The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  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 altered 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 mizenmast, 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 mizen 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 mizen 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 mizen. 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-mizen. 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 mizen 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.

  Jack swung over the side of the crow's nest, and as he gripped the topmost shrouds his frozen hand slipped on the coat of ice: he would have fallen but that his legs, so long at sea, instantly whipped round the shroud below and held him for the vital moment.

  On deck he said, 'Tom, when the hands have had their breakfast let us shake out our reefs and set the foretopgallant. Look at that fellow' - nodding southwards - 'he has studdingsails both sides, aloft and alow.'

  'I dare say he has a clear stretch of water, for the moment; but I must say the ice-field looks right solid down there,' said Pullings hopefully, and they both staggered as the Surprise struck yet another heavy floe.

  There was a hanging stove lit in the cabin, still more coffee, endless eggs and bacon, toast, a creditable Peruvian orange marmalade. Jack, stripped to his waistcoat, absorbed these things and the warmth; but he had little conversation, merely observing that he had seen an albatross, several seals, and a most prodigious whale. Stephen spoke, in a desultory fashion, about ice-islands, and the sudden change in colour at the point of cleavage when some great mass fell into the sea. 'This I have observed in a telescope,' he said, then paused, for Jack's head was sinking on his breast.

  'If you please, sir,' cried Reade, bouncing in, alive with youthful joy, 'Captain Pullings says would you like to step on deck.'

  'Eh?' asked Captain Aubrey.

  Reade said it again and Jack heaved himself up, all seventeen stone. Reade led him blinking aft, passed him a telescope and said, 'There, sir: directly to windward.'

  Jack gazed, changed the glass to his good eye, gazed again, his tired face lighting with a great smile; he stamped upon the frozen deck, and cried, 'He counted his chickens without his host, by God! Ha, ha, ha!' for the big frigate lay motionless, her sails brailed up; and she was getting her boats over the side. 'On deck, there,' hailed the lookout, one of the Surprise's whale-men. 'Sir, she's gone down a lane in the ice-field, a blind alley, like. A no-thoroughfare, ha, ha, ha. And she'll have to tow back three miles into the wind's eye, oh ha, ha, ha!' And in something of an undertone to his mate at the foremast head, 'Oh, won't he cop it, that poor bleeding sod of a lookout of theirs, ha, ha!'

  The distant ship fired a gun to leeward, sending up a cloud of antarctic skuas from a dead and drifting whale.

  'The enemy has fired a leeward gun, sir, if you please,' reported the signal midshipman.

  'You astonish me, Mr Reade,' said Jack. 'And now, I perceive, she is throwing out a signal. Be so good as to read it.'

  Norton stepped forward; Reade rested the telescope on his shoulder, focused, and said, 'Alphabetic, sir: our alphabet. H,A,P,P,Y R,E,T,U,R,N, sir.'

  'Come,' cried Jack, 'that's handsome. Reply Same to you. Who is their president, Tom?'

  'Mr Washington, I believe,' said Pullings, after some thought.

  'Compliments to Mr Washington would be too long by far. No, leave it at that, Mr Reade; and give him a gun in return. Tom,' he went on, 'let us not crack on at all, but proceed east-north-east at a walking-pace until we are out of this infernal ice. Let us not rush upon our doom like a parcel of mad lunatics or gabardine swine. A walking-pace, Captain Pullings; and in the afternoon we will start work on a jury-mast.'

  In his happy ease of heart he now went straight to sleep in the warm cabin, never moving until dinner-time, when he woke, fresh and clear-headed, aware that the ship had touched no ice for some hours; he took a turn on deck, observed that although the sky was murky in the north-east the sea was as open as the Channel except far, far to the south, where ice and the reflexion of ice could still be seen, with great islands cutting the horizon, and paced the quart
erdeck until he heard his steward's shrewish, barely respectful, complaining voice: 'Which the cook says ain't he ever coming, what with everything going cold, spoilt and ruined?'

  After dinner Jack, Pullings and Mr Bentley conferred about the jury-mizen; and now it was found just how grievous the loss of spars in the recent blow had been. Though the ship was heavy with prize-goods such as ambergris and cloth of gold taken from the Alastor, with specie, mostly chests of silver, and with provisions of a quantity and above all a quality to make a flagship stare, she had scarcely a stick to call her own.

  'After endless lamentations and if only's', said Jack as he and Stephen were settling to their music, 'it was decided that by using the launch's mast and the rough-tree rail we could raise stump enough and gaff enough to spread a tolerable mizen. Enough, at all events, to sail with the wind ahead at a moderate pace without straining the rudder right off its pintles; and if it ain't elegant why, be damned to elegance.'

  'What are pintles?'

  'Those right-angled pieces in the front of the rudder that hook into rings or braces as we say at the back of the stern-post so that the rudder can swing like a door on its hinges.'

  And when they had finished their piece, a gentle, meditative anonymous manuscript duet bought at an auction, he said, 'Lord, Stephen, when you remember how hot we were after those China ships so short a while ago, and how simple we should have looked if we had taken them, with that devilish great eighteen-pounder frigate and the brig coming down on us with the weather-gage; and when you consider how happy we are now, to have come off with the loss of no more than our mizen, why, it makes you think.'

  'I do not know that I should go quite so far as that,' said Stephen.