The Mauritius Command, page 17
"The packet will come in from one day to the next, and it will bring a budget of tax-demands, bills, and an account of the usual domestic catastrophes: news of mumps, chicken-pox, a leaking tap; my prophetic soul sees it beneath the horizon."
The days dropped by while the Boadicea, her holds emptied and herself heaved down with purchase to bollards on the shore, had her foul bottom cleaned; Jack set up his telescope with a new counterbalance that worked perfectly on land; Stephen saw his lion, a pride of lions; and then, although it had mistaken the horizon, his prophetic soul was shown to have been right: news did come in. But it was not domestic news, nor from the west: the flying Wasp had turned about in mid-ocean and had come racing back to the Cape to report that the French had taken three more Indiamen, HM sloop Victor, and the powerful Portuguese frigate Minerva.
The Vinus and the Manche, already at sea when the squadron looked into Port-Louis, had captured the Windham, the United Kingdom, and the Charlton, all Indiamen of the highest value. The Bellone, slipping out past the blockade by night, had taken the eighteen-gun Victor, and then she and her prize had set about the Minerva, which mounted fifty-two guns, but which mounted them in vain against the fury of the French attack. The Portuguese, now La Minerve, was at present in Port-Louis, manned by seamen from the Canonniere and some deserters: the Indiamen, the Venus and the Manche were probably there too, but of that the Wasp was not quite sure.
Before the turn of the tide Jack was at sea, the wart-hogs, the soldiers, and even his telescope left behind: he had shifted his pendant into the Boadicea, for the hurricane months were not far away, and the Raisonable could not face them. He was back in his own Boadicea, driving her through variable and sometimes contrary winds until they reached the steady south-east trade, when she lay over with her lee-rail under white water, her deck sloping like the roof of Ashgrove Cottage, and began to tear off her two hundred and fifty and even three hundred nautical miles between one noon observation and the next; for there was some remote hope of catching the Frenchmen and their prizes, cutting them off before they reached Mauritius.
On the second Sunday after their departure, with church rigged, Jack was reading the Articles of War in a loud, official, comminatory voice by way of sermon and all hands were trying to keep upright (for not a sail might be attempted to be touched). He had just reached article XXIX, which dealt with sodomy by hanging the sodomite and which always made Spotted Dick and other midshipmen swell purple from suppressed giggling at every monthly repetition, when two ships heaved in sight. They were a great way off, and without interrupting her devotions, such as they might be with every mind fixed earnestly upon the mast-head, the Boadicea edged away to gain the weather-gage. But by the time Jack had reached All crimes not capital (there were precious few), and well before he cleared the ship for action, the windward stranger broke out the private signal. In answer to the Boadicea's she made her number: the Magicienne; and her companion was the Windham.
The Magicienne, said Captain Curtis, coming aboard the Commodore, had retaken the Indiamen off the east coast of Mauritius. The Windham had been separated from her captor, the Vinus, during a tremendous sudden blow in seventeen degrees south; the Magicienne had snapped her up after something of a chase, beating to windward all day, and had then stood on all night in the hope of finding the French frigate. Curtis had found her at sunset, looking like a scarecrow with only her lower masts standing and a few scraps of canvas aboard, far away right under the land, creeping in with her tattered forecourse alone. But unhappily the land to which she was creeping was the entrance to Grand-Port; and when the land-breeze set in, blowing straight in her teeth, the Magicienne had the mortification of seeing the Vinus towed right under the guns of the Ile de la Passe, at the entrance to the haven.
"By the next morning, sir, when I could stand in," said Curtis apologetically, "she was half way up to the far end, and with my ammunition so low--only eleven rounds to a gun--and the Indiaman in such a state, I did not think it right to follow her."
"Certainly not," said Jack, thinking of that long inlet, guarded by the strongly fortified Ile de la Passe, by batteries on either side and at the bottom and even more by a tricky, winding fairway fringed with reefs: the Navy called it Port South-East, as opposed to Port-Louis in the north-west, and he knew it well. "Certainly not. It would have meant throwing the Magicienne away; and I need her. Oh, yes, indeed, I need her, now they have that thumping great Minerva. You will dine with me, Curtis? Then we must bear away for Port- Louis." They passed the Indianian a tow, and lugging their heavy burden through the sea they stood on, the wind just abaft the beam.
Stephen Maturin had been deeply mistaken in supposing that Jack, older and more consequential, now looked upon ships as lodgings, more or less comfortable: the Raisonable had never been truly his; he was not wedded to her. The Boadicea was essentially different; he entered into her; he was one of her people. He knew them all, and with a few exceptions he liked them all: he was delighted to be back, and although Captain Eliot had been a perfectly unexceptionable officer, they were delighted to have him. They had in fact led Eliot a sad life of it, opposing an elastic but effective resistance to the slightest hint of change: "The Commodore had always liked it this way; the Commodore had always liked it that; it was Captain Aubrey that had personally ordered the brass bow-chasers to be painted brown." Jack particularly valued Mr Fellowes, his bosun, who had clung even more firmly than most to Captain Aubrey's sail-plan and his huge, ugly snatch-blocks that allowed hawsers to be instantly set up to the mastheads, there to withstand the strain of an extraordinary spread of canvas; and now that the Boadicea's hold had been thoroughly restowed, her hull careened, and her standing-rigging rerove with the spoils of St Paul's, she answered their joint hopes entirely. In spite of her heavy burden she was now making nine knots at every heave of the log.
"She is making a steady nine knots," said Jack, coming below after quarters.
"How happy you make me, Jack," said Stephen. "And you might make me even happier, should you so wish, by giving me a hand with this. The unreasonable attitude, or lurch, of the ship caused me to overset the chest."
"God help us," cried Jack, gazing at the mass of gold coins lying in a deep curve along the leeward side of the cabin. "What is this?"
"It is technically known as money," said Stephen. "And was you to help me pick it up, instead of leering upon it with a stunned concupiscencc more worthy of Danae than a king's officer, we might conceivably save some few pieces before they all slip through the cracks in the floor. Come, come, bear a hand, there."
They picked and shovelled busily, on all fours, and when the thick squat iron bound box was full again, Stephen said, "They are to go into these small little bags, if you please, by fifties: each to be tied with string. Will I tell you what it is, Jack?" he said, as the heavy bags piled up.
"If you please."
"It is the vile corrupting British gold that Buonaparte and his newspapers do so perpetually call out against. Sometimes it exists, as you perceive. And, I may tell you, every louis, every napoleon, every ducat or doubloon is sound: the French sometimes buy services or intelligence with false coin or paper. That is the kind of thing that gives espionage a bad name."
"If we pay real money, it is to be presumed we get better intelligence?" said Jack.
"Why, truly, it is much of a muchness: your paid agent and his information are rarely of much consequence. The real jewel, unpurchasable, beyond all price, is the man who hates tyranny as bitterly as I do: in this case the royalist or the true republican who will risk his life to bring down that Buonaparte. There are several of them on La Reunion, and I have every reason to believe there are more on the Mauritius. As for your common venal agents," said Stephen, shrugging, "most of these bags are for them; it may do some good; indeed it probably will, men rarely being all of a piece. Tell me, when shall you be able to set me down? And how do you reckon the odds at present?"
"As to the first," said Jack, "I cannot say until I have believe they are looked into Port-Louis. The odds? I still about evens for the moment. If they have gained the Minerva, we have gained the Magicienne. You will tell me that the Minerva is the heaviest of the two, and that the Magicienne only carries twelve-pounders; but Lucius Curtis is a rare plucked "un, a damned good seaman. So let us say evens for the moment. For the moment, I say, because the hurricane-season is coming, and if they lie snug in port and we outside, why, there is no telling how we shall stand in a few weeks" time."
During the night they brought the wind aft as they went north about Mauritius, and when Stephen woke he found the Boadicea on an even keel; she was pitching gently, and the urgent music that had filled her between decks these last days was no longer to be heard. He washed his face perfunctorily, passed his hand over his beard, said "It will do for today," and hurried into the day-cabin, eager for coffee and his first little paper cigar of the day. Killick was there, gaping out of the stern-window, with the coffee- pot in his hand.
"Good morning, Killick," said Stephen. "Where's himself?"
"Good morning, sir," said Killick. "Which he's still on deck."
"Killick," said Stephen, "what's amiss? Have you seen the ghost in the bread-room? Are you sick? Show me your tongue."
When Killick had withdrawn his tongue, a flannelly object of inordinate length, he said, paler still, "Is there a ghost in the bread-room, sir? Oh, oh, and I was there in the middle watch. Oh, sir, I might a seen it."
"There is always a ghost in the bread-room. Light along that pot, will you now?"
"I durs'nt, sir, begging your pardon. There's worse news than the ghost, even. Them wicked old rats got at the coffee, sir, and I doubt there's another pot in the barky."
"Preserved Killick, pass me that pot, or you will join the ghost in the bread room, and howl for evermore."
With extreme unwillingness Killick put the pot on the very edge of the table, muttering, "Oh, I'll cop it: oh, I'll cop It."
Jack walked in, poured himself a cup as he bade Stephen good morning, and said,
"All in what?"
"All the Frenchmen are in harbour, with their two Indiamen and the Victor. Have not you been on deck? We are lying off Port-Louis. The coffee has a damned odd taste."
"This I attribute to the excrement of rats. Rats have eaten our entire stock; and I take the present brew to be a mixture of the scrapings at the bottom of the sack."
"I thought it had a familiar tang," said Jack. "Killick, you may tell Mr Seymour, with my compliments, that you are to have a boat. And if you don't find at least a stone of beans among the squadron, you need not come back. It is no use trying Nereide; she don't drink any."
When the pot had been jealously divided down to its ultimate dregs, dregs that might have been called dubious, had there been the least doubt of their nature, they went on deck. The Boadicea was lying in a splendid bay, with the rest of the squadron ahead and astern of her: Sirius,
"I am afraid they are all in."
Nereide, Otter, the brig Grappler which they had retaken at St Paul's, and a couple of fore-and-aft- rigged avisoes, from the same source: to leeward the Windham Indiaman, with parties from each ship repairing the damage caused by the blow and the violence of the enemy, watched by the philosophical French prize-crew. At the bottom of the deep curve lay Port-Louis, the capital of Mauritius, with green hills rising behind and cloud-capped mountains beyond them.
"Shall you adventure to the maintop?" asked Jack. "I could show you better from up there."
"Certainly," said Stephen. "To the ultimate crosstrees, if you choose: I too am as nimble as an ape."
Jack was moved to ask whether there were earthbound apes, as compact as lead, afflicted with vertigo, possessed of two left hands and no sense of balance; but he had seen the startling effect of a challenge upon his friend, and apart from grunting as he thrust Stephen up through the lubber's hole, he remained silent until they were comfortably installed among the studding sails, with their glasses trained upon the town.
"You have the white building with the tricolour flying over it?" said Jack. "That is General Decaen's headquarters. Now come down to the shore and a little to the right, and there is the Bellone: she is swaying up a new foretopmast. Another foot--he holds up his hand--he bangs home the fid: neatly done, most seamanlike. Inside her lies the Victor. Do you see the French colours over ours? The dogs; though indeed she was theirs before she was ours. Inside again, the French colours over the Portuguese: that is the Minerva. A very heavy frigate, Stephen; and no sign of her having been roughly handled that I can see. Then comes the Vinus, with the broad pendant, alongside the sheer hulk. They are giving her a new mizen. Now she has been handled rough- bowsprit gone in the gammoning, headrails all ahoo, not a dead- eye left this side, hardly; and very low in the water; pumps hard at it: I wonder they managed to bring her in. Yet it was early in the year for that kind of blow: she must have been in the heart of it, the Indiaman on the edge, and the Magicienne quite outside, for Curtis never even struck his top-gallant masts."
"Your hurricano has a rotatory motion, I believe?"
"Exactly so. And you can be taken aback just when you think you have rode it out. Then over to the right you have the Manche and a corvette: the Criole, I believe. A very tidy squadron, once they have put the Vinus to rights. What a match it would be, was they to come out and fight their ships as well as that gallant fellow at St Paul's fought his. What was his name?"
"Feretier. Do you suppose they mean to come out?"
"Never in life," said Jack. "Not unless I can amuse them--not unless I can make their commodore believe we are no longer in the offing, or only one or two of us. No: it looks like Brest or Toulon all over again: steady blockade until we are down to salt horse and Old Weevil's wedding-cake. We used to call it polishing Cape Sicie in the Mediterranean. But at least it means that I can send you down to La Reunion with the Grappler, if you really have to go: she can convoy the Windham that far, in case of the odd privateer, and be back the next day. It is barely thirty leagues, and with this steady wind . . . Forgive me, Stephen, it is time for my captains. There is Clonfert's gig putting off already, with his damn-fool boat's crew. Why does he have to make such a raree-show of himself?"
"Other captains dress their boat's crew in odd garments."
"Still, there is such a thing as measure. I do not look forward to this meeting, Stephen. I shall have to call for an explanation--they will have to tell me how the Bellone got out. However, it will not be long. Shall you wait for me here?"
The conference was longer than Jack had expected, but Stephen, cradled in his top as it swung fore and aft on the long even swell, scarcely noticed the passage of time. He was warm through and through, so warm that he took off his neck-cloth; and while his eye dwelt on the motions of the seabirds (noddies, for the most part), the routine work on the deck below, the repairs carrying on aboard the Windham, and the boats moving to and fro, his mind was far away on La Reunion, following a large number of schemes designed to overcome the French reluctance to becoming British by means less forthright, and less murderous, than a yardarm-to yardarm engagement with both broadsides roaring loud. He was therefore almost surprised to see the Commodore's large red face heave up over the edge of his capacious nest; while at the same time he was concerned to see its heavy, anxious expression, the comparative dullness of that bright blue eye.
"This is a damned awkward harbour for a close blockade," observed the Commodore. "Easy enough to slip out of, with the wind almost always in the south-east, but difficult to enter, without you are lucky with the sea breeze and the tide--that is why they use St Paul's so often--and difficult to bottle up tight in the dark of the moon. Still, come down into the cabin, if you would like a wet: Killick has discovered a few pale ancient beans that will just provide our elevenses."
In the cabin he said, "I do not blame them for letting the Bellone slip between them and the cape; and the Canonniere was gone before ever they reached their stations. But I do blame them for falling out over it. There they sat like a couple of cross dogs, answering short and glaring at one another. It was Pym's responsibility as the senior captain, of course; but whose fault it was in fact I could not make out. All I am sure of is that they are on wretched terms. Clonfert seems to have a genius that way, but I am surprised at Pym, such an easy, good-natured fellow. However, I have invited all captains to dine, and let us hope that will smooth things over. It is a miserable business, these rivalries in a squadron. I though I had got rid of them with Corbett."
Although this dinner, whose main dishes were a fourhundred-pound turtle and a saddle of mutton from the Cape, was eaten in a humid ninety degrees, it did restore a semblance of civility, if not more. Pym was no man to keep up a resentment, and Clonfert could command the social graces; they drank wine together, and Jack saw with relief that his entertainment was going fairly well. Curtis of the Magicienne was a lively, conversable man, and he had much to tell them about the French squadron and its depredations in the Company's far eastern settlements: Hamelin, their commodore, was a savage, Jacobin fellow, it seemed, though a good seaman, while Duperre of the Bellone had a fine, swift-sailing ship, and he fought her with great determination; and the French crews were in a surprisingly high state of efficiency. Curtis's account carried the dinner over the first formal stage, and soon there was plenty of animated talk; although indeed Clonfert addressed almost all his conversation to his neighbour, Dr Maturin, and the two young commanders, Tomkinson of the Otter and Dent of the Grappler, did not feel it proper to open their mouths except to admit calipash and calipee, fat-tailed sheep and Cape Madeira.
"You and Clonfert got along very well together," observed Jack, when his bloated guests had gone. "What did you find to talk about? Is he a reading man?"
