soldiers packed tight on the quarterdeck and forecastle were blazing away over the hammocks with steady pertinacity: stray ropes and blocks fell on to the splinternetting overhead: smoke hung thick between the ships, continually renewed as it blew away, and through the smoke the Bellone's guns flashed orange--flashes from the Victor too, on the Nereide's starboard quarter.
Stephen walked across to the other side: the Magicienne, hard aground on her sharp piercing reef with her figurehead pointing at the French line, could nevertheless bring her forward guns to bear and she was hitting the enemy as hard as she could, while her boats worked furiously to get her off: the Iphigenia was close alongside the Mineme; they were separated by a long narrow shoal but they were not a stone's throw apart and they were hammering one another with appalling ferocity. The volume of noise was greater than anything Stephen had ever experienced: yet through it all there was a sound familiar to him--the cry of the wounded. The Bellone's heavy guns were mauling the Nereide most terribly, tearing gaps in her hammocks, dismounting guns: presently she would use grape. He was a little uncertain of his position. In all previous engagements his place as a surgeon had been below, in the orlop; here it was perhaps his duty to stand and be shot at, to stand with nothing to do, like the army officers: it did not move him unduly, he found, though by now grape was screeching overhead. Yet at the same time men were carrying below in increasing numbers, and there at least he could be of some use. 'I shall stay for the present, however,' he reflected. 'It is something, after all, to view an action from such a vantage- point.' The glass turned, the bell rang: again and again. 'Six bells,' he said, counting. 'Is it possible we have been at it so long?' And it seemed to him that the Bellone was now firing with far less conviction, far less accuracy--that her ragged broadsides had far longer intervals between them.
A confused cheering forward, and from the Iphigenia too: a gap in the cloud of smoke showed him the weakly manned and weakly armed Ceylon, battered by the grounded Magicienne and by the Iphigenia's quarter-guns, in the act of striking her colours; and in one of those strange momentary pauses without a gun he heard the captain of the Iphigenia hail the Magicienne in a voice of thunder, desiring her to take possession of the Indiaman. But as the Magicienne's boat neared her, pulling fast through water whipped white with small shot and great, the Ceylon dropped her topsails and ran for the shore behind the Bellone. The boat was still pursuing her and roaring out when the Minerve, either cutting her cable or having it cut for her by the Iphigenia's murderous and continual fire, swung round, got under way, and ran straight before the wind, following the Ceylon. She steered better than the Ceylon however, for the Indianian blundered right into the Bellone, forcing her too to cut. They all three drifted on shore--a heap of ships ashore, with the Minerve lying directly behind the Bellone and so near that she could not fire. But the Bellone's broadside still lay square to the Nereide, and now men were pouring into her from the land and from the Minerve and the Ceylon: her fire, which had slackened, now redoubled and grew more furious still, the broadsides now coming fast and true. The Iphigenia, directly to the windward of her shoal and only a pistol- shot from it, could not stir, and it was clear that in these last few minutes the face of the battle had totally changed. There was no more cheering aboard the Nereide. The gun crews, for all their spirit, were growing very tired, and the rate of fire fell off. By now the sun had almost gone: and the shore-batteries, which had hitherto played on the Iphigenia and the Magicienne, now concentrated their fire on the Nereide.
'Why do we swing so?' wondered Stephen, and then he realized that a shot had cut the spring on the Nereide's cable, the spring that held her broadside on to the Bellone. Round she came, and farther yet, until her stern took the ground, thumping gently with the swell and pointing towards the enemy, who poured in a steady raking fire. She still fired her quarter- guns and her stern-chaser, but now men were falling fast. The first lieutenant and three of the army officers were dead: blood ran over her quarterdeck not in streams but in a sheet. Clonfert was giving the bosun orders about a warp when a messenger from below, a little terrified boy, ran up to him, pointing at Dr Maturin as he spoke: Clonfert crossed the deck and said, 'Dr Maturin, may I beg you to give a hand in the orlop? McAdam has had an accident. I should be most infinitely obliged.'
McAdam's accident was an alcoholic coma, and his assistant, who had never been in action before, was completely overwhelmed. Stephen threw off his coat, and in the darkness, weakly lit by a lantern, he set to work: tourniquet, saw, knife, sutures, forceps, probe, retractor, dressings, case after case, with the sometimes perilously delicate operations continually interrupted by the huge, all-pervading, sonorous jar of heavy shot smashing into the frigate's hull. And still the wounded came, until it seemed that half and even more than half of the Nereide's company had passed through his bloody hands as she lay there, quite unsupported, her fire reduced to half a dozen guns.
'Make a lane there, make a lane for the Captain,' he heard, and here was Clonfert on the chest before him, under the lantern. One eye was torn out and dangling: maxilla shattered: neck ripped open and the carotid artery laid bare, pulsing in the dim light, its wall shaved almost to the bursting-point. A typical splinter-wound. And the frightful gash across his face was grape. He was conscious, perfectly clear in his mind, and at present he felt no pain, a far from uncommon phenomenon in wounds of this kind and at such a time. He was not even aware of the scalpel, probe and needle, except to say that they were oddly cold; and as Stephen worked over him he spoke, sensibly though in a voice altered by his shattered teeth, he told Stephen that he had sent to ask Pyrn whether he judged the ship could be towed out or whether the wounded should be put into the squadron's boats and the Nereide set on fire. 'She might wreck the Bellone, when she blows up,' he added.
His wounds were still being dressed when Webber came back from the Sirius with one of her officers and a message from Pym, a message that had to be shouted above the crash of the Bellone's guns. Pym suggested that Clonfert should come aboard the Sirius. The Iphigenia could not possibly warp off from behind her shoal until daylight and in the meantime the Nereide lay between her and the French ships; she could not fire upon them; Lord Clonfert might certainly come aboard the Sirius.
'Abandon my men?' cried Clonfert in that strange new voice. 'I'll see him damned first. Tell him I have struck.' And when the officer had gone and the dressing was finished he said to Stephen, 'Is it done, Doctor? I am most truly grateful to you,' and made as though to rise.
'You will never get up?' asked Stephen.
'Yes,' he said. 'My legs are sound enough. I am going on deck. I must do this properly, not like a scrub.'
He stood up and Stephen said, 'Take care of the bandage on your neck. Do not pluck at it, or you may die within the minute.'
Shortly afterwards most of the remaining men came below, sent by the Captain: the routine of the ship was gone--there had been no bells this hour and more--and her life was going. Some clustered in the orlop, and from their low, muted talk and from those who came and went their shipmates learnt what was going on: a boat had come from the Iphigenia to ask why the Nereide was no longer firing, and would the Captain come aboard of her--told, had struck, and the Captain would not stir--Captain had sent to Bellone to tell her to stop firing, because why? Because he had struck; but the boat could not reach her nor make her hear. Then there was the cry of fire on deck and several men ran up to put it out: and shortly after the mainmast went by the board.
Lord Clonfert came below again, and sat for a while in the orlop. Although Stephen was still working hard he took a look at him between patients and formed the impression that he was in a state of walking unconsciousness; but after some time Clonfert got up and began moving about among the wounded, calling them by name.
It was long past midnight. The French fire was slackening; the British fire had stopped long since; and now after a few random shots the night fell silent. Men slept where they had chanced to sit or throw themselves down. Stephen took Clonfert by the arm, guided him to the dead purser's cot, well under the water-line, directed him how to rest his head so that he should not endanger his wound, and returned to his patients. There were more
