The Wine-Dark Sea Read Online Free PDF

getting up something cruel.'
    It was true. The ship was cutting such extraordinary capers that even Jack, a merman if ever there was one, had to sit down, wedging himself firmly on a broad locker; and at the setting of the watch, after their traditional toasted cheese had been eaten, he went on deck to take in the courses and lie to under a close-reefed main topsail. He had, at least by dead-reckoning, reached something like the point he had been steering for; the inevitable leeway should do the rest by dawn; and he hoped that now the ship's motion would be eased.
    'Is it very disagreeable upstairs?' asked Stephen when he returned. 'I hear thunderous rain on the skylight.'
    'It is not so much very disagreeable as very strange," said Jack. 'As black as can be, of course - never the smell of a star - and wet; and there are strong cross-seas, apparently flowing in three directions at once, which is contrary to reason. Lightning above the cloud, too, showing deep red. Yet there is something else I can hardly put a name to.' He held the lamp close to the barometer, shook his head, and going back to his seat on the locker he said that the motion was certainly easier: perhaps they might go back to the andante?
    'With all my heart,' said Stephen, 'if I might have a rope round my middle to hold me to the chair.'
    'Of course you may,' said Jack. 'Killick! Killick, there. Lash the Doctor into his seat, and let us have another decanter of port.'
    The andante wound its slow length along with a curious gasping unpredictable rhythm; and when they had brought it to its hesitant end, each looking at the other with reproach and disapproval at each false note, Jack said, 'Let us drink to Zephyrus, the son of Millpond.' He was in the act of pouring a glass when the ship pitched with such extraordinary violence -pitched as though she had fallen into a hole - that he very nearly fell, and the glass left the wine in the air, a coherent body for a single moment.
    'This will never do,' he said: and then, 'What in Hell was that crash?' He stood listening for a moment, and then in reply to a knock on the door he called, 'Come in.'
    'Mr West's duty, sir,' said Norton, the newly-appointed midshipman, dripping on the chequered deck-cloth, 'and there is firing on the larboard bow.'
    'Thank you, Mr Norton,' said Jack. 'I shall come at once.' He quickly stowed his fiddle on the locker and ran on deck. While he was still on the ladder there was another heavy crash, then as he reached the quarterdeck and the pouring rain, several more far forward.
    'There, sir,' said West, pointing to a jetting glow, blurred crimson through the milk-warm rain. 'It comes and goes. I believe we are under mortar-fire.'
    'Beat to quarters,' called Jack, and the bosun's mate wound his call. 'Mr West - Mr West, there. D'ye hear me?' He raised his voice immensely, calling for a lantern: it showed West flat on his face, pouring blood.
    'Fore topsail,' cried Jack, putting the ship before the wind, and as she gathered way he told two of the afterguard to carry West below. 'Forestaysail and jib.'
    The ship came to life, to battle-stations, with a speed and regularity that would have given him deep satisfaction if he had had a second to feel it.
    Stephen was already in the sick-berth with a sleepy Martin and a half-dressed Padeen when West was brought down, followed by half a dozen foremast hands, two of them walking cases. 'A severe depressed fracture on either side of the coronal suture," said Stephen, having examined West under a powerful lantern, 'and of course this apparently meaningless laceration. Deep coma. Padeen, Davies, lift him as gently as ever you can to the mattress on the floor back there; lay him face down with a little small pad under his forehead the way he can breathe. Next.'
    The next man, with a compound fracture of his left arm and a series of gashes down his side, required close, prolonged attention: sewing, snipping, binding-up. He was a man of exceptional