Book 16 - The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  Yet they were clear enough for Awkward Davies to bawl out, 'Now there are five of the poor unfortunate buggers. Five!' in an exulting roar, instantly suppressed; and Jack had a fleeting glimpse of gun-ports on the large vessel before they both merged in the greyness once more, slightly darker forms that soon vanished entirely.

  There followed a long period of total uncertainty, with the fog thickening, clearing, thickening again, and both lookouts confusing the object they reported, sometimes taking the brig for the ship or the other way about—the two vessels were moving quite fast in relation to one another—while even the experienced Bonden varied strangely about their size.

  Jack saw virtually nothing. It seemed to him that these were almost certainly Spaniards, merchantmen bound for Valparaiso and to the northward; the larger one, if she was really as large as she sometimes seemed to be, a thousand tons and more, possibly for the Philippines. The row of gunports was neither here nor there: even if they were real that did not mean there were any guns behind them. Most merchantmen had a full array, real or painted, as some sort of a deterrent.

  'Sail ho. Sail on the starboard bow, sir,' called Norton. Jack whipped round, saw the towering whiteness loom through the mist, thinning over there, and heard Norton cry, 'Oh no, oh no, sir. I'm sorry. It's an ice-island.'

  Yes. And there was another beyond it, with more appearing in the south and the east as the fog grew patchy; and now the particular chill of a breeze blowing off ice was far more pronounced.

  By this time the Surprise was perfectly well placed for her attack on the China ships. They were well beyond the islands, moving steadily a little south of west, and with the present breeze she could cross their wake under a moderate press of sail within an hour or so. The misty newcomers lay between the Surprise and her prey—she would probably pass within hail—and as he contemplated those vague forms, now remarkably large and even doubled by the odd reflexion from frozen mist particles coupled with what dim shadows they were capable of casting, it occurred to him that the ship might conceivably be a Spanish man-of-war sent to deal with the Alastor, news of her depredation having reached Cadiz. 'If that is the case,' he reflected, 'I shall ask Stephen to have a civil word with her.'

  He leant over, meaning to tell Pullings to wear the ship round on to her new westward course, but even as he gathered his breath he heard that never-to-be-forgotten sound of falling ice as a mass the size of a parish church broke from the nearest island and plunged a hundred feet into the sea, sending up an immense turmoil of spray and leaping water, and he changed the order to that for tacking, a quicker operation altogether though much less economical in wear and tear and effort. 'The sooner we are out of this the better,' he reflected, glancing astern at the huge forms moving steadily northwards through the fog, although they were already much further to the north than they had any right to be at this time of the year.

  The ship was round on her new tack and gathering way; all had been coiled down and hands were laying out on the foretopgallantyards when the brig showed dim on the larboard beam, then plainer and plainer.

  'The brig ahoy,' hailed Jack in his powerful voice, now from the quarterdeck. No reply, but in the rapidly clearing air a great deal of activity could be made out.

  'Colours,' said Jack to Reade, the signal midshipman; and then louder, very much louder, as the colours broke out, 'What ship is that? Qué barco está?'

  'Noah's Ark, ten days out of Ararat, New Jersey,' replied the brig, with a cackle of maniac laughter. Her big fore-and-aft mainsail was hauled right aft, she heeled violently to leeward, her stern-chaser went off, sending a ball through the Surprise's forestaysail, and she vanished into the mist.

  The Surprise replied at random. The crack of the single gun, a forecastle carronade, was still echoing to and fro between the curtains of fog when a second dark form heaved up on the starboard bow, grew rapidly distinct, and lit the remaining mist between them with a thundering broadside, eighteen crimson flashes. The guns had been fired on the downward roll and most of the shot fell short, but some hit the Surprise by ricochet, breaking through the hammocks in the netting and rolling across the deck: eighteen pound roundshot. The smoke swept to leeward, much of the mist with it, and clear and plain Jack saw a heavy American frigate, a thirty-eight-gun ship with a three hundred and forty-two pounds broadside, apart from her chasers and carronades.

  The Surprise was hopelessly outgunned and with her small privateer's crew hopelessly outmanned; while there was also the brig-of-war ready to infest her disengaged side or rake her from astern. 'Fire as they bear,' cried Jack. He bore the helm up: the ship's head fell off from the wind: her starboard guns bore in succession and fired, each with accurate deliberation.

  She had a surprising amount of way on her and in a quick aside Jack said, 'Tom, I am going to put her about if ever she will stay: do what you can.' Then aloud, 'Larboard guns: one round as they bear. Sail-trimmers away.' He put the helm over; the good ship responded, turning, turning, turning, dead into the wind. If she missed stays, if she fell off, all was lost. She turned yet, turning just beyond the crucial point, with hands madly flatting-in forward to help her, filled her jib and head staysails on the other tack and she was round: and the larboard guns were bearing, at point-blank range. The moment the last was fired and made fast the gun-crews all leapt to brace round and to haul aft the sheets that had been let go and to clear the horrible apparent confusion.

  Jack gave the course east-north-east a half east, hoping to weather the nearest iceberg on his starboard bow, the only way out of this impossible encounter; and as soon as there were a few hands free he called, 'Topgallants and weather studding-sails,' while he and those he could gather together attended to the unloaded guns.

  Although he was somewhat taken aback by this shockingly improper going-about, a manoeuvre that had brought the Surprise so close to his larboard bow that quite apart from the terrible effect of her round-shot, fragments of glowing wad had come aboard, lighting a spilt cartridge and causing an explosion, the American captain brought his ship round, spreading canvas at an extraordinary rate and steering a parallel course, somewhat to leeward, close-hauled to the strengthening wind, now at north-west.

  Obviously he had made his turn later than Jack, which set him close on a mile behind and almost as much farther east; yet even so he thought he too might weather the ice-island, although it was moving steadily northwards. This particular island—for there were many others in sight, south and east—could now be seen as a whole in the increasing light, full two miles across, rising in steep crags and spires, green in general but ice-blue in the towering middle regions; and its northwestern point, the point which the Surprise must weather if she were to have any chance of escaping destruction, and the point for which the American was steering with such energy, ended in a sheer ice-cliff, much worn, fretted into pinnacles.

  To begin with the American, with his full man-of-war's complement of hands, had been able to spread more canvas in spite of the damage and slaughter of that brief point-blank engagement and to make up some of the lost distance; but now that the Surprises had set their gun-deck in order they evened the difference and both ships raced through the frigid sea with everything their masts could bear, bowlines twanging taut, both firing chasers as they ran.

  Jack left the gunnery to Pullings and Mr Smith. He stood at the con, sailing the ship, getting every inch of windward distance out of the wind's thrust, calculating leeway, gazing at the fatal cliff with his good eye, feeling the pain in his heart as the bows and cutwater hit drifting ice, a terribly frequent sound and sometimes very dangerous. He dared not ship a protective bow-grace: he could not risk the slightest diminution of the frigate's speed.

  It was with the horror of a nightmare that he saw the calm, doom-like motion of the ice-island. The vast bulk moved with the apparent ease of a cloud and the slight expanse of safe water to the windward of its tip was narrowing, narrowing every minute.

  'Sir,' said Wilkins, 'the brig has al
tered course.'

  Certainly: Jack had expected it. These turns and her own manoeuvres had brought the brig to the westward of both ships, on the Surprise's quarter and somewhat nearer to her than the heavy frigate; and for the last two miles she had been losing steadily. Now, in answer to a signal, she was bearing up with the evident intention of crossing the Surprise's stern and raking her, firing a broadside that would run the whole length of the ship. It was a bold move, since Jack had only to make a slight turn to larboard to bring his own broadside to bear and quite possibly sink her. But the time taken by even a slight turn, by the discharge and the falling off again to her true course would almost certainly make the Surprise lose her race against the iceberg's movement.

  'My compliments to Captain Pullings,' he said, having looked fore and aft, 'and beg he will direct all his attention to the brig's foremast and yard.'

  The stern-chase guns in the cabin below increased their rate of fire. Eight shots in rapid succession, and there was a triumphant roar. Jack turned, saw the brig shoot up into the wind, her square foresail down on deck, her fore-and-aft mainsail swinging her helplessly out of control. He nodded, but the real essence of the matter lay ahead: not half a mile ahead. With his good eye he could now gauge his leeway exactly against a long fissure in the ice. It would be a near-run thing, a damned near-run thing. He had the wheel under his hands, easing her very gently to the rise of each swell, urging her a trifle and still another trifle to windward, to the thin lane at the cliff's very foot itself. Not two cables now, and they were running at eight knots. There was no turning back.

  'Sir,' said Wilkins again, 'the frigate ports her helm.'

  Again Jack nodded. She had been to the leeward of the Surprise from the beginning: now she had no chance whatsoever of weathering the point and she meant to hit the Surprise as hard as ever she could, crippling her before she was out of reach. He shrugged: his course was wholly committed now, and again he eased the helm, his eyes as intent upon the lane of green water as they might have been on a tall hedge with God knows what beyond, and he galloping towards it. He was aware of the whiter surf rising on the white ice at the cliff's foot, of a still whiter albatross crossing the swell, and even before he heard the American's broadside he was stunned and deafened by the enormous crash of ice falling from the cliff itself; he felt the ship's hull tremble and then grate on the iceberg's submerged outer shelf, and saw the mizzenmast, shot through in two separate places, sway, break and go slowly over the side.

  'Axes, axes,' he roared. 'Cut all away. Cut clear, cut clear.'

  Shrouds, backstays, rigging all whipped free; the ship ran past the ice-cliff, her mainyard scraping, past and beyond into the open water: sea-room and to spare for a good three miles. Ice-islands thick beyond.

  She answered her helm perfectly: she was an entirely living ship: and there was a prodigious mass of ice between her and the enemies' guns. Jack was aware of some confusion in his mind: just in what order had things happened? Not that it signified. The ship was swimming in clear water. He sent Reade to ask the carpenter to sound the well and then looked for the destruction here on deck. There was surprisingly little. The mizzen had gone as clean as a whistle, and the bosun, together with his mates, was knotting and splicing.

  'What damage did it do among the people?' he asked Wilkins.

  'None this last bout, sir. The ice missed us by a shaver.'

  Pullings came aft, smiling, curiously talkative, a marline-spike in his hand. 'Give you joy of our passage, sir,' he said. 'At one moment I did not think she could do it, and my heart was fairly in my mouth. And then when the ice came down I said, "All up with you, Pullings, old cock" But, however, it missed.'

  'You saw what happened?'

  'Why, yes, sir. I had just put my head over the top of the ladder when the Yankee opened fire: deliberate shots at first—one hit the mizzen below the hounds—and then when we were weathering the point and running clear, all her remaining guns at once, and some of their shots hit the ice, or perhaps it was just the concussion: anyway a thundering great steeple came down, a thousand ton, I dare say. I never seen the like nor heard it. Plunged into our wake, soaked one and all; and some odd fragments spoilt the gingerbread work on the taffrail.'

  Jack perceived that he was indeed deeply soaked behind; and perhaps still somewhat shattered by the fantastic uproar. He said, 'How I regret the mizzen. But a moment's attempt at saving it would have brought us right on the ice. As it was we scraped most horribly, and I tremble for our copper. Yes, Mr Reade?'

  'If you please, sir, Chips says . . .'

  'What was that, Mr Reade?'

  'Beg pardon, sir. Mr Bentley says two inches in the well, no more.'

  'Very good. Tom, we must put before the wind or close on until we can ship a jury-mizzen. Pick our oldest whale-men and send them into the crow's nest one after another to pick us a way through the ice: there is a terrible quantity to leeward. Let a stout bow-grace be prepared; and since we are not likely to see that big fellow'—nodding westwards—'until he has gone about twice, let the galley fires be lit and all hands fed.'

  'He may consider it his duty to hurry back and protect his convoy,' said Pullings.

  'Let us hope he has a very strong sense of duty, an overwhelming sense of duty,' said Jack.

  In fact the big American did not round the point until well on in the afternoon. The devoted brig had not only lost her yard, shot through in the slings, but had also stopped a nine-pounder ball just under the waterline and sprung a butt: water and pieces of ice were pouring into her. By this time the Surprise, keeping the wind one and two points on her starboard quarter as far as the ice allowed it, had travelled ten miles in a straight line—more of course when her deviations to avoid icebergs and close-packed ice-fields were counted—and it was from this distance, the fog having largely cleared, that at last her lookout saw the big American. Yet she too would have to thread those devious channels and circumvent the same islands, and Jack sat down to his belated dinner with as easy a mind as was compatible with the loss of a mast, the presence of an active and enterprising enemy, and of an unconscionable amount of ice ahead in the form of floating islands or massive floes.

  He had already been down to the sick-berth to see the very moderate casualties—two splinter wounds, one of them the invariably unfortunate Joe Plaice; one man struck into a coma by a falling block but not despaired of; one man with toes and metatarsals crushed by a recoiling gun—and he had told Stephen that dinner would be ready by eight bells, adding, 'Four o'clock, you know,' in case he did not.

  He did, however, and at the first stroke he walked eagerly in, wiping his hands. 'I am so sorry if I have kept you, but I had to take that foot off after all: such a mass of comminuted bone. Pray tell me how we do.'

  'Pretty well, I thank you. The American is ten miles astern, and I do not think he can possibly come within range before nightfall. Allow me to give you a piece of this fish, a cousin to the cod, it seems.'

  'They tell me we have lost a mast. Will this impede our progress to any fatal degree—will it reduce our pace by say a third?'

  'I hope not. When we are sailing large the mizzen makes surprisingly little difference; and less than you might think close-hauled. With a side-wind the balance would be upset and she would fall off sadly: I should not like to be chased by a herring-buss in the open ocean with a strong side wind. But I hope that the westerlies or south-westerlies will go on blowing until some lingering notion of responsibility makes the captain of that frigate turn back to his convoy.'

  'I do not believe those ships were his convoy: I believe there was a chance meeting in say the river Plate, no more. But it makes little odds, since I am convinced he will protect them now. My dear, you look sadly done up; and your appetite has failed you. Drink up another glass of wine and breathe as deeply as you can. I shall give you a comfortable dose tonight.'

  'No, Stephen: many thanks, but it would not do. I shall not turn in; nor I shall not heave to, neither. I dare
not let that cove—a determined and bloody-minded cove if ever there was one—creep up on me in the night. Coffee is more the mark than a dose, however comfortable and kindly intended. Let us toy with these chops. I do love a dry chop, a really well-dried mutton chop, turned twice a day.'

  The well-dried chops sustained him all that night, which he spent in the crow's nest, kept if not warm then at least preserved from death by a sequence of whalers and refreshed every other hour by the truly devoted Killick or his mate who came aloft in mittens, holding a villainous tin pot of coffee, slung by a loop, in their teeth.

  A fairly clear night, particularly at ten or twenty feet above the surface; a moderate swell for these parts; and above all the blessed moon, only just past the full and as brilliant as extreme cold could make her. The watch on deck, muffled in their Magellan jackets, with flannel shirts over their heads, stood by to shove off floating slabs of ice with what spars the ship still possessed; and so, with the whalers advising what lanes to take, the Surprise groped her way cautiously eastwards and as far north of east as ever she could manage. In spite of the stout bow-grace and the zeal of those employed in shoving-off, she received some wicked strokes from thick, deep-swimming floes, and several times the high-perched Jack Aubrey trembled for his nest—literally trembled with extreme cold, weariness and the grave tension of guiding his ship through this potentially mortal maze: he was no longer a young man.

  By the strange sunrise he was older still: a sun rising in a clear sky that presently grew light sapphire blue, while the sea took on a deeper tinge and the ice-islands showed at some points pure rosy pink and at others bright ultramarine. But there, at seven miles or less, considerably farther south, lay the dogged American. In this light her hull looked black; and she had already begun to set more sail.