The Mauritius Command

by Patrick O'Brian

  'Never concern yourself about the ministry, my dear sir,' said Stephen. 'They know of its existence. They know very well; it is a tolerably open secret, I assure you. But in any event, I must not imperil my source of information: and I have given an undertaking that only three men on the Mauritius shall see it, and that I shall then commit it to the flames.' He lapped the document, heavy with curses, in his handkerchief, and thrust it into his bosom: Farquhar looked wistfully at the bulge, but he only said, 'Ah, if you have given an undertaking . . .' and they both glanced at the slips of paper upon which they had noted the subjects they were to discuss.

  Stephen's were all crossed off: one remained on Farquhar's list, but he seemed to find it difficult to broach. He paused, and laughed, and said, 'The form in which I have written this will never do. You would find it offensive. I reminded myself—very unnecessarily, I may add—to beg you to give me an explanation—oh, not in any way an official explanation, you understand—for the Commodore's abounding sanguine activity. He really seems to assume that our plans for invading the Mauritius can go forward in spite of this appalling disaster at the Ile de la Passe: he has thoroughly infected or perhaps I should say convinced Keating, and the two of them dart from point to point, day and night, flying in the face of the clearest evidence. Naturally I second him with all my power—I scarcely dare do otherwise, now that he has taken on his present heroic Jovian stature. He runs into this room, says, "Farquhar, my good fellow, be so good as to cut all the tallest trees on the island and set all carpenters to work directly. The Africaine must have masts by dawn on Thursday at the latest," and runs out again. I tremble and obey: but when I reflect that the French possess seven frigates to our one and a pitiful wreck, and when I reckon up the guns at their disposal as opposed to ours, why, I am seized with an amazement.' He stared out of the window, seized with retrospective stupor; and to fill the gap Stephen observed that the number of guns counted for less than the accuracy with which they were pointed and the zeal with which they were served, adding that although the Africaine was not yet fit for battle, her guns were available for the other vessels, such as they were.

  'Very true,' said the Governor. 'But I will confess that a perhaps unworthy explanation of the Commodore's eagerness thrust itself into my mind: it occurred to me that he might possibly have some encouraging intelligence that I did not share. Do not take my words amiss, Dr Maturin, I beg.'

  'Never in life, my dear sir,' said Stephen. 'No: I have told him nothing that I have not told you. The answer lies on another plane entirely. As I understand it, Commodore Aubrey has arrived at an intimate conviction that we have a moral superiority over our opponents; that the initiative has changed sides; and that, as he puts it himself, although they want neither ships nor seamanship nor conduct, they do lack spirit. They lack an earnest desire to engage, to risk everything on one throw; and he is of the opinion that Hamelin also lacks the sense of the decisive moment in the ebb and flow of a campaign. Furthermore, it is his view that Commodore Hamelin is more interested in snapping up Indiamen than in gathering laurels at the one moment when they lie ready to his hand. He quoted your remark about Fortune with great approval, declaring that Hamelin would find the wench's forelock hellfire hard to grapple, now that she had forged ahead.'

  'I made that remark in a very different context,' said Farquhar; but Stephen, carrying on with his thought, continued, 'I am no strategist, but I know Jack Aubrey well: I respect his judgment in naval matters, and I find his conviction, his military intuition, wholly persuasive. There may also be some illogical factors,' he added, being perfectly aware of the reason for Jack's frequent hurried visits to the hospital and his immoderate delight in Colley's recovery, 'such as seamen's omens and the like, that need not detain a rational mind.'

  'So you are persuaded,' said the Governor doubtfully. 'Well then, I too am persuaded; though at one remove. But at least there is no prospect of his stirring until the Africaine is ready for sea? No prospect, in this extremely dangerous situation, of his dashing out like a sea-borne Bayard to engage at seven to one?'

  'I imagine not, but I would scarcely answer for it. Now, sir,' said Stephen, standing up, 'I must beg to take my leave: the boat is no doubt waiting, and I shall have harsh words if I do not hurry.'

  'I shall see you again very shortly?' asked Farquhar.

  'Yes, with the blessing. This journey takes me no farther than the south west tip of the Mauritius, the Morne Brabant, where I see two officers of the Irish troops and another gentleman; and I think I can promise that the Commodore and Colonel Keating will have little trouble with the more Catholic members of General Decaen's garrison, when they come face to face.' As they walked through the hall he said in an undertone, tapping his chest, 'This is so very much more portable than a hundredweight of gold, and so very, very much more effective.'

  The great door opened, and in the entrance they were very nearly run down by Mr Trollope, who came bounding up the steps of the Residence four at a time. He recovered himself, cast a reproachful look at Stephen, plucked off his hat, and said, 'I beg your pardon, your Excellency, but I am charged with the Commodore's respectful compliments and might he have seven hundred and fifty blacks before the evening gun? I was also to remind Dr Maturin that he asked for the aviso at five and twenty minutes past four o'clock precisely.'

  Stephen looked at his watch, uttered a low howl, and set off at a shambling run for the harbour, where the Pearl of the Mascarenes, the fastest aviso in the island, lay champing at her buoy.

  At dawn on Sunday the two quartermasters at the signalstation high above Saint-Denis were weighing the probabilities of duff today: last Sunday they, like all the Boadiceas and all the Africaines, Staunches and Otters, had been deprived of their duff, on account of the furious pace of work in the dockyards; and it looked very much as though the same might happen today. As they leaned out to peer at the yard below the strong land-breeze whipped their pigtails forward, obscuring their view: automatically they grasped them with their teeth and peered on: judging by the feverish activity down there, the parties of blacks and seamen and artificers and soldiers already toiling like so many ants, Sunday duff seemed as remote as wedding cake. Even beef was by no means certain.

  'Some foreign mess again,' said William Jenkins, 'and ate cold, no doubt. How Goldilocks does crack on. Slavedriving ain't in it, when you consider two weeks of no duff; and it was much the same in Simon's Town. Hurry, hurry, hurry, and don't you dare sweat the glass.'

  Goldilocks was Jack Aubrey's nickname in the service, and the other quartermaster, Henry Trecothick, had sailed with him when the locks were indeed golden, rather than their present dull sun-bleached yellow. He felt that Jenkins was coming it a little high, and he said coldly, 'He's got a job of work to do, ain't he? And dogged does it. Though I must say a man likes a hot dinner, as being more natural and Bill, what do you make of that craft out there?'

  'Where away?'

  'Nor-nor-east: just coming round the point. Behind the islands. She's dowsed her mainsail.'

  'I can't see nothing.'

  'What a wall-eyed slab-sided Dutch-built bugger you are, to be sure, Bill Jenkins. Behind the islands.'

  'Behind the islands? Why didn't you say so? She's a fisherman, that's what she is. Can't you see they're a-pulling? Ain't you got no eyes?'

  'Light along the glass, Bill,' said Trecothick. And having stared fixedly he said, 'She ain't no fisherman. They're pulling like Dogget's coat and badge; pulling right into the wind's eye like it was a race for a thousand pound. No fisherman ever pulled like that.' A pause. 'I tell you what, Bill Jenkins, she's that little old aviso, Pearl by name.'

  'You and your fancies, Henry. Pearl ain't due back this tide, no, nor the next. Was that thunder? A drop of rain would—'

  'Christ, she's broke out a signal. Get your fat arse out of the way. Enemy in sight—what's red white chequer?—due north. Bill, jump down and rouse out Mr Ballocks. I'll fix the hoist. Bear a hand, mate, bear a hand.'

>   Up flew the signal, out banged the gun: the station above St Paul's repeated within a matter of seconds, and into the dining-cabin of the Boadicea darted the midshipman of the watch, who found the Commodore pink and cheerful, surrounded by papers and already dictating to his blear-eyed, unshaved secretary as he devoured his first, or sunrise, breakfast, 'Mr Johnson's duty, sir,' he cried,' St Paul's repeating from Saint-Denis enemy in sight, bearing due north.'

  'Thank you, Mr Bates,' said Jack. 'I shall be on deck directly.'

  There he found the whole quarterdeck motionless, all faces turned towards the distant flagstaff: he said, 'Prepare to slip, Mr Johnson,' and then he too fixed his eyes on the hill. Two full minutes passed with no further hoist, and he said to the signal-midshipman, 'Repeat to Saint-Denis, Staunch and Otter proceed to sea immediately: attend to pennant's motions.' Then stepping to the taffrail he hailed the Africaine. 'Mr Tullidge, I have room for fifty volunteers, no more.'

  The Africaines were less remarkable for their discipline than their ferocious eagerness to serve the Frenchmen out, and now began a disorderly savage jostling race, whose fifty winners, headed by a powerful master's mate with a face like a baboon, came aboard the Boadicea by boat or strong swimming as her buoyed cable ran smoking from her hawse and she cast to the fine land-breeze.

  The sails came crowding on; she gathered way, and the good breeze carried them up towards Cape Bernard, the high land that barred out all the ocean due north of Saint-Denis as well as the town itself. With studdingsails on either side, the Boadicea threw a bow-wave that came creaming down to the mainchains, but even so the cape moved tediously slow, and Jack found it something of a relief to have his impatience distracted by the ugly scene that developed when it was rumoured that the Africaines were to take over the forward starboard guns. Loud angry voices, rarely raised aboard the Boadicea, could be heard on the forecastle, disturbing the holy calm of a well-run man-of-war: the bosun came hurrying aft, spoke to the first lieutenant, and Seymour, crossing the quarterdeck to the rail where Jack was staring at the station in the hope of some more definite signal, coughed and said, 'I beg your pardon, sir, but the men of Mr Richardson's division believe that their guns are to be taken from them, and with the utmost respect they wish to represent that they would find this a little hard.'

  'Let the hands come aft, Mr Seymour,' said Jack, with his telescope still trained on the flagstaff, now at the far limit of his view. When he clapped the glass to and turned there they were before him, the whole waist of the ship crowded with men, whose utmost respect (though genuine) was for the moment scarcely discernible beneath their rage at injustice.

  'What a precious set of old women you are, upon my word,' he said testily. 'You clap on to a silly buzz with no truth in it and set about one another like a parcel of fish-fags. Look at Eames there, with a bloody nose and on a Sunday too, for shame. And all this before we know whether the enemy is anything more than some stray sloop, or whether he will be so polite as to stay until you have stopped clawing one another. Now I tell you what it is: if we have the good fortune to come into action, every team is going to fight the gun it's used to. That's justice. But if any Boadicea is hurt, then an Africaine takes his place: and if we board, then the Africaines board first. That's flat and that's fair all round. Mr Seymour, be so good as to have cutlasses and boarding-axes served out to the Africaines.'

  The general opinion was that this was fair enough: and although for the present the Boadiceas could not be brought to love the Africaines, they did at least treat their guests with a distant civility—no oaths, no blows, little more than a covert kick or nudge, accidental done a purpose.

  Cape Bernard at last, and the frigate rounded it, shaving the reef so close that a lobbed biscuit might have reached the wicked breakers. And as she rounded it, opening new skies, so her people heard the sound of gunfire, the growling of heavy guns a great way off in the north.

  'Jump up to the masthead, Mr Richardson,' said Jack, 'and tell me what you see.'

  As the midshipman vanished aloft Saint-Denis came into sight: the Staunch was still working out of the harbour, and the Otter was only a mile ahead of her. Jack frowned; he was about to call the signalmidshipman when he saw fresh canvas break out aboard both of them. It was true that neither had been ready for action, ready to slip at a moment's notice, as the Boadicea had been these last twenty-four hours; it was true that they must have had most of their hands ashore or in the yard; but even so he was not pleased, and he meditated a rebuke. 'Am I growing pompous?' he wondered, and the answer 'Probably' had taken disagreeable form in his mind when Spotted Dick, after a scrupulous examination of the distant northern sea, hailed him. 'On deck, there. Sir, I believe I can make out three ships hulldown two points on the larboard bow.' And as if to confirm his words, the distant thunder growled again. Every man aboard listened with all his might, strained ears trying to pierce through the song of the rigging and the slap of the sea to the underlying silence; and every man aboard heard the popping of a musket, weak, but nothing near so remote as the great guns.

  Again the masthead hailed the deck, reporting, perhaps a little late, the presence of the aviso a couple of miles away, almost invisible against the reef. She was still pulling strongly against the wind, still announcing that the enemy was in sight, with a musket-shot to underline the signal.

  'Close the aviso, Mr Seymour,' said Jack.

  As the Boadicea swept down the Pearl set her jib and mainsall, spun about and ran quartering before the wind, clear of the reef and its islands, so that when the two vessels converged they were both running fast on almost parallel courses—Dr Maturin could be restored to the frigate without the loss of a moment.

  His standard of seamanship being tolerably well-known aboard the Boadicea, no orders were required for his reception: there was not time for a bosun's chair, but a whip appeared at the mainyardarm; and now, as they tore along together with no more than a few feet of foaming, heaving sea between them, Bonden, poised on the rail of the Pearl, seized the line, made Stephen fast, adjured him 'to take it easy', called out 'Heave away, there: cheerly now', sprang across the gulf and ran up the frigate's side like a cat to receive the Doctor as he came aboard. He had timed the roll exactly, and all would have gone well if Stephen, with some notion of steadying himself, had not grasped at the Pearl's rigging. A slack slabline at once took a turn about his dangling legs and jerked him into a maze of cordage that he could neither name nor disentangle. A fairly heavy swell was running, and for a moment it seemed that Stephen must come aboard in two pieces. A nimble Pearl raced aloft and at great cost to the aviso's rigging cut him free; but this he did at the very moment when the Boadiceas, realizing that they were tearing their surgeon apart, let go; and Stephen therefore swung in a sickening downward curve to strike the frigate's side a little below the waterline. Now, urged by cries, they heaved again, but he stuck under the chains, and the ship's next roll plunged him deep. Unfortunately for Stephen he counted none but friends aboard, and a large proportion of these sprang to his rescue; powerful hands pulled him in different directions by the arms, legs and hair, and only the violent intervention of the Commodore preserved him. He reached the deck at last, more dead than alive, oozing blood from scratches inflicted by the barnacles; they emptied some of the water out of him, carried him below, and plucked off his clothes.

  'There, there, take it easy,' said Jack, looking anxiously into his face and speaking in that compassionate protective voice which has vexed so many invalids into the tomb.

  'There is not a moment to lose,' cried Stephen, starting up.

  Jack pressed him back into the cot with irresistible force, and still in the same soothing voice he said, 'We are not losing any time at all, old Stephen. Not a moment. Do not grow agitated. All is well. You are all right now.'

  'Oh, your soul to the devil, Jack Aubrey,' said Stephen, and in an even stronger tone, 'Killick, Killick, you mumping, villain, bring in the coffee, will you now, for the love of God. And a bowl
of sweet oil. Listen, Jack'—writhing from beneath his hand and sitting up—'you must press on, crack on, clap on, as fast as ever you can go. There are two frigates out there battering one of ours. And one of them, the Vénus, has lost masts, rigging—Bonden will tell you the details—and you may catch her, if only you will make haste, and not sit there leering like a mole with the palsy.'

  'Pass the word for my coxswain,' called Jack, and to Stephen he said, 'We are already making haste, you know.' He named the sails that were now urging the Boadicea towards the distant battle, and he assured Stephen that the moment she cleared the land-breeze and entered the region of the south easter offshore, he would let fall his maincourse and set his staysails, for then they would have the wind on the quarter, rather than right aft; and Stephen was to take notice that the presence of the captain on deck was not essential to the progress of the ship, once he was blessed with a seamanlike set of officers. The appearance of Bonden and of Killick bearing the sweet oil cut off Stephen's reply: he groped among the heap of wet clothes, brought out his watch and dipped it in the oil, observing, 'It has survived several grave immersions; let us hope it may survive this. Now, Barret Bonden, I shall give the Commodore a succinct account of the position, and you will supply the technical details.' He collected his mind, and went on, 'Yesterday evening, you must understand, I was standing on the most elevated point of the Morne Brabant, where it overlooks the sea, and conversing with some gentlemen who among other things told me, and this I must not omit, that the Bellone, Minerve and lphigenia are undergoing heavy repairs, with their guns all out, and will not be fit for sea this fortnight and more: Bonden was at a certain distance—'