The Mauritius Command, page 31
The first was the wind. The south-easter was slackening; already there were glassy patches of sea on the starboard bow, forerunners of the usual midday lull, which might leave him without steerage-way or compel a very slow advance, head-on, into the combined broadside fire of the Venus and Bombay, and which might allow Hamelin time to set up a jury-rig that would at least give him twice his present power of manoeuvring.
The second was the arrival of reinforcements. He had no very high opinion of the French commodore's enterprise, but Hamelin was no halfwit. On finding himself in such a position at dawn, with La Reunion looming large on the south horizon, he would certainly have sent his best cutter racing back to Mauritius for support. In Hamelin's place he would have done so the moment the Bombay struck.
While he turned these things over in his mind, the pattern to the northward grew clearer. The boats had been hoisted in; the Victor, all sails abroad, had taken the Bombay in tow; the Vinus, dropping her fore and main courses, had put before the wind. And now a foresail appeared aboard the Bombay. They still had a fresh breeze out there, and presently they were moving at about three knots, while the Boadicea, with all her noble spread of canvas, was making little better than five and a half. "However," he reflected, "there is nothing much I can do about that."
What little he could do, he did. Having finished "Plymouth Point," the surest of tunes for a wind, he was whistling at random when he became aware that Sophie was in his mind, present with an extraordinary clarity. "Was I a superstitious cove," he said, smiling with singular sweetness in the direction of England, "I should swear she was thinking of me."
The smile was still lingering on his face when he reached the deck, and this encouraged Seymour to ask whether he might start to clear the ship for action.
"As to that, Mr Seymour," said Jack, looking at the log-board, "it might be a little premature. We must not tempt fate, you know. Mr Bates, be so good as to heave the log."
"Heave the log it is, sir," said the midshipman, darting to the lee-rail with his attendant boy and quartermaster. The boy held the reel, the quartermaster the thirty-second sand-glass; Bates threw the log, watched the mark go clear, called "Turn" and the quartermaster held the glass to his eye, while the boy held up the reel with a hieratic solemnity. The log went astern, the knots in the line passing smoothly through Bates" fingers. "Nip," cried the quartermaster. The midshipman nipped, then jerked the line; the boy reeled in, and Bates crossed the deck to announce, "Just on the five, sir, if you please."
Jack nodded, glanced up at the frigate's towering array of canvas, at the fire-hose in the tops wetting all the jet could reach, at the buckets hoisting to the crosstrees to damp the topgallants so that they should catch every last ounce of thrust, and said, "No, Mr Seymour. Without the gods are kind, we have more time on our hands than I could wish. It would be a pity to dowse the galley fires so soon; so let the men be piped to dinner at six bells, and since they went without their duff last Sunday, let there be a double ration of plums today. On the other hand, only half the grog will be served out this spell: and no plush allowed." The faces of the men at the wheel, the quartermaster conning the ship, the yeoman of the signals and the nearer members of the afterguard took on a stony look. Jack paced fore and aft and continued, "The rest will be kept for supper, wind, weather and the enemy permitting. And Mr Seymour, since we shall be pinched for time, dinner being so early, church will not be rigged today; however, I believe we may proceed to divisions. Mr Kiernan," he added, nodding towards the baboonfaced officer, "will muster his Africaines on the forecastle."
From this moment on time raced by aboard the frigate. Every man, with little notice and even less expectation of this solemn event (practised on every peaceful Sunday, but never, never when bearing down on the enemy), had to present himself, an hour earlier than usual, washed, shaved, and in a clean shirt for inspection by his particular midshipman and officer and then by the Commodore himself. Furthermore, there was a general determination to wipe the Africaines' collective eye by a brilliantly striking appearance. All along the gangway and on the forecastle the tie-for-tie pairs swiftly and silently combed and plaited one another's pigtails, while impatient groups clustered round the barber's tubs, urging him to even greater speed, whatever it might cost; and anxious Marines pipeclayed and polished in the blazing sun.
The inspection itself was a creditable affair, with the officers, in full dress and wearing their swords, accompanying the Commodore in his slow progress along the lines of trim seamen in their best; and the hairy Africaines in their dirty shirts were brought suitably low. But the ceremony was marred by an extraordinary degree of distraction: remarkable things were happening in the north--the Bombay's towline had parted, the Victor was having a devilish time passing another, the Vinus had first sheered off and had then come up into what wind there was to lend a hand, and above all the vast stretch of ocean between the Boadicea and the French had narrowed surprisingly. Even while the Commodore was on deck, few men apart from the rigid Marines could resist glancing northwards and passing remarks; and when he was exploring the galley and the berth-deck with the first lieutenant, Mr Trollope was obliged to call out "Silence, fore and aft" several times, and to take the names of the more loquacious, for future punishment.
The moment divisions was over, the bosun and his mates piped loud and shrill to dinner. Every man aboard knew that the order clear for action would follow in a very short time indeed, for the wind had freshened markedly this last half hour, and that he must make up his mind at once between fighting the ship in his best clothes and missing if not his beef then his double shotted duff. Most plumped for the duff, which they ate on deck, by their guns, holding it carefully away from their snowy shirts, their silk neckerchiefs, and trousers beribboned at the seams. Scarcely was the last crumb down when the expected order came. Mess-kids vanished and the men, some still chewing, set about the familiar task of making a clean sweep fore and aft: they had done so, and they were standing at their action-stations staring now at the enemy, not far from extreme range, and now astern at the distant Staunch and Otter, when Stephen appeared on the quarterdeck, bearing a plate of sandwiches.
Doctor Maturin was a God-send to the Boadiceas: not only would he accost the Commodore with a freedom impossible to any other man aboard, but he would ask questions that none but he might propound, and receive civil answers rather than a severe set-down. Any gentlemanly reluctance to overhear private conversation had long since died away, and casual chat on the quarterdeck fell silent, in case any word between the Commodore and the Doctor should be lost.
He did not disappoint them now. "Why, sir," said he, looking about him, "what splendour I see: gold lace, breeches, cocked hats. Allow me to recommend a sandwich. And would you be contemplating an attack, at all?"
"It had crossed my mind, I must admit," said Jack. "Indeed, I may go so far as to say, that I am afraid a conflict is now virtually inevitable. Did you notice we have cleared for action?"
"Certainly I did. I have not ploughed the ocean all these weary years without learning the significance of this wild disorder, the cabins vanishing, my papers, my specimens, flung upside-down into the nearest recess. That is why I am come out here, for a little peace. Dear me, how close they are! It would be indiscreet, perhaps, to ask what happens next?"
"To tell you the truth, Doctor," said Jack, "for the moment I am in two minds. The corvette, do you see, has cast off her tow for good and all, and she is bearing away for the Mauritius under all sail, no doubt on her commodore's orders, while he is coming down towards the Bombay. Now if he has manned his prize, if he has sent enough men aboard the Bombay to serve her guns, then his plan will be to fight us with both ships in close support; and in that case we must run between "em, firing both sides. But if he has not manned her, and if he is only covering the Victor's retreat by this manoeuvre, why, then he means to meet us alone. And in that case we must run down on his bow, or his quarter if he wears, and carry him by boarding, so as not to damage his hull nor those precious spars I see on his deck. Another ten minutes will tell us what he means to do. If he don't back his foresail just before reaching the Bombay, so as to heave to beside her, you understand, that will mean she is not manned and that he must fight us by himself. Masthead," he cried, "what do you see in the north?"
"Nothing, sir, bar the sloop," replied the masthead. "A clear horizon all round. Sloop's carried away a kite on the main: is setting another."
After this there was a prolonged silence aboard the Boadicea: the men stationed at the guns stared over the barricade of hammocks or out through the open ports at the Vinus; the splinter-netting over their heads sent a strange shifting rectangular pattern down on the deck; the wind hummed and sighed through the rigging.
The minutes passed; ten minutes passed; and then a general murmur ran through the ship. The Vinus had not backed her foresail and now she was well beyond the Bombay. She was ugly, with her stumpy masts, but she was dangerous, determined, and her gunports were all open; she carried heavy metal, and her decks were crowded with men.
"Mr Seymour," said Jack, "topsails and forecourse alone, and draw the guns. Reload with grape. Not a shot is to touch her hull. Sweep her decks, but do not touch her hull. D'ye hear me, there?" he cried, raising his voice. "Any gun crew that wounds her hull will be flogged. Mr Hall, lay me for the bow."
Closer and closer. Jack's opinion of Hamelin rose: the
Frenchman was staking everything on coming so close before he yawed that his broadside must do the Boadicea irreparable damage--staking everything, because after that one turn the Vinus, with no more sail than she could spread, would never come up into the wind again, but must lie there to be battered to death.
Closer still in the silence: they were within pistol-shot. The Vinus" bow guns cracked out; the turn began, and the moment before her side came into full view Jack said, "Hard a-port.'The Boadicea moved fast, heeling abruptly, and the thundering broadside from the Venus cut no mast away. The foretopsail yard was wounded, two studdingsail booms had gone, some rigging hung loose; the starboard cathead was shattered and the best bower swung free; but Hamelin had lost his bet.
"Duck up forward," said Jack, and at once the foresail puckered, checking the frigate's speed as she swept through the enemy's smoke. The Venus turned, turned until she was almost before the wind and stern-on to the Boadicea. "Bear a hand with the clew-line," said Jack. "Mr Hall, clear her starboard quarter, and bump me her bows." The Boadicea shot forward, and it was clear that she would range up on the Venus before the Frenchmen had had time to reload. "Africaines stand by to board over her bow," he cried. "Boadiceas, come aft: we go for her quarterdeck. And we give the Africaines one minute's law, mark what I say. Steady there by the guns," he said, loosening his sword. "Bonden, where are my pistols?"
There was Killick at his side, holding an old pair of shoes and a coat over his arm. "You can't go in your best silver-buckled shoes, your honour, nor in your number one coat," he kept saying in an angry whine. "It won't take you a minute to change."
"Nonsense," said Jack. "Everyone else is going in his best, so why should I be left out?"
The Venus" soldiers were firing from her stern, but it was too late. The Boadicea ranged alongside, Jack said
"Fire," and the Boadicea's grape swept the Venus's deck at head-height and in the smoke graphics flew over the side; topmen ran out and lashed the Frenchman's yardarms tight; their bows ground together, and Jack roared "Africaines away." A moment later their sterns swung in, and the two ships lay side by side.
For a full minute he stood at the head of his boarders, while the Marines behind him plied their muskets as though they were on parade and the small arms men in the tops kept up a fire on the guns. A full minute of vast din and shouting forward, the crackle of pistols and the bellow of a carronade that the Africaines had turned into the waist of the Venus. Then he cried, "Boadiceas, come along with me," vaulted on to the torn hammocks, leapt sword in hand across to the shrouds of the mainmast, slashed the boarding netting, slashed at a head below him, and so down to the Venus's quarterdeck, followed by a cheering mass of seamen.
Before him stood a line of soldiers--the seamen were in the waist, facing the Africaines" furious attack and in the second before the wave of Boadiceas broke over them a little terrified corporal lunged at Jack with his bayonet. Bonden caught the muzzle, wrenched the musket free, flogged three men flat with the butt and broke the line. On the deck behind the soldiers lay several bodies--officers--and in the momentary pause Jack thought he saw a French captain's uniform. Then the aftermost group on the larboard gangway, led by a young officer, turned and came for the Boadiceas with such a rush that they were swept back to the wheel, and the next few minutes were a furious confusion of violence, cut and parry, duck the pistol, kick and thrust and hack.
But the Venuses were no match for the boarders; they were oppressed and hemmed in by their own numbers; they were worn out by their long night's battle and the toll that had followed it; their spirits were crushed by the sight of the Otter and the Staunch coming up fast, and by the certainty of eventual defeat. A body of Croatian soldiers, who had no real concern with the quarrel, leapt down the now unguarded main hatchway; others followed them, seeking safety below. The remaining Frenchmen on the gangway made a last desperate charge, and a short, broadshouldered seaman with a knife grappled Jack round the waist. Jack dashed his hilt into the seaman's face, trampled him down, broke free; and there in the clear space by the fife-rail stood an officer, offering his sword and pointing aft, where a boy was hauling down the colours.
Through the enormous cheering that spread from the Vinus's quarterdeck to the Boadicea, Jack roared out, "Vast fighting, there. Forward there, Africaines, "vast fighting. She's struck."
Men fell apart, stared impersonally at one another, and moved slowly away. The extreme tension died with extraordinary speed and within moments a new relationship had established itself, a kind of primitive social contract- men could no longer hit one another.
Jack accepted the officer's sword with a civil bend of his head and passed it to Bonden. The man he had trampled upon got to his feet without looking at him and stumbled away to his shipmates, who were standing where the battle had left them or who had gathered in little groups by the lee-rail, silent, as though the act of surrender had drained their spirit away, leaving them quite numb.
Still the Boadicea was cheering, and the exultant din was echoed by the Bombay, a quarter of a mile away: she had reholsted her ensign, and her crew was skipping and waving and roaring all along her side and in her tops.
"Commodore Hamelin?" said Jack to the officer, and the officer pointed to one of the bodies close by the wheel.
"I was sorry about Hamelin, however," said Jack, as he and Stephen sat over a late dinner. "Though when you come to think of it, a man could hardly ask better."
"For my part," said Stephen, "I could ask for very much better. A grapeshot in the heart is not my idea of bliss, and I should do my utmost to avoid it. Yet your grief does not affect your appetite, I find: that is the eighth chop you have eaten. Nor, which strikes me with peculiar force, do I find that this battle has produced the melancholy reaction I have so often noticed in you."
"That is true," said Jack. "An action clears your mind amazingly, for the moment; but afterwards the black dog comes down. The butcher's bill, the funerals, the men's widows to write to, the mess to be cleared up, the knotting and splicing, the pumping--you feel done up, hipped, as flat as ditch water; though there is more to it than that. But this time it is different. To be sure, we have come off scot-free or very near, but that is not the point. The point is that this dust-up is only the beginning of the real action. Africaine will be ready for sea on Tuesday: with the spars preparing at St Paul's and what we have captured today, Venus and Bombay will not take much longer, working double tides--their hulls would already pass a survey, you know. That is four capital frigates, plus the Windham, three good sloops, and all our armed transports: while on their side they have only Astree and Manche ready for sea. Bellone and Minerve must certainly be heaved down; and Iphigenia and Nereide arc little use to man or beast even when they are repaired. They have lost their commodore; and the captain of the Astree at least is a booby. And where is their spirit? No: I tell you what, Stephen, by the end of the week Keating and I will carry out our plan--that will be the real action, what I call the real action; and I don't care how glum I grow after it."
"Well, my dear," said Stephen, "politically Mauritius was ready to fall like a ripe plum, or mango, even before the Ile de la Passe; and now that you have repaired the disaster and more, I believe you may install Governor Farquhar at Port-Louis within a week of landing your troops."
CHAPTER TEN
"You have been very much in my mind these days, sweetheart, even more than usual," wrote Jack, continuing his serial letter to Sophie, a letter that he been building up to its present bulk ever since the Leopard had sailed from St Paul's for the Cape, his last contact with the flag, "and I should certainly have wrote, had we not been so uncommon busy. Since Monday morning we have been on the run, with all hands turning to, to make the squadron ready for sea; and such a sawing of carpenters, a thumping of caulkers, and a busyness of bosuns you never heard in your life. Poor Trollope, an active officer but of a bilious turn, was overcome with a sunstroke, while a black blacksmith, that had wrought eighteen hours on a stretch, was carried off in a dead swoon, quite grey. But now it is done. Now we are at sea, sinking the land as the sun comes up"--he looked, smiling, out of the Boadicea's stern window, and there in her wake, two cable-lengths away, he saw the Vinus, her sails pearly in the growing light; beyond her he could make out the Africaine, and far to leeward the last three transports. As the pendantship, the Boadicea was sailing in the middle of the squadron with the Bombay and the Windham ahead of her, the Staunch, the Otter and the Grappler far up to windward, and under her lee the transports, comfortably full of soldiers- "and a very respectable body we are. It is true some of our masts would make the dock-yard mateys stare, but they will serve: they may not be very pretty, but they will serve. We took many of the spars out of Bombay and Venus, and the Devil's own job we had to bring them home: I had promised the men the other half of their grog should be served out with their ration for supper, which might have been well enough if they had not found their way into the enemy's spirit room, too. Lord, Sophie, we rolled back that night like a whole herd of Davey's sows, with seven Boadiceas and seven Africaines in irons, and most of the rest not fit to go aloft. Fortunately the Otter had Bombay in tow, or I doubt we should ever have brought them both in. As it was, any French brig in her right wits could have snapped us up.
