Author's note: I've never been this depressing before, but this has been gnawing at me ever since I realized that, in the scene with Jack, Nagle, and Allen cutting Warley and the mast away, the last rope refuses to be cut. I need to go write something nicer now.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Fury of the Sea
He turns, and there is Mr. Allen at his back, eyebrow raised and face cast into a grimace by this damned tempest. The man is waiting for an order, and he knows it, but at the same time there is Nagle at his side, crying out with desperation – "Sir, he's going to make it, sir! He can do it!"
The decision is heartbreakingly simple to make, but difficult to keep to. He had made it when Tom had first cried out that the wreckage was acting as an anchor; Jack Aubrey knows the choice that must be made when the life of one man is pitted against the life of hundreds. There was no question in his mind that the fallen mast, and Will Warley, still clinging to it with hopeless slipping hands, would have to be cut loose.
But now, with Mr. Allen holding the bundle of axes that might as well be cutting Warley himself in two, he finds himself hesitating. He wants to tell Nagle, who is still cleaving to his sinking shreds of hope, to be quiet, for can't he see they can't wait any longer in this seething, tossing sea? Can't he resign himself to the fact, as Jack almost has, that it is his duty now to watch a good man die?
He hands an axe to Nagle, blinking but refusing to look away as the young carpenter's mate stares, horrified and shocked and yet loyal beneath it all, into his eyes. Nagle's eyes then turn to the hatchet in his hands, and he takes a deep shuddering, sobbing breath, and plunges it into one of the ropes with a cry that is half-anger, half-grief. Jack, silent, does the same beside him, and so does Mr. Allen, inscrutable, on Jack's other side. The wind wails and howls around them as they work, and the rain and hail drive into their faces, and behind them they can hear the splash of water rushing onto the deck and the creak of the straining wood.
Is it significant, that the last rope refuses to be cut, Jack wonders as he hacks at it. It is the sort of question Stephen might ask, Stephen with his books and his introspection. Does it mean that he has made a mistake, or that Warley's death will haunt them, or does it simply mean that he has weakened since he began? Jack gives one last cut and the rope snaps, whirling away into the screaming darkness that is not loud enough to drown out Warley's cries.
The ship rights itself so suddenly that Jack, who stands steadier at sea than he does on land, has to grab onto the rail. A cheer from the crew goes up beneath them and Nagle hacks with greater ferocity and Jack feels sick to his stomach. The sailors on duty have clustered behind them, and they do not cheer. Instead they stare out at the roiling gray water and watch Will Warley flounder, choke, and gasp. They cannot look away from him. Jack cannot look. Instead he stares down at the scores in the woodwork left by their axes—Mr. Allen's precise, sailorly marks, his own slightly ragged ones, and the angry, deep gashes by Nagle's hand that almost look as if they could bleed.
There is laughter and huzzah-ing belowdecks, and shrieking all around, and beside him Nagle sniffs heavily and tries not to cry, but as Jack looks at anything but the dying man in the sea, he is silent.