The Mauritius Command, page 12
"Yes: commodious, ain't it?" said Jack, stepping out on to the stern-gallery, from which he could see the Wasp, rising and failing ten feet on the long smooth swell and shivering her foretopsail from time to time to keep her pace down to that of the two-decker. Coming back he said, "Stephen, I do so hate this vile scheme of yours."
"I know you do, my dear," said Stephen, "You have frequently mentioned it. And each time I have replied, that in the first place the contacts and the information I seek are of essential importance; and in the second, that the risk is negligible. I walk two hundred paces along a strand clearly defined by palm- trees; I call at the second house I see--a house of which I have an accurate drawing--I make a contact of inestimable value, receive my information, deliver these documents, whose extreme tenuity, you see"--holding them out--"renders them edible, as tradition doth require--I walk back to the boat and so to your swift-sailing machine, to join you, with the blessing, for breakfast. I promise not to linger, Jack, though La Reunion is another Ophir, to the philosophic mind."
Jack paced up and down: all that Stephen said was perfectly reasonable. Yet not so many years ago Jack had fetched him out of Port Mahon more dead than alive, Port Mahon in Minorca, where he had been caught on a secret mission, interrogated with all the barbarity of the Inquisition, and very nearly destroyed.
"Minorca was entirely different," said Stephen. "In that case I had been undermined at home. Here the possibility does not exist."
"It is not only that," said Jack, coming to a halt in front of a chart of the coast of La Reunion. "Just look at these God-damned reefs. Think of the surf. I have told you again and again, Stephen, these inshore waters are hellish dangerous--reefs everywhere, half of "em uncharted, the most tremendous surf. I know what I am talking about. I was here as a boy. There is scarcely a beach where you can land in safety, even when the swell is more moderate by half , To get into your Petite Anse you must run through a gap in the reef not a cable's length across even at high tide, by moonlight. And what if this Company's chap don't find it? He is no pilot for these waters: admits it candidly."
"The alternative is to go in the Otter. Clonfert does know these shores; and he has a native pilot. And since I shall have to spend some time in the Otter sooner or later, I am eager to know her captain. Much will depend upon our understanding."
"Certainly he knows this coast," said Jack, "but then the coast knows him. He has been In and out a score of times on this east side alone. The Otter is very recognizable, and if any fishing-boat or aviso or watchman on the cliffs sees her standing in, then every soldier and militiaman on the island will be running about, shooting the first thing that stirs. No: if it has to be, then the schooner is the right choice. Her captain is a steady young fellow and a good seaman; nothing flash or gimcrack about him or his Wasp. Besides, there is the time."
"Sure, I should prefer the schooner. She leaves us at Rodriguez for Bombay, as I understand it, and that will preserve my character a little longer."
"Well," said Jack in the most unwilling voice. "But I tell you, Stephen, I shall give him absolute orders to return immediately if he cannot make out his leading marks at once, or at the least sign of movement ashore. And Stephen, I must tell you this, too: if the scheme goes wrong, I cannot land a party to bring you off."
"It would be madness to attempt any such thing," said Stephen placidly; and after a slight pause, "Honest Jack, would it be uncivil to remind you, that time waits for no man? This also applies, they tell me, to the tide."
"Then at least," cried Jack, "I can send Bonden with you, and have a carronade mounted in the boat."
"That would be kind; and might I suggest that black men for the boat's crew would be a diabolically cunning stroke, by way of amusing the enemy? For we must assume that he sees in the dark, the creature."
"I shall attend to it this minute," said Jack, and he left Stephen to his encoding.
A little before four bells in the afternoon watch Dr Maturin was lowered like a parcel on to the heaving deck of the Wasp, where Bonden seized him, cast off the five fathoms of stout line that had held him motionless (no one had the least opinion of his powers of self-preservation, at sea) and led him aft, whispering, "Don't forget to pull off your hat, sir."
It was a round hat of French manufacture, and Stephen took it off to the schooner's quarterdeck and to her captain with something of an air; then turning about with the intention of waving it to Jack he found that he was gazing over a broad lane of sea at the Raisonable's stolid figurehead. The schooner had already crossed the two-decker's bows, and she was now flying goose-winged towards the clouds that hung over La Reunion.
"If you will step this way, sir,l said the captain of the Wasp, "I believe we shall find our dinner ready."
At the same moment Killick mounted to the poop of the Raisonable, where Jack was staring after the schooner, and stated, with something of his old acerbity, that "the gentlemen were treading on one another's toes in the halfdeck this ten minutes past: and his honour still in his trousers." Abruptly Jack realized that he had forgotten his invitation to the wardroom, that he was improperly dressed--north of Capricorn once more he had reverted to the free and easy ducks--and that he was in danger of committing unpunctuality. He darted below, huddled on his uniform, and shot into the great cabin just as five bells struck. Here he received his guests, the sailors in their best blue coats, the soldiers in their scarlet, and all of them red faced in the heat, for they had had their finery on for the last half hour at least: presently he led them to the dining-table, where the skylight admitted the rays of the ardent sun, and they grew redder still. At the beginning of a cruise, and often right through it, these feasts, theoretically the gathering of equals for social intercourse but in fact the almost obligatory attendance of men belonging to different steps of a rigid and never-forgotten hierarchy, tended to be ponderous affairs. Jack was perfectly aware of it, and he exerted himself to give some semblance of spontaneity to his entertainment. He tried very hard, and at one point, feeling for the sufferings of the Marine captain whose stock was bringing him nearer and nearer to a cerebral congestion, he even though of bidding them take off their heavy coats: but that would never do--a disproportioned thought indeed--for although he naturally liked his guests to enjoy themselves, he must not conciliate their goodwill by the least improper concession; they must enjoy themselves within the limits of naval convention, and these limits certainly did not extend to turning the cabin into a bawdy-house. He confined himself to ordering the awning, removed for Stephen's aerial voyage, to be rigged again, and water to be dashed upon the deck.
Although his heart was not in it, he laboured on: yet artificial conviviality is rarely infectious, and still they sat, hot, prim, polite. Convention required that no man but Jack Aubrey should initiate any conversation, and since they had not yet taken the measure of their new Commodore they obeyed it religiously. Presently he began to run short of topics, and he was reduced to urging them to eat and drink. For his own part he could only go through the motions of eating--his stomach was quite closed--but as a grateful coolness began to come down from the shaded skylight, wafted by the unvarying south- east trade, the bottle went about more briskly. Even before the port came to the table each man had a shining, glazed appearance, a tendency to stare and hold himself very straight, and each man behaved with even greater care as the decanter went its rounds--tolerably dismal rounds, as Jack could not but inwardly confess.
Dinner in the Wasp's low triangular cabin was a very different matter. Since this coming night's activity called for a mind as clear as it could be Stephen had begged for thin cold coffee: Mr Fortescue drank no wine at any time, so the bottle he had provided for his guest stood untouched between the lime- juice and the tall brass pot while the two of them devoured a great mound of curry so Vesuvian that it paled the tropic sun. Each had early discovered the other's passionate concern with birds; and now, after a modest though fully detailed account of petrels he had known, Mr Fortescue observed that there was nothing like a sailor's life for bringing a man acquainted with the world.
"Sir, sir," cried Stephen, waving a Bombay duck, "how can you speak so? Every ship I have sailed upon might have been called the Tantalus. They have carried me to remote countries, within reach of the paradise-bird, the ostrich, the sacred ibis; they have set me down in a variety of smelly and essentially identical havens; and then, almost without exception, they have hurried me away. The wealth of the Indies is within my grasp, and I am hurried away to another stinking port a thousand miles away, where exactly the same thing occurs. In candour I must not deny that the intervening ocean may reveal wonders that more than compensate the tedium of one's confinement, the Judaic ritual of life aboard--I have beheld the albatross!- but these are fleeting glimpses: we know nothing of the birds" economy, the interesting period of their loves, their solicitude for their young, their domestic tasks and cares. Yet all this is just at hand, attained by enormous expense of spirit and of the public treasure: and it is thrown away. No: I can conceive of no more deeply frustrating life for a naturalist than that of a sailor, whose lot it is to traverse the world without ever seeing it. But perhaps, sir, you have been more fortunate?"
Mr Fortescue, though freely admitting the justice of Dr Maturin's observations in general, had indeed been more fortunate, particularly in respect of the great albatross, Diomedea exulans, to which the Doctor had so feelingly referred: he had been cast away on Tristan da Cunha, where he had lived with and upon albatrosses, thousands and thousands of albatrosses, to say nothing of the penguins, terns, skuas, prions, the indigenous gallinule and a hitherto nondescript finch. He had sat with albatrosses right through their incubation; he had weighed, measured, and eaten their eggs; he had attended to their nuptial ceremonies; and, having been cast away with a piece of pencil and the Complete Practical Navigator, whose blank pages served for notes and measurements, he had, to the best of his poor abilities, drawn them.
"And were you indeed able to make illustrated notes?" cried Stephen, his eyes gleaming. "How I wish, oh how I wish, that you might be persuaded to communicate them, at some not too distant time!"
As it happened, said Mr Fortescue, reaching for the book, they were just at hand, entirely at Dr Maturin's service; and he rather thought that there might be some specimens--eggs, skins, and bones--in the locker upon which he sat.
They were still with their albatrosses at nightfall, when the chaotic mountains of La Reunion stood black against the afterglow, and when Jack, with the taste of brass in his mouth and an aching head, began his pacing of the poop, glancing westward at each turn, although there could not be the slightest chance of seeing the Wasp much before dawn. It was a pacing that continued as the stars swept widdershins round the southern sky and watch succeeded watch: nervous and uneasy at first, it settled into a mechanical to and fro of his body, leaving his mind to run clear. By this stage he was fairly peaceful, and between watching the stars he ran over his calculations, always coming up with the same comforting result: La Reunion lay at the apex of a triangle whose base was the squadron's course during the afternoon and then the night, its southern arm the Wasp's path taking Stephen in, an arm some fifty miles long. He had kept the squadron under topsails alone, and having checked the rate of sailing each time the log was heaved he was confident that they would have run off eighty miles at about four bells in the morning watch, reaching the point at which the northern arm of the triangle, that of the schooner bringing Stephen back, should meet the base, making a neat isosceles of the whole. In these seas, with their perfectly steady wind, such calculations could be made with remarkable accuracy; and here the only important variable was the time Stephen spent ashore, which Jack provisionally set at three hours.
The middle watch wore on: once a flying squid struck against the great stern-lantern: otherwise the quiet nightroutine of the ship moved along its invariable course. The wind sang an even note in the rigging, the water slipped along the side, the phosphorescent wake stretched out, a straight line broken by the bow-wave of the Otter, two cables" lengths astern; and at each stroke of the bell the sentinels called out from their stations, "All's well', "All's well', right round the ship and up and down the squadron.
"I hope to God they are right," said Jack. He stepped down to the quarterdeck and looked at the log-board again. He was strongly tempted to go up into the top or even to the masthead; but that would singularize the whole thing too much--draw too much attention to it--and he returned to his lonely poop, only desiring the officer of the watch to send a good man aloft with a night-glass and bid him keep a sharp look-out.
He was still on the poop when the eastern stars began to pale: the morning watch had been called long since and men were moving about the dim deck, sprinkling sand. Jack's certainties had vanished an hour ago: his neat isosceles triangle had fled down the wind, routed by a thousand fresh unknown quantities. He stood still now, leaning on the rail and searching the horizon from the west to south-west. The blazing rim of the sun thrust up; light shot into the eastern sky; and the lookout hailed "Sail ho."
"Where away?" cried Jack.
"On the starboard beam, sir. Wasp. A-lying to."
And there indeed she was, hull-down, well to the east, her triangular sails just nicking the rising sun. Jack called down to the quarterdeck, "Make sail to close her," and resumed his pacing. The steady grind of holystones, the slap of swabs: full day-t1me life returned to the Raisonable as she set her topgallants and ran fast along the line that should cut the schooner's path. When his powerful glass had shown him Stephen walking about far over there, Jack
went below, said, "Breakfast in the after-cabin, Killick," and stretched himself out on his cot for a while. Presently he heard the officer of the watch call for a bosun's chair, agitated cries of "Handsomely, handsomely, there. Boom him off the backstay," and a little later Stephen's familiar step.
"Good morning, Stephen," he said. "You look as pleased as Punch--the trip was to your liking, I hope and trust?"
"The most delightful trip, I thank you, Jack; and a very good morning to you too. Most delightful . . . look!" He held out his two hands, opened them cautiously and disclosed an enormous egg.
"Well, it is a prodigious fine egg, to be sure," said Jack: then, raising his voice, "Killick, light along the breakfast, will you? Bear a hand, there."
"Other things have I brought with me," said Stephen, drawing a green-baize parcel from his pocket and a large cloth bag. "But nothing in comparison with the truly regal gift of that most deserving young man Fortescue. For what you see there, Jack, is nothing less than the concrete evidence of the albatross's gigantic love. Whereas this'- pointing to the gently heaving parcel--"is no more than a poll-parrot of the common green, or West African, species, too loquacious for its own good." He undid the baize, snipped the band confining the parrot's wings, and set the bird upon its feet. The parrot instantly cried. "A bas Buonaparte. Salaud, salaud, salaud," in a metallic, indignant voice, climbed on to the back of his chair, and began to preen its ruffled feathers. "The cloth bag, on the other hand, contains some of the finest coffee I have ever tasted; it grows to great advantage upon the island."
Breakfast appeared, and when they were alone again Jack said, "So you did not spend all your time ashore bird's nesting, I collect. Would it be proper to tell me anything about the rest of your journey?"
"Oh, that," said Stephen, setting his egg sideways upon a butter-dish to see it at a better angle. "Yes, yes: it was a straightforward piece of routine, perfectly simple, as I told you. Fruitful, however. I shall not tell you about my interlocutor--far better to know nothing in these cases--apart from saying that I take him to be a wholly reliable source, exceptionable only in his prolonged retention of this indiscreet fowl, a fault of which he was himself most sensible. Nor shall I trouble you with the political aspect: but I have a clear notion of the military side. I believe it to be a true statement of the position, and am not without hope that it will give you pleasure. In the first place, our accession of strength is as yet unknown: in the second, the two most recently captured Indiamen, the Europe and the Streatham, are in St Paul's road, on the other side of the island, together with their captor, the frigate Caroline, whose inward parts are alleged to require some attention that will keep her there for perhaps a fortnight. In fact her captain, a most amiable young man called Feretier, is attached to the wife of the Governor, General Desbrusleys, a passionate gentleman who is at odds with Captain Saint-Michiel, the commandant of St Paul's, and with most of the other officers on La Reunion. At present he is at Saint- Denis: his forces amount to something over three thousand men, including the militia; but they are stationed at various points, twenty and even thirty miles apart over difficult mountain country; and although St Paul's is strongly defended by batteries and fortifications mounting, let us see, nine and eight is seventeen--I write seven and I retain one; five and five is ten, and with the one that I retained, eleven--mounting a hundred and seventeen guns, you may consider it practicable, in spite of the difficulty of landing on these shores, to which you have so frequently adverted. This rude sketch shows the approximate location of the batteries. This the disposition of the troops. You will forgive me for labouring the obvious when I say, that if you do decide to act, then celerity is everything. "Lose not a minute", as you would put it."
"Lord, Stephen, how happy you make me," said Jack, taking the paper and comparing it with his chart of St Paul's dstead and the shore. "Yes, yes: I see. A crossing fire, of course. Forty-two-pounders, I dare say; and well served, no doubt. There is no possibility of cutthing the Indiamen or the frigate out, none at all, without we take the batteries. And that we cannot do with our Marines and seamen: but three or four hundred soldiers from Rodriguez would just tip the scale, I do believe. We could not hold the place, of course, but we might take the ships--there is a fair chance that we take the ships." He stared at the paper and at his chart. "Yes: a tough nut, to be sure; but if only I can persuade the soldiers on Rodriguez to move at once, and if only we can get our men ashore, I believe we can crack it. St Paul's is on the leeward side, where the surf is not so wicked unless the wind lies in the west . . . but I quite take your point about losing no time, Stephen . . . "He ran out of the cabin, and a few moments later Stephen, turning the egg over in his hands, heard the Raisonable begin to speak as she bore up for Rodriguez, spreading sail after sail: the masts complained, the taut rigging sang with a greater urgency, the sound of the water racing along her side mounted to a diffused roar; the complex orchestra of cordage, wood under stress, moving sea and wind, all-pervading sound, exalting to the sea borne ear--a sound that never slackened day or night while the squadron made good its five hundred miles with the strong, steady south-east wind just abaft the beam.
