The Mauritius Command, page 33
"She says she has never felt better in her life--swears it passed off as easy as a letter in the post finds the little chap a great comfort, and excellent company. Now I know you are about as partial to children as old Herod, Stephen, but--"
"No, no. I am not doggedly, mechanically set against them, though I freely admit I find most babies superfluous, and unnecessary. I
"Without there were babies, we should have no next generation."
"So much the better, when you consider the state to which we have reduced the world they must live in, the bloody-minded wolfish stock from which they spring, and the wicked, inhuman society that will form them. Yet I do admit of exceptions: the replication of such a creature as Sophie, and even I may say of yourself, can be seen as a good. But I am afraid I interrupt you."
"I was only going to say, that you might like to hear Sophie's description of him. It appears that he is a most unusual, exceptional child." Stephen listened with a decent show of complaisance: the smell of roasting meat drifted aft, and that of fried onions; he heard the drum beat "Heart of Oak" for the gunroom's dinner; his stomach called out for his own; and still the tale ran on.
"You cannot conceive, Stephen, how it extends a man's future, having a son," said Jack. "Now it is worth while planting a walnut-tree! Why, I may even lay down a whole plantation of oaks."
"The girls would have gathered your walnuts. The girls would have sported under the oaks; and their grandchildren would have felled them."
"No, no. It is not the same thing at all. Now, thank God, they have portions; and so eventually they will marry some greasy fellow called Snooks--you must admit, Stephen, that it is not the same thing at all."
Just before five bells Jack was cut short by the arrival of Pullings, still sadly reduced, and of the Colonel, still trembling with rage; and at five bells itself Killick announced, "Wittles is up," with a courtly jerk of his thumb, and they moved into the dining-cabin.
Pullings ate his mutton silently, with little appetite; Colonel Keating, though allowed by convention to speak freely at the Commodore's table, remained almost equally mute, not wishing to spoil a happy occasion by giving vent to the words he longed to utter; Stephen was lost in reflection, though from time to time he did respond to pauses in Jack's cheerful flow. When the long meal was over, when the King, Mrs Aubrey and young Stupor Mundi had been drunk in bumpers of luke-warm port, and when the guests had moved into the open air to dissipate the fumes of their wine, he said to Jack, "I scarcely know which I most admire, the strength of your philoprogenitive instinct, or your magnanimity in the face of this disappointment. Not many years ago you would have clapped your telescope to your blind eye; you would have evaded these orders; and you would have taken the Mauritius before Mr Bertie knew what you were at."
"Well, I am disappointed," said Jack, "I must confess; and when first I smoked the Admiral's intentions I had a month's mind to steer due west for a while. But it would not do, you know. Orders is orders, bar one case in a million; and this is not one of those cases. The Mauritius must fall in the next week or so, whoever is in command, or whoever takes the glory."
"Keating does not take it so philosophically."
"Keating has not just heard he has a son. Ha, ha, ha: there's for you, Stephen."
"Keating already has five, and a sad expense they are to him, as well as a grave disappointment. The news of a sixth boy would not have mollified his indignation, unless indeed it had been a daughter, the one thing he longs for. Strange, strange: it is a passion to which I cannot find the least echo, when I peer into my bosom."
Colonel Keating's indignation was shared throughout the Boadicea and her companions. It was universally held that the Commodore had been done out of his rights, cheated of his due, and wiped in the eye if not stabbed in the back: and there was not a man in the squadron who did not know that two captured Indiamen lay in Port-Louis, together with a large number of only slightly less magnificent prizes, and that the appearance--the totally unnecessary appearance--of a seventy-four, eight frigates, four sloops, and maybe a dozen regiments of lobsters, would reduce the share of all who had done the real work to half a pint of small beer, if that.
The indignation increased with brooding, and as the two bodies slowly converged, meeting at Rodriguez, it grew to such a pitch that when the Boadicea's salute to the flag roared out, the gunner said, "And I wish they was loaded with grape, you old--"without a word of reproach from the officers near at hand. When the last gun had been fired, and before the flagship began her reply, Jack said,
"Strike the pendant. Hoist out my barge." Then, a mere post-captain again, he stepped into the cabin and called for his breeches, cocked hat and number one coat to go aboard the Admiral. It had been a hard moment, the striking of his pendant--for a pendant could not fly in the presence of a flag without the unusual compliment of a direct invitation--but little comfort did he meet with below. Killick's sense of injustice had been inflamed by the extra ration of grog served out to all hands. It now overflowed on to the principal victim, and in his old shrewish voice he said, "You ain't got no number one coat, sir. All bloody and mucked up, with figuring away aboard the Vinus, when two minutes would of changed it. The scraper will pass with a shove'- spitting on the lace of the cocked hat and rubbing it with his sleeve "but you'll have to wear it athwartships, on account of the rats. As for coats and breeches, this is the best I can do--I've shipped the old epaulettes--and if any jumped up new-come son of a Gosport fart don't like it, he may--"
"Bear a hand, bear a hand," cried Jack. "Give me my stockings and that packet, and don't stand muttering there all day."
The same sullen resentment was obvious in the bargemen who pulled Captain Aubrey across to the Illustrious; it was evident in his coxswain's rigour, in the vicious stab of the boathook that clamped on to the two-decker's chains, removing a good hand's-breadth of paint, and in the expressionless reserve that met the friendly advances of the seamen peering out of her lowerdeck ports.
Admiral Bertie expected it; he knew very well what he was doing, and he was fully armoured against all reaction except cheerfulness. From the outset he adopted an attitude of jovial bonhomie, with a good deal of laughter: he spoke as though it were the most natural thing in the world to find a ready and willing compliance, no trace of ill-feeling or resentment; and to his astonishment he did find it. The Naval Instructions clearly laid down that he must find it, and that anything less than total abnegation, total perfection of conduct, would render a subordinate liable to punishment; but his whole service life had proved that there was a world of difference between the Navy in print and the Navy in practice, and that although in theory a senior post-captain must be as submissive to an admiral as a newly-joined midshipman, in fact an oppressed commodore, growing froward under ill usage, might make things extremely awkward for his oppressor and still keep the right side of the law: he had himself used obstruction in all its refinements often enough to know what it could accomplish. He had been prepared to meet the cunningest ploys or the most violent expressions of dissent (his secretary was there to note down any choleric word): none appeared: he was taken aback, rendered uneasy. He probed a little deeper, asking whether Aubrey was not surprised to see so many ships coming to queer his pitch? And when Jack, with equal joviality, replied that he was not, that the greater the number the less the bloodshed (so repugnant to him, as to all right-feeling men), and that the more the merrier was his motto, the Admiral glanced at his secretary, to see whether Mr Shepherd shared his suspicion that Captain Aubrey was somewhat disguised, cheerfully disguised, in wine.
The suspicion could not be maintained. As soon as the captains of the fleet were assembled aboard the flagship, at the Admiral's request Jack Aubrey delivered to them a singularly lucid, cogent account of the situation, with all the facts, all the figures at instant command. To the anxious words about the notorious difficulty of the reefs surrounding Mauritius, the wicked surf that beat upon them, and the paucity of harbours, he replied with a chart, a little masterpiece of hydrography, showing Flat Island and the Grande Baie, exactly surveyed by himself, with triple-sextant-bearings and doubled checked soundings showing plenty of room and clean anchorage for seventy ships, as well as sheltered beaches for a very great number of men. He ended his exposition by observing that in view of the lateness of the season he would respectfully suggest an immediate descent.
The Admiral was by no means so sure of that: long before Captain Aubrey was born the Admiral's old nurse had told him "The more hurry, the less speed." He would take the matter under consideration urgent consideration- and advise with General Abercrombie and the gentlemen of his staff.
When the meeting broke up he kept Jack for a while, by way of plumbing his mind: for Aubrey was either a nonpareil of docility (and that was not his reputation at all), or he had something up his sleeve. It made the Admiral uneasy. It seemed to him that beneath all his proper deference Jack regarded him with a certain detachment and something not far from a secret amused contempt; and since the Admiral was not altogether a scrub, he found this extremely disagreeable. Then again, Mr Bertie had invariably met with hostility from those he had over-reached, a hostility that gave him a retrospective justification; and here there was none--continuing cheerfulness, even benignity. It made him feel nervous, and on parting with Jack he said, "By the way, Aubrey, it was quite right to strike your pendant, of course; but you must hoist it again the moment you set foot aboard the Boadicea."
Admiral Bertie was more uneasy still by the time he reached his cot. In the interval, as the fleet lay at anchor in the road of Rodriguez and the visiting boats passed to and fro, Mr Peter had called upon his near relation Mr Shepherd. Mr Peter had seen a good deal of Dr Maturin, a simpler, more penetrable man than he had been led to suppose, particularly since this last flood of letters and information from home: and from Maturin's casual remarks, some of them really far from discreet, Peter had formed the conviction that General Aubrey, the Commodore's father and a member of parliament, was probably playing a very deep game, that he might be about to change sides, that he was secretly very well with the ministry, and that it was by no means impossible that he might shortly appear in an office connected with honours and patronage, if not on the Board of Admiralty itself. Stephen had poisoned too many sources of intelligence to derive much satisfaction from this elementary exercise; but in fact the sneaking underhand little tale was admirably suited to the ears that received it a few minutes after Peter's departure. It explained Aubrey's disconcerting nonchalance: a man with such allies must be handled with care.
In the morning a council, attended by the captains and the senior army officers, considered the plan of attack worked out by Jack and Colonel Keating. General Abercomble's plea for delay, strongly supported by his staff, was brushed aside with even greater strength by the Admiral himself. The General looked surprised and even injured: he was a stout old gentleman, and he stared across the table at nothing in particular, with a look of hostile stupidity in his protuberant eyes, as though he did not quite understand what had happened. But having repeated himself for the space of about three quarters of an hour he yielded to the Admiral's insistence; and the plan, scarcely mangled in any important respect, was agreed to, though with very little grace. Half an hour later the flagship stood out to sea, with a fine topgallant breeze to send her north about Mauritius for Flat Island and the beaches up the coast from Port-Louis.
The conquest of Mauritius ran its leisurely course, with the regiments marching and countermarching in a scientific manner that pleased the generals on either side. The infantrymen sweated, but few of them bled. They had been landed smoothly, without opposition, and they presented General Decaen with an insuperable problem. His numerous Militia was no use to him at all: most of its members had read Stephen's broadsheets, many of them had already seen copies of Governor Farquhar's proposed proclamation, all of them were more concerned with the revival of their strangled trade than with the welfare of Buonaparte's empire. His Irish troops were clearly disaffected; his French regulars were outnumbered by well over five to one; and his navy was blockaded by an overwhelming force of ships. His only concern was to delay General Abercrombie's advance until his surrender should meet certain arcane military requirements, so that he should be able to justify his conduct at home and obtain honourable terms at Port-Louis for himself and his men.
He succeeded to admiration, and Abercrombie particular praised his orderly retreat on the night of Thursday, when his flanking battalions fell back from Terre Rouge and the Long Mountain, changing face at the double in the most professional way. "That is real soldiering," said the General.
While these rural gestures were being made the emissaries passed to and fro, and although Port-Louis was still nominally French Stephen Maturin walked up to the military hospital without his usual detour; and there he found McAdam on the verandah. "How is our patient this morning?" he asked.
"Och, the night was good enough, with your draught," said McAdam, though with no great satisfaction. "And the eye shows some wee improvement. It is the neck that keeps me so anxious--slough, slough and slough again, and this morning it looked as ugly as ever. He will pluck at the dressing in his sleep. Dr Martin suggests sewing flaps of healthy skin across the whole morbid area."
"Martin is a fool," said Stephen. "What we are concerned with is the artery wall itself, not the gross exfoliation. Rest is the answer, clean dressings, lenitives and peace of mind: there is physical strength in galore. How is the agitation?"
"Fair enough this morning; and he has been sleeping since my early rounds."
"Very good, very good. Then we must certainly not disturb him; there is nothing like sleep for repair. I shall come back about noon, bringing the Commodore. He has a letter from Lady Clonfert at the Cape; he wishes to deliver it himself, and to tell Clonfert how the fleet praises his noble defence of the Nereide." McAdam whistled and screwed up his face. "Do you think it imprudent?" asked Stephen.
McAdam scratched himself: he could not say--Clonfert had been very strange these days--did not talk to him--no longer opened his mind--remained silent, listening for gunfire hour after hour. "Maybe it would be best if you was to come a few minutes ahead. We can sound him out, and if we judge the excitement would not be too much, the Commodore can see him. It might do him a world of good. He liked seeing you," said McAdam with a burst of generosity that he instantly balanced by asking in a sneering voice, "I suppose your Big Buck Aubrey is prancing about on shore, the lord of creation? How are things going along down there, will you tell me?"
"Much as we had expected. Mr Farquhar has landed from the Otter, and I dare say the capitulation will be signed before dinner."
They talked about other wounded Nereides: some were doing well, some were at death's door. Young Hobson, a master's mate emasculated late in the battle, had passed through it that night, thankful to go. Stephen nodded, and for a while he watched two geckoes on the wall, paying some attention to McAdam's account of the French surgeon's words " about the impossibility of saving patients when the vital spring was gone. After a long pause he said, "McAdam, you know more about this aspect of medicine than I do: what do you say to a patient with no physical injury, no tangible lesion, who loses all real concern with his life? Who takes a disgust to the world? A scholar, say, who has edited Livy, Livy his sole study and his delight: he stumbles on the lost books, carries them home, and finds he has not the courage, the spirit, to open even the first. He does not care about Livy's lost books, nor about his books that are known, nor about any books or authors at all. They do not interest him. He will not lift the cover; and he sees that very soon his own animal functions will not interest him either. Do you understand me? Have you seen cases of this sort in your practice?"
"Certainly I have. And they are not so rare, neither, even in men that are kept busy."
"What is the prognosis? How do you see the nature of the malady?"
"I take it that here we are to leave grace to one side?"
"Just so."
"As to the nature, why, I believe he perceives the void that has always surrounded him, and in doing so he falls straight into a pit. Sometimes his perception of the void is intermittent; but where it is not, then in my experience spiritual death ensues, preceding physical death sometimes by ten years and more. Occasionally he may be pulled out by his prick."
"You mean he may remain capable of love?"
"As between men and women I use the term lust: but call it what you like: desire, a burning desire for some slut may answer, if only he burns hard enough. In the early stages, however," said McAdam, leering at the geckoes, "he may tide himself over with opium, for a while."
"Good day to you, now, Dr McAdam."
On his way down through the growing heat Stephen overtook two crippled boys, the one with his leg taken off at the knee, the other with an empty sleeve pinned over his breast, midshipmen of the Nereide. "Mr Lomax," he cried, "sit down at once. This is madness: your stitches will burst. Sit down at once on that stone: elevate your limb."
Pale young wraithlike Lomax, propped by his crutch and his companion, hopped to the stone, the mounting stone outside a rich-looking house, and sat upon it. "It is only another hundred yards, sir,'he said. "All the Nereides are there. You can see the ship from the corner; and we are to go aboard the minute her colours go up."
"Nonsense," said Stephen. But having considered for a while he knocked at the door: a little later he came out with a chair, a cushion, and two stout anxious care-worn black men. He put Lomax into the chair, properly padded, and the black men carried it down to the turn in the road where the little group of mobile survivors looked down on their frigate, tight-packed among the Indiamen, the merchant ships and the men-of-war in Port-Louis harbour. Some of their eager life seeped into him. "Mr Yeo," he said to a lieutenant with a great bandage covering most of his face, "you may do me an essential service, if you will be so kind. I was obliged to leave a valuable bolster in your ship, and I should be most grateful if you would order the strictest search when you go aboard. I have already mentioned it to the Admiral and the Commodore, but--"His words were cut off by cheering away to the right, a cheering that spread as the French colours came down on the citadel, and that redoubled when the union flag replaced them. The Nereides cheered too, thin and piping, a poor volume of sound that was lost in the salvoes of artillery and then in a deep rolling thunder from the guns of the fleet.
