weapons - she was already packing on more sail.
The guns were run out again. At three degrees of elevation he gave her another broadside, a raking broadside at her defenceless stern, a broadside delivered with a fierce, savage cheer. But though several shots struck her hull they did not check her speed; nor did the now-normal flash of the Worcester's fire induce her to lie to; and by the time Jack called 'Hard a-starboard' to go in chase she had gained a quarter of a mile, while fools were capering on the forecastle, cheering, bawling out 'She runs, she runs! We've beat her!'
The Worcester hauled her wind, the sail-trimmers leapt to the braces and flew aloft to set the upper staysails, but she could not lie as close to her quarry by nearly a whole point, nor, without her mainsail, could she run on a bowline so fast by two knots and more. When the Jemmapes was so far ahead that the bow-chaser could hardly reach her, Jack yawned, gave her one last deliberate, sullen broadside at extreme range, and said 'House your guns. Mr Gill, course south-south-west: all plain sail.' He realized that it was day, that the sun was rising over Lorient, and added 'Dowse the battle-lanterns.' As he spoke he saw Pullings' face and the cruel disappointment on it: had they held their opening fire another five minutes the Jemmapes could never have reached Lorient. With the wind, the He de Groix, its reefs, and the shore all lying just so, a close action could have been forced whether the Jemmapes held her course or no: five minutes longer and Pullings would either have been a commander or a corpse. For a successful, evenly-matched action was certain promotion for a surviving first lieutenant: Pullings' only possible chance of promotion from the long and over-crowded lieutenants' list, since he had no pull, no interest or influence of any kind, no hope apart from his patron's luck or superior ability; and Jack Aubrey had misjudged the situation, one that might never arise again in Tom Pullings' whole career. Jack felt a sadness rise, far greater than his usual depression after a real battle, and looking at the dangling maintack he said in a hard voice, 'What are our casualties, Mr Pullings?'
'No dead, sir. Three splinter wounds and a crushed foot, no more. And number seven, lower deck, dismounted. But I am sorry to tell you, sir, I am very sorry to tell you, the Doctor has copped it.'
CHAPTER THREE
Dr Maturin had taken part in many actions at sea, and although he had twice been captured and once wrecked he had never copped it yet, because as a surgeon he spent most of the time below the water-line, sheltered from splinters, round-shot and grape, in comparative safety if not in comfort. But now he had been wounded in three several places: first a falling shoulder-block knocked him down, then a jagged lump of elm from the hounds of the mizen topmast ripped off half his scalp, and lastly one of a shower of eighteen-inch splinters driven from the Worcester's quarterdeck berthing by a thirty-two-pound ball struck both his feet as he lay there, struck them flatwise, piercing the list slippers and his soles. The wounds were spectacular and he left an uninterrupted trail of blood as he was carried below, but they were not serious; his assistants sewed him up again - Lewis, the elder man, was a rare hand with a needle- and although the pain was singularly shrill and insistent, Stephen's favourite tincture of laudanum dealt with that. He could take it now with a clear conscience, and with the tolerance resulting from long abuse he drank it by the pint. It was not the wounds, therefore, nor the loss of blood, nor the pain that brought him so low, but rather the incessant flow of visitors.
His assistants left him pretty well alone, apart from attending to his dressings, for not only was he a dangerous patient, stubborn, dogged and even violent if attempted to be dosed according to any system but his own, but he was also their superior in naval and in medical rank, being a physician and the author of highly- esteemed works on seamen's diseases, an officer much caressed by the Sick and Hurt Board: furthermore he was no more consistent than other men and in spite of his liberal principles and his dislike of constituted authority he was capable of petulant tyranny when confronted with a slime-draught early in the morning. But he had no authority over the Worcester's passengers, and with regard to them the social contract was fully binding. It was their duty to visit the sick unless they were being sick themselves (and poor Dr Davis was prostrated by the slightest roll or pitch); they had nothing else at all to do; and throughout their leisurely, almost windless and unnaturally calm passage across the Bay of Biscay and down the coast of Portugal they succeeded one another in the Captain's dining-cabin, where Stephen's cot had been set up. Nor were they alone. His old shipmates Pullings and Mowett sat with him every day, and very welcome they were; but all the other members of the wardroom came in from time to time, walking on tiptoe and suggesting remedies in low, considerate tones. Men who had listened to him with respectful attention when he was well now gave him advice quite fearlessly; and Killick hovered near at hand with fortifying broth, possets made by the gunner's wife, and galley receipts for strengthening the blood. Had it not been for the blessed opium that allowed him to plane above his irascibility some of the time his wellwishers would have worried him into his coffin, a hammock with two round-shot at his feet, before they raised the Rock of Lisbon; for although he could put up with pain tolerably well he had always found boredom mortal, and the purser, the Marine Captain (strangers to him) and two of the parsons droned on and on. Apart from the inventor of the double-bottomed defecator, whose history he had heard seven times, they had nothing to say, and they said it for what seemed hours, while his smile grew more fixed and rigid until at last it came to resemble the risus sardonicus.
But in latitude thirty-eight degrees north he began to recover; the feverish petulance left him, he became equable and mild, and his complaisance was no longer a matter of strong self-restraint. He discovered agreeable qualities in two of the clergymen and Professor Graham. When Cape St Vincent showed misty on the larboard bow he was well enough to be carried on deck in an elbow-chair with two capstan-bars lashed to its sides, sedan- fashion, to be shown the desert of grey ocean in which Lieutenant Aubrey, Sir John Jervis, and Commodore Nelson had defeated the greatly superior Spanish fleet on St Valentine's Day in 1797. And when the Worcester lay alongside the New Mole in Gibraltar, taking in fresh supplies and waiting for the levanter to blow out, the strong east wind that prevented her from passing the Strait into the Mediterranean, he sat luxuriating in the sun in the stern-galley, his bandaged feet on a stool, a glass of fresh orange-juice in his hand, and Professor Graham by his side: for although the Scotchman was a grey, somewhat positive, humourless soul he had read a great deal, and now that he had overcome at least some of his initial reserve he was a grateful companion, a man of obvious parts, and in no way a bore. Stephen had received the visit of several acquaintances from the shore, the last of these bringing him specimens of four uncommon cryptogams that he had always longed to see; he gazed at them now with such pleasure, such intensity, that it was some moments before he answered the Professor's question 'What was the language you were speaking with that gentleman?'
'The language, sir?' he said with a smile - he was feeling unusually cheerful, even merry, 'It was Catalan.' He had been tempted to say Aramaic, out of a spirit of fun; but Graham was too learned, too much of a linguist to swallow that.
'So you speak the Catalan, Doctor, as well as the French and Spanish?'
'I have spent much of my life on the shores of the Mediterranean,' said Stephen, 'and in my malleable youth I came by a certain knowledge of the languages spoken at its western end. I do not possess your command of Arabic, however; still less of your Turkish, God forbid.'
'To revert to our battle,' said Graham, having digested this. 'What I do not understand is why Captain Aubrey should have shot off those extraordinary coloured balls in the first place.'
'As for that,' said Stephen, smiling at Graham's notion of a battle - from their noble balcony they had the whole bay spread out before them, with Algeciras on the farther shore, where he had taken part in a real action: a hundred and forty-two casualties in HMS Hannibal alone: blood and thunder all day long - 'You must know that in their wisdom the Lords of the Admiralty have laid down that for the first six months of his commission no captain may presume to fire more shot a month than one third the number of his guns under various heavy mulcts and
