The Mauritius Command (35 page)
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 Venus 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 Venus, 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 Venus" 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 Venus'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 rehoisted 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 are 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 Venus, 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.
"By the morning most of the hands were sober, and I harangued them on the beastly vice of inebriation; but I am afraid the effect of my words (and thundering good words they were) were quite lost because of the welcome they gave us ashore. Rockets, Bengal lights you could hardly see because of the sun though kindly intended, salvoes from all the fortifications, and three times three all round the port: the Governor, a capital determined fellow, with a good head on his shoulders, and thoroughly understands cooperation, was so pleased at the sight of two frigates bringing in that he would, though a tea-drinker himself, have made the men drunk again directly, if I had not represented to him, that we must make hay while the sun shone. Colonel Keating was positively overjoyed, and expressed himself in the most obliging manner; and he too thoroughly agreed that we must strike while the iron is hot.
"Nothing could exceed his zeal in harrying his staff officers and other slow bellies and in getting his men aboard with all their proper accoutrements and in the right order: for I will tell you, my dear (since no eye but yours will see this letter, and that only after the event), that we mean to invade the Mauritius the day after tomorrow; and we have a very fair hope of a happy outcome." He cast a furtive glance at Stephen Maturin as he wrote these words, so offensive to all his friend's principles and so contrary to all his repeated injunctions, and Stephen, catching his eye, said, "Should you like some encouragement, joy?"
"If you please," said Jack.
"Then you must know that the captain of the ship the Jefferson B. Lowell--"
"The barque, Stephen. The American was a barque; and an amazing fine sailer, too."
"Bah. Was so good as to tell me of the various rates he and his colleagues trading to St Louis have placed on Mauritius paper money. Before our arrival it was very nearly at par with cash; then it dropped to twenty-two per centum below, and so rose and fell according to the fortunes of the campaign, rising to ninety-three after the Ile de la Passe. But now it is not admitted upon any discount at all, and gold is absolutely insisted upon. There is cool, objective testimony for you."
"I am delighted to hear it, Stephen: thank you very much," said Jack. He returned to his letter, and Stephen to his "cello.
"Keating would, I am sure, have been as busy as a bee in any event, out of zeal for our joint campaign (and never did army and navy work so well together, I believe, since ships were first found out); but in this case he was as busy as two or even more, from an uneasiness in his mind at what he had heard from the army officers we released from the Venus. They spoke of a General Abercrombie, who was to command them and a very considerable force gathered from all parts of India: it is difficult to make much sense of what they said, for their colonel was killed in the action, and the junior officers had only fag-ends of gossip; but the general notion is that they were to rendezvous at Rodriguez with several regiments from Fort William and some troops from the Cape and that they were then to make a descent on La Reunion; which, when you come to think of it, is absurd. Even so, Keating was much concerned: "If any gouty old fool of a general comes along to snatch the bread out of my mouth again the very moment it is buttered," cries he in a great passion, "I shall sell my commission to the highest bidder, and be d-d to the service: to be choused out of the glory when we have done all the work, would be more than flesh and blood can bear." And he told me again of the siege of some Indian city whose name I forget, where he had carried the approaches right up to the walls, had repelled sorties by the score, had made a practicable breach, and was on the eve of storming the place when a general appeared in a palanquin, took over, gave the order to attack, wrote a despatch giving himself all the credit for the victory, was promoted and.given the Bath, with an augmentation to his coat of arms. Keating added some pretty severe reflections on the Bath and old men who would do anything for a trumpery piece of ribbon, which I will not repeat, they being somewhat too warm." Jack paused, meditating a witticism in which hot water should combine with Bath to produce a brilliant effect, but his genius did not lie that way, and having chewed his pen for some time, he carried on: "For my own part, I could not make much more sense out of poor Graham of the Bombay, either. He had had a cruise after pirates in the Persian Gulf, and when he put in, precious short-handed, he was at once ordered to take a whole heap of soldiers aboard and to rendezvous with the Illustrious, 74, just south of the Eight Degree Channel--had nothing but ill-luck all the way- sprang a leak low down under his fore-peak ten days out, had to put back, beating up with the wind in his teeth, pumping hard and his men falling sick- endless delays in the yard--missed his first rendezvous, missed the next, so bore away, sick himself with a low fever, for Port-Louis, where he expected to find us blockading--and was taken, after a long and tolerably bloody running fight. I am afraid the heat and the wear and the anxiety and the action may have sent his wits astray, for the unfortunate wight absolutely struck to a sloop, which he took for a second frigate in the darkness. (It is true she was ship-rigged: our old sixteen-gun Victor, but a very mere cockle in fact.) Stephen was of my opinion about his intellects, filled him to the hatches with opium-draughts, shaving and blistering his head just before we left. But in any case, I cannot find that he ever had orders for Rodriguez; so it Is a hundred to one that Keating was nourishing a chimaera, as they say. But since it made him so desperate eager to present any lurking general, hungry for honours, with a fait accompli, viz. a conquered island with HM Governor already installed, and since his eagerness chimed in with my eagerness to get to sea before the French had the Minerve and Bellone afloat (there is a rumour that someone, a Royalist or Papist or both, damaged their bottoms with an infernal machine: but I find it hard to believe that even a foreigner could be so wicked)--why, I fairly caressed the chimaera of his. Stephen," he called, over the growling "cello, "how do you spell chimaera?"
"Many people start with ch, I believe. Have you told her about my stink-pot petrel?"
"Is not stink-pot a hellish low expression for a letter, Stephen?"
"Bless you, my dear, a mother that tends her own babies will not boggle at stink-pot. But you may put thalassodrome, if you find it more genteel."
The pen scratched on; the "cello sang deep; a midshipman tapped on the door. He reported a sail on the starboard quarter, adding that from a curious patch in her foretopsail she was thought to be the Emma.
"Aye, no doubt," said Jack. "She has made amazing good time. Thank you, Mr Penn." The Emma had been called in by aviso from her station off Rodriguez, but he had not looked for her sooner than Thursday. "Tom Pullings will be aboard presently," he said to Stephen. "We must keep him for dinner. After all this to and fro-ing off Rodriguez he will be glad of a bite of fresh mutton." He called out to Killick: the saddle of yesterday's sheep was to be ready at five bells precisely, together with half a dozen of the red Constantia and a drowned baby. They discussed Thomas Pullings, his indifferent prospects, his real deserts, his probable appetite; and the midshipman reappeared, breathless and staring: Staunch had just signalled four sail, bearing north-east.
"What says Emma?" asked Jack.
"I don't know, sir," said the midshipman.
"Then be so good as to find out," said the Commodore, with some asperity.
The Emma, it appeared, had nothing to say, No enemy in sight flew from her fore; no gun called for her pendant's attention; yet the Emma, with a seamanlike captain aboard, was nearer those four sail than the Staunch. The conclusion was obvious: the four sails were Indiamen... unless, he reflected, with a cold grip in his heart, they were English men-of-war.
Stepping thoughtfully out of the cabin, he took over the deck, hailed the Africaine that he was leaving the line, and hauled up to close the Emma. Hitherto the Boadicea had been proceeding under easy sail, at a pace suited to that of the transports, but now topgallants broke out, and with the fine breeze two points free she began to move like a thoroughbred. Her wake stretched white and long; her bow-wave rose to the bridle-ports and the spray came sweeping aft from her forecastle, making rainbows in the sun. Spirits rose high, and the boys and the younger topmen laughed aloud as they raced aloft to loose the royals: but a few sharp, unusually vehement orders from the quarterdeck did away with their more obvious mirth. The afterguard and the waisters moved as mute as mice, ludicrously tiptoeing when they could not be seen; those forward exchanged covert winks and nudges; and those high above murmured, "Watch out for squalls, mate" with a knowing grin. Little passes unnoticed in a man-of-war, and although only the Marine sentry and one or two members of the anchor-watch had seen Jack and Colonel Keating come aboard after Governor Farquhar's farewell dinner, the whole ship's company knew that the skipper "had taken a glass', that he had been "as pissed as old Noah', that he had been "brought down in a barrow, roaring for a woman for a black girl in his cot', and they smiled indulgently, whispering quotations from his homily on the beastly vice of inebriation, as he called out to know whether that tack was to be brought to the chesstrees this watch or not.
Now the Boadicea was really lying down to her work, shouldering the long swell aside with a fine living motion and making her ten knots with no effort, so that for all those untormented by vile premonitions it was a pleasure to feel her sail.
"This is what I had imagined life at sea to be like," said Mr Peter, a rare visitor to the quarterdeck--he spent most of his days in an airless paper lined hole beneath the waterline, dividing his time between seasickness and work. "Do you not find it exhilarating, sir?"
"Sure, it is like a glass of champagne," replied Stephen; and Mr Peter smiled, looking significantly at Colonel Keating, greyish-yellow and blinking in the sun. It was in fact the Colonel who had been brought down in a wheelbarrow; it was he who had so often cried "Let copulation thrive."
The Boadicea and the Emma were approaching at a combined rate of sixteen knots, and every few minutes pushed the eastward horizon back another mile. Soon the lookout told the deck of the four sail reported by the Staunch: then came another hail--two ships bearing eastnorth-east, and a hint of topgallantsails beyond them.
Six ships at least: it was almost impossible that so many should be Indiamen. Jack took a few turns, and his face grew more forbidding: he tossed off his coat, borrowed Seymour's telescope, and made his way up to the foretopgallant masthead. He was nearly there, with the shrouds creaking under his weight and the wind sweeping his long hair away to the north-west, when he heard the lookout mutter "Sixteen, seventeen... "tis a bleeding armada. An invincible bleeding armada. On deck, there... "
"Never mind, Lee," said Jack, "I can see "em myself. Shift over." He settled himself into the crosstrees and trained his glass east and north-east. There they lay, the greatest concentration of men-of-war he had ever seen in the Indian Ocean. And presently, to knock any lingering ghost of hope on the head, he made out the Illustrious, a two-decker wearing a vice-admiral's flag at the fore.
By this time the Emma was well within range. They had long since exchanged signals, and now the Emma was coming under the BoadiceaÕs lee in her heavy wallowing fashion, while the frigate backed her foretopsail and lay to.
Jack took a last long look at the fleet, men-of-war and transports, and then lowered himself heavily down through the rigging, much as another man might have walked heavily down the stairs in his house, thinking not of the steps but of his own problems. He reached the deck and put on his coat as Pullings came up the side; and the contrast between the lieutenant's beaming face, white teeth flashing in the deep ruddy tan, and the Commodore's sombre look would have struck an eye far less observant than Stephen's. However, the mere force of Pullings's grin, his evident pleasure, brought an answering smile; and the smile grew a little more lively at the sight of a large bag hoisting up from the Emma's boat, the much-loved familiar mail-sack.