'I must go and see my patients. I am not altogether happy about young Harper.' - Splinter-wounds occupied them for some time: instances of healing at first intent, instances of malignant impostumes; and when Stephen stood up Jack said 'I will come with you.'
Down the ladder and away aft. 'You observe the sweetness even here?' asked Stephen. 'Well may she be called the Nutmeg.'
Before Jack could reply there was a tremendous triple crash overhead and the simultaneous discharge of both stern-chasers. He raced up the various ladders, reached the quarterdeck in the last veil of rain and the first light of dawn and instantly grasped the position: the Corn?e, bringing up the wind, bringing up the tide, spreading a little more makeshift canvas and moving faster out there in the channel, had come up hidden by the squall to well within range of her long guns, had yawed and fired a full broadside. One of her balls had struck the Nutmeg's maintopsail yard in the slings and though the halliards had already been let go the great sail was billowing away to leeward, making a noise like thunder.
'Port the helm,' he cried, partly to ease the sail but much more to change the Nutmeg's course, which was now carrying her diagonally across the Corn?e's path.
'She don't steer, sir,' shouted Fielding over the roar of the chasers. 'Tiller-rope shot away and a ball between rudder and sternpost.'
Jack hailed the forecastle. 'Spritsail course and topsail. Cast off the buoy.' Then turning, 'Mr Crown, relieving- tackles directly. Mr Seymour, clew up to windward: cut the leeward robans: bundle all you can into the top.' He ran into the cabin and as the starboard-chaser fired and recoiled said 'Check her inboard.' He leaned far out and there was Richardson in his nightshirt, slung over the stern, up to his chin every time a sea overtook her, prising furiously at the ball with a handspike. 'Dick,' he called, 'has it pierced or is it wedged?'
'Mostly wedged, sir, between the upper pintle-strap and...' a rising smother of foam cut him short.
Withdrawing, Jack said 'Bonden, give me a bight of rope fast to the munnion. Tell bosun to haul the helm hard a-starboard the moment the tackles are shipped. Pass me a crow. Mr White, carry on.'
A moment later he was in the white boil of the wake. The massive crowbar sank him but with a hearty kick he rose to what surface there was and seized the pendant-chain hook as the Corn?e began a rolling broadside. Swinging himself under the overhang Jack heard one ball strike the Nutmeg's hull and then Mr White's stern- chaser deafened him. With one foot on the ring-plate and his left arm round the rudder he stabbed his crow into the space beneath the half-buried ball and tried to force it out while Richardson levered it from the other side. Wave after wave drowned them in foam for the Nutmeg was gathering way, and it seemed hopeless: Jack's strength was going fast. He was near losing his grip on the iron when the whole rudder to which they were so intimately attached gave a groan and moved slightly to larboard. A last wrench and the ball fell free.
They exchanged a nod, mouths shut tight against the flying sea, and Jack, dropping his bar, tried to climb aboard. His arms refused their duty and he hailed his coxswain. They
hauled him up, cruelly scraped against the counter; and then came Richardson, his leg streaming red from an unnoticed wound. They both sat, sodden and gasping, and Jack said 'Run her up, Bonden.' The gun slammed against the port and almost instantly fired.
As the smoke cleared Jack saw Fleming race in bawling 'Mr Fielding says she steers, sir.' At the same moment he saw the Corn?e begin her turn to close the growing distance and he said 'Thank you, Mr Fleming. Desire him to put her before the wind and to send me one of the waisters.' Then to Richardson 'Dick, how do you find yourself? '
'Perfectly well, sir, I thank you; I never felt it at the time. I think the pendant-hook must have caught me.'
The waister came in: touched his forehead. 'Jevons, give Mr Richardson a hand below. Dick, get yourself bound up: tell thc Doctor we are before the wind: and if he says you are to stay below, then you stay below.'
Richardson's answer as the waister heaved him up was lost in the crash of guns and a savage cheering. 'Hulled her amidships, sir,' called Mr White. 'I saw the splinters fly.'
Staring through what gap there was Jack saw the frigate plain, lit by the sun through a gap in the clouded east, and now three quarters on; the light caught the stream jetting from her starboard chain-pump.
He stood up, flexed his hands and arms and swarmed up the ladder to the quarterdeck: a scene of apparent confusion under the troubled sky. 'We have cleared away a spare yard, sir,' said Fielding, 'and the topsail is passing down as you see, but Seymour says the mast is too much injured.'
'Cut half way through a foot from the crosstrees, sir.'
The bosun reappeared. 'New tiller-ropes shipped, sir,' he said.
'Very good, Mr Crown: stand by to bend a sail to the crossjack yard.'
The Corn?e opened with her bow-chasers again, the plume of one ball drenching them. 'Aye aye, sir,' said the bosun at last, more amazed by the order than the splash, hearty though -it was. He had never bent a crossjack in his life.
'Mr Fielding, sway up fore and mizen topgallant masts.' The orders came fast, with no emphasis but with great authority: as soon as this strange sail was set and drawing and hammocks piped up, hands were to go to breakfast by half-watches: four picked hands at the wheel with Fielding himself at the con.
All this while the chasers had been barking at one another with no greater effect than pierced sails and some cut rigging, but by the time the crossjack was giving its almost unknown and potentially very dangerous thrust the Corn?e had made up the distance lost during her broadsides and she was gaining fast. Jack altered course to bring the wind from right aft to near enough her quarter for the crossjack not to becalm the maincourse: she gathered way at once. After ten minutes of very close attention and the setting of two more jibs he decided that their speeds were as nearly equal as he could expect without a maintopsail, and he told Seymour, in charge of the aftermost larboard carronades, and his two midshipmen to stand by. The Nutmeg had fine round buttocks and these carronades, trained as far aft as possible, could be brought to bear by a turn of no more than two points from the Nutmeg's present course.
He called down through the companion, now a shattered remnant of wood with splinters of glass in parts of the frame, 'Mr White, run out your gun, make all fast and give the larboard smashers play: Mr Seymour, we are about to put the helm a-lee. Fire as they bear; fire high; fire quick.' Crouching under the foot of the crossjack, that anomalous, inconvenient sail, he took the wheel himself.
Round she came, easy, moving faster, the hands too anxious about the strange sail's sheet and tack to worry about the Corn?e's chasers: round: and the first carronade went off, followed by two simultaneously. As Jack had
