05 Desolation Island by O'Brian Patrick

Author:O'Brian, Patrick [O'Brian, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Retail
ISBN: 9780007429363
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Dawn broke, and once again Jack was knocked up; once again he was torn from the arms of an ideal Mrs Wogan with the news of a ship fine on the larboard bow. This time the Leopard’s top-gallants had already vanished, but it was little more than a gesture to the conventions of war, because this time the Waakzaamheid was a good three miles nearer, perfectly recognizable in spite of the mist hanging over the cold milky sea – hanging and parting in the light air from the east, so that sometimes she almost entirely vanished and sometimes she looked spectral, unnaturally large, as she bore up, spread her wings, and headed for the Leopard.

They were already at the edge of the westerly current, and the breeze chopped up the pale surface; but there was nothing of a sea, nothing resembling the great rollers with the hills and dales that so favoured a heavier ship, and by noon the Leopard, setting all she could carry and steering south-west, had run the Waakzaamheid out of sight.

‘May we cry Io triumphe?’ asked Stephen at dinner. ‘It is two hours since she vanished, wallowing in impotent rage.’

‘I am not going to cry Io anything at all until we pick up our moorings in Simon’s Bay,’ cried Jack. ‘With Turnbull and Holles here, I did not like to say anything at breakfast, but I do not know that I have ever seen anything so shocking in all my life as that Dutchman at dawn, sitting there to the windward, between us and the Cape. It was exactly as though he had been leaning over my shoulder last night, while I worked out our course. And I am by no means easy in my mind about this morning’s performance, neither. It was too far off to be certain, with the haze, but I had an ugly feeling he was not chasing wholehearted. No skysails, as I dare say you remarked. Maybe his pole topgallantmasts will not bear ’em; but it seemed to me he was not so much eager to catch us as to drive us south, away to the leeward. In his place, and with his advantage in men, I should try to carry the ship by boarding, rather than batter her into matchwood and maybe have her sink on me: what a triumph to carry a sound fifty-gun ship with him to the Indies! And he may be waiting for his opportunity. However, I shall do all I can to cross his wake tonight, and if only I can get the weather-gage, with the wind anywhere east of south, I shall try a luffing match with him. We can lie closer to the wind, and those broad-bottomed ships always sag to leeward more than we do. So in any sea where Leopard can stay, I believe we could leave him a great way astern by beating up, leave him for good and all; and I hope to be windward of him tomorrow.’

A vain hope.

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