![]() ![]() ![]() In private, Stephen comforts Jack but questions whether Jack's pursuit of the Acheron has become a reckless obsession. As the mast rigging pulls the Surprise sharply over on its keel, Jack and Nagle are forced to cut the ropes to save the ship, but cannot rescue Warley. Jack orders the Surprise 's sails taken in, and as Hollom climbs to the mizzen top to assist Warley, the mast snaps, flinging Warley into the sea. Near the cape, a fierce storm abruptly closes in and the French ship disappears. Jack presses his advantage, chasing the Acheron as it hastily retreats southward toward Cape Horn. The following morning the officers are impressed to find that Jack has maneuvered the Surprise in a vast circle and come up behind the Acheron. Jack then orders a decoy raft made and that night has it placed in the water with lit lanterns and cut adrift to attract the Acheron fire while the Surprise slips away. The following day, Jack is stunned when the Acheron abruptly appears on the horizon closing in behind them, and orders the Surprise to make a top speed escape. When older midshipman Hollom joins the crew's lusty singing, however, the men are inexplicably offended. Meanwhile, up on deck, the crew celebrates when Plaice utters his first words since his injury. Jack is fascinated by the double hull design that allows the ship to sit high in the water and move at great speed. A few days later as the Surprise returns to open sea, carpenter's mate Joseph Nagle, captain of the mizzen top William Warley, and another sailor bring Jack a replica of the Acheron, which the crew has nicknamed the "phantom ship." Nagle explains that Warley had witnessed the boat under construction in a Boston shipyard and built the model with exact detail. That evening in the great cabin, Stephen joins Jack for their regular meeting to play violin and cello duets. ![]() The crew watches with interest when Stephen performs surgery on the ship's oldest crew member, Joe Plaice, who has sustained a serious head wound. Learning that Stephen has had to amputate young midshipman Lord Blakeney's right arm, Jack brings Blakeney a book about the exploits of famed British naval hero Horatio Nelson, who also suffered the loss of a limb in battle. Determined to fulfill his orders to capture the French privateer, Jack refuses to consider returning to England for refitting and orders repairs to be made while the ship rests on the coast's nearby shoals. ![]() Jack then oversees the ship's numerous repairs while his close friend, Irish surgeon Stephen Maturin, tends to the many wounded. Later, Jack speculates about the Acheron 's stealth, speed and apparent impregnability and wonders how the French ship, which the Surprise had been trying to locate for seven weeks, found them. When return fire from the Surprise proves ineffectual and coxswain Barret Bonden reports their ship's rudder has been shot away, Jack orders boats lowered to tow his damaged vessel into a fog whiteout. In 1805, in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Brazil, the HMS Surprise, a British frigate commanded by Captain Jack Aubrey, comes under an unexpected attack by a French privateer, the Acheron. ![]()
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