was composed, reserved and indeed somewhat severe
- his orders cracked out sharp and quick as he sailed her hard, completely identified with the ship. He was on the quarterdeck, yet at the same time he was in the straining studdingsail-?boom, gauging the breaking-?point exactly.
‘Yes,’ he said, as though a long period of time had not passed. ‘And it will be more grandiose by half before the end of the watch. The glass is dropping fast, and it will start to blow, presently. Just you wait until this sea gets up and starts to tumble about. Mr Harrowby, Mr Harrowby, another man to the wheel, if you please. And we will get the flying jib and stuns’ls off her.’
The bosun’s pipe, the rush of feet, and her tearing speed sensibly diminished. Mr Stanhope, clinging to the companion-?ladder, cruelly in the way, said, ‘It is a wonder they do not fall off, poor fellows. This is exhilarating, is it not? Like champagne.’
So it was, with the whole ship vibrating and a deep bass hum coming from the hold, and the clean keen air searching deep into their lungs: but well before nightfall the clean keen air blew so strong as to whip the breath away as they tried to draw it in, and the Surprise was under close-?reefed topsails and courses, topgallant-?masts struck down on deck, running faster still, and still holding her course south-?east.
During the night Stephen heard a number of bumps and cries through his sleep, and he was aware of a change of course, for his cot no longer swung in the same direction. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he came on deck. Under the low grey tearing sky, half driving rain, half driving spray, the whole sea was white - a vast creaming spread as far as eye could see. He had seen the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and the great south-?west gales on the Irish coast: they were nothing to this. For a moment the whole might have been a wild landscape, mountainous yet strangely regular; but then he saw that the whole was in motion, a vast majestic motion whose size concealed its terrifying dreamlike speed. Now the crests and troughs were enormously greater; now they were very much farther apart; and now the crests were curling over and breaking as they came, an avalanche of white pouring down the steep face. The Surprise was running almost straight before them, east by south; she had managed to strike her mizentopmast at first light - anything to diminish the wind-?pressure aft and thus the risk of broaching-?to - and man-?ropes were rigged along her streaming deck. As his eyes reached the level of the quarterdeck he saw a wave, a green-?grey wall towering above the taffrail, racing towards them - swift inevitability. He strained his head back to see its top, curving beyond the vertical as it came yet still balancing with the speed of its approach, a beard of wind-?torn spray flying out before it He heard Jack call an order to the man at the wheel: the frigate moved a trifle from her course, rose, tilting her stern skywards so that Stephen clung backwards to the ladder, rose and rose; and the mortal wave swept under her counter, dividing and passing on to smother her waist in foam and solid water, on to bar the horizon just ahead, while the ship sank in the trough and the shriek of the rigging sank an octave as the strain slackened.
‘Seize hold, Doctor,’ shouted Jack. ‘Take both hands to it.’
Stephen crept along the life-?line, catching a reproachful look from the four men at the wheel, as who should say ‘Look what you done with your albatrosses, mate’, and reached the stanchion to which Jack was lashed. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.
‘A very good morning to you. It is coming on to blow.’
‘What?’
‘It is coming on to blow,’ said Jack, with greater force. Stephen frowned, and looked astern through the haze of spray; and there, whiter than the foam, were two albatrosses, racing across the wind. One wheeled towards the ship, rose to the height of the taffrail and poised there in the eddy not ten feet away. He saw its mild round eye looking back at him, the perpetual minute change of its wing-?feathers, its tail; then it banked, rose on the wind, darted down, and its wings raised high it paddled on the face of an advancing cliff of water, picked something up and shot away along the valley of the wave before it broke.
Killick appeared with a sour, mean look on his face, all screwed up against the wind; he passed the coffee-?pot from the bosom of his jacket; Jack put the spout into his mouth and drank. ‘You had better go below,’ he shouted to Stephen. ‘Go below and have some breakfast: you may not get another hot meal, if it turns nasty.’
The gunroom was of the same opinion. They had their table spread with boiled ham, beef-?steaks, and a sea-? pie, all held down as tight as double-?rove fiddles would hold them, but all mingling their gravy in reckless confusion.
‘Sea-?pie, Doctor?’ said Etherege, beaming at him. ‘I have kept you a piece.’
‘If you please.’ Stephen held out his plate, received the piece on the top of the rise; and as the frigate shot down the face of the wave so the pie rose in the air. Etherege instantly pinned it with his practised fork, held it until she reached the trough and gravity went to work again.
Pullings gave him a selected biscuit, and told him with a smile ‘that the glass was falling yet; it had to be worse before it got better’, and begged him ‘to blow out his luff while he might’.
The purser was telling them of an infallible method of calculating the height of waves by simple triangulation when Hervey plunged into the gunroom, spouting water like an inverted fountain. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he said, throwing his tarpaulins into his cabin and putting on his spectacles. ‘Give me a cup of tea, Babbington, there’s a good fellow. My fingers are too numb to turn the tap.’
‘The tea has gone by the board, sir. Would coffee do?’
‘Anything, anything, so long as it is warm and wet. Is there any sea-?pie left?’ They showed him the empty dish. ‘Why, here’s a pretty thing,’ he cried. ‘All night on deck, and no sea-?pie.’ When ham had mollified him, Stephen said, ‘Why did you spend all night on deck, pray?’
‘The skipper would not go below, though I begged him to turn in; and I could not very well do so with him on deck. I have a noble nature,’ said Hervey, smiling now through the ham.
‘Are we in extreme peril then?’ asked Stephen.
Oh yes, they assured him, with grave, anxious faces; they were in horrid danger of foundering, broaching-?to, running violently into Australia; but there was a hope, just a very slight hope, of their meeting with a mountain of ice and clambering on to it - as many as half a dozen men might be saved.
When they had exercised their wit for some considerable time, Hervey said, ‘The skipper is worried about the foretopmast. We went aloft to look at it, and - would you credit it? - the force of the wind upon us as we went aloft threw the ship a point off her course. The coaking just above the cap is not what any of our friends could wish; and if a cross-?sea sets in, and we start to roll, I shall start saying my prayers.’
‘Mr Stanhope begs Dr Maturin to spare him a minute, when conwenient,’ said Killick in his ear.
