Excerpt from Blue At The Mizzen by Patrick O'Brian, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'Pass the word for Poll Skeeping,' cried Stephen in a harsh peremptory tone. He thrust them aside irrespective of rank, whipped out a lancet 9always in a side-pocket), slit Jacob's sleeve up to the shoulder, cut the shirt away, uncovered the spurting brachial artery and two other ample sources of blood on the same limb. In turning a complete somersault over both his chair and a small stool with a glass in his hand, at the moment of a double rise on the part of the frigate followed by a sickening plunge, Jacob had contrived not only to stun himself but also to shatter the glass, whose broad, sharp-edged sides had severed the artery and many other smaller but still considerable vessels.

Poll came at a run, carrying bandages, gut-threaded needles, pledgets and splints. Stephen, who had his thumb on the most important pressure-point, desired the members of the gunroom to stand back, right back; and Poll instantly set about swabbing, dressing, and even tidying the patient before he was carried off to a sick-berth cot.

All this had called for a good deal of explanation and comment: and when Jack came below, telling Mr. Harding that they were making truly remarkable way, barely six points off the wind, the whole tedious thing seemed to be happening again, with people showing just what had happened and how it had happened, when a truly enormous, an utterly shocking crash checked the frigate's way entirely, thrusting her off course and swinging the lanterns so violently against the deck overhead that two went out—a crash that drove all discussion of Jacob's injuries far, far from the collective mind. jack shot up on deck, followed by the whole gunroom.

He could see nothing in the roaring darkness: but Whewell, the officer fo the watch, told him that the forward starboard lookout had hailed "light on the starboard bow' seconds before the enormous impact; that he himself had seen a huge, dark, and otherwise lightless craft coming right before the wind at ten knots or more, strike the frigate's bows, cross her shattered stem and run down her larboard side, her yards sweeping Surprise's shrouds but always breaking free. A very heavy Scandinavian timer-carrier, he though: ship-rigged. Could see no name, no port, no flag. No hail came across. He had roused out the bosun and the carpenter—they would report in a moment—the ship was steering still, though she sagged to leeward.

Jack ran forward to meet them. 'Bowsprit and most of the head carried away, sir,' said the carpenter.

'Nor I shouldn't answer for the foremast,' said the bosun.

A carpenter's mate addressed his chief: 'We'm making water: five ton a minute,' in a tone of penetrating anxiety that affected all who heard him.

Harding had already called all hands, and as they came tumbling up Jack put the ship before the wind, furling everything but the main and fore courses and manning the pumps. She answered her helm slowly, and she sailed slowly; but once jack had her with the very strong wind and the short, pounding sea on her uninjured larboard quarter she no longer gave him that desperate sense of being about to founder any minute; and he and the carpenter and Harding, each with a lantern, made their tour of inspection: what they found was very, very bad—bowsprit, head and all the gear swept clean away—headsails gone, of course; and there were certainly some sprung butts lower down. But by the end of the middle watch, with the carpenter and his mates working as men will work with water pouring into their ship, the pumps were holding their own, or even slightly gaining on the influx. 'Oh, it's only makeshift stuff, you know, sir,' said the carpenter. 'And if you can bring her inside the mole and so into the yard, I shall forswear evil living and give half my prize-money to the poor: for its is only the yard that can make her anything like seaworthy. God send we may creep inside that lovely old mole again.'

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