The Books: “Desolation Island” (Patrick O’Brian)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Desolation Island , by Patrick O’Brian.

And now I come to the end (so far) of my experience with the M&C series. I finished Desolation Island last week, and am now re-reading James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime (post about it here) … but I will eventually pick up the next in the series. I am, how you say, hooked. I love them. I love every word. I know I have a long way to go to actually finish the series, with much ahead of me – but I’ll say this, from my experience of having read the first five – Desolation Island is, so far, my favorite in the series. There are a couple of set-piece events which absolutely knocked me on my ass and I had a really hard time picking which excerpt I wanted to do today. There is the scene where the ship hits the iceberg. Terrifying. It’s a misty day and visibility is bad and suddenly – towering above the masts – is a wall of ice. Brilliantly written. There is the outbreak of plague on the boat which kills hundreds of people, and runs Maturin ragged – tryiing to contain it. There is the frantic pumping and bailing out scene after hitting the berg – trying to save the ship … and those who want to bail, and those who want to stay. Panic growing. Factions erupting. There is the section on Desolation Island itself, with the surly American ship – and the growing threat of war between the two countries. And then there is the unbeLIEVABLE battle between the Leopard and the Waakaamheid (that excerpt won out – or at least part of it – since the battle goes on for more than 10 pages) – I seriously felt like I was actually transported reading that battle. I may have been sitting on the bus reading it, but I wasn’t actually there. I was on the Leopard – climbing the mountains of water, descending into the troughs – looking over my shoulder for the ship pulling up behind us – sometimes blocked by a wall of water – and then – oh look – there it is – on the top of the mountain behind us … Trying to outrun the ship in the middle of a hurricane with Perfect-Storm-like conditions. I could see it. It was excruciating to read. How to time the shots fired – so that they might hit their mark – even while going wildly up up up and then wildly down down down … God. Kudos.

There was just something about the particular brand of desperation expressed in this book that really spoke to me. How people behave when they are panicking: sometimes it brings out the best (the relentless night-and-day pumping) and sometimes it brings out the worst (the chaos and looting as people decided to jump into lifeboats). Nobody is ONLY noble. We all have demons within us. Sometimes they win out. I just found that aspect of the book totally fascinating.

Like I said, the set-piece battle is spectacular – some of the best writing in the series so far. It’s the only battle in the whole book (if I’m remembering correctly – I honestly think I’m reading these books too fast!! Sometimes details are lost – but I just can’t seem to slow myself down). The rest of the book has to do with the perils of life at sea, and it also goes into the details of intelligence work with much more depth than in the other books. At least that is my impression. There is a female prisoner on board the boat – who is also a spy (and not a very adept one) – and there is her lover, a stowaway. Maturin plays them off each other, and has to hide his motivations, and make it seem like much of what is going on is purely accidental. There are deeps in Stephen Maturin – I feel like I am just getting to know the man.

But what I am really left with from Desolation Island is the battle in the middle of the hurricane, and the ship striking the iceberg.

O’Brian outdoes himself.

If you haven’t read the books, and you plan to, and you do not want to know how the battle ends in Desolation Island, then skip this excerpt! It has the most powerful ending of a chapter yet! And it reveals the true character of Jack Aubrey. Spectacular.

EXCERPT FROM Desolation Island , by Patrick O’Brian.

They cast loose the guns, removed the wing deadlights, and looked out on to a soaring green cliff of water fifty yards away with the Leopard‘s wake trace down its side. It shut out the sky, and it was racing towards them. The Leopard‘s stern rose, rose: the enormous wave passed smoothly under her counter, and there through the flying spume lay the Waakzaamheid below, running down the far slow. ‘When you please, Mr Burton,’ said Jack to the gunner. ‘A hole in her foretopsail might make it split.’ The larboard gun roared out and instantly the cabin was filled with smoke. No hole: no fall of shot either. Jack, to starboard, had the Dutchman in his dispart sight. A trifle of elevation and he pulled the lanyard. Nothing happened: flying spray had soaked the lock. ‘Match,’ he cried, but by the time he had the glowing end in his hand the Waakzaamheid was below his line of sight, below the depression of the gun. From down there in the trough she fired up, a distant wink of flame, and she got in another couple of shots before the grey-green hill of water parted them again.

‘May I suggest a cigar, sir?’ said Moore. ‘One can hold it in one’s mouth.’ He was acting as sponger and second captain, and his face was six inches from Jack’s: he was encased in oilskins and there was nothing of the Marine about him but his fine red face and the neat stock showing under his chin.

‘A capital idea,’ said Jack, and in the calm of the trough, before the Waakzaamheid appeared again, Moore lit him a cigar from the glowing match in its tub.

The Leopard began to rise, the Dutchman appeared, black in the white water of the breaking crests high up there, and both nine-pounders went off together. The guns leapt back, the crews worked furiously, grunting, no words, sponged, loaded, and ran them out again. Another shot, and this time Jack saw his ball, dark in the haze of lit water, flying at its mark: he could not follow it home, but the line was true, a little low. Now they were on the crest, and the cabin was filled with wind and water mingled, unbreathable: the gun-crews worked without the slightest pause, worked through and through.

Down, down the slope amidst the white wreckage of the wave, the guns run out and waiting. Across the hollow and up the other side. ‘I believe I caught his splash,’ said Moore. ‘Twenty yards short of our starboard quarter.’

‘So did I,’ said Burton. ‘He wants to knock our rudder, range along, and give us a broadside, the bloody-minded dog.’

The Waakzaamheid over the crest again: Jack poured the priming into the touch-hole with his horn, guarding it with the flat of his hand, the cigar clenched between his teeth and the glow kept bright; and this bout each gun fired three times before the Leopard mounted too high, racing up and up, pursued by the Dutchman’s shot. On and on: an enormous switchback, itself in slow, majestic motion, but traversed at a racing speed in which the least stumble meant a fall. Alternate bursts of fire, aimed and discharged with such an intensity of purpose that the men did not even see the storm of flying water that burst in upon them at each crest. On and on, the Waakzaamheid gaining visibly.

Here was Babbington at his side, waiting for a pause. ‘Take over, Moore,’ said Jack, as the gun ran in. He stepped over the train-tackle, and Babbington said, ‘She’s hit our mizzen-top, sir, fair and square.’

Jack nodded. She was coming far too close: point-blank range now, and the wind to help her balls. ‘Start the water, all but a ton; and try the jib, one-third in.’

Back to the gun as it ran out. Now it was the Waakzaamheid‘s turn to fire, and fire she did, striking the Leopard‘s stern-post high up: a shrewd knock that jarred the ship as she was on the height of the wave, and a moment later a green sea swept through the deadlights.

‘Good practice in this sea, Mr Burton,’ said Jack.

The gunner turned his streaming face, and its fixed fierce glare broke into a smile. ‘Pretty fair, sir, pretty fair. But if I did not get home two shots ago, my name is Zebedee.’

The flying Leopard drew a little way ahead with the thrust of her jib, a hundred yards or so; and the switchback continued, the distances the same. It was the strangest gunnery, with its furious activity and then the pause, waiting to be fired at; the soaking at the crest, the deck awash; the intervening wall of water; the repetition of the whole sequence. No order; none of the rigid fire-discipline of the gun-deck; loud, gun-deafened conversation between the bouts. The dread of being pooped by the great seas right there in front of their noses, rising to blot out the sun with unfailing regularity, and of broaching to, hardly affected the cabin.

A savage roar from Burton’s crew. ‘We hit her port-lid,’ cried Bonden, the second captain. ‘They can’t get it closed.’

‘Then we are all in the same boat,’ said Moore. ‘Now the Dutchmen will have a wet jacket every time she digs in her bows, and I wish they may like it, ha ha!’

A short-lived triumph. A midshipman came to report the jib carried clean away – Babbington had all in hand – was trying to set a storm-staysail – half the water was pumped out.

But although the Leopard was lighter she felt the loss of the jib; the Waakzaamheid was coming up, and now the vast hill of sea separated them only for seconds. If the Leopard did not gain when all her water was gone, the upper-deck guns would have to follow it: anything to draw ahead and preserve the ship. The firing was more and more continuous; the guns grew hot, kicking clear on the recoil, and first Burton and then Jack reduced the charge.

Nearer and nearer, so that they were both on the same slop, no trough between them: a hole in the Dutchman’s foretopsail, but it would not split, and three shots in quick succession struck the Leopard‘s hull, close to her rudder. Jack had smoked five cigars to the butt, and his mouth was scorched and dry. He was staring along the barrel of his gun, watching for the second when the Waakzaamheid‘s bowsprit should rise above his sight, when he saw her starboard chaser fire. A split second later he stabbed his cigar down on the priming and there was an enormous crash, far louder than the roar of the gun.

How much later he looked up he could not tell. Nor, when he did look up, could he quite tell what was afoot. He was lying by the cabin bulkhead with Killick holding his head and Stephen sewing busily; he could feel the passage of the needle and of the thread, but no pain. He stared right and left. ‘Hold still,’ said Stephen. He felt the red-hot stabbing now, and everything fell into place. The gun had not burst: there was Moore fighting it. He had been dragged clear – hit – a splinter, no doubt. Stephen and Killick crouched over him as a green sea gushed in: then Stephen cut the thread, whipped a wet cloth round his ears, one eye and forehead, and said, ‘Do you hear me now?’ He nodded; Stephen moved on to another man lying on the deck; Jack stood up, fell, and crawled over to the guns. Killick tried to hold him, but Jack thrust him back, clapped on to the tackle and helped run out the loaded starboard gun. Moore bent over it, cigar in hand, and from behind him Jack could see the Waakzaamheid twenty yards away, huge, black-hulled, throwing the water wide. As Moore’s hand came down, Jack automatically stepped aside; but he was still stupid, he moved slow, and the recoiling gun flung him to the deck again. On hands and knees he felt for the train-tackle in the smoke, found it as the darkness cleared, and tallied on. But for a moment he could not understand the cheering that filled the cabin, deafening his ears: then through the shattered deadlights he saw the Dutchman’s foremast lurch, lurch again, the stays part, the mast and sail carry away right over the bows.

The Leopard reached the crest. Green water blinded him. It cleared, and through the bloody haze running from his cloth he saw the vast breaking wave with the Waakzaamheid broadside on its curl, on her beam-ends, broached to. An enormous, momentary turmoil of black hull and white water, flying spars, rigging that streamed wild for a second, and then nothing at all but the great hill of green-grey with foam racing upon it.

‘My God, oh my God,’ he said. ‘Six hundred men.’