Desolation island by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian [O'Brian, Patrick]
Format: epub

"Poor Michad Herapath,"wrote Stephen in his book, "he suffers much. I know the harrow's mark too well ever to mistake it, the harrow directed by a determined woman. Perhaps I shall give him a little of my laudanum, to tide him over till the Cape."

Since her hands were protected from impressment, the whaler was not unwilling to be spoken by a British man-of-war: she was the Three Brothers from London river for the Great South Sea, she said, in answer to the Leopard's 'What ship? What ship is that? Last from the Cape: no, she had not seen a single sail since she cleared False Bay.

"Come aboard and crack a bottle," called Jack over the wind and the grey heaving water. The whaler's words were balm to him; they did away with the lingering, almost superstitious doubt that had kept his eye perpetually

turning to the windward for that white fleck on the horizon that, in spite of all his calculations, would prove to be the devilish Waakzaamheid. It was notorious that whalers had the sharpest eyes of any men afloat: their livelihood depended on seeing the distant spout, often in a torn, tormented, cloud-covered waste of sea, and they always had men up there in their crow's nests, watching with the most constant eagerness: the remotest gleam of topsails could not escape them by day, nor yet by these late moonlit nights.

The master of the Three Brothers came and cracked his bottle and talked about the pursuit of the whale in these largely unknown waters: he knew them as well as most men, having made three voyages, and he gave Jack some particularly valuable information about South Georgia, correcting his chart of the anchorages in that remote, inhospitable island, in case the Leopard should ever find herself in 54'S, 37'W, and about the few other specks of land in that vast far southern ocean. But presently, as the full bottles came in and the empty were carried away, his accounts became wilder; he spoke of the great continent that must lie round the pole, of the gold that was certainly there, and of how he should ballast his ship with the ore. Sailors rarely feel that they have done their duty if their guests leave them sober: but Jack was perfectly satisfied as he saw the whaler plunge into his boat. He bade the Three Brothers farewell and a happy return and worked out his course for the Cape: the Leopard brought the wind a little abaft the larboard beam in a fine fierce curve - white water sweeping over her waist - and began to run northwards under courses and reefed topsails, her deck sloping like a moderately pitched roof and her lee chains buried in the foam that came racing from her bows. She was heading for dirty weather, for a low bank of cloud with rain-squalls drifting across its face and hidden lightning within the mass; it was precious cold, and spray, whipping across the deck in the eddy of the mainsail, kept wetting the Captain's

face.

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