Free The Hundred Days by Patrick O’Brian Page A

and clear, to Somers, the relieving officer, ‘Mr
Somers, we may pipe to breakfast at two bells or earlier, and then clear. It is
not worth going below. Look out afore, there.’
    He swung over the rail to the larboard ratlines and
ran up to the maintop. ‘Good morning, Wilson,’ he said to the lookout,
and stood gazing away eastward, gazing, gazing.
    Two bells, and almost at
once three red lights appeared, spreading like crimson flowers one after
another, fading and drifting away fast downwind. Before the second had reached
its full Jack called down, ‘Pipe to breakfast.’
    On the quarterdeck he gave orders to increase sail,
to steer south by south-south-west, and to prepare for action: these of course
were signals, but by word of mouth he sent to tell the cook to use a bucket of
slush to get the galley stove right hot right quick.
    ‘Stephen,’ he said, walking into the cabin, ‘I am
afraid we must disturb you. William has just let us know that Laraish has no
corsairs: since the wind has been dropping this last watch and more, the
likelihood is that the Indiamen will very soon leave their shelter under the
lee of the Sugar Loaf, sailing for home, and that the corsairs mean to cut them
off. So we are pelting down to stop their capers - we shall be setting
close-reefed topgallants presently - and quite soon we shall have to turn you out
to clear for action. But at least there is this consolation: we shall have an
uncovenanted pot of coffee. It is always far better for the people to have
something in their belly before a fight, even if it is only hot burgoo; and
since the fires are lit, we may as well profit by the situation.’
    ‘It is our obvious duty,’ said Stephen, with a pale
smile. In the earlier crises of his life he had often, indeed generally, taken
refuge in laudanum, or more recently in coca leaves: on this occasion he had
entirely forsworn them, together with tobacco and anything but the merest token
of wine to avoid singularity; yet he had always despised the stylite or even
hair-shirt kind of asceticism and he was still drinking the last of the pot
with something not far from relish - Jack had left him ten minutes earlier -
when the thundering drum beat to quarters.
    He swallowed the remaining grouts and hurried down
to the orlop, where he found Poll and Harris, the ship’s butcher: seamen had
already lashed chests together to form two operating tables and Poll was making
fast the covers of number eight sailcloth with a practised hand - she had
already laid out a selection of saws, catlings, clamps, tourniquets,
leather-covered chains, dressings, splints; while Harris had lined up buckets,
swabs, and the usual boxes for limbs.
    To them, after a long pause, entered Dr Jacob, led
by an irascible boy - not a ship’s boy, but a nominal captain’s servant,
entered as a first-class volunteer and looked after by the gunner until he
should be rated midshipman and join their berth - one of those useless little
creatures who had been wished on Jack Aubrey in Gibraltar by former ship-mates,
men he could not refuse, though the original hydrographical Surprise had
carried no learners, only thoroughly trained midshipmen capable of passing
their examination for lieutenant in a year or two.
    ‘There, sir,’ said the first-class volunteer, ‘it
was as simple as I told you the first time. First left,
second left, down the ladder and second on your right. Your right.’
    ‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Jacob; and to Stephen,
‘Oh sir, I do beg you to forgive me. I am no great seaman, as you know, and
this great dark wandering labyrinth confounded me - darkness visible. At one
time I found myself by the seat of ease in the head, spray dashing upon me from
the rising wave.’
    ‘No doubt it will become more familiar in time,’
said Stephen. ‘What do you say to putting a true
razor’s edge on our implements? Poll, my dear, there are two coarse and two
very fine oilstones on the bottom shelf of the medicine