Master and Commander

by Patrick O'Brian

  Jack returned to the quarter-deck. 'Silence fore and aft,' he cried through the low, excited murmur. 'Silence. Cast loose your guns. Level your guns. Out tompions. Run out your guns. Mr Dillon, they are to be trained as far for'ard as possible. Mr Babbington, tell the gunner the next round will be chain.' An eighteen-pound ball hit the Sophie's side between the larboard number one and three guns, sending in a shower of sharp-edged splintered wood, some pieces two feet long, and heavy: it continued its course along the crowded deck, knocked down a marine and struck against the mainmast, its force almost spent. A dismal 'Oh oh oh' showed that some of the splinters had done their work, and a moment later two seamen hurried by, carrying their mate below, leaving a trail of blood as they went.

  'Are those guns trained round?' cried Jack.

  'All hard round sir,' came the reply after a gasping pause. 'Starboard broadside first. Fire as they bear. Fire high. Fire for the masts. Right, Mr Marshall, over she goes.'

  The Sophie yawed forty-five degrees off her course, presenting quarter of her starboard side to the galley, which instantly sent another eighteen-pound ball into it amidships, just above the water-line, its deep resonant impact surprising Stephen Maturin as he put a ligature round William Musgrave's spouting femoral artery, almost making him miss the loop. But now the Sophie's guns were bearing, and the starboard broadside went off on two successive rolls: the sea beyond the galley spat up in white plumes and the Sophie's deck swirled with smoke, acrid, piercing gunpowder smoke. As the seventh gun fired Jack cried, 'Over again,' and the Sophie's head came round for the larboard broadside. The eddying cloud cleared under her lee: Jack saw the galley fire its whole forward battery and leap into motion under the power of its oars to avoid the Sophie's fire. The galley fired high, on the upward roll, and one of its balls severed the maintopmast stay and struck a great lump of wood from the cap. The lump, rebounding from the top, fell on to the gunner's head just as he put it up through the main hatchway.

  'Lively with those starboard guns,' cried Jack. 'Helm amidships.' He meant to bring the sloop back on to the port tack, for if he could manage to get in another starboard broadside he would catch the galley as it was moving across from left to right. A muffled roar from number four gun and a terrible shrieking: in his haste the sponger had not fully cleared the gun and now the fresh charge had gone off in his face as he rammed it down. They dragged him clear, re-sponged, re-loaded the gun and ran it up. But the whole manoeuvre had been too slow: the whole starboard battery had been too slow: the galley was round again—it could spin like a top, with all those oars backing water—and it was speeding away to the south-west with the wind on its starboard quarter and its great lateen sails spread on either side—set in hares' ears, as they say. The cat was now standing south-east; it was half a mile away already, and their courses were diverging fast. The yawing had taken a surprising amount of time—had lost a surprising amount of distance.

  'Port half a point,' said Jack, standing on the lee-rail and staring very hard at the galley, which was almost directly ahead of the Sophie, a little over a hundred yards away, and gaining. 'Topgallant stuns'ls. Mr Dillon, get a gun into the bows, if you please. We still have the twelve-pounder's ring-bolts.'

  As far as he could see they had done the galley no harm: firing low would have meant firing straight into benches packed tight with Christian rowers chained to the oars; firing high . . . His head jerked sideways, his hat darted across the deck: a musket-ball from the corsair had nicked his ear. It was perfectly numb under his investigating hand, and it was pouring with blood. He stepped down from the rail, craning his head out sideways to bleed to windward, while his right hand sheltered his precious epaulette from the flow. 'Killick,' he shouted, bending to keep his eyes on the galley under the taut arch of the square mainsail, 'bring me an old coat and another handkerchief.' Throughout his changing he gazed piercingly at the galley, which had fired twice with its single after gun, both shots going a very little wide. 'Lord, they run that twelve-pounder in and out briskly,' he reflected. The topgallant studdingsails were sheeted home; the Sophie's pace increased; now she was gaining perceptibly. Jack was not the only one to notice this, and a cheer went up from the fo'c'sle, running down the larboard side as the gun-crews heard the news.

  'The bow-chaser is ready, sir,' said James Dillon, smiling. 'Are you all right, sir?' he asked, seeing Jack's bloody hand and neck.

  'A scratch—nothing at all,' said Jack. 'What do you make of the galley?'

  'We're gaining on her, sir,' said Dillon, and although he spoke quietly there was an extraordinarily fierce exultation in his voice. He had been shockingly upset by Stephen's sudden appearance, and although his innumerable present duties had kept him from much consecutive thought, the whole of his mind, apart from its immediate forefront, was filled with unvoiced concern, distress and dark incoherent nightmare shadows: he looked forward to the turmoil on the galley's deck with a wild longing.

  'She's spilling her wind,' said Jack. 'Look at that sly villain by the mainsheet. Take my glass.'

  'No, sir. Surely not,' said Dillon, angrily clapping the telescope shut.

  'Well,' said Jack, 'well . . .' A twelve-pounder ball passed through the Sophie's starboard lower studdingsails—two holes, precisely behind each other, and hummed along four or five feet from them, a visible blur, just skimming the hammocks. 'We could do with one or two of their gunners,' observed Jack. 'Masthead!' he hailed.

  'Sir?' came the distant voice.

  'What do you make of the sail to windward?'

  'Bearing up, sir, bearing up for the head of the convoy.'

  Jack nodded. 'Let the captains of the bow guns and the quartergunners serve the chaser. I'll lay her myself.'

  'Pring is dead, sir. Another captain?'

  'Make it so, Mr Dillon.'

  He walked up forward. 'Shall we catch 'un, sir?' asked a grizzled seaman, one of the big boarding-party, with the pleasant friendliness of crisis.

  'I hope so, Cundall, I hope so indeed,' said Jack. 'At least we shall have a bang at him.'

  'That dog,' he said to himself, staring along the dispart-sight at the Algerine's deck. He felt the first beginning of the upward roll under the Sophie's forefoot, snapped the match down on to the touch-hole, heard the hiss and the shattering crash and the shriek of trucks as the gun recoiled.

  'Huzzay, huzzay!' roared the men on the fo'c'sle. It was no more than a hole in the galley's mainsail, about half-way up, but it was the first blow they had managed to get home. Three more shots; and they heard one strike something metallic in the galley's stern.

  'Carry on, Mr Dillon,' said Jack, straightening. 'Light along my glass, there.'

  The sun was so low now that it was difficult to see as he stood balancing to the sea, shading his object-glass with his far hand and concentrating with all his power on two red-turbanned figures behind the galley's stern-chaser. A musketoon-ball struck the Sophie's starboard knighthead and he heard a seaman rip out a string of furious obscenity. 'John Lakey copped it something cruel,' said a low voice close behind him. 'In the ballocks.' The gun went off at his side, but before its smoke hid the galley from him he had made up his mind. The Algerine was, in fact, spilling his wind—starting his sheets so that his sails, apparently full, were not really drawing with their whole force: that was why the poor old fat heavy dirty-bottomed Sophie, labouring furiously and on the very edge of carrying everything away, was gaining slightly on the slim, deadly, fine-cut galley. The Algerine was leading him on—could, in fact, run away at any moment. Why? To draw him far to the leeward of the cat, that was why: together with the real possibility of dismasting him, raking him at leisure (being independent of the wind) and making a prize of the Sophie as well. To draw him to the leeward of the convoy, too, so that the sail to windward might snap up half a dozen of them. He glanced over his left shoulder at the cat. Even if she were to go about they would still fetch her in one board, close-hauled, for she was a very slow creature—no topgallants and, of cour
se, no royals—far slower than the Sophie. But in a very little while, on this course and at this pace, he would never be able to reach her except by beating up, tack upon tack, with the darkness coming fast. It would not do. His duty was clear enough: the unwelcome choice, as usual. And this was the time for decision.

  ' 'Vast firing,' he said as the gun ran in. 'Starboard broadside: ready, now. Sergeant Quinn, look to the small-arms men. When we have her dead on the beam, aim for her cabin abaft the rowers' benches, right low. Fire at the word of command.' As he turned and ran back to the quarter-deck he caught a look from James Dillon's powder-blackened face, a look if not of anger or something worse, then at least of bitter contrariety. 'Hands to the braces,' he called, mentally dismissing that as something for another day. 'Mr Marshall, lay her for the cat.' He heard the men's groan—a universal exhalation of disappointment—and said, 'Hard over.'

  'We'll catch him unaware and give him something to remember the Sophie by,' he added, to himself, standing directly behind the starboard brass four-pounder. At this speed the Sophie came round very fast: he crouched, half-bent, not breathing, all his being focused along the central gleam of brass and the turning seascape beyond it. The Sophie turned, turned; the galley's oars started into furious motion, churning up the sea, but it was too late. A tenth of a second before he had the galley dead on the beam and just before the Sophie reached the middle of her downward roll he cried 'Fire!' and the Sophie's broadside went off as crisply as a ship of the line's, together with every musket aboard. The smoke cleared and a cheer went up, for there was a gaping hole in the galley's side and the Moors were running to and fro in disorder and dismay. In his glass Jack could see the stern-chaser dismounted and several bodies lying on the deck: but the miracle had not happened—he had neither knocked her rudder away nor holed her disastrously below the water-line. However, there was no further trouble to be expected from her, he reflected, turning his attention from the galley to the cat.

  'Well, Doctor,' he said, appearing in the cockpit, 'how are you getting along?'

  'Tolerably well, I thank you. Has the battle begun again?'

  'Oh, no. That was only a shot across the cat's bows. The galley is hull-down in the south-south-west and Dillon has just taken a boat across to set the Norwegians free—the Moors have hung out a white shirt and called for quarter. The damned rogues.'

  'I am happy to hear it. It is really impossible to sew one's flaps neatly with the jarring of the guns. May I see your ear?'

  'It was only a passing flick. How are your patients?'

  'I believe I may answer for four or five of them. The man with the terrible incision in his thigh—they tell me it was a splinter of wood: can this be true?'

  'Yes, indeed. A great piece of hard sharp-edged oak flying through the air will cut you up amazingly. It often happens.'

  '—has responded remarkably well; and I have patched up the poor fellow with the burn. Do you know that the rammer was actually thrust right through between the head of the biceps, just missing the ulnar nerve? But I cannot deal with the gunner down here—not in this light.'

  'The gunner? What's amiss with the gunner? I thought you had cured him?'

  'So I had. Of the grossest self-induced costiveness it has ever been my privilege to see, caused by a frantic indulgence in Peruvian bark—self-administered Peruvian bark. But this is a depressed cranial fracture, sir, and I must use the trephine: here he lies—you notice the characteristic stertor?—and I think he is safe until the morning. But as soon as the sun is up I must have off the top of his skull with my little saw. You will see the gunner's brain, my dear sir,' he added with a smile. 'Or at least his dura mater.'

  'Oh dear, oh dear,' murmured Jack. Deep depression was settling on him—anticlimax—such a bloody little engagement for so little—two good men killed—the gunner almost certainly dead—no man could survive having his brain opened, that stood to reason—and the others might easily die too—they so often did. If it had not been for that damned convoy he might have had the galley—two could play at that game. 'Now what's to do?' he cried, as a clamour broke out on deck.

  'They're carrying on very old-fashioned aboard the cat, sir,' said the master as Jack reached the quarter-deck in the twilight. The master came from some far northern part—Orkney, Shetland—and either that or a natural defect in his speech caused him to pronounce er as ar; a peculiarity that grew more marked in time of stress. 'It looks as though those infernal buggars were cutting their capars again, sir.'

  'Put her alongside, Mr Marshall. Boarders, come along with me.'

  The Sophie braced round her yards to avoid any more damage, backed her fore-topsail and glided evenly along the cat's side. Jack reached out for the main channels on the Norwegian's high side and swung himself up through the wrecked boarding netting, followed by a grim and savage-looking band. Blood on the deck: three bodies: five ashy Moors pressed against the roundhouse bulkhead under the protection of James Dillon: the dumb Negro Alfred King with a boarder's axe in his hand.

  'Get those prisoners across,' said Jack. 'Stow them in the forehold. What's to do, Mr Dillon?'

  'I can't quite make him out, sir, but I think the prisoners must have attacked King between decks.'

  'Is that what happened, King?'

  The Negro was still glaring about—his mates held his arms—and his answer might have meant anything.

  'Is that what happened, Williams?' asked Jack.

  'Don't know, sir,' said Williams, touching his hat and looking glassy.

  'Is that what happened, Kelly?'

  'Don't know, sir,' said Kelly, with a knuckle to his forehead and the same look to a hairsbreadth.

  'Where's the cat's master, Mr Dillon?'

  'Sir, it seems the Moors tossed them all overboard.'

  'Good God,' cried Jack. Yet the thing was not uncommon. An angry noise behind him showed that the news had reached the Sophie. 'Mr Marshall,' he called, going to the rail, 'take care of these prisoners, will you? I will not have any foolery.' He looked up and down the deck, up and down the rigging: very little damage. 'You will bring her in to Cagliari, Mr Dillon,' he said in a low voice, quite upset by the savagery of the thing. 'Take what men you need.'

  He returned to the Sophie, very grave, very grave. Yet he had scarcely reached his own quarter-deck before a minute, discreditable voice within said, 'In that case she's a prize, you know, not just a rescue.' He frowned it down, called for the bosun and began a tour of the brig, deciding the order of the more urgent repairs. She had suffered surprisingly for a short engagement in which not more than fifty shots had been exchanged—she was a floating example of what superior gunnery could do. The carpenter and two of his crew were over the side in cradles, trying to plug a hole very near the water-Line.

  'I can't rightly come at 'un, sir,' said Mr Lamb, in answer to Jack's inquiry. 'We'm half drowned, but we can't seem to bang 'un home, not on this tack.'

  'We'll put her about for you, then, Mr Lamb. But let me know the minute she's plugged.' He glanced over the darkening sea at the cat, now taking her place in the convoy once more: going about would mean travelling right away from the cat, and the cat had grown strangely dear to his heart. 'Loaded with spars, Stettin oak, tow, Stockholm tar, cordage,' continued that inner voice eagerly. 'She might easily fetch two or three thousand—even four . . .' 'Yes, Mr Watt, certainly,' he said aloud. They climbed into the maintop and gazed at the injured cap.

  'That was the bit that done poor Mr Day's business for him,' said the bosun.

  'So that was it? A devilish great lump indeed. But we must not give up hope. Dr Maturin is going to—going to do something prodigious clever with a saw, as soon as there is light. He needs light for it—something uncommonly skilful, I dare say.'

  'Oh, yes, I'm sure, sir,' cried the bosun warmly. 'A very clever gentleman he must be, no question. The men are wonderfully pleased. "How kind," they say, "to saw off Ned Evans' leg so trim, and to sew up John Lakey's private parts so neat; as well as al
l the rest; he being, so to speak, on leave—a visitor, like." '

  'It is handsome,' said Jack. 'It is very handsome, I agree. We'll need a kind of gammoning here, Mr Watt, until the carpenter can attend to the cap. Hawsers bowsed as tight as can be, and God help us if we have to strike topmasts.'

  They saw to half a dozen other points and Jack climbed down, paused to count his convoy—very close and orderly now after its fright—and went below. As he let himself sink on to the long cushioned locker he found that he was in the act of saying 'Carry three,' for his mind was busily working out three eighths of £3,500—it had now fixed upon this sum as the worth of the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdatter. For three-eighths (less one of them for the admiral) was to be his share of the proceeds. Nor was his the only mind to be busy with figures, by any means, for every other man on the Sophie's books was entitled to share—Dillon and the master, an eighth between them; the surgeon (if the Sophie had officially borne one on her books), bosun, carpenter and master's mates, another eighth; then the midshipmen, the inferior warrant officers and the marine sergeant another eighth, while the rest of the ship's company shared the remaining quarter. And it was wonderful to see how briskly minds not given to abstract thought rattled these figures, these symbols, up and down, coming out with the acting yeoman of the sheets' share correct to the nearest farthing. He reached for a pencil to do the sum properly, felt ashamed, pushed it aside, hesitated, took it up again and wrote the figures very small, diagonally upon the corner of a leaf, thrusting the paper quickly from him at a knock on the door. It was the still-moist carpenter, coming to report the shot-holes plugged, and no more than eighteen inches of water in the well, 'which is less nor half what I expected, with that nasty rough stroke the galley give us, firing from so low down'. He paused, giving Jack an odd, sideways-looking glance.