whole of her forecastle vanished as she plunged. Still she rose, pouring water, spouting from her scuppers: every time she rose. More heavily now?
In the cabin one of Mr Stanhope’s servants, half drunk, had managed to blow himself up with a spirit-?stove: miserably burnt, and shattered by falling against a gun, he was being patched up by the surgeons. Mr White, Mr Atkins and Mr Berkeley, all of whom had struggled earnestly in London to reach this position, sat wedged together on the couch, with their feet tucked up out of the water, staring in front of them. Hour after hour.
On deck the day was fading, if that grey shrieking murk could be called day. Yet still Jack could see the rollers sweeping towards her stern from half a mile away, their white tops clear: their whole length traversed the sky as the frigate rolled; and two monstrous waves, too close to one another, exploded in ruin just astern, to be swept up into a still greater whole that thundered as it came, vast and overwhelming. And above the thunder as it passed his waiting ear caught a sharp gun-?like crack, a crash forward, and the foremast went by the board. The foretopsail, ripped from its yard, vanished far ahead, a flickering whiteness in the gloom.
‘All hands, all hands,’ he roared. Already the ship was steering wild, yawing off her course. He glanced back. They were running down into the trough: unless they could get her before the wind - could get some headsail on her - the next wave would poop her. She would broach to and take the next sea on her beam.
‘All hands - ‘ his voice tearing blood from his throat - ‘Pullings, men into the foreshrouds. It’s gone above the cap. Forestays’l, forestays’l! Come along with me. Axes! Axes!’
In the momentary lull of the deepest trough he raced along the gangway, followed by twenty men: a cross-? sea broke over the side waist-?deep: they ploughed through and they were on the forecastle before the ship, slewed half across the wind, began to rise - before the next wave was more than half-?way to them. Men were swarming up the weather ratlines, forcing themselves up against the strength of the gale; their backs made sail enough to bring her head a little round before the sea struck them with an all-?engulfing crash and spout of foam - far enough round for the wave to take her abaft the beam, and still she swam. The axes cleared the wreckage. Bonden was out on the bowsprit, hacking at the foretopmast-?stay that still held fast to the floating mast, slewing the ship around; holding his breath Jack swarmed out after him, his head under the foam, feeling for the gaskets of the forestaysail, snugged down tight under the stay. He had it - his hands, many hands were tearing at the lashings, so tight they would not, would not come.
‘Hold on!’ roared in his ear, and there was a strong hand pressing on his neck: then an unimaginable force of water, a weight and a strength past anything - the third wave that broached the frigate squarely to.
The pressure slackened. His head was above water, and now there were more men in the shrouds. Again the thrust of the gale on them brought her head round, helped by a savage cross-?sea; but they could not hold there for ever - a few more minutes of this and the shrouds would be swept clear. Down again as she plunged, and running his hand along the sail he found the trouble - the down-?hauler had fouled the clew: stray lines from the wreckage in the hanks. ‘Knife!’ he roared as his head came clear. It was in his reaching hand: a lightning slash, and all sprang free.
‘Hold on! Hold on!’ and again the thunder of a falling sea, a mountainous wave: the intolerable pressure on his chest: the total certainty that he must not let go of the sail clutched under him: his legs curled round the bowsprit to hold on: hold on. . . strength going. But here was breath again in his bursting lungs and he reared up out of the water bawling, ‘Man the halliards. D’ye hear me aft? Man the halliards there!’
In slow jerks the sail rose up the stay, filled: they sheeted home. But now she was broadside on, wallowing. Oh would it be in time? Slowly, heavily she turned as the
forestaysail took the strain, the great wave racing up -turned, turned just enough and took it on her quarter:
rose to the height, and the full blast in the head-?sail set her right before the wind. Faster and faster she moved, steering nimbly now; for though the last blow had flung the men from the wheel the relieving-?tackles held; and the next wave passed harmlessly under her stern.
He swarmed in, clinging to the knightheads for a moment as she plunged again, and then he was on the forecastle:
it was clear of wreckage: the sail set well, He called the men down from the shrouds and moved along the gangway. ‘Any hands lost, Hervey?’ was asked, with his arms round the stanchion.
‘No, sir. Some hurt, but they have all come aft. Are you all right, sir?’
Jack nodded. ‘She steers better,’ he said. ‘Dismiss the watch below. Grog for all hands: serve it out in the half-?deck. Pass the word for the bosun.’
All night. The officers stayed on deck that endless night or spent a few brief spells in the gunroom, sitting between dreaming and waking, listening gravely, concentrated upon that one triangle of rigid canvas forward. After an hour Jack found the trembling that had affected his entire body die away, and with it even the consciousness of his body. The wheel was relieved. Relieved again:
again. Continually his croaking voice called out orders, and twice he sent picked parties forward, strengthening, frapping, making all as fast as ever they could in a night that cut to the bone. A little before dawn the wind veered a point, two points, blowing with sudden flaws, vacuums that hurt his ears; it reached a screaming note more savage than anything he had heard and his heart hurt him for the staysail, for the ship - an edge of sentiment and self-?pity, with Sophia’s name hovering on the edge of utterance aloud. Then slowly, slowly, the shriek dropped half a tone, another, and another: a low buffeting roar at last, when the faint straggling light showed a sea white from rim to rim, with the steady procession of great rollers in their due solemn ordered ranks once again - vast indeed, but no longer maniac. No cross-?sea; very little roll; and the Surprise scudding over the desolation, passing every sea under her counter, her waist with no more than a foot of water swirling about it. An albatross broad on the starboard beam. He cast off his lashings and moved stiffly forward. ‘We will ship the pumps, Mr Hervey, if you please. And I believe we may get a scrap of maintopsail on her.’
Peace, peace. Madagascar lay astern and the Cormorins; the shattered hulk that had crept north of the fortieth parallel, trailing ends of rope and pumping day and night, was now as trim as art and a limited supply of paint could make her. An expert eye would have seen a great deal of twice-?laid stuff in the rigging and an odd scarcity of boats on the booms; it would have stared with amazement at the attachments of the rudder; and it would have noted that in spite of fair and moderate breeze the frigate carried nothing above her topsails. She dared not; although with her new foretopmast and her fresh paintwork she looked ‘as pretty as a picture’, her inward parts had suffered. Jack spoke so often of her butt-?ends and her hanging knees that Stephen said, ‘Captain Aubrey, your butt-?ends and your hanging knees cannot be attempted to be rectified, as I understand you, until you have her docked, three thousand miles away; so may I beg you to clap a stopper over all and to accept the inevitable with a decent appearance of unconcern? If we fall apart, why, we fall apart, and there is the end to it. For my part, I have every confidence of reaching Bombay.’
‘What I know, and what you don’t know,’ cried Jack, ‘is that I have not so much as a single ten-?inch spike left
