Free The Hundred Days by Patrick O’Brian Page B

chest.’
    Each of the surgeons valued himself upon his skill
in sharpening knives of all kinds, scalpels, gouges - almost everything indeed
except saws, which they left to the armourer - and they ground away by the
light of the powerful lamp. There was some degree of silent competition, avowed
only by the slightly ostentatious manner in which each shaved his forearm with
his finished blade and his evident complacency when the skin was left perfectly
bare. Stephen was uniformly successful with the scalpels, but he had to return
the largest catling, a heavy, double-edged, sharp-pointed amputating knife, to
the coarse stone again and again.
    ‘No sir,’ cried Harris, who could bear it no
longer. ‘Let me show you.’ Stephen was not a particularly sweet tempered man,
above all at this moment when Jacob had scarcely a hair left to show; but
Harris’s professional authority was so evident that he let the heavy catling be
taken - he let the stone be spat upon, the spittle smoothed with an even rapid
drawing movement, heel to tip, then transferred to the fine stone and finished
with an emulsion of spit and oil. ‘There, sir,’ said the butcher, ‘that’s how
we do it in Leadenhall Market, asking your pardon.’
    ‘Well damn you, Harris,’ said Stephen, having tried
the superlative edge. ‘If ever I have to operate upon you, I shall do so with
an instrument of your own preparing, and...’
    He was about to add something more likely to please
when all present raised their heads, listening intently, ignoring the sound of
the hull in a fairly heavy sea, the whole complex voice of the ship; and after
a few seconds there it was again, not thunder but the sound of guns.
    On deck Jack had not only the advantage of hearing
more clearly but of seeing too. The squadron had been sailing close inshore,
heading for a point beyond which there rose the modest hill called the Sugar
Loaf: at the first remote sound he had thrown out the signal Make more sail,
and when they came round the point at twelve or even thirteen knots they had
the battle spread out full before them in the little leeward bay, rosy with a
burning ship and lit by innumerable flashes. The East India convoy, under sail, was
being attacked by at least a score of xebecs and galleys, while smallcraft
crammed with Moors waited to board any disabled merchantman.
    The convoy, escorted only by a sixteen-gun
brig-sloop, had formed in something of a line and it was protecting itself
moderately well against the xebecs, powerfully armed though they were. But it
was almost helpless against the galleys, which could race downwind of the line
under sail, turn, take to their oars and come up from leeward, raking the
hindmost ships from right aft or on the quarter, where their guns, though
comparatively small and few, could do terrible slaughter, firing from so low
and near, right along the deck, while the galley itself could not be touched by
its victim’s cannon.
    The rearmost Indiaman it was that lit the bay - an
enemy shot having no doubt traversed her light-room and powdermagazine - but
even without that, the moonlight, the clear sky and the flashes made the
position perfectly evident. Jack made the signal for independent engagement, emphasized it with two guns, and he launched the
Surprise at what seemed to be the commanding xebec, the corsairs’ leader: the
Moors had no distinct line of battle, but this one wore some red and tawny
pennants.
    They met, sailing with the wind on the beam,
Surprise on the starboard tack, the Moor on the larboard. When each was five
points on the other’s bow, Jack backed his foretopsail, and called, ‘On the downward roll: fire from forward as they bear.’
    All along the deck the gun-crews crouched
motionless, the captain with the linstock in his hand, glaring along the
barrel. Officers and midshipmen exactly spaced.
    Some desultory musket-fire, two or three
well-directed round-shot from the xebec; the tingling sound of a gun hit full
on the