The Aubrey-Maturin Chronicles - Volume Six, the Wine-Dark Sea the Commodore the Yellow Admiral by O'Brian Patrick

Author:O'Brian, Patrick [O'Brian, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007319367
Amazon: 0007319363
Goodreads: 8548697
Publisher: Patrick O'Brian
Published: 2010-04-05T07:00:00+00:00

The fog increased that night, and Jack spent most of his time on deck, together with Woodbine and Harding, both of them experienced navigators with a fair knowledge of the

waters off Brest. The Bellona had lain-to near the Ar Men rock for the brief ceremony and she had now to feel her way across some twenty miles of often dangerous water to a point a little west of St Matthews (most of the places had English names) where either the Ramillies or one of her boats would meet her, bringing the Brittany pilot and Stephen’s colleague; for tomorrow was the dark of the moon, the time for the landing in Dog-Leg Cove.

Although the very slowly falling glass foretold dirty weather in the near future, Jack felt reasonably confident that he should be able to carry out his plan, which was to beat steadily up and down between the Black Rocks and the Saints by day, as usual, and at nightfall, after the turn of the tide, to double back and run through the Raz de Sein with the current, dropping Stephen as near to the cove as he dared and then to stand off and wait for the boat, anchored south of the lie de Sein: twelve-fathom water and good holding ground. But first, of course, there was the essential rendezvous, and with the log heaved every glass or sometimes more often and the lead going steadily they sailed west by north with the wind one point free, the fog streaming across the binnacles and the storm lantern.

When by their very close and concordant reckoning they were well beyond the Iroise Passage the breeze strengthened, veering northwards, and presently it became obvious that even close-hauled they could not reach the channel through the islands they had hoped for: Jack therefore wore ship and set a necessary but most disagreeable course that would bring them close to the southern fringe of the Black Rocks and their outliers - not always accurately charted.

This held until four bells in the middle watch - low tide-when the infernal breeze wavered, grew uneasy, utteFed some violent gusts and hauled a full point forward, with every sign of doing worse. Before it could come frankly into the northeast and head him, Jack Aubrey changed course yet again and stood right across the mouth of the Passage du Four, which had no more than seven fathoms in some places. The Bellona drew six. On and on, the three men entirely closed upon their continually developing calculations, all based on the frequent reports of the ship’s progress, their informed estimate of her leeway under this trim and with this wind, the ebb and flow of the tide, the force of local currents, the occasional dive into the master’s sea-cabin abaft the wheel where by a dim light a chart as accurate as present knowledge would allow was spread out, and on their own sense of the sea, intuitive, pragmatical, hardly to be reduced to words.

‘I wonder whether the others hear and feel that wicked grind and crack as we strike a reef,’ said Jack to himself.

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