Master and Commander

by Patrick O'Brian

  James Dillon broke through the glass wall. 'Hands at quarters, sir, if you please,' he said, raising his three-corner hat.

  'Very well, Mr Dillon,' said Jack. 'We will exercise the great guns.

  A four-pounder may not throw a very great weight of metal, and it not be able to pierce two feet of oak half a mile away, as a thirty-two-pounder can; but it does throw a solid three-inch cast-iron ball at a thousand feet a second, which is an ugly thing to receive; and the gun itself is a formidable machine. Its barrel is six feet long; it weighs twelve hundredweight; it stands on a ponderous oak carriage; and when it is fired it leaps back as though it were violently alive.

  The Sophie possessed fourteen of these, seven a side; and the two aftermost guns on the quarter-deck were gleaming brass. Each gun had a crew of four and a man or boy to bring up powder from the magazine. Each group of guns was in charge of a midshipman or a master's mate—Pullings had the six forward guns, Ricketts the four in the waist and Babbington the four farthest aft.

  'Mr Babbington, where is this gun's powder horn?' asked Jack coldly.

  'I don't know, sir,' stammered Babbington, very red. 'It seems to have gone astray.'

  'Quarter-gunner,' said Jack, 'go to Mr Day—no, to his mate, for he is sick—and get another.' His inspection showed no other obvious shortcomings: but when he had had both broadsides run in and out half a dozen times—that is to say when the men had been through all the motions short of actually firing the guns—his face grew long and grave. They were quite extraordinarily slow. They had obviously been trained to fire nothing but whole broadsides at once—very little independent firing. They seemed quite happy with easing their guns gently up to the port at the rate of the slowest of them all: and the whole exercise had an artificial, wooden air. It was true that ordinary convoy-duty in a sloop did not give the men any very passionate conviction of the guns' vital reality, but even so . . . 'How I wish I could afford a few barrels of powder,' he thought, with a clear image of the gunner's accounts in his mind: forty-nine half barrels in all, seven under the Sophie's full allowance; forty-one of the red, large grain, seven of them white, large grain—restored powder of doubtful strength—and one barrel of fine grain for priming. The barrels held forty-five pounds, so the Sophie would nearly empty one with each double broadside. 'But even so,' he went on, 'I think we can have a couple of rounds: God knows how long these charges have been lying in the guns. Besides,' he added in a voice within his inner voice—a voice from a far deeper level, 'think of the lovely smell.'

  'Very well,' he said aloud. 'Mr Mowett, be so good as to go into my cabin. Sit down by the table-watch and take exact note of the time that elapses between the first and second discharge of each gun. Mr Pullings, we'll start with your division. Number one. Silence, fore and aft.'

  Dead silence fell over the Sophie. The wind sang evenly in her taut weather-rigging, steady at two points abaft the beam. Number one's crew licked their lips nervously. Their gun was in its ordinary position of rest, bowsed up tight against its port and lashed there—put away, as it were.

  'Cast loose your gun.'

  They cast loose the tackles that held the gun hard against the side and cut the spun-yarn frapping that clenched the breeching to hold it firmer still. With a gentle squeal of trucks the gun showed that it was free: a man held each side-tackle, or the Sophie's heel (which made the rear-tackle unnecessary) would have brought the gun inboard before the next word of command.

  'Level your gun.'

  The sponger pushed his handspike under the thick breech of the gun and with a quick heave levered it up, while number one's captain thrust the wooden wedge more than half-way under, bringing the barrel to the horizontal pointblank position.

  'Out tompion.'

  They let the gun run in fast: the breeching checked its inward course when the muzzle was a foot or so inboard: the sail-trimmer whipped out the carved and painted tompion that plugged it.

  'Run out your gun.'

  Clapping on to the side-tackles they heaved her up hand over hand, running the carriage hard against the side and coiling the falls, coiling them down in wonderfully neat little fakes.

  'Prime.'

  The captain took his priming-iron, thrust it down the touch-hole and pierced the flannel cartridge lying within the gun, poured fine powder from his horn into the open vent and on to the pan, bruising it industriously with the nozzle. The sponger put the flat of his hand over the powder to prevent its blowing away, and the fireman slung the horn behind his back.

  'Point your gun.' And to this order Jack added, 'As she lies,' since he wished to add no complications of traversing or elevating for range at this stage. Two of the gun's crew were now holding the side tackles: the sponger knelt on one side with his head away from the gun, blowing gently on the smouldering slow-match he had taken from its little tub (for the Sophie did not run to flintlocks): the powder-boy stood with the next cartridge in its leather box over on the starboard side directly behind the gun: the captain, holding his vent-bit and sheltering the priming, bent over the gun, staring along its barrel.

  'Fire.'

  The slow-match whipped across. The captain stubbed it hard down on to the priming. For an infinitesimal spark of time there was a hissing, a flash, and then the gun went off with the round, satisfying bang of a pound and more of hard-rammed powder exploding in a confined space. A stab of crimson flame in the smoke, flying morsels of wad, the gun shooting eight feet backwards under the arched body of its captain and between the members of its crew, the deep twang of the breeching as it brought up the recoil—all these were virtually inseparable in time; and before they were over the next order came.

  'Stop your vent,' cried Jack, watching for the flight of the ball as the white smoke raced streaming down to leeward. The captain stabbed his vent-piece into the touch-hole; and the ball sent up a fleeting plume in the choppy sea four hundred yards to windward, then another and another, ducks and drakes for fifty yards before it sank. The crew clapped on to the rear-tackle to hold the gun firmly inboard against the roll.

  'Sponge your gun.'

  The sponger darted his sheepskin swab into the fireman's bucket, and pushing his face into the narrow space between the muzzle and the side he shot the handle out of the port and thrust the swab down the bore of the gun: he twirled it conscientiously and brought it out, blackened, with a little smoking rag on it.

  'Load with cartridge.'

  The powder-boy had the tight cloth bag there ready: the sponger entered it and rammed it hard down. The captain, with his priming-iron in the vent to feel for its arrival, cried, 'Home!'

  'Shot your gun.'

  The ball was there to hand in its garland, and the wad in its cheese; but an unlucky slip sent the ball trundling across the deck towards the fore-hatch, with the anxious captain, sponger and powder-boy following its erratic course. Eventually it joined the. cartridge, with the wad rammed down over it, and Jack cried, 'Run out your gun.—Prime.—Point your gun.—Fire. Mr Mowett,' he called, through the cabin skylight, 'what was the interval?'

  'Three minutes and three-quarters, sir.'

  'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Jack, almost to himself. There were no words in the vocabulary at his command to express his distress. Pullings' division looked apprehensive and ashamed: number three gun-crew had stripped to the waist and had tied their handkerchiefs round their heads against the flash and the thunder: they were spitting on their hands, and Mr Pullings himself was fussing anxiously about with the crows, handspikes and swabs.

  'Silence. Cast loose your gun. Level your gun. Out tompion. Run out your gun . . .'

  This time it was rather better—just over three minutes. But then they had not dropped their shot and Mr Pullings had helped run up the gun and haul on the rear-tackle, gazing absently into the sky as he did so, to prove that he was not in fact there at all.

  As the firing came aft gun by gun, so Jack's melancholy increased. One and three had not been unlucky bands of boobies: this was the Sophi
e's true average rate of fire. Archaic. Antediluvian. And if there had been any question of aiming, of traversing the guns, heaving them round with crows and handspikes, it would have been even slower. Number five would not fire, damp having got at the powder, and the gun had to be wormed and drawn. That could happen in any ship: but it was a pity that it also occurred twice in the starboard broadside.

  The Sophie had come up into the wind to fire her starboard guns, out of a certain delicacy about shooting at random into her convoy, and she was lying there, pitching easily with almost no way on her, while the last damp charge was being extracted, when Stephen, feeling that in this lull he might without impropriety address the captain, said to Jack, 'Pray tell me why those ships are so very close together. Are they conversing—rendering one another mutual assistance?' He pointed over the neat wall of hammocks in the quarter-netting: Jack followed his finger and gazed for an unbelieving second at the rearmost vessel in his convoy, the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdatter, the Norwegian cat.

  'Hands to the braces,' he shouted. 'Port your helm. Flat in for'ard—jump to it. Brail up the mainsail.'

  Slowly, then faster and faster with all the wind in her sharp-braced headsails, the Sophie paid off. Now the wind was on her port beam: a few moments later she was right before it, and in still another moment she steadied on her course, with the wind three points on her starboard quarter. There had been a good deal of trampling to and fro, with Mr Watt and his mates roaring and piping like fury, but the Sophies were better hands with a sail than a gun, and quite soon Jack could cry, 'Square mains'l. Topmast stuns'ls. Mr Watt, the top-chains and puddening—but I need not tell you what to do, I see.'

  'Aye aye, sir,' said the bosun, clanking away aloft, already loaded with the chains that were to prevent the yards falling in action.

  'Mowett, run up with a glass and tell me what you see. Mr Dillon, you'll not forget that look-out? We'll have the hide off him tomorrow, if he lives to see it. Mr Lamb, you have your shot-plugs ready?'

  'Ready, aye ready, sir,' said the carpenter, smiling, for this was not a serious question.

  'Deck!' hailed Mowett, high above the taut, straining canvas. 'Deck! She's an Algerine—a quarter-galley. They've boarded the cat. They have not carried her yet. I think the Norwegians are holding out in their close-quarters.'

  'Anything to windward?' called Jack.

  In the pause that followed the peevish crackling of pistols could be heard from the Norwegian, struggling faintly up through the streaming of the wind.

  'Yes, sir. A sail. A lateen. Hull down in the wind's eye. I can't make her out for sure. Standing east . . . standing due east, I think.'

  Jack nodded, looking up and down his two broadsides. He was a big man at any time, but now he seemed to be at least twice his usual size; his eyes were shining in an extraordinary manner, as blue as the sea, and a continuous smile showed a gleam across the lively scarlet of his face. Something of the same change had come over the Sophie; with her big new square mainsail and her topsails immensely broadened by the studdingsails at either side of them she, like her master and commander, seemed to have doubled in size as she tore heavily through the sea. 'Well, Mr Dillon,' he cried, 'this is a bit of luck, is it not?'

  Stephen, looking at them curiously, saw that the same extraordinary animation had seized upon James Dillon—indeed, the whole crew was filled with a strange ebullience. Close by him the marines were checking the flints of their muskets, and one of them was polishing the buckle of his cross-belt, breathing on it and laughing happily between the carefully-directed breaths.

  'Yes, sir,' said James Dillon. 'It could not have fallen more happily.'

  'Signal the convoy to haul two points to larboard and to reduce sail. Mr Richards, have you noted the time? You must carefully note the time of everything. But, Dillon, what can the fellow be thinking of? Did he suppose we were engaged? Blind? However, this is not time to . . . We will board, of course, if only the Norwegians can hold out long enough. I hate firing into a galley, in any event. I believe you may have all our pistols and cutlasses served out Now, Mr Marshall,' he said, turning to the master, who was at his action-station by the wheel, and who was now responsible for sailing the Sophie, 'I want you to lay us alongside that damned Moor You may set the lower-stuns'ls if she will bear them.' At this moment the gunner crept up the ladder. 'Well, Mr Day,' said Jack, 'I am happy to see you on deck. Are you a little better?'

  'Much better, sir, I thank you,' said Mr Day, 'thanks to the gentleman'—nodding towards Stephen. 'It worked,' he said, directing his voice towards the taffrail 'I just thought I'd report as I was in my place, sir'

  'Glad of it—I'm very glad of it This is a bit of luck, master-gunner, I believe?' said Jack

  'Why, so it is, sir—it worked, Doctor it worked, sir, like a maiden's dream,—So it is,' said the gunner, looking complacently over the mile or so of sea at the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdatter and the corsair, at the Sophie, with all her guns warm, freshly-loaded, run out, perfectly ready, her crew on tip-toe and her decks cleared for action

  'Here we were exercising,' went on Jack, almost to himself 'And that impudent dog rowed up-wind on the far side and made a snatch at the cat—what can he be thinking of?—and would be running off with her now if our good doctor had not brought us to our senses.'

  'Never was such a doctor, is my belief,' said the gunner. 'Now I fancy I had best get down into my magazine, sir. We've not all that much powder filled; and I dare say you'll be calling for a tidy parcel, ha, ha, ha!'

  'My dear sir,' said Jack to Stephen, measuring the Sophie's increasing speed and the distance that separated her from the embattled cat—in this state of triply intensified vitality he could perfectly well calculate, talk to Stephen and revolve a thousand shifting variables all at once—'my dear sir, do you choose to go below or should you rather stay on deck? Perhaps it would divert you to go to into the maintop with a musket, along with the sharpshooters, and have a bang at the villains?'

  'No, no, no,' said Stephen. 'I deprecate violence. My part is to heal rather than to kill; or at least to kill with kindly intent. Pray let me take my place, my station, in the cockpit.'

  'I hoped you would say that,' said Jack, shaking him by the hand. 'I had not liked to suggest it to my guest, however. It will comfort the men amazingly—all of us, indeed. Mr Ricketts, show Dr Maturin the cockpit. And give the loblolly boy a hand with the chests.'

  A sloop with the depth of a mere ten feet ten inches cannot rival a ship of the line for dank airless obscurity below; but the Sophie did astonishingly well, and Stephen was obliged to call for another lantern to check and lay out his instruments and the meagre store of bandages, lint, tourniquets and pledgets. He was sitting there with Northcote's Marine Practice held close to the light, carefully reading '. . . having divided the skin, order the same assistant to draw it up as much as possible; then cut through the flesh and bones circularly,' when Jack came down. He had put on Hessian boots and his sword, and he was carrying a pair of pistols.

  'May I use the room next door?' asked Stephen, adding in Latin, so that he might not be understood by the loblolly boy, 'it might discourage the patients, were they to see me consulting my printed authorities.'

  'Certainly, certainly,' cried Jack, riding straight over the Latin. 'Anything you like. I will leave these with you. We shall board, if ever we can come up with them; and then, you know, they may try to board us—there's no telling—these damned Algerines are usually crammed with men. Cut-throat dogs, every one of 'em,' he added, laughing heartily and vanishing into the gloom.

  Jack had only been below a very short while, but by the time he returned to the quarter-deck the situation had entirely changed. The Algerines were in command of the cat: she was falling off before the northerly wind; they were setting her crossjack, and it was clear that they hoped to get away with her. The galley lay in its own length away from her, on her starboard quarter: it lay there motionless on its oars, fourteen great sweeps a side, headed directly towa
rds the Sophie, with its huge lateen sails brailed up loosely to the yards—a long, low, slim vessel, longer than the Sophie but much slighter and narrower: obviously very fast and obviously in enterprising hands. It had a singularly lethal, reptilian air. Its intention was clearly either to-engage the Sophie or at least to delay her until the prize-crew should have run the cat a mile or so down the wind towards the safety of the coming night.

  The distance was now a little over a quarter of a mile, and with a smooth continuous flow the relative positions were perpetually changing: the cat's speed was increasing, and in four or five minutes she was a cable's length to the leeward of the galley, which still lay there on its oars

  A fleeting cloud of smoke appeared in the galley's bows, a ball hummed overhead, at about the level of the topmast crosstrees, followed in half a heart's beat by the deep boom of the gun that had fired it 'Note down the time, Mr Richards,' said Jack to the pale clerk—the nature of his pallor had changed and his eyes were starting from his head. Jack hurried forward, just in time to see the flash of the galley's second gun. With an enormous smithy-noise the ball struck the fluke of the Sophie's best bower anchor, bent it half over and glanced off into the sea far behind.

  'An eighteen-pounder,' observed Jack to the bosun, standing there at his post on the fo'c'sle. 'Maybe even a twenty-four. Oh, for my long twelves,' he added inwardly. The galley had no broadside, naturally, but mounted her guns fore and aft: in his glass Jack could see that the forward battery consisted of two heavy guns, a smaller one and some swivels; and, of course, the Sophie would be exposed to their raking fire throughout her approach. The swivels were firing now, a high sharp cracking noise.