12 The Letter of Marque by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian [O'Brian, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Retail
ISBN: 9780007429073
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-11-25T04:42:33+00:00

Chapter Six

On the misty night of Thursday the Surprise kept a lookout aloft, and now from the foretopsail yard he called ‘On deck, there. I think I see ’em.’

‘Where away?’ asked Jack.

‘One point on the starboard bow. Not above two or three mile.’

The ship was under all plain sail, with what inconstant breeze there was mainly two points on her quarter; there was little to be seen ahead from the tops, therefore, so Jack, slinging his night-glass, climbed the taut, dew-damp shrouds to the main crosstrees. He gazed for some time, but nothing did he see until the haze parted and there, much closer than he had expected, lay a line of four ships, exactly spaced, close-hauled on the larboard tack: quite certainly the St Martin’s squadron. On this warm night and in this calm sea most of their gun-ports were open and the light streamed out: he counted the ports, and he had time to see that the third ship in the line was the eighteen-gun Tartarus before the mist so blurred them that they were four yellow bars, dwindling until they vanished altogether. When they reappeared all the foremost ports were dark, eight bells having sounded, and aboard the Tartarus nothing was to be seen but a bright scuttle or two, a cabin port and the stern lantern. Eight bells struck on the Surprise’s battered old bell; he heard the bosun’s mate piping lights out down the hatchway; and he reached the deck as the watch was being mustered.

‘Someone has been flogging the glass in Tartarus,’ he said to Pullings, having given the course. ‘They are a good two or three minutes before us.’ And as he walked into the cabin, ‘Lord, Stephen, I am so very deeply relieved. The squadron is hull-up in the north-east, and we shall speak them within the hour.’

‘I am so glad that your uneasiness is removed,’ said Stephen, looking up from the score he was correcting. ‘Now perhaps you will sit down and eat your supper in peace: unless indeed you choose to wait and invite William Babbington and Fanny Wray. Adi has a superb bouillabaisse prepared, and there will be enough for four, or even six.’

‘No. The council of war must certainly take place aboard the Tartarus.’

‘Very true. And in any case some food now would help to calm your spirits. You were in a sad taking, brother; I have rarely known you so impatient.’

‘Why,’ said Jack smiling as he let himself down in his chair, ‘I believe any commander would have found today quite trying.’ He thought of attempting to make Stephen understand some of the difficulties the Surprise had had to contend with – lack of wind for much of the day and strong contrary currents. The spring-tides were near at hand, and in these waters the floods set strongly against her, so that although she seemed to be towing at a fair rate, with all the boats out ahead and the men pulling like heroes, her movement was

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