The Mauritius Command, page 26
"Why do we swing so?" wondered Stephen, and then he realized that a shot had cut the spring on the Nereide's cable, the spring that held her broadside on to the Bellone. Round she came, and farther yet, until her stern took the ground, thumping gently with the swell and pointing towards the enemy, who poured in a steady raking fire. She still fired her quarter- guns and her stern-chaser, but now men were falling fast. The first lieutenant and three of the army officers were dead: blood ran over her quarterdeck not in streams but in a sheet. Clonfert was giving the bosun orders about a warp when a messenger from below, a little terrified boy, ran up to him, pointing at Dr Maturin as he spoke: Clonfert crossed the deck and said, "Dr Maturin, may I beg you to give a hand in the orlop? McAdam has had an accident. I should be most infinitely obliged."
McAdam's accident was an alcoholic coma, and his assistant, who had never been in action before, was completely overwhelmed. Stephen threw off his coat, and in the darkness, weakly lit by a lantern, he set to work: tourniquet, saw, knife, sutures, forceps, probe, retractor, dressings, case after case, with the sometimes perilously delicate operations continually interrupted by the huge, all-pervading, sonorous jar of heavy shot smashing into the frigate's hull. And still the wounded came, until it seemed that half and even more than half of the Nereide's company had passed through his bloody hands as she lay there, quite unsupported, her fire reduced to half a dozen guns.
"Make a lane there, make a lane for the Captain," he heard, and here was Clonfert on the chest before him, under the lantern. One eye was torn out and dangling: maxilla shattered: neck ripped open and the carotid artery laid bare, pulsing in the dim light, its wall shaved almost to the bursting-point. A typical splinter-wound. And the frightful gash across his face was grape. He was conscious, perfectly clear in his mind, and at present he felt no pain, a far from uncommon phenomenon in wounds of this kind and at such a time. He was not even aware of the scalpel, probe and needle, except to say that they were oddly cold; and as Stephen worked over him he spoke, sensibly though in a voice altered by his shattered teeth, he told Stephen that he had sent to ask Pyrn whether he judged the ship could be towed out or whether the wounded should be put into the squadron's boats and the Nereide set on fire. "She might wreck the Bellone, when she blows up," he added.
His wounds were still being dressed when Webber came back from the Sirius with one of her officers and a message from Pym, a message that had to be shouted above the crash of the Bellone's guns. Pym suggested that Clonfert should come aboard the Sirius. The Iphigenia could not possibly warp off from behind her shoal until daylight and in the meantime the Nereide lay between her and the French ships; she could not fire upon them; Lord Clonfert might certainly come aboard the Sirius.
"Abandon my men?" cried Clonfert in that strange new voice. "I'll see him damned first. Tell him I have struck." And when the officer had gone and the dressing was finished he said to Stephen, "Is it done, Doctor? I am most truly grateful to you," and made as though to rise.
"You will never get up?" asked Stephen.
"Yes," he said. "My legs are sound enough. I am going on deck. I must do this properly, not like a scrub."
He stood up and Stephen said, "Take care of the bandage on your neck. Do not pluck at it, or you may die within the minute."
Shortly afterwards most of the remaining men came below, sent by the Captain: the routine of the ship was gone--there had been no bells this hour and more--and her life was going. Some clustered in the orlop, and from their low, muted talk and from those who came and went their shipmates learnt what was going on: a boat had come from the Iphigenia to ask why the Nereide was no longer firing, and would the Captain come aboard of her--told, had struck, and the Captain would not stir--Captain had sent to Bellone to tell her to stop firing, because why? Because he had struck; but the boat could not reach her nor make her hear. Then there was the cry of fire on deck and several men ran up to put it out: and shortly after the mainmast went by the board.
Lord Clonfert came below again, and sat for a while in the orlop. Although Stephen was still working hard he took a look at him between patients and formed the impression that he was in a state of walking unconsciousness; but after some time Clonfert got up and began moving about among the wounded, calling them by name.
It was long past midnight. The French fire was slackening; the British fire had stopped long since; and now after a few random shots the night fell silent. Men slept where they had chanced to sit or throw themselves down. Stephen took Clonfert by the arm, guided him to the dead purser's cot, well under the water-line, directed him how to rest his head so that he should not endanger his wound, and returned to his patients. There were more than a hundred and fifty of them: twenty-seven had already died below, but he had hopes for about a hundred of the rest: the Dear knew how many had been killed outright on deck and thrown overboard. Seventy or so, he thought. He roused Mr Fenton, who was sleeping with his head on his arms, leaning on the chest that formed their operating-table, and together they looked to their dressings.
They were still busy when the sun rose and the Bellone began to fire at the Nereide again: on and on, in spite of repeated hails. The gunner came below with a gushing splinter-wound in his forearm, and while Stephen applied the tourniquet and tied the artery the gunner told him that the Nereide colours had not in fact been struck: they were flying still, and they could not be hauled down. There was a rumour that they had been nailed to the mast, but the gunner knew nothing of it, and the bosun, who would have had the true word, he was dead. "And not a scrap of rigging to come at them, "he said. "So his lordship's told the carpenter to cut the mizen away. Thank you kindly, sir: that's a right tidy job. I'm much obliged. And, Doctor," he said in a low rumble behind his hand, "if you don't much care for a French prison, there's some of us topping our boom in the cutter, going aboard of Sirius."
Stephen nodded, looked over his worst cases, and made his way through the wreckage to the cabin. Clonfert was not there. He found him on the quarterdeck, sitting on an upturned match-tub and watching the carpenters ply their axes. The mizenmast fell, carrying the colours with it, and the Bellone's fire ceased. "There, I have done it properly," said Clonfert in a barely intelligible murmur, out of the side of his ruined, bandaged face. Stephen looked at his most dangerous wound, found him sensible, though by now at a far remove, and said, "I wish to go to the Sirius, my lord: the remaining boat is fit to leave, and I beg you will give an order to that effect."
"Make it so, Doctor Maturin," said Clonfert. "I wish you may get away. Thank you again. "They shook hands. Stephen took some papers from his cabin, destroyed others, and made his way to the boat. It was no great climb down, for the Nereide had settled on the sea-bed.
Although Pym received him kindly aboard the stranded Sirius, his conduct did not raise Stephen's opinion of him as a commander or as a man of sense. The Iphigenia, having at last warped herself free of the long shoal that had stood between her and the Minerve, sent to ask permission to stand in, to attack the immobilized French ships, boarding them with extra hands from Sirius and Magicienne, and not only taking them but rescuing the Nereide too. No, said Pym, who needed her help to heave his own ship off, she must go on warping towards the Sirius. Twice he sent back this categorical reply, each time as a direct order. With the Iphigenia warping out, the French fire concentrated on the Magicienne, hard and fast on her reef, badly holed, with nine foot of water in her hold and only a few guns that could be brought to bear. The French shot poured in upon her, and sometimes upon the other ships, and upon the frantically busy, exhausted hands in the remaining boats all that long, appalling, bloody day. It was impossible to get her off; it was impossible that she should swim if she were got off. Her men were ordered into the Iphigenia, and after sunset she was set on fire, blowing up in doleful splendour about midnight.
The next day the French had a new battery ready on shore, closer to, and the battery and the ships began to fire on the Iphigenia and the Sirius as they strove to heave Pym's frigate off her reef. At last, after incessant labour all in vain, and after some ugly scenes with the captain of the Iphigenia, who was utterly convinced (and Stephen, together with many better-qualified observers, agreed with him) that his plan would have meant a total victory and who could barely bring himself to speak civilly to the man who had forbidden it, Pym realized that the Sirius could not be saved. Her ship's company were taken into the Iphigenia and the Sirius too was set on fire, Pym thereby relinquishing his command, twenty-four hours too late; and the now solitary Iphigenia returned to her warping.
She was obliged to warp--to carry out an anchor on the end of a cable, drop it, and wind herself up to it by the capstan--because never in the daylight did the wind cease blowing dead on shore. She could make no progress whatsoever in any other way, for when the land-breeze got up before dawn she dared not attempt the dark and unseen channel, and it always died with the rising of the sun. So hour after hour her boats, carrying the ponderous great anchors, dragged out the sodden nine-inch hawsers; and if the anchors held, if the ground was not foul, she then crept a very little way, rarely more than fifty yards, because of the turns. But often the ground was foul, and sometimes the anchors came home or were broken or were lost altogether; and all this exhausting labour had to be carried out in the blazing sun by a dispirited crew. Meanwhile the French ships in Port South-East had been heaved off, and a French brig was sighted beyond the Ile de la Passe, probably the forerunner of Hamelin's squadron from Port- Louis.
However, there was nothing for it, and the Iphigenia warped on and on towards the fort, fifty yards by fifty yards with long pauses for the recovery of fouled anchors, the whole length of that vast lagoon. It was two full days before she reached a point about three quarters of a mile from the island, and here she anchored for the night. The next day, when the Bellone and Minerve had profited by the land-breeze to advance fair into the lagoon whose channels they knew so well, and had there anchored, she set to again; and by eight o'clock, when she was within a thousand feet of the fort, of the open sea and the infinite delight of sailing free, she saw three ships join the French brig outside the reef: the Vinus, Manche and Astrie. They were exchanging signals with the Bellone and Minerve ; and the wind, still right in the Iphigenia� teeth, was bearing them fast towards the Ile de la Passe, where they would lie to, just out of range.
The Iphigenia at once sent the soldiers and many of the seamen to the fort and cleared for action. She had little ammunition, however: even before the end of the Port South-East battle she had had to send to the Sirius for more, and since then she had fired away so much that half an hour's engagement would see her locker bare. The clearing was therefore largely symbolic, and it was carried out, as her captain told Stephen privately, to let -the French see that he would not surrender unconditionally, that he still had teeth, an that if he could not get decent terms he would use them.
"That being so," said Stephen, "I must ask you for a sailing-boat before the Vinus and her consorts close the entrance to the channel."
"For Reunion, you mean? Yes, certainly. You shall have the launch and my own coxswain, an old whaling hand, and young Craddock to navigate her: though I should not carry the news that you must take, no, not for a thousand pound." He gave orders for the preparation of the launch--stores, instruments, charts, water--and returning he said, You would oblige me extremely, Dr Maturin, by carrying a letter for my wife: I doubt I shall see her again this war."
The launch pulled along the wicked channel in the darkness, touching twice for all their care; pulled out well beyond the reef, set her lugsail and bore away south-west. She carried ten days" provisions, but although she had many of the Iphigenia's hungry young gentlemen and ship's boys aboard--their captain could not see them spend those years in a prison--the stores were almost intact when, after a perfect voyage, Stephen made his laborious way up the Boadicea's side as she lay at single anchor in the road of St Paul's, close by the Windham and the Bombay transport.
"Why, Stephen, there you are!" cried Jack, springing from behind a mass of papers as Stephen walked into the cabin. "How happy I am to see you- another couple of hours and I should have been off to Flat Island with Keating and his men--Stephen, what's amiss?"
"I must tell you what's amiss, my dear," said Stephen: but he sat down and paused a while before going on. "The attack on Port South-East has failed. The Nereide is taken; the Sirius and Magicienne are burnt; and by now the Iphigenta and the Ile de ]a Passe will almost certainly have surrendered."
"Well," said Jack, considering, "Minerve, Bellone, Astree, Venus, Manche; together with Nereide and Iphigenia: that makes seven to one. But we have seen longer odds, I believe."
CHAPTER EIGHT
"All hands unmoor ship," said Jack. The bosun's calls wailed and twittered; the Boadiceas ran to their stations; the fife began its thin piercing tune; "Stamp and go, stamp and go," cried the bosun's mates; and in the midst of the familiar din of proceeding to sea Stephen turned from the rail, where he had been staring under his shading hand at the ship lying within the frigate. "I could almost swear I had see that vessel before," he said.
"Oh, not above a hundred times," said Jack. "She is the Windham. The Windham Indiaman again. This time she was outward-bound, and they took her in the Mozambique channel. Sirius very neatly retook her when she shied away from Port South-East. Did not Pym tell you?"
"Faith, we had little conversation, Captain Pyrn and I"
"No: I suppose not. But, however, Pullings snapped her up in his little schooner just as she was running under the guns of Riviere Noire: a good, seamanlike officer, Tom Pullings . . ."
"Up and down, sir," called the bosun.
"Thick and dry," came Jack's answer, as automatic as a response in church; and he continued" . . . and he brought her in, cracking on regardless. That was the first I knew of the affair. Let fall, there," he cried, directing his voice upwards.
The topsails flashed out, the frigate's head swung to the north-east and steadied: she heeled, steeper and steeper as the courses, topgallants and staysails were sheeted home in smooth succession and the way came on her, the water slipping fast and faster still along her side. She shaved the cruel reef off Saint Denis, altered course two points to eastward, and setting a flying-jib she stretched for the
Ile de la Passe, making her ten knots watch after watch, her wake a straight green line of phosphorescence in the dark.
Every minute counted. Stephen's voyage had taken so little time that there was a possibility the fort had not yet surrendered, and that the Iphigenia still lay under its protection, within the reef. Every minute counted, and although sailcloth and spars were so precious they drove her through the sea as though they had a Spanish galleon in chase: with an even greater zeal indeed; so great that they raised the island before the light of day.
When he had two peaks of the Bamboo Mountain in a line and the Pointe du Diable bearing N 17 W Jack reduced sail, carried a night-glass up to the foretop, and took the ship in, ghosting along under topsails on the edge of the land-breeze. His eyes were used to the night, helped as it was by the stars and the sickle-moon: he had made out a good deal of what lay inshore and out to sea, and when the first dawn came up before the sun he was not surprised to see the Manche and Venus--but not the Astree--lying two miles off the reef to leeward, the Iphigenia just inside it, the Bellone, Minerve, Nereide and Ceylon Indiaman far over by Port South-East, and the charred wrecks of the Sirius and Magicienne in the lagoon. But what did give him a shock was the sight of a fifth ship down there, just astern of the shattered Nereide. Leaning his telescope on the rim and focusing with care he discovered what she was: the Ranger from Bombay. She was only a transport, but she would have been a treasure-ship to the remnant of his squadron, for she carried spare yards and topmasts, besides three hundred tons of invaluable stores, and he had been looking for her arrival at St Paul's these many days--the Otter, quite unfit for sea, was heaved down in expectation of what she should bring; the Staunch lacked almost everything; and if the Boadicea carried away a spar, she would have to whistle for it. And here was the Ranger fitting out the enemy. The Bellone, which must have suffered terribly in the long action, already had her topgallantyards across. His face took on a harder look.
No colours were flying yet from either the fort or the Iphigenia: had they surrendered? If not, conceivably his boats might tow the Iphigenia through the channel, covered by the Boadicea and the fort, and with even a battered consort he could set about the Venus and the Manche; for although he was short of stores, he was rich in men and ammunition. And this was no time for timid defensive measures. He came down on deck, gave orders for the ensign, the private signal, and a hoist stating his intention. The Boadicea stood in as the sun came up, signals flying, one eye on the French frigates, the other on the fort and the Iphigenia. Farther and farther in, and still no colours, though the sun was now a hand's-breadth over the horizon. Another few minutes and the Boadicea would be within random shot.
