The warm monsoon blew gently from the east, wafting HMS Leopard into the bay of Pulo Batang. She had spread all the sails she could, to reach anchorage before the tide should turn and to come in without discredit, but a pitiful show they made - patched, with discoloured heavy-weather canvas next to stuff so thin it scarcely checked the brilliant light - and her hull was worse. A professional eye could make out that she had once been painted with the Nelson chequer, that she was a man-of-war, a fourth-rate built to carry fifty guns on two full decks; but to a landsman, in spite of her pennant and the dingy ensign at her mizen-peak, she looked like an unusually shabby merchant ship. And although both watches were on deck, gazing earnestly at the shore, the extraordinarily bright-green shore, and breathing in the heady scent of the Spice Islands, the Leopard's crew were so sparse that the notion of her being a merchantman was confirmed: furthermore, a casual glance showed no guns at all; while the ragged, shirt-sleeved figures on her quarterdeck could hardly be commissioned officers.
-Patrick O'Brian, The Fortune of War
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment