The Surgeon’s Mate. Patrick O’Brian

Jack gave her the remaining carronades of the starboard broadside: surely that must make them see that something was amiss? The well-remembered powder-smell eddied about the deck; the stumpy guns ran smoothly in and out; their breechings gave a comfortable twang. He and his mates reloaded with grape and round-shot.

      The merchantman shook the reefs out of her topsails and stood on, as into the bosom of her friends. The Diligence had early thrown out a signal warning her of her danger, but she seemed to make nothing of it; and in fact she was in no danger at all.

      The privateers might look wishfully at her, but it was now certain that the packet was their quarry, the packet alone. They had hauled their wind and they were forereaching on the Diligence diverging from the stranger’s course; the crucial moment had almost passed, and presently the stranger would cross their wake into safety.

      ‘Never say die,’ said Dalgleish with a ghastly smile; he gave orders for topgallants and royals in spite of the wounded mast, and took the wheel himself, luffing up as close as ever she would lie and then easing off a trifle. He loved the Diligence and he knew her through and through; he called for all that she could give, and she answered superbly. But once the breeze had steadied and the chase had settled down to this new phase it was apparent that she could not possibly outsail the schooners on the wind: nor could she put before it now, since the change had set the privateers to leeward before ever they left the merchantman. They were coming up hand over fist, making a good seven knots to the packet’s six; and by about noon the chase must end in a trial of force. The mails had already been brought on deck, and there they lay, three long, thin leather portmanteaux, each lashed to two pigs of iron so that they would sink when they were heaved overboard at the last moment.

      Hour after hour they ran over the grey heaving sea. Heavy cloud gathered in the west, obscuring the whole horizon; both swell and wind increased, and many and many a time the hands glanced up at the fished topmast. In spite of the strong woolding they saw the hideous cleft gape and close on the heavier rolls. The bosun clapped on more bands, but even so Dalgleish could not tack against a head-sea to get more to windward of the schooners, not with a mast so wounded; and wearing would deliver him right into their hands.

      ‘I will leave the glory-side to you, sir,’ he said to Jack, his eye fixed on the maintopsail’s weather-leech. ‘Once they open fire I mean to bear up sharp and steer between them.’ There was a savage look on his grey, lined, hairy face as he added, ‘We will touch them up handsome, if it is the last thing we do.’

      Jack nodded: it was the only course open to them, short of striking, and although the probability of success in broad daylight was almost infinitely remote it was better than a tame surrender: anything was better than that.

      Methodically he and Humphreys and their small party cast loose the carronades on the larboard side, fired them off and reloaded: Jack loved a clean, heated gun with fresh powder in it. He fired the last, and as it leapt in on the recoil a great howling roar from aft made him jerk round. Men were capering about the deck, clawing one another on the back, bawling and cheering. Someone let go the maincourse bowline with a run. The Diligence paid off and the Liberty appeared broad on the beam; her foremast was gone, broken off short at the partners, and together with its vast spread of sail it was lying over her starboard bow. As he looked her maintopmast followed it, and the schooner shot up into the wind, her slack mainsail beating madly.

      But here was Dalgleish’s furious voice, damning them all for lubbers, roaring, ‘Royal halliards, royal halliards, let fly! Tom and Joe, round in those fucking weather braces. Clew up, there, forward. Bunt-lines, bunt-lines, you poxed set of whoreson sods. Start them, Mr Harvey. Kick the buggers, oh! You, Joe, will you start that bloody sheet before I break your head?’

      A wild turmoil, in which Jack received two kicks and one blow from a rope’s end – the first since his voice had broken – and the Diligence was under plain sail, the strain on her wounded mast reduced, order restored. Mr Dalgleish handed over the wheel, and he and Jack inspected the Liberty at their leisure: she had run straight on to ice with all her force, impaling herself and, since she was already very much by the head, apparently shearing away her stem below the waterline. Her people were trying to get her boats over the side, and the other schooner was standing towards her, directly away from the packet, losing an hour’s gain in five minutes.

      After another board northwards the packet put before the wind and the schooners dropped astern. ‘Will the single vessel continue to pursue us, do you think?’ asked Stephen.

      ‘No, sir,’ said Dalgleish, yawning. ‘You can go to your cot and sleep easy: I am sure I shall. She will cram all Mr Henry’s men aboard, if she possibly can – look at the vast number of them going across, for God’s sake – there is a silly bugger has thrown himself into the sea, ha, ha, ha! It is as good as a play. Then she will go home. And a weary time they will have of it, beating to the westward day and night; they will be eating their belts and their shoes before they see Marblehead again, with all those hands aboard, and no stores saved out of the Liberty.’

      ‘There is something in the misfortunes of others that does not altogether displease us,’ said Stephen, but nobody heard him in the general cry of ‘There she goes’ as the now distant Liberty slipped beneath the grey surface of the ocean.

      ‘No, sir,’ said Mr Dalgleish again, ‘you can sleep easy now. And so can Mrs – so can your betrothed, your financy. I forget the lady’s name. I hope she has not been disturbed by all the banging and calling out.’

      ‘I doubt it,’ said Stephen, ‘but I will go down and see.’

      He was mistaken. Diana was very much disturbed indeed. The first discharge of artillery had wiped out her already waning seasickness; she had misinterpreted the later gunfire and the uproar on deck, and Stephen found her dressed, sitting on a locker with a cocked pistol in either hand, looking as fierce as a wild cat in a trap.

      ‘Put those pistols down at once,’ he said coldly. ‘Do not you know it is very rude to point a pistol at a person you do not mean to kill? For shame, Villiers. Where were you brought up?’

      ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, quite daunted by his severity. ‘I thought there was an action – that they had boarded.’

      ‘Not at all, not at all. The most inveterate privateer, the Liberty, has undone herself entirely; she ran upon ice and sank not five minutes since; and the other, loaded like Noah’s ark, is going home. Give you joy of your escape, my dear. You are looking better, I find,’ he said, taking her pulse. ‘Yes: you are far better. Should you like to take some fresh air, and see the discomfiture of our enemies?’

      Stephen led her on deck, a deck still full of wild hilarity – no sense of hierarchy at all – and her appearance was greeted with a spontaneous, friendly cheer. Busy hands supported her to the rail, pointed out the distant schooner, now standing east; tight against her elbow the cook gave her a detailed account of the movements since sunrise in a hoarse whisper, almost drowned by the explanations of the two mates and a little stunted boy who wished her to know that he had foreseen it all from the start. Mr Dalgleish came up, took off his hat, and welcomed her with some ceremony: ‘We are all very happy to see you on deck, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and hope we may be so honoured every day for the rest of the passage, when fine. Not that there will be so many days, if this wind holds true: those villains pushed us east so fast and far, I should not be surprised to raise Rockall on Wednesday.’ And seeing that Rockall meant nothing to her he said, ‘I should not be surprised if we were to make the quickest passage ever known, bar Clytie’s in ninety-four. And how glad they will be to see us, ma’am, with the news we bring. I fairly laughed aloud when first I heard the Shannon had took the Chesapeake.’