Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  Those were idyllic weeks; but how difficult it was to remember them, to call them vividly to mind as an experienced reality, a fortnight after the ship had sailed into the true antarctic, and more than antarctic stream, the haunt of the wandering albatross, mollymauks in all their variety, the great bone-breaking petrel, the stinkpot and the ice-bird—had sailed into that green water at fourteen knots under topsails, forecourses and a jib, impelled by an almighty quartering wind. The change was not unexpected. Well before this ominous parallel the frigate's people had been engaged in shifting, packing and storing her light sails and replacing them with much heavier cloth, with storm-canvas trysails and the like for emergency. Many a watch had been spent in sending up preventer backstays, braces, shrouds and stays and in attending to new earings, robands, reef-points, reef-tackles for the courses and spilling-lines for the topsails, to say nothing of new sheets and clewlines fore and aft. Then again all hands had rounded the Horn at least once, some many times, and they took their long woollen drawers, their mittens and their Magellan jackets very seriously when they were served out, while most of those who had had any foresight dug into their chests for Monmouth caps, Welsh wigs or padded domes with flaps to protect the wearer's ears and strings to tie beneath his chin.

  This serving-out happened on a Tuesday in fine clear weather, a pleasant topgallant breeze blowing from the north-west, and it seemed almost absurd: on Friday the ship was tearing eastwards with four men at the wheel, snow blurring both binnacles, hatches battened down, and the muffled watch on deck sheltering in the waist, dreading a call to grapple with the frozen rigging and board-stiff sails.

  Presently, in this incessant roar of sea and wind, and in this continual tension, the vision of the warm and mild Pacific faded, leaving little evidence apart from Stephen's collections, neatly labelled, noted and wrapped in oiled silk and then sailcloth, carefully packed into thoroughly watertight casks set up by the cooper, and stowed in the hold; and apart from the remarkable store of provisions Mr Adams had laid in. He had had a free hand; he was not bound by the pinch-penny rules of the King's service, since in her present state the Surprise was run on the privateer's tradition of the ship's own money, her personal reserve to be laid out in marine stores, food and drink, a stated share of all the prizes—a very handsome sum after the sale of the Franklin, the Alastor and the whalers—and she was sailing eastwards deep-laden with provisions of the highest quality, enough to last another circumnavigation.

  This was just as well, for after a few days of the first icy blow, when the deathly chill had worked right into the whole ship from keelson to cabin, all hands began to eat with far more than usual eagerness. Their hunger persisted, since the roaring westerly storm had sent the ship a great way, at great speed, south and east into the high fifties, a cold region at the best and now even colder in this unusual year, even without a wind: frequent rain; even more frequent sleet and snow; most hands wet most of the time; all of them always cold.

  In such very thick weather observation was impossible for days on end, and in spite of his chronometers and well-worn sextant, and of the presence of three other expert navigators aboard, Jack could not be sure of his longitude or latitude, dead-reckoning in such wind and seas being wonderfully uncertain. He therefore reduced sail, and the frigate moved eastwards at an average of no more than three knots, sometimes under bare poles or with a mere scrap of sail right forward to give her steerage-way when the wind blew a full gale from the west. Yet there were also those strange antarctic calms, when the albatrosses (and half a dozen followed the Surprise, together with some Cape pigeons and most of the smaller petrels) sat on the heaving sea, unwilling or unable to rise; and during two of these the drum beat to quarters, as it had done all the way south from Valparaiso, and the gun-crew exercised their pieces, housing them warm, dry and new-charged, with the touch-hole covered and the tompions doubly waterproofed with grease, ready for instant service.

  It was after the second of these exercises—two fine rippling broadsides, almost up to the old Surprise's astonishing accuracy and speed—that the sky cleared and Jack had a series of perfect observations of first the sun, then Achernar, and later Mars himself, positions that were confirmed by the other officers and that showed that in spite of this dawdling their initial zeal had brought them almost to the rendezvous far too soon. The China ships intended to pass south of Diego Ramirez with the full moon, and in her present stage she was only three days old: that would mean a great deal of beating to and fro in the most inhospitable seas known to man, with no more than a passable likelihood of success after all. Quite apart from the unpredictable winds, foul weather or fair, state of the sea and so on, merchantmen on such a voyage never attempted any great accuracy of movement.

  'We shall have to stand off and on until well past the full,' said Jack at supper—fish soup, a dish of sweetbreads, Peruvian cheese, two bottles of Coquimbo claret—'The full of the moon, of course.'

  'An uninviting prospect,' said Stephen. 'Last night I was unable to control my 'cello because of the erratic jerking of the floor, and this evening most of my soup is spread on my lap; while day after day men are brought below with cruel bruises, even broken bones, and are falling from the frozen ropes above or slipping on the icy deck below. Do you not think it would be better to go home?'

  'Yes. It often occurs to me, but then my innate nobility of character cries out, "Hey, Jack Aubrey: you mind your duty, d'ye hear me there?" Do you know about duty, Stephen?'

  'I believe I have heard it well spoken of.'

  'Well, it exists. And apart from the obvious duty of distressing the King's enemies—not that I have anything against Americans: they are capital seamen and they treated us most handsomely in Boston. But it is my duty. Apart from that, I say, we also have a duty to the officers and the foremast jacks. They have brought the barky here in the hope of three China ships, and if I call out, "Oh be damned to your three China ships" what will they say? They are not man-of-war's men; and even if they were . . .'

  Stephen nodded. The argument was unanswerable. But he was not quite satisfied. 'As I was stuffing a green Andean parakeet this afternoon,' he said, 'another thought came to me. As you say, the Americans are capital seamen: they beat us hollow in the Java, and carried us prisoners away. Do you not feel that attacking three of their China ships is somewhat rash? Does it not smack of that pride which goeth before destruction?'

  'Oh dear no. These are not solid great Indiamen, these are not thousand-ton Company's ships that you could take for men-of-war, nor anything like it. They are quite modest private merchantmen with a few six-pounders and swivels and small-arms, just to beat off the pirates of the South China Sea: they have nothing like the very heavy crew of a man-of-war, above all an American man-of-war, and they could not fire a full broadside even if they carried the guns, which they don't. No. In the unlikely event of their keeping all together and manoeuvring just so, they must still fall victims to even a quite small frigate capable of firing three well-directed hundred and forty-four-pound broadsides in under five minutes.'

  'Well,' said Stephen. And then, 'If we must wait for your more or less mythical Chinamen, if we must wait until your sense of duty is satisfied, may we not go just a little way south, just to the edge of the ice? How charming that would be.'

  'With all due respect, Stephen, I must tell you that I utterly decline to go anywhere near any ice whatsoever, however thin, however deeply laden with seals, great auks, or other wonders of the deep. I hate and despise ice. Ever since our mortal time with the ice-island in the horrible old Leopard, I have always sworn never to give it any countenance.'

  'My dear,' said Stephen, pouring him another glass of wine, 'how well a graceful timidity does become you.'

  Stephen Maturin had little room to prate about timidity. In the relatively tranquil forenoon watch of the following day Captain Aubrey caused a crow's nest, in the whaler's manner, to be set up on the main topmast head, a crow's nest stuffed with straw, so that the
lookout should not freeze to death. Dr Maturin having publicly expressed a wish to see farther to the south in case, on this clear day, ice might be visible, Jack, in the presence of his officers and several hands, invited him to take a view from this eminence: Stephen looked at the masts (the ship was rolling twenty-one degrees and pitching twelve) and blenched, but he lacked the moral courage to refuse and within minutes he was rising through the maze of rigging, rising on a double whip with several turns about his person and a look of contained horror on his face. Bonden and young Wedell steered him through the shrouds and backstays and their reinforcements, Jack preceded him by foot, and between them they got him safe into the nest.

  'Now I come to think of it,' said Jack, who had meant no harm at all, 'I do not believe you have ever been aloft with the ship a little skittish. I hope it don't make you uneasy?'

  'Not at all,' said Stephen, glancing over the edge at the absurdly distant white-streaked sea immediately below on the starboard roll and closing his eyes again. 'I like it of all things.'

  'I am afraid you will not see much in the south,' said Jack. He pointed his telescope and kept it fixed while the mast upon which he was poised went through its gyrations, swinging his pigtail left and then right and then straight out behind.

  Watching it as he lay there coiled in the straw, Stephen asked, 'How much do you suppose we move, at all?'

  'Well,' said Jack, still sweeping the southern rim of the world, 'we are rolling about twenty degrees and pitching let us say twelve: so at this height the roll should carry us some seventy-five feet and the pitch forty-five. And we describe a tolerably angular ellipse. Are you sure it don't worry you?'

  'Never in life,' said Stephen, bringing himself to look over the edge again: and having looked, 'Tell me, brother, do people ever come this way voluntarily? I mean, apart from those that ply up and down the American coast?'

  'Oh yes. With the steady westerlies and the west-wind drift this is the quickest way from New South Wales to the Cape. Oh dear me, yes. They began using it at the very beginning of the infernal colony, you remember, and the Navy still . . . I tell you what, Stephen: there is something very nasty blowing up in the south. The swell is already with us and I fear a deadly storm. Bonden. Bonden, there. Clap on to the line: I am sending the Doctor down. Bear a hand, bear a hand.'

  It was a cruel hard blow, and the Surprise clawed off from Diego Ramirez and its long tail of rocks as far and fast as ever she could, sometimes making fair headway, sometimes lying-to under storm trysails when the prodigious southern swell compelled her to do so, but always keeping enough sea-room for the comfort of those aboard, every man-jack of whom dreaded a lee-shore more than anything in this world and perhaps the next. That however was the only kind of comfort they knew until at last the storm blew itself out. For the rest of the time the ship was in very violent motion, with green seas sweeping her deck fore and aft, nobody turning in dry, nobody lying warm, nobody having a hot meal and rarely a hot drink, all hands called night after night.

  Yet the storm did blow itself out; the strong westerlies returned, and the frigate made her uneven way back across the southern swell cut into frightful seas by a strong sideways blast. Most very strong irregular winds have freakish effects and this was no exception: no men were lost or seriously injured, but on the other hand the well-lashed and double griped spare top and topgallant masts on the leeward side of the booms flew overboard, together with other valuable spars, like a bundle of twigs, while the Doctor's skiff, stowed inside the untouched launch, was utterly destroyed; and while the Doctor himself, contemplating the apocalyptic scene from a scuttle in the cabin (he was not allowed on deck) saw a sight unique in his experience: an albatross, navigating the great crests and troughs with all its natural skill, was surprised by a flying packet of water plucked from a cross-current and dashed into the sea. It arose from the boil with an enormous wing-stroke and fled across the face of the rising wave: no sound could of course be heard, but Stephen thought he detected a look of extreme indignation on its face.

  They were back on their station, with the islands clear on the larboard beam except in thick weather. But they had brought the cold with them, the right antarctic cold of the high sixties and beyond; and although the midshipmen's berth took a perverse delight in fishing up pieces of drift-ice to freeze their already frigid grog, the older hands, particularly those who had sailed in South Sea whalers, looked upon it with sullen disapproval, as a mark of worse, far worse, to come.

  This cold, and this for late summer unparallelled show of ice, meant that whenever the westerlies paused, which they sometimes did, without any rhyme or reason that could be made out, the air was filled with mist or even downright fog.

  They paused indeed in the middle watch of the Friday after the ship's return, the day after the full moon, and presently they were succeeded by an air from the north; this strengthened with the rising of the sun and immediately after breakfast the man in the crow's nest hailed the deck in an enormous voice of passionate intensity: 'Sail ho! Two sail of ships on the larboard bow.'

  The hail reached the cabin, where Jack was drinking coffee in a battered half-pint mug and eating eggs. He had already started up, thrusting both from him when Reade darted in, crying, 'Two sail of ships, sir, fine on the larboard bow.'

  Jack ran aloft, straight up without a pause, the hoar-frost scattering from the ratlines under his feet. The lookout moved down on to the yard to leave him room, calling up, 'They have just cleared the middle island, sir. Topsails and courses. Which I saw them clear before the fog closed in.'

  Time passed. The intently listening silence on deck was broken by two bells: no one heard the steady heave of the south-western swell at all. In these latitudes a sea-fog could resist almost any amount of wind, being bred from the surface itself; yet the wind could tear gaps in it, and the wind did so just as the cold was beginning to pinch Jack Aubrey's nose and ears. Three miles to the north-east he saw the two ships, their sails white against the black islands of Diego Ramirez: three to four hundred tons, bluff-bowed, broad in the beam. Stout merchantmen, no doubt, capable of cramming a great deal into their hold: but surely very, very slow.

  With his glass to his good eye he studied the nearest: she seemed to be getting ready to change course, bringing the wind on to her quarter in order to sail westward round the southern shore of the last island in the group before hauling her wind and steering as near north into the Pacific as the breeze would allow. Both her watches were on deck, of course, a meagre crew: and with so few hands no brisk manoeuvre could be expected. Yet even so she seemed strangely hesitant about this sensible, straightforward operation; and all at once it occurred to Jack that she was the leader, the ship which had been there before, which pointed out the way, and that she was finding it very difficult to induce her second astern to take notice of her signals. Admittedly, the second astern was more often blurred by fog than not; and in this light flags were difficult to read. His theory was confirmed almost at once: the leading ship fired a gun, and all her people stared eagerly astern to see what effect it would have. She seemed to be keeping no look-out at all. In any case he was morally certain that she had not seen the Surprise: the frigate, lying with reefed courses against a blurred grey background, would have been very hard to see in any case, and to those who had no notion of any enemy within five thousand miles she was virtually invisible.

  The China ships' intention was perfectly obvious. And if the Surprise ran a little way to the east and then steered north she would have the weather-gage, which would enable her to bring them to action when she pleased. Yet he would not hurry things: there was the possibility of the third ship. And as they had been as regular as the Bath to London stage-coach as far as time was concerned there seemed a strong likelihood that they would be equally exact in number; and it would be a sad shame not to bag the whole shooting-match. The third ship must be allowed to sail right through the tangled islands and join her companions, for once she was in the open sea the
re was no return with this breeze. Very soon the wind would back into the west, and with the Surprise's remarkable powers of sailing close-hauled the merchantmen could not hope to escape.

  He leaned over the edge of the crow's nest and in a quiet voice he called, 'Captain Pullings.'

  'Sir?'

  'Pray let all hands go to quarters, but without any noise at all: no drum. And as soon as the fog closes in on us, make sail, all plain sail: course north-north-east. For the moment let Mr Norton go into the mizzen-top with a glass and Bonden to the fore.'

  The muffled sound of many feet below: guns run out with infinite precaution—no more than the faint squeak of a truck, the inevitable but stifled clash of round-shot. Then the fog closed in and without a single order the sails dropped from their yards or rose silently along their stays.

  The frigate gathered way. Pullings could be heard saying, 'Thus, thus, very well thus,' to the helmsman as she settled on her course. Three bells. 'Dowse that God-damn bell,' said Jack, rather loud.

  Fifteen minutes more, and as he had expected the breeze freshened, backing westward. He felt a sudden chill waft about him; and he was not alone, for the whalers looked at one another with a meaning nod.

  'Sir,' called Bonden. 'Two sail of ships on the larboard beam. No. A brig and a ship.'

  'Where away?' asked Jack. His injured eye was now watering extremely in the icy breeze, blurring the sight of both.

  'Which I've lost them now, sir,' said Bonden. 'The ship seemed a fair size: topsails and I think forecourse: but they come and go. Sometimes you would say a ship of the line, sometimes only a sloop.'

  Silence. Blankness: grey trails of mist wafted through the rigging, leaving ice-crystals on every strand. Jack whipped a handkerchief over his poor eye, and he was still knotting the ends when an eddy tore something of a window in the fog. The China ships, all three of them now, could be seen quite plain: they had cleared the islands and they were well to the south of them, exactly where reason had foretold. But illogically the newcomers, though closer to, indeed between the Surprise and her quarry, were much vaguer, mere looming shapes.