The Mauritius Command (34 page)

"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 Venus, 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--"

"A cable's length, sir," said Bonden.

When I perceived a ship sailing down from Port-Louis in the direction of La Reunion. One of the gentlemen, who had followed the sea for many years, asserted that she was an Indiaman. He pointed out her general mercantile appearance, and the presence of a subsidiary posterior deck, or platform--"

Poop," muttered Bonden. "The infallible mark of your Indiaman; and he remarked that it would be strange indeed if Monsieur Hamelin, then in Port-Louis, should let such a prize escape him. And in fact shortly afterwards we descried the Venus and a smaller frigate--"

"Pardon ene, sir," said Bonden, "Venus and a sloop."

"The little one had three masts," said Stephen sharply. "I counted them."

"Yes, sir; but she was only a sloop." And addressing Jack, Bonden went on, "Sixteen-gun corvette Victor, sir."

"Well, never mind. They pursued the alleged Indiaman, the Venus outsailing her companion: and then to our surprise the Indiaman turned out to be no Indiaman, at all. She took down or folded a number of sails, allowed the Venus to come close, and discharged a number of guns upon her, at the same time displaying a banner indicating she was a man-of war."

Jack looked at Bonden, who said, "Bombay, sir; a country-built Indiaman bought into the service in the year five. My cousin George, he sailed in her one commission, gunner's mate; said she was a good seaboat, but mortal slow. Twenty-four eighteen-pounders, two long nines, and fourteen twenty-fourpounder carronades."

"At this," said Stephen, "the Venus drew back, waiting for her consort, and the Bombay pressed on. The sun had set: we descended the cliff, made our way to the aviso, and there I resigned the conduct of affairs into Bonden's hands."

"Well, sir," said Bonden, "I knew you would be wishful to know as soon as ever could be, so we nipped through the Dutchman's Passage with barely a scrape, though the tide was out, fetched the Victor's wake, crossed under her stern in the dark just before moonrise, and worked up to windward with all she could wear and well-nigh more. We was well ahead, running nine-ten knots by the time the moon was well up, and we see Venus coming up on the Bombay hand over hand, seven knots to her six, maybe; and at the beginning of the middle watch, when we had sunk the land long since, she ranged up alongside and they set to hammer and tongs. I ought to of said, sir, that Bombay had a tidy packet of redcoats aboard, and there seemed to be plenty of soldiers in Venus too, her decks were that crowded with men. Well now, Venus didn't care for it overmuch, and presently she wore out of range, new-gammoning her bowsprit, as far as I could judge. Howsoever, in a couple of glasses she perked her spirits up again, and the wind having backed two points she set her stuns'ls and bore down. The action started again in the morning watch, a running fight, with both on "em under royals and larboard stuns'ls; but by now we was so far ahead I couldn't rightly see how it went. I did see Venus lose her foretopmast and her gaff, and Bombay, she lost her main and mizen topmasts, and her courses were chawed up something cruel; but she was standing on for Saint-Denis and giving as good as she got when last we see her plain, and the sloop was still a league and more astern."

While he was speaking the Boadicea began to heel to larboard; she had run beyond the land-breeze, which came from aft, and she was now in the south easter, a gentle wind today, untimely gentle. In spite of his words about seamanlike officers Jack went on deck the moment Bonden's account was done. He automatically checked the spread of canvas against the force of the wind, and found something of a disproportion: like so many others, young Johnson still entertained the delusion that more sail meant more speed, and in his eagerness he was pressing her down by the head. Jack did not wish the change to have the appearance of a check, however, and first he hailed the masthead. "Masthead, there. What do you see?"

"They are hull-up now, sir," called the lookout. "Heavy frigate, Indiaman, and a ship-rigged sloop or maybe a jackass frigate, all wearing French colours; pendant aboard the big frigate. No firing since four bells. Frigate's lost her topmasts, all three of them. Indiaman too. Sloop unwounded, I believe."

Jack nodded, took a turn or so, told Johnson that he might find her labour less with the flying-jib hauled down, slung his glass, set his hands to the shrouds, and swung himself up: up and up, through the maintop, Up again to the crosstrees, slower than he would have climbed twenty years before, but still at a respectable pace.

All that the lookout had told him was true; but what the lookout had not been able to tell him was the spirit of the scene far over there to the north, so far over that the shimmering air sometimes gave the distant ships their masts and sometimes took them away; and it was that he had climbed his airy pinnacle to make out. After a backward glance at the Staunch and the Otter, both of them a couple of miles astern and losing steadily, he settled down to a prolonged study of the position. Between them the Venus and the Victor had certainly taken the Bombay, having reduced her to her lower masts alone: the Venus had paid heavily, however, losing not only her fore and main topmasts but the greater part of her mizen too. The sloop had not suffered at all. There was great activity aboard the Vinus, and it appeared to him that they were preparing to send up a new foretopmast: they had certainly fished a fine great spar of some kind to the stump of the mizen. Boats were passing between the ships. The distance was too great for any certainty, but it looked as though bodies of men were moving in both directions: as though it were not merely a shifting of prisoners. Did Hamelin intend to man his prize? It was by no means impossible: sailing from his home port he might very well have doubled his crew with seamen drafted from his other ships, to say nothing of all the soldiers in Port-Louis. If he could spare enough men to serve the Bombay's forty guns, and if he had the hardihood to do so, that would change the situation.

Within himself Jack had not the slightest doubt of victory, but it would never do to let this conviction take the form of even unspoken words; it must remain in the state of that inward glow which had inhabited him ever since the retaking of the Africaine and which had now increased to fill the whole of his heart--a glow that he believed to be his most private secret, although in fact it was evident to everyone aboard from Stephen Maturin to the adenoidal third-class boy who closed the muster-book. So leaving that to one side he set himself to a cold, professional, objective examination of the factors that might delay or even prevent it.

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 Venus, 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 Venus 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.