Antediluvian. And if there had been any question of aiming, of traversing the guns, heaving them round with crows and handspikes, it would have been even slower. Number five would not fire, damp having got at the powder, and the gun had to be wormed and drawn. That could happen in any ship: but it was a pity that it also occurred twice in the starboard broadside.
The Sophie had come up into the wind to fire her starboard guns, out of a certain delicacy about shooting at random into her convoy, and she was lying there, pitching easily with almost no way on her, while the last damp charge was being extracted, when Stephen, feeling that in this lull he might without impropriety address the captain, said to Jack, ‘Pray tell me why those ships are so very close together. Are they conversing – rendering one another mutual assistance?’ He pointed over the neat wall of hammocks in the quarter-netting: Jack followed his finger and gazed for an unbelieving second at the rearmost vessel in his convoy, the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdatter, the Norwegian cat.
‘Hands to the braces,’ he shouted. ‘Port your helm. Flat in for’ard – jump to it. Brail up the mainsail.’
Slowly, then faster and faster with all the wind in her sharp-braced headsails, the Sophie paid off. Now the wind was on her port beam: a few moments later she was right before it, and in still another moment she steadied on her course, with the wind three points on her starboard quarter. There had been a good deal of trampling to and fro, with Mr Watt and his mates roaring and piping like fury, but the Sophies were better hands with a sail than a gun, and quite soon Jack could cry, ‘Square mains’l. Topmast stuns’ls. Mr Watt, the top-chains and puddening – but I need not tell you what to do, I see.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the bosun, clanking away aloft, already loaded with the chains that were to prevent the yards falling in action.
‘Mowett, run up with a glass and tell me what you see. Mr Dillon, you’ll not forget that lookout? We’ll have the hide off him tomorrow, if he lives to see it. Mr Lamb, you have your shot-plugs ready?’
‘Ready, aye ready, sir,’ said the carpenter, smiling, for this was not a serious question.
‘Deck!’ hailed Mowett, high above the taut, straining canvas. ‘Deck! She’s an Algerine – a quarter-galley. They’ve boarded the cat. They have not carried her yet. I think the Norwegians are holding out in their close-quarters.’
‘Anything to windward?’ called Jack.
In the pause that followed the peevish crackling of pistols could be heard from the Norwegian, struggling faintly up through the streaming of the wind.
‘Yes, sir. A sail. A lateen. Hull down in the wind’s eye. I can’t make her out for sure.
Standing east. . . standing due east, I think.’
Jack nodded, looking up and down his two broadsides. He was a big man at any time, but now he seemed to be at least twice his usual size; his eyes were shining in an extraordinary manner, as blue as the sea, and a continuous smile showed a gleam across the lively scarlet of his face. Something of the same change had come over the Sophie; with her big new square mainsail and her topsails immensely broadened by the studdingsails at either side of them she, like her master and commander, seemed to have doubled in size as she tore heavily through the sea. ‘Well, Mr Dillon,’ he cried, ‘this is a bit of luck, is it not?’
Stephen, looking at them curiously, saw that the same
extraordinary animation had seized upon James Dillon -indeed, the whole crew was filled with a strange ebullience. Close by him the marines were checking the flints of their muskets, and one of them was polishing the buckle of his cross-belt, breathing on it and laughing happily between the carefully-directed breaths.
‘Yes, sir,’ said James Dillon. ‘It could not have fallen more happily.’
‘Signal the convoy to haul two points to larboard and to reduce sail. Mr Richards, have you noted the time? You must carefully note the time of everything. But, Dillon, what can the fellow be thinking of? Did he suppose we were engaged? Blind? However, this is not time to. . . We will board, of course, if only the Norwegians can hold out long enough. I hate firing into a galley, in any event. I believe you may have all our pistols and cutlasses served out Now, Mr Marshall,’ he said, turning to the master, who was at his action-station by the wheel, and who was now responsible for sailing the Sophie, ‘I want you to lay us alongside that damned Moor You may set the lower-stuns’ls if she will bear them.’ At this moment the gunner crept up the ladder. ‘Well, Mr Day,’ said Jack, ‘I am happy to see you on deck Are you a little better?’
‘Much better, sir, I thank you,’ said Mr Day, ‘thanks to the gentleman’ – nodding towards Stephen. ‘It worked,’ he said, directing his voice towards the taffrail ‘I just thought I’d report as I was in my place, sir’
‘Glad of it – I’m very glad of it This is a bit of luck, master-gunner, I believe?’ said Jack
‘Why, so it is, sir – it worked, Doctor it worked, sir, like a maiden’s dream – So it is,’ said the gunner, looking complacently over the mile or so of sea at the Dorthe Engelbrechtsdauer and the corsair, at the Sophie, with all her guns warm, freshly-loaded, run out, perfectly ready, her crew on tip-toe and her decks cleared for action
‘Here we were exercising,’ went on Jack, almost to himself ‘And that impudent dog rowed up-wind on the far side
and made a snatch at the cat – what can he be thinking of?
– and would be running off with her now if our good doctor had not brought us to our senses.’
‘Never was such a doctor, is my belief,’ said the gunner. ‘Now I fancy I had best get down into my magazine, sir. We’ve not all that much powder filled; and I dare say you’ll be calling for a tidy parcel, ha, ha, ha!’
‘My dear sir,’ said Jack to Stephen, measuring the Sophie’s increasing speed and the distance that separated her from the embattled cat – in this state of triply intensified vitality he could perfectly well calculate, talk to Stephen and revolve a thousand shifting variables all at once – ‘my dear sir, do you choose to go below or should you rather stay on deck?
Perhaps it would divert you to go to into the maintop with a musket, along with the sharpshooters, and have a bang at the villains?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Stephen. ‘I deprecate violence. My part is to heal rather than to kill; or at least to kill with kindly intent. Pray let me take my place, my station, in the cockpit.’
‘I hoped you would say that,’ said Jack, shaking him by the hand. ‘I had not liked to suggest it to my guest, however. It will comfort the men amazingly – all of us, indeed. Mr Ricketts, show Dr Maturin the cockpit. And give the loblolly boy a hand with the chests.’
A sloop with the depth of a mere ten feet ten inches cannot rival a ship of the line for dank airless obscurity below; but the Sophie did astonishingly well, and Stephen was obliged to call for another lantern to check and lay out his instruments and the meagre store of
bandages, lint, tourniquets and pledgets. He was sitting there with Northcote’s Marine Practice held close to the light, carefully reading’. . . having divided the skin, order the same assistant to draw it up as much as possible; then cut through the flesh and bones circularly,’ when Jack came down. He had put on Hessian boots and his sword, and he was carrying a pair of pistols.
‘May I use the room next door?’ asked Stephen, adding
in Latin, so that he might not be understood by the loblolly boy, ‘it might discourage the patients, were they to see me consulting my printed authorities.’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ cried Jack, riding straight over the Latin. ‘Anything you like. I will leave these with you. We shall board, if ever we can come up with them; and then, you know, they may try to board us – there’s no telling -these damned Algerines are usually crammed with men. Cut-throat dogs, every one of ’em,’ he added, laughing heartily and vanishing into the gloom.
Jack had only been below a very short while, but by the time he returned to the quarterdeck the situation had entirely changed. The Algerines were in command of the cat: she was falling off before the northerly wind; they were setting her crossjack, and it was clear that they hoped to get away with her. The galley lay in its own length away from her, on her starboard quarter: it lay there motionless on its oars, fourteen great sweeps a side, headed directly towards the Sophie, with its huge lateen sails brailed up loosely to the yards – a long, low, slim vessel, longer than the Sophie but much slighter and narrower: obviously very fast and obviously in enterprising hands. It had a singularly lethal, reptilian air. Its intention was clearly either to-engage the Sophie or at least to delay her until the prize-crew should have run the cat a mile or so down the wind towards the safety of the coming night.