cannot in honesty give them any more hope. And if I may speak plain, I doubt they would come to their duty, with the water deep in the orlop. I doubt they would still obey orders."

  "Would you still obey orders, Mr Grant?" asked Jack with a smile.

  "I will obey orders, sir," said Grant, deadly earnest. "No man shall ever accuse me of mutiny. All lawful orders. But, sir, is it lawful to order men to their death, with no enemy at hand, no battle? I respect your decision to stay with your ship, but I beg you to consider those of another way of thinking. I believe the ship must founder. I believe the boats can reach the Cape."

  "I hear what you say, Mr Grant," said Jack. He reflected: the discontented men would do nothing from this moment on - they certainly knew Grant's mind; there would be no point in putting down the mutiny, if mutiny this could be called, even if he could rely on the Marines. "I hear what' you say. I think that you are probably mistaken, and that the Leopard will swim. But swim or not, I stay with her. Each man must do what he thinks right. If you think it right to go off in the boats, you may do so, and God speed you well. But you must see them provisioned. What now, William?" he said, looking up.

  It was Babbington, looking old, yellow, and destroyed. "The bosun -has come aft with a party of men, sir. I said I thought you would see them," he said, with a significant look. "Shall I ask Captain Moore to step in?"

  "No. I will see them."

  They wanted the boats, they said: they meant no disrespect - they believed they had done their duty but the barky was sinking - they wanted to chance their luck in the cutters and the launch.

  "Yes," said Jack. "You have done your duty; no man could ask more. And it is true, the ship is in a very sad way. But I believe she has a better chance than the boats. At all events, I stay with her. I tell you again, I tell you fair, I believe she may swim. If you and your mates will go back and pump, while we fother her again, I promise you I will give Mr Grant orders to prepare the boats; they will be there and ready, if there is no hope for the ship.

  "There you are, Mr Grant," he said when they were alone, "that will give you some hours to provision them.

  Launch and prepare both cutters: leave the jolly-boat - it will be no use to you. Take what you need; but for God's sake do not let the hands get into the spirit-room."

  They would go: he was certain of that. Go even before he had tried a new sail. Some of these men were mad for escape, even into open boats with thirteen hundred miles of sea between them and the Cape, and soon there would be no controlling them by any means short of death; and there was nothing to be gained by killing men at this juncture. When Stephen came in he said, "Stephen, the boat will soon be away, probably some time before nightfall. If you choose to go, pray dress up warm and take my waterproof cloak. They will take you, I know."

  "They? You do not go?"

  "No. I stay with the ship. But I do not wish you to feel the least obligation to remain, if you had rather not."

  "It is a matter of principle with you?" Jack nodded. "Listen, will you lay it plain before me, now? I speak for some papers I have, not for myself. Principles aside - for I know your views on what is right in a captain - which is the better course?"

  "I may be wrong, but I still think the ship. Yet the launch may get through. Bligh took his boat farther, and Grant is an excellent seaman: he will certainly be in the launch."

  "Then I shall give him what I can copy. Forgive me now, Jack, I must work as fast as I can. The ship is all on a buzz with this talk of the boats, and there are some fellows may break out in no time at all."

  Jack hobbled out on to the quarterdeck. There was still a fair semblance of order. A man stood by the useless wheel: the glass had been turned; the pumps were working steadily. The wind had lessened, and with it the sea; the Leopard, strangely low in the water, moved steadily on, her trim keeping the breeze on the beam. He called for the bosun and gave orders for the launch to be hoisted out, then the cutters. The Jolly-boat was not to be touched. A

  long task, but efficiently carried out, the men working with a will: and all the time he was conscious of furtive looks darting at him from the men and boys on the quarterdeck. When it was done he told Grant to see them provisioned and went below to write to the Admiralty and to Sophie. It was when he came to this that the shift between himself and the present broke down, vanished entirely. It had been with him ever since that remote day of the Waakzaamheid, this sense of observing the world from a distance, and of moving, functioning, more through duty than intimate concern; and the moment of its breaking, of his coming wholly to life, was exquisitely painful.

  At the same time, below him, down on the orlop with the water washing about his shins, Stephen wrote like a man possessed: a summary that nevertheless covered page after page in close-written code.

  They were both of them jerked from their writing by a bawling, hallooing, rioting din. What Jack feared most had happened: getting aft, uncontrolled, for provisions, some hands had forced the spirit room door. Some were roaring drunk already. Others were following their example. At much the same time the larboard chain-pump broke down at last, choked with the coal that had washed into the well; at once its team hurried aft; and at once the leak began gaining faster still. This was the end.

  In the event the boats' parting was not a clear-cut division between those who wanted to go and those who, from duty or loyalty to their captain and trust in his powers, chose to stay: it was a period of very ugly confusion, panic in some, drunken madness in others, a period in which cabins were looted, boxes broken open, so that waisters appeared in laced coats and hats and two pairs of trousers, and men were killed or drowned as they tried to crowd into the boats. Some tried to launch the jolly-boat, but Bonden and a score of his friends would not let them. The division had a good deal to do with men's

  ability to hold drink, and some good hands who would have stayed an hour earlier now went over the side. Yet still, roughly speaking, it followed the line of attachment to the Captain, although there were some surprising, sober departures.

  But with the spirit-room open the final stages were so squalid, so saddening, that Jack would not look on at all. Having shaken Grant's hand, having given him the packets for England, and having wished him all that a sailor could hope for, he retired to his charts and his drawing of a jury-rudder.

  Stephen stayed by the rail to the end: sometimes they called to him to come into one boat or another, but he only shook his head. He saw the launch hoist a lug-sail and stand away to the north: the red cutter, unable to step its mast, rowed after it, while the blue pulled back to the ship, catching crabs, falling about, and then ramming the side. They had already lost their sails, and they bawled out for more. Someone flung a bundle of canvas into the boat, and perhaps a score of men with second thoughts or with none at all jumped from the ship'sgunwale and chains. The last the Leopard saw of them as they went astern was the dark struggling mass in the icy water as those in the sea fought to get into the boat and those in the boat fought to keep them out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Wednesday, 24 December. Course estimated E 15'S. Latitude estimated 46'30'S. Longitude 49'45'E. First part, fresh breezes at WNW, latter parts calm and fine. People employed pumping and thrumming spritsail to fother ship.Water one and a half foot above orlop beams forward, one foot amidship and aft.

  "Thursday, 25 December. Course estimated E 10'S. Latitude observed 46'37'S. Longitude estimated 50'15'E. Winds light and variable with haze and rain. Sea calm with several small blocks of ice. PM hauled up foresail, veered out stop-water to check ship
's way, and passed fothering-sail forward from abaft the sternpost, bowsing it taut from the fashion-pieces to the mizen chains. The sail answered and the pumps gained five foot in the day."

  Jack was copying his rough notes into the log-book, and when he came to this triumphant entry he smiled. He was tempted to embellish it with an epithet or two - to add something about the feeble screech by way of a cheer when the gain of the first clear foot was reported - to describe the extraordinary change of spirit, the flood of new strength that sent the winches flying round, so that from having to encourage, threaten, beat or even cajole the exhausted hands, their officers had to restrain their zeal, for fear that the pump-chains would break or choke yet again - to speak of the Christmas dinner (fresh pork and double plum-duff) eaten with such merriment in relays. But he knew that even if he could find words to describe this change, a log-book was not the place for them, and he contented himself with drawing a small pointing hand in the margin.

  His earlier notes, those that dealt with the first days

  after the boats went off, had been lost when he and the carpenters were trying to rig some kind of a rudder, working out of the stern window - a following sea had set the whole cabin in a swim. They had recorded the Leopard's eastward course, directly before the wind for the most part, travelling on in what seemed a slow death agony, while all her people's efforts were divided between trying to keep her afloat and trying to get her to steer, The pumps never still, except when they broke down or choked with the infernal coal: the men perpetually heaving the winches round and sometimes even baling too, when the water surged up through the scuttles and hatchways, as though the ship were settling at last.