The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  '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.'r />
  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 there 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 mizen-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.

  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 grey ness 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 fore-topgallantyards 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? Que barco esta?'

  '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.