The Mauritius Command (29 page)
"They are too close by far," said Clonfert. He turned to the artillery officer, haggard and quite wretched at having been separated from his men, at having lost the finest opportunity of his professional career, and said, "Captain Newnham, will the brass mortar fetch them, do you think?"
"I shall try it, my lord," said Newnham. He loaded the piece himself with a thirteen-inch bomb-shell, laid it--a long and delicate operation--set the fuse just so, and fired. The shell soared high in the clean air, a rapidly-diminishing black ball, and burst right over the Bellone. A delighted cheer went up: the French ships slipped their cables and stood farther in, to anchor out of range. The last shell, fired at extreme elevation, fell short: and it was the last shot of the day.
The remaining hours of light saw all the precautions taken that should have been taken the day before: by the next morning the Ile de la Passe was capable of sinking any ship that attempted the passage. The Nereide had crossed new topgallantyards, had repaired her boom and fished her wounded foremast; and she sent in a boat to demand the surrender of the corvette.
"I hope to God Webber has found the Sirius," said Clonfert, gazing eagerly out to sea. But the day passed, and no sail showed beyond the cape. The night passed too, with boats rowing guard: before sunrise the perilous landbreeze began to blow--perilous because it might bring the powerful ships and a swarm of boats across the lagoon in the darkness, but the French never stirred, and at dawn the reviving south- easter kept them where they lay. So two days went by, with no incident apart from the French commodore's refusal to give up the Victor. The soldiers drilled and polished their equipment; the artillerymen exercised their pieces; the master-gunner filled cartridge and checked his stores. Clonfert remained as cheerful and active as ever, and his spirits reached a new height on the third day, when the French ships were seen to move down to the far end of the harbour, right down among the shoals and under the batteries of Port South-East, mooring in a curved line that stretched from one end of the sunken reef that guarded the port's entrance to the other; for this, said he, must mean that Webber had found the Sirius. At least some of the blockading force must have disappeared from off Port-Louis, and Governor Decaen, fearing an attack upon the Minerve and Bellone, had surely sent the news overland to Port South-East. Clonfert was right. Some hours later the Sirius herself rounded the cape under a great press of sail.
"Look sharp with the signal," said Clonfert, when they had exchanged numbers. The prepared hoist broke out, and he laughed aloud.
"What does it signify?" asked Stephen.
"Ready for action and Enemy of inferior force," replied Clonfert with a slightly conscious look; and immediately afterwards, "Look alive with the book, Briggs. What is she saying?"
The signal-yeoman muttered the answer, and the midshipman spoke up: "Send Nereide's master aboard, my lord."
"Gig's crew," cried Clonfert. "Mr Satterly, bring her in as quick as ever you can."
In she came, and her last signal before she entered the channel told the Nereide to get under way. The Sirius passed the fort almost as fast as the Bellone, and still under her topsails and courses swept by the Nereide, Pym leaning over the rail and hailing Clonfert to follow him. Down the long winding channel they went, more cautiously now, but the Sirius still with her topsails set, for there was not much daylight left. In the Nereide her black pilot was at the con; he had her under staysails, no more, and he was muttering to himself, for after the Horseshoe bank their course would lead them into a region of the inner harbour that they did not know well--a region that they had avoided, it being swept by the guns of Port South-East.
Past the Noddy shoal, with the lead going fast: past the Three Brothers, and a four-point turn to larboard. The leadsman's calls came sharp, quick and clear: "By the mark ten; and a half ten; by the deep eleven; by the deep eleven; by the mark fifteen." A good depth of water, a clear channel one would have sworn: yet at the last call the Sirius, only just ahead, struck hard on the tail of a bank and ran far up on to the submerged coral.
Yet if she had to go aground at least she had chosen a good place for doing so. The shore- batteries could not reach her, and the wind, blowing right on to the land, pinned the French frigates to their moorings. The Sirius and the Nereide carried out their warps undisturbed as the sun set over Mauritius, and they settled down to heaving her off in a seamanlike manner. But she would not come off at the first heave, nor in the first hour of heaving, during which the tide began to ebb: however, tomorrow's flood would be higher and there were great hopes of floating her at about eight in the morning; and in the meantime there was nothing to be done except to ensure that no French boat-attack could succeed.
"What have you to say to our patient's present state of exaltation?" said Stephen to McAdam. "In these circumstances, does it pass the limits of reasonable conduct? Do you find it morbid?"
"I am at a loss," said McAdam. "I have never seen him like this, at all. He may know what he is about, but he may be bent on wiping your friend's eye, and damn the whole world, so he does it. Have you ever seen a man look so beautiful?"
Dawn, and still the French had not moved. For once no holy-stone was heard aboard the Sirius or the Nereide; no swabs beat the decks, littered as they were with cables, hawsers, heavy tackles, all the resources of the bosun's art. The tide rose, the capstans turned, slower and slower as the full strain came on and as all hands who could find a place at the bars heaved her grinding off into deep water, where she anchored by the Nereide and all the carpenters crowded about her bows, cut deep by the sharp and lagged coral. The exhausted hands were piped to their late breakfast, and they were beginning to set the still-encumbered deck into some kind of fighting-trim when the Iphigenia and Magicienne were seen in the offing.
Clonfert sent his master to bring them in, for Mr Satterly, though harassed and ashamed, now certainly knew the channel up to this point very well; but he had grown so cautious that it was not until after dinner that they dropped anchor and all captains gathered aboard the Sirius to hear Pym's plan of attack. It was clear: it made good plain sense. Nereide, with her black pilot, was to lead in and anchor between the Victor and the Bellone at the northern end of the French line; Sirius with her eighteen- pounders was to anchor abreast of the Bellone; Magicienne between the Ceylon and the powerful Minerve; and Iphigenia, who also carried eighteen-pounders, abreast of the Minerve, closing the line on the south.
The captains turned to their ships. Clonfert, who did in fact look extraordinarily gay, young, and lighthearted, as though possessed by some happy spirit, went below to put on a new coat and fresh white breeches; coming on deck again he said to Stephen, with a particularly sweet and affectionate smile, "Dr Maturin, I believe we may show you something to be compared to what you have seen with Commodore Aubrey."
The Sirius made her signal, and the Nereide, slipping her cable, led in under staysails, her pilot conning the ship from the foretopmast yard. The Sirius followed her, then the Magicienne, then the Iphigenia, each falling into line at intervals of a cable's length. On through the winding channel with the steady breeze, the shore coming closer and closer: with successive turns in the channel the intervals grew wider, and the Sirius, hurrying to close the gap and misjudging her swing, struck hard and grounded on the rocky edge. At the same moment the French frigates and the shore-batteries opened fire.
Pym hailed his ships to carry on. In five minutes the Nereide was out of the narrow pass. The Magicienne and the Iphigenia, judging the channel by the stranded Sirius, pressed on after her but now at a somewhat greater distance; and in the last wind, four hundred yards from the French line, the Magicienne took the ground. By now the French broadsides were sweeping high over the Nereide's deck from stem to stern to disable her as she ran down, making for the Victor's bow. "Warm work, Dr Maturin," said Clonfert, and then, glancing over the taffrail, "Sirius has not backed off; she is hard and fast," he said. "We must tackle the Bellone for her. Mr Satterly, lay me alongside the Bellone. Lay me alongside the Bellone," he said louder, to be heard above the din; for now the bow guns were answering the French. "Aye, aye, sir," said the master. For another cable's length she held on, straight through the French fire: another fifty yards, and the master, waving his hand to the watchful bosun, ordered the helm put up.
The Nereide swung round, dropped her anchor, and lay there broadside to broadside, abeam of the big Frenchman, and her twelve-pounders roared out at point-blank range. She was firing fast: the Marines and soldiers packed tight on the quarterdeck and forecastle were blazing away over the hammocks with steady pertinacity: stray ropes and blocks fell on to the splinternetting overhead: smoke hung thick between the ships, continually renewed as it blew away, and through the smoke the Bellone's guns flashed orange--flashes from the Victor too, on the Nereide's starboard quarter.
Stephen walked across to the other side: the Magicienne, hard aground on her sharp piercing reef with her figurehead pointing at the French line, could nevertheless bring her forward guns to bear and she was hitting the enemy as hard as she could, while her boats worked furiously to get her off: the Iphigenia was close alongside the Minerve; they were separated by a long narrow shoal but they were not a stone's throw apart and they were hammering one another with appalling ferocity. The volume of noise was greater than anything Stephen had ever experienced: yet through it all there was a sound familiar to him--the cry of the wounded. The Bellone's heavy guns were mauling the Nereide most terribly, tearing gaps in her hammocks, dismounting guns: presently she would use grape. He was a little uncertain of his position. In all previous engagements his place as a surgeon had been below, in the orlop; here it was perhaps his duty to stand and be shot at, to stand with nothing to do, like the army officers: it did not move him unduly, he found, though by now grape was screeching overhead. Yet at the same time men were carrying below in increasing numbers, and there at least he could be of some use. "I shall stay for the present, however," he reflected. "It is something, after all, to view an action from such a vantage- point." The glass turned, the bell rang: again and again. "Six bells," he said, counting. "Is it possible we have been at it so long?" And it seemed to him that the Bellone was now firing with far less conviction, far less accuracy--that her ragged broadsides had far longer intervals between them.
A confused cheering forward, and from the Iphigenia too: a gap in the cloud of smoke showed him the weakly manned and weakly armed Ceylon, battered by the grounded Magicienne and by the Iphigenia's quarter-guns, in the act of striking her colours; and in one of those strange momentary pauses without a gun he heard the captain of the Iphigenia hail the Magicienne in a voice of thunder, desiring her to take possession of the Indiaman. But as the Magicienne's boat neared her, pulling fast through water whipped white with small shot and great, the Ceylon dropped her topsails and ran for the shore behind the Bellone. The boat was still pursuing her and roaring out when the Minerve, either cutting her cable or having it cut for her by the Iphigenia's murderous and continual fire, swung round, got under way, and ran straight before the wind, following the Ceylon. She steered better than the Ceylon however, for the Indiaman blundered right into the Bellone, forcing her too to cut. They all three drifted on shore--a heap of ships ashore, with the Minerve lying directly behind the Bellone and so near that she could not fire. But the Bellone's broadside still lay square to the Nereide, and now men were pouring into her from the land and from the Minerve and the Ceylon: her fire, which had slackened, now redoubled and grew more furious still, the broadsides now coming fast and true. The Iphigenia, directly to the windward of her shoal and only a pistol-shot from it, could not stir, and it was clear that in these last few minutes the face of the battle had totally changed. There was no more cheering aboard the Nereide. The gun crews, for all their spirit, were growing very tired, and the rate of fire fell off. By now the sun had almost gone: and the shore-batteries, which had hitherto played on the Iphigenia and the Magicienne, now concentrated their fire on the Nereide.
"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.