The Mauritius Command, page 23
The Commodore laughed aloud, beat his massive thigh, held out his hand and said, "Governor, I give you joy. They have surrendered, and your kingdom awaits you. Or this island of it, at the least."
CHAPTER SEVEN
His Excellency the Governor of La Reunion sat at the head of his council table: he now wore a uniform as splendid as that of the gold and scarlet colonels on his left hand, more splendid by far than the weather- worn blue of the sea-officers on his right; and now there was no question of his sitting mute. Yet there was no trace of hauteur to be seen on his eager, intelligent face as he tried to guide the meeting towards a unanimous approval of the Commodore's revolutionary scheme, his plan of an instant attack upon Mauritius, with simultaneous landings from Flat Island off Port-Louis and in the neighbourhood of Port South-East at the other end of the island. Colonel Keating had been with him from the first; but a distinct inclination to enjoy the fruits of victory for a while, "to allow the men a little rest', and, more creditably, a desire to prepare the campaign with due deliberation, so that mortars for example did not arrive without their shells, had yet to be overcome; for if so ambitious and risky an operation as this were to fall, the attempt could be justified only by a unanimous vote.
"I shall echo the Commodore's words, gentlemen," said Mr Farquhar, "and cry "Lose not a moment". This is the moment at which we have a superiority of five to three in frigates, when we possess a fleet of transports, troops in the first flush of victory, and exact intelligence of the enemy's strength and dispositions on the Mauritius, supplied by their own records here."
"Hear him, hear him," said Colonel Keating.
"With command of the sea we may concentrate our forces wherever we choose. Furthermore, my colleague"--bowing to Stephen at the far end of the table--"assures me that at this juncture, this very favourable juncture, our efforts at sapping the enemy's morale are more than likely to be crowned with success; and we are all aware of Dr Maturin's powers in that direction." It was not the most fortunate stroke: some of the colonels who had toiled and sweated extremely in the hope of glory turned a sombre gaze upon Dr Maturin. Feeling this, Mr Farquhar hurried on, "And perhaps even more important, this is the moment at which our hands are free. The Leopard has taken our despatches to the Cape: she will not return. No orders from any authority unacquainted with the exact state of local conditions can take the guidance of operations from the hands of those who are acquainted with them--no new set of staff officers can, for the moment, arrive with a plan of campaign matured in Bombay, Fort William, or Whitehall. This is a state of affairs that cannot last."
"Hear him, hear him," said Colonel Keating, Colonel McLeod and Colonel Fraser; and the fatter, more cautious staff-officers exchanged uneasy glances.
"Far be it from me to decry patient laborious staff-work," said the Governor. "We have seen its gratifying results on this island: but, gentlemen, time and tide wait for no man; and I must remind you that Fortune is bald behind."
Walking away from the Residence through streets placarded with the Governor's proclamation, Jack said to Stephen, "What is this that Farquhar tells us about Fortune? Is she supposed to have the mange?"
"I conceive he was referring to the old tag--his meaning was, that she must be seized by the forelock, since once she is passed there is no clapping on to her hair, at all. In the figure she ships none abaft the ears, if you follow me."
"Oh, I see. Rather well put: though I doubt those heavy-sided lobsters will smoke the simile." He paused, considering, and said, "It don't sound very eligible, bald behind; but, however, it is all figurative, all figurative. . . " He gazed with benign approval at a strikingly elegant woman accompanied by an even more willowy black slave-girl, stepped into the gutter to let them pass, they looked haughty, unconscious, a thousand miles away, and continued, "Still, I am glad they have come to see reason. But Lord, Stephen, what an infernal waste of time these councils are! If it had dragged on another day the squadron would have been dispersed- Sirius is gone already--and I should have had to follow my own scheme. My first duty is to the sea, and I must get at Hamelin before the Bellone and Minerve are back. But as it is, I can combine the two. Pullings!" he exclaimed.
On the other side of the street Pullings cast off the girl at his side and crossed, blushing a reddish mahogany yet beaming too. "Did you find anything you liked, Pullings?" asked Jack. "I mean, in the professional line?"
"Oh, yes, sir--I was only looking after her for a minute, for Mr--for another officer, sir--but I don't suppose you will let me have her, sir--far too pretty, except for a trifle of worm in her futtocks, her ground futtocks." Pullings, had been sent to St Paul's in the Sirius when the frigate tore down immediately after the capitulation to snap up all the shipping in the road; he had been told to make his own choice of a replacement for the Groper, and he had done himself as proud as Pontius Pilate. They watched the young woman attach herself to the arm of Mr Joyce of the Kite transport, and as they walked along, Pullings, more coherent now that he was relieved of a sense of guilt--for very strangely his officers looked upon Jack Aubrey as a moral figure, in spite of all proofs to the contrary--expatiated on the merits of his prize, a privateer schooner, copper-fastened, wonderfully well-found.
At the gates of the government stable-yard they parted, and while Bonden led forth a powerful black horse, once the pride of the French garrison, Stephen said, "This is not the moment to ask how you mean to combine the two schemes; yet I admit that I am curious to know. Bonden, I advise you, in your own best interest, not to stand behind that creature's heels."
"If you will ride over to St Paul's with me," said Jack, "I will tell you."
"Alas, I have an audience of the Bishop in half an hour, and then an appointment at the printing-shop."
"Maybe it is just as well. Things will be clearer in the morning. Bonden, cast off afore."
Things were indeed clearer in the morning: the Commodore had seen all the officers concerned; he had all the facts distinctly arranged; and he received Stephen in a room filled with charts and maps.
"Here, do you see," he said, pointing to an island three or four miles off Port South-East, "is the Ile de la Passe. It lies on the reef at the very edge of the only deep-water channel into the port: a devilish channel, narrow, with a double dog-leg and any number of banks and rocks in its bed. The island is pretty strongly held--it mounts about twenty heavy guns--but the town is not. They expect us in the north, where we have been blockading all this while, and most of their forces are around Port-Louis: so if we knock out the Ile de la Passe--and a couple of frigates should be able to manage it--"
"In spite of the intricate navigation? These are very alarming shoals, brother. I see two and three fathoms marked for a couple of miles inside the reef; and here is a vast area with the words Canoe- passage at high-tide; while your channel is a mere serpent; a lean serpent at the best. But I am not to be teaching you your business."
"It can be done. Clonfert and his black pilot know these waters perfectly. Look, here is the Jacotet anchorage just at hand, where he cut out the American. Yes, they should manage it well enough; though of course it must be done by boats and in the night; ships could not stand in against that fire, without being sadly mauled. Then once the island is seized, the French cannot easily retake it: their batteries cannot reach across the inner bay and since they have no ship of force in Port South-East, nor even gunboats, they have no means of getting their artillery any nearer. Nor can they starve it out, so long as we victual it from the sea. So if we hold the Ile de la Passe we deny the French their best harbour after Port-Louis; we have a base for our landing; and we open up all the country out of range of the batteries for your handing-out of broadsheets and culling simples. For their little garrisons in the town and along the coast will scarcely stir outside the reach of their own guns."
"This is a very beautiful plan," said Stephen.
"Ain't it?" said Jack. "Keating has already sent some Bombay gunners and European troops into the Nereide, to garrison the place when we have taken it: for obviously the Nereide possesses more local knowledge than all the rest of the squadron put together."
"You do not feel that Clonfert's oversetting of the little ship off the Riviere des Pluies throws a certain shade on his qualifications?"
"No, I do not. It could have happened to anyone in those circumstances, with the soldiers ready to call us shy. I should have tried it myself. But I am not going to give him his head at the Ile de la Passe; I do not want him to be coming it the Cochrane: Pyrn shall command. Pym may not be very wise, but he is a good, sound man, as regular as a clock; so Nereide, Iphigenia and perhaps Staunch -
"What is this Staunch?"
"She is a brig: came in last night from Bombay. A useful little brig, and in excellent order. Narborough has her, a most officer-like cove: you remember Narborough, Stephen?" Stephen shook his head. "Of course you do," cried Jack. "Lord Narborough, a big black man with a Newfoundland dog, third of the Su?prise."
"You mean Garron," said Stephen.
"Garron, of course: you are quite right. Garron he was then, but his father died last year, and now he is called Narborough. So Nereide, Iphigenia, and perhaps Staunch if she can get her water in quick enough, are to run up to Port-Louis, where Pym is watching Hamelin's motions. lphigema will stay, and Sirius and Nereide will come south for the Ile de la Passe."
"The Nereide is not to come back here, so?"
"To wait for the dark of the moon, you mean? No; we cannot afford the time."
"Then in that case I had better go aboard her now. There is a great deal to be done in the Mauritius, and the sooner I get there the better. For I tell you, my dear, that though they are less lethal, my broadsheets are as effective as your--as your roundshot."
"Stephen," said Jack, "I am convinced of it."
"I had almost said, as effective as your broadsides, but I was afraid the miserable play upon words might offend an embryonic baronet; for Farquhar tells me that if this second campaign should succeed as well as the first the happy commander will certainly be so honoured. Should you not like to be a baronet, Jack?"
"Why, as to that," said Jack, "I don't know that I should much care for it. The Jack Aubrey of King James's time paid a thumping fine not to be a baronet, you know. Not that I mean the least fling against men who have won a great fleet action--it is right and proper that they should be peers--but when you look at the mass of titles, tradesmen, dirty politicians, moneylenders . . . why, I had as soon be plain Jack Aubrey--Captain Jack Aubrey, for I am as proud as Nebuchadnezzar of my service rank, and if ever I hoist my flag, I shall paint here lives Admiral Aubrey on the front of Ashgrove Cottage in huge letters. Do not think I am one of your wild democratical Jacobins, Stephen--do not run away with that notion--but different people look at these things in different lights." He paused, and said with a grin, "I'll tell you of one chap who would give his eye-teeth to be a baronet, and this is Admiral Bertie. He puts it down to Mrs Bcrtie, but the whole service knows how he plotted and planned for the Bath. Lord," he said, laughing heartily, "to think of crawling about St James's for a ribbon when you are an ancient man, past sixty. Though to be sure, perhaps I might think differently if I had a son: but I doubt it."
In the afternoon of the next day, Dr Maturin, preceded by two bales of hand bills, proclamations and broadsheets, some printed in Cape Town and others so recently struck off in Saint-Denis that they were still damp from the press, came alongside the Nereide, six hours late. But the Nereide were not used to his ways; they were in a fuming hurry to be off in pursuit of the Iphigenia, which had sailed at crack of dawn; and they let him drop between the boat and the ship's side. In his fall he struck his head and back on the boat's gunwale, cracking two ribs and sinking stunned down through the warm clear water: the frigate was already under way, and although she heaved to at once not a man aboard did anything more valuable than run about shouting for some minutes, and by the time she had dropped her stern-boat Stephen would have been dead if one of the bale-carrying black men had not dived in and fetched him out.
He had had a shrewd knock, and although the weather was so kind, the sun so warm, an inflammation of the lungs kept him pinned to his cot for days. Or rather to the captain's cot, for Lord Clonfert moved from his own sleeping cabin and slung a hammock in the coach.
Stephen therefore missed their rapid voyage north, the meeting of the ships off Port-Louis, and their return southwards through heavy seas to carry out the Commodore's plan of attack on the Ile de la Passe; he missed all but the sounds of their first abortive attempt at gathering the boats for the assault in a pitch-black night with the wind blowing a close-reef topsail gale, when even the Nereide's pilot could not find the channel and when the weather forced them back to Port-Louis; but on the other hand, in these circumstances of particular intimacy he did grow more closely acquainted with Clonfert and McAdam.
The captain spent many hours at Stephen's bedside: their conversation was desultory and for most part of no great consequence; but Clonfert was capable of an almost female delicacy- he could be quiet without constraint, and he always knew when Stephen would like a cooling drink or the skylight opened--and they talked about novels, the more recent romantic poetry, and Jack Aubrey, or rather Jack Aubrey's actions, in a most companionable way; and at times Stephen saw, among the various persons that made up his host, a gentle, vulnerable creature, one that excited his affection. "His intuition, however," reflected Stephen, "though so nice in a tete-e-tete, does not serve him when three or more are gathered in a room, nor when he is anxious. Jack has never seen him in his quasi-domestic character. His women have, no doubt; and it may be this that accounts for his notorious success among them."
These reflections were prompted by the visit of his old shipmate Narborough, before whom Clonfert pranced away, monopolizing the talk with anecdotes of Sir Sydney Smith, and to whom he behaved with such an aggressive affectation of superiority that the commander of the Staunch soon returned aboard her, thoroughly displeased. Yet that same evening, as the Nereide and Staunch approached the Ile de la Passe once more, coming south about while the Sirius took the northern route, to avoid suspicion, Clonfert was as quiet and agreeable and well-bred as ever he had been: particularly conciliating, indeed, as though he were aware of his lapse. And when, at his request, Stephen had once again related Jack's taking of the Cacafuego, shot by shot, Clonfert said with a sigh, "Well, I honour him for it, upon my word. I should die happy, with such a victory behind me."
With McAdam Stephen's relationship was by no means so pleasant. Like most medical men Stephen was an indifferent patient; and like most medical men McAdam had an authoritative attitude towards those under his care. As soon as the patient had recovered his wits they fell out over
the advisability of a cingulum, a black draught, and phlebotomy, all of which Stephen rejected in a weak, hoarse, but passionate voice as" utterly exploded, fit for Paracelsus, or a quicksalver at the fair of Ballinasloe," together with a fling about McAdam's fondness for a strait-waistcoat. Yet this, even when it was coupled with Stephen's recovery without any treatment but bark administered by himself, would not have caused real animosity if McAdam had not also taken to resenting Clonfert's attention to Stephen, Stephen's ascendancy over Clonfert, and their pleasure in one another's company.
He came into the cabin, only half-drunk, the evening before the Nereide and the Staunch, though delayed by head-winds, hoped to rendezvous with the Sirius off the Ile de la Passe for the assault, took Stephen's pulse, said, "There is still a wee smidgeon of fever that bleeding would certainly have cured before this; but I shall allow you to take the air on deck again tomorrow, if the action leaves you any deck to take it upon," drew his case bottle from his pocket, poured himself a liberal dram in Stephen's physic glass, and bending, picked up a paper that had slipped beneath the cot, a single printed sheet. "What language is this?" he asked, holding it to the light.
"It is Irish," said Stephen calmly: he was extremely vexed with himself for letting it be seen, for although there was no kind of remaining secrecy about his activities, his ingrained sense of caution was deeply wounded: he was determined not to let this appear, however.
"Tis not the Irish character," said McAdam.
"Irish type is rarely to be found in the French colonies, I believe."
"I suppose it is meant for those papisher blackguards on the Mauritius," said McAdam, referring to the Irishmen who were known to have enlisted in the French service. Stephen made no reply, and McAdam went on, "What does it say?"
"Do you not understand Irish?"
"Of course not. What would a civilized man want with Irish?"
"Perhaps that depends upon your idea of a civilized man."
"I'll just give you my idea of a civilized man: it is one thot makes croppies Ile down, thot drinks to King Billy, and thot cries--the Pope." With this McAdam began to sing Croppies lie down, and the grating, triumphant noise wounded Stephen's still fevered and over-acute hearing. Stephen was fairly sure that McAdam did not know he was a Catholic, but even so his irritation, increased by the heat, the din, the smell, and his present inability to smoke, rose to such a pitch that against all his principles he said, "It is the pity of the world, Dr McAdam, to see a man of your parts obnubilate his mind with the juice of the grape."
McAdam instantly collected his faculties and replied, "It is the pity of the world, Dr Maturin, to see a man of your parts obnubilate his mind with the juice of the poppy."
In his journal that night Stephen wrote " . . . and his blotched face clearing on a sudden, he checked me with my laudanum. I am amazed at his "Perspicacity. Yet do I indeed obnubilate my mind? Surely not: looking back in this very book, I detect no diminution of activity, mental or physical. The pamphlet on Buonaparte's real conduct towards this Pope and the last is as good as anything I have ever written: I wish it may be as well translated. I rarely take a thousand drops, a trifle compared with your true opium-eater's dose or with my own in Diana's day: I can refrain whenever I choose: and I take it only when my disgust is so great that it threatens to impede my work. One day, when he is sober, I shall ask McAdam whether disgust for oneself, for one's fellows, and for the whole process of living was common among his patients in Belfast--whether it incapacitated them. My own seems to grow; and it is perhaps significant that I can feel no gratitude towards the man who took me from the water: I make the gestures that humanity requires but I feet no real kindness for him: surely this is inhuman? Humanity drained away by disgust? It grows; and although my loathing for Buonaparte and his evil system is an efficient stimulant, hatred alone is a poor sterile kind of a basis. And, laudanum or not, the disgust seems to persist even through my sleep, since frequently it is there, ready to envelop me when I wake."
