‘Yet perhaps, gentlemen,’ said Mowett, beaming on them, ‘there may be some happy authors.’
Both Martin and Stephen looked extremely doubtful, but before either could reply a fierce, savage, triumphant roar broke out overhead, drowning the powerful voice of the wind and
the sea and just preceding the appearance of Calamy in his streaming tarpaulin jacket, reporting that the chase had split her foresail.
So she had, and although she set her close-reefed foretopsail in the most seamanlike fashion, the Surprise gained more than a mile before she was running at anything near her former pace.
Jack and Mowett stood there on the forecastle, studying the Spartan. ‘I wonder, I wonder,’
murmured Jack: if he could gain five or six hundred yards more he could fire his chaser with some hope of cutting up her rigging, knocking away a spar, or at least holing her drum-tight canvas: with that done he should certainly be able to lay her aboard before dark. The Surprise was now rolling heavily as well as pitching, but she carried her weather chaser so much the higher, and with very good gunners dangerous fire would still be possible for a while. A veil of small rain swept between them and the Spartan vanished. ‘I believe she will wear it,’ he said. ‘Let the reefs be shaken out of the maintopsail. And tell the gunner to stand by to try for the range.’
A solid packet of water sweeping from aft soaked him as he hurried, bent low, along the gangway, but
he hardly noticed it: the air was full of flying spindrift, and it looked as though they were in for a thoroughly dirty night. He had already shifted sail for the shift of wind, and she had a fine press of canvas: as the reefs came out of the maintopsail she heeled still farther, so that the deck sloped another five degrees, and his hand automatically reached out for the backstay: there was a pure keen delight in this flying speed, the rushing air, and the taste of sea in his mouth. He was not the only one to appreciate it, either: the four men at the wheel and the quartermaster at the con had the same expression of grave pleasure; and when two bells in the first dog-watch struck a few moments later the midshipman who heaved the log reported ‘Eleven and a half knots exactly, sir, if you please,’ with a look of perfect bliss. And certainly. although the difference between two knots and three was neither here nor there, at this pace even half a knot more made an immense change in the feeling of speed: it was also very hard to attain. But two bells already: that meant there was precious little daylight left; it would be a damned near-run thing, if indeed it could be done at all. And now in his glass he saw the Spartan starting her water over the side, two thick jets of it flying to leeward, relieving her of many tons.
Right forward, just as the ship was reaching the height of her rise, the gunner let fly. At almost the same moment an extraordinarily violent gust split the Surprise’s maintopsail.
The men leapt to the sheets, halliards, buntlines and clewlines and the moment he gave the order the flapping, cracking, streaming sailcloth was gathered into the top, there to be mastered, unbent and sent down -they laid aloft as though they were on a millpond with never a breeze at all. At the same time the bosun, the sailmaker and their mates were rousing out a number two canvas topsail and manhandling the awkward, unwieldy mass up through the fore hatchway.
It was a most uncommonly rapid, skilful, efficient, seamanlike operation, almost without words, certainly without loud, harsh, angry words, and in the midst of his intense frustration Jack was aware of it: but rapid though it was it still took time, and there was the Spartan fleeting away into the thick grey weather ahead. The sun, such as it was, would soon be gone; the moon would not rise until the changing of the watch, and little light would she give even then.
His only hope was to crack on. The gale, now stronger still, came roaring in just before the quarter, the Surprise’s favourite point of sailing, and he was almost sure that the gust that had wrecked the topsail marked the end of the wind’s backing. He was almost sure that it would now blow steadily, though very hard.
He might be wrong; the wish might be father to the thought; but whether or no it was his only chance. On the other hand, was he going to run the ship on to the rocks of Ushant?
He had not been able to fix his position at noon, and at this pace they must have run off a great deal of the distance. But then with singular clarity his mind presented him with a dead reckoning since the last observation; they were closing with the land, yet even at this rate they could not raise it before midnight. With his eye fixed on the faint and dwindling privateer far over the white-torn sea he cried ‘Fore topgallantsail’
It was only a comparatively small sail, but its sheeting home and hoisting fairly made the frigate stagger; its force came on to her just as she was reaching the crest of a wave and she changed step like a horse on the point of shying. Once she had recovered her smooth swooping pace Jack stepped forward, laid his hand on the cablet sustaining the foremast, nodded, and called ‘Maintopgallant. Cheerly, now.’
She was already under single-reefed topsails, and these two, so high, added immensely to their thrust. She was clearly gaining on the Spartan. But she was not gaining fast enough. At this rate the Spartan would run into the safety of darkness before she could be laid aboard: and now there was no possibility of distant gunfire for anything but a ship of the line – both swell and speed were now so much greater that green seas swept the forecastle every other heave.
‘Lifelines fore and aft,’ said Jack. ‘What?’
‘Come on now, come on, sir,’ cried Killick in a very angry whine. ‘Ain’t I called out fifty times? Come into the cabin.’ His indignation gave him such moral superiority that Jack followed him, stripped off his sopping coat and shirt and put on dry, with tarpaulin hat and jacket over all Returning, he took Honey’s speaking-trumpet and roared, ‘Stand by for the studdingsails.’
The men stood by, of course, but they looked aft and they looked at one another with significant expressions; this was cracking on indeed.
Yet even foretopmast and lower studdingsails did not satisfy him. Although the Surprise was now making very close on thirteen knots, with her larboard cathead well under water and her lee rail hardly to he seen for the rushing foam, while her bow-wave flung the spray a good twenty yards and her deck sloped at thirty-five degrees, he still called for the
spritsail course. It was an odd, rather old-fashioned sail, slung under the bowsprit and masking the chasers, but it had the advantage of reefing diagonally, so that its leeward corner was hitched up out of the sea and its windward half gave just that additional impulse Jack longed for.
Both ships had their battle-lanterns lit between decks by now, and both raced on through the rain and the spin-drift in a dim glow. But when the Spartan began throwing her guns overboard bright orange squares appeared as her ports opened, opened again and again, for her leeward guns had to be manhandled across to be heaved out on the windward side, a shocking task in such a sea. Her boats were jettisoned too, lightening her still more; but for all that
the Surprise was now running a full knot faster than the chase and Jack felt confident that he should have her if only he could keep her in sight for half an hour. Yet there was murk ahead, and frequent squalls, the certainty of an impenetrable night. He sent the sharpest eyes in the ship into the foretop and stood at the weather rail, as tense as he had ever been, watching the Spartan, her white wake, the suffused light from her stern-window, and the low dark cloud sweeping up from the south-south-west. Five minutes. Her last two guns went over. Ten minutes more at this same tearing pace or even faster and she was not a quarter of a mile ahead; but nor was the dark broad squall. She faded, faded, and suddenly she dowsed all her lights, disappearing entirely. For a moment her wake could still be seen, and then that too was gone. The rain swept in, flat on the driving gale.
‘She’s hauled her wind,’ roared the foretop; and the squall parting, there she was again, the faintest unlit ghost in the dimness, five points off her course. ‘I have her now,’ said Jack. But now the squall clearing farther still showed a great ship nearer by far, a three-decker wearing an admiral’s top-lantern, and more ships beyond her. And as the three-decker fired, sending a ball across the Surprise’s forefoot, Jack realized that he was in the midst of the Channel fleet, and that the Spartan had slipped through them for Brest, unseen in the squall. He shot up into the wind, lowering his topsails on the cap, and made the private signal, together with his number and the words Enemy in the east-northeast.