HMS Surprise. Patrick O’Brian
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‘Sir,’ said Bonden, ‘this chap comes in at the front door.’ Two of his mates propped a man into the room. ‘I’m afraid the prisoners nobbled him on the way up.’
They stared at the dying, the dead colonel, and in the pause Dutourd whipped round, dashed out the lamp, and leapt from the window.
‘While trying to escape,’ said Stephen, when Java Dick came up to report. ‘Oh, altogether too – too – Jack, what now? I cannot scarcely crawl, alas.’
‘We carry you down to the gunboat,’ said Jack.
Maragall said, ‘There is the shutter they carry their dead suspects on, behind the door.’
‘Joan,’ said Stephen to him, ‘all the papers that matter are in the press to the right of the table.’
Gently, gently down through the open streets, Stephen staring up at the stars and the clean air reaching deep into his lungs. Dead streets, with one single figure that glanced at this familiar cortège and looked quickly away: right down to the quays and along. The gunboat: Satisfaction’s party there before them, ready at the sweeps. Bonden reporting ‘All present and sober, sir, if you please.’ Farewell, farewell, Maragall: God go with you and may no new thing arise. The black water slipping by faster, faster, lipping along her side. The strangled chime of a clock among the neat bundles of loot under the half-deck. Silence behind them: Mahon still fast asleep.
Lazaretto Island left astern; the signal lanterns swaying up, answered from the battery with the regulation hoist and a last derisive cry of ‘Cochons’. And the blessed realisation that the dawn was bringing its usual slackening of the tramontane – and that the sail down to leeward was the Lively.
‘God knows I should do the same again,’ said Jack, leaning on the helm to close her, the keen spray stinging his tired, reddened eyes. ‘But I feel I need the whole sea to clean me.’
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