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weigh fifty pound - and showed me the cinders the rain had not washed away. Then I saw the whole thing plain. I think I should have smoked it earlier if the island had blazed away good and steady, like Stromboli; but it kept shooting out jets, quite like a battery of mortars. But at least I was not so foolishly mistaken about the Franklin. There she lies, right under our lee. You will have to stand on the caronnade-slide to see her: take my glass.'
    The Franklin was of infinitely less interest to Dr Maturin than the encyclopaedia of marine life heaving on the swell below, but he climbed up, gazed, and said, 'She is in the sad way altogether, with no masts at all. How she rolls! Do you suppose we shall be able to catch her? Our sails seem somewhat out of order.'
    'Perhaps we shall,' said Jack. 'We should have steerage-way in about five minutes. But there is no hurry. She has few hands on deck, and those few cannot be called very brisk. I had much rather bear down fully prepared, so that there can be no argument, no foolish waste of life, let alone spars and cordage.'
    Six bells, and Stephen said, 'I must go below.'
    Jack gave him a hand as far as the ladder, and having urged him 'to clap on for dear life' asked whether they should meet for breakfast, adding that 'this unnatural hell-fire sea would go down as suddenly as it had got up.'
    'A late breakfast? I hope so indeed,' said Stephen, making his way down by single steps and moving, as Jack noticed for the first time, like an old man.
    It was after this late breakfast that Stephen, somewhat restored and by now reconciled to the fact that the dead marine animals were too far altered by heat, battering and sometimes by great change of depth to be valued as specimens, sat under an awning watching the Franklin grow larger. For the rest, he and Martin contented themselves with counting at least the main genera and rehearsing all that Dr Falconer had said about submarine volcanic activity, so usual in these parts; they had little energy for more. The wind had dropped, and a squall having cleared the air of volcanic dust, the sun beat down on the heaving sea with more than ordinary strength: the Surprise, under forecourse and main topsail, bore slowly down on the privateer, rarely exceeding three knots. Her guns were loaded and run out; her boarders had their weapons at hand; but their earlier apprehensions had died away entirely. The chase had suffered much more than they had; she was much less well equipped with stores and seamen; and she made no attempt to escape. It had to be admitted that with scarcely three foot of her main and mizen masts showing above deck and the foremast gone at the partners her condition was almost desperate; but she could surely have done something with the wreckage over the side, still hanging by the shrouds and stays, something with the spars still to be seen in her waist, something with her undamaged bowsprit? The Surprises looked at her with a certain tolerant contempt. With the monstrous seas fast declining the galley fires had been lit quite early, and this being Thursday they had all eaten a pound of reasonably fresh pork, half a pint of dried peas, some of the remaining Moahu yams, and as a particular indulgence a large quantity of plum duff; they had also drunk a quarter of a pint of Sydney rum, publicly diluted with three quarters of a pint of water and lemon-juice, and now with full bellies and benevolent minds they felt that the natural order of things was returning: the barky, though cruelly mauled, was in a fair way to being shipshape; and they were bearing down upon their prey.
    Closer and closer, until the capricious breeze headed them and Jack steered south and west to run alongside the Franklin on the following tack. But as the Surprise was seen to change course a confused bawling arose from the Franklin and a kind of raft was launched over her side, paddled by a single man with a bloody bandage round his head. Jack let fly the sheets,