The Mauritius Command (38 page)
Stephen crossed the blazing courtyard again, and under the trees Jack stood up, expectant. His smile vanished when Stephen said, "He is dead," and they paced down in silence through the town. A town busier now, with the shops opening, men posting up the proclamation, large numbers of people walking about, companies of soldiers marching, parties of bluejackets, queues forming outside the brothels, several French officers who saluted punctiliously, putting the best face they could on defeat. Stephen stopped to kneel as the Sacrament passed by to a deathbed, a single priest and a boy with a bell.
"I trust he went easy?" said Jack in a low voice, at last.
Stephen nodded, and he looked at Jack with his pale, expressionless eyes, looking objectively at his friend, tall, sanguine, almost beefy, full of health, rich, and under his kindly though moderate concern happy and even triumphant. He thought, "You cannot blame the bull because the frog burst: the bull has no comprehension of the affair," but even so he said, "Listen, Jack: I do not much care for the taste of this victory. Nor any victory, if it comes to that. I shall see you at dinner."
The dinner was nothing in comparison with those usually eaten at Government House under the rule of General Decaen: many of his cooks and all of his plate had vanished in the brief interregnum, and a stray mortar bomb had destroyed part of the wall. But even so the creole dishes made a pleasant contrast with the hard fare of recent days, and above all the ceremony provided an ideal occasion for speeches.
Something, reflected Jack, something came over officers who reached flag rank or the equivalent, something that made them love to get up on their hind legs and produce long measured periods with even longer pauses between them. Several gentlemen had already risen to utter slow compliments to themselves, their fellows, and their nation, and now General Abercrombie was struggling to his feet, with a sheaf of notes in his hand. "Your Excellency, my lords, Admiral Bertie, and gentlemen. We are met here together," two bars of silence, "on this happy, eh, occasion," two more bars, "to celebrate what I may perhaps be permitted to call, an unparalleled feat, of combined operations, of combination, valour, organization, and I may say, of indomitable will." Pause. "I take no credit to myself." Cries of No, no; and cheers. "No. It is all due," pause, "to a young lady in Madras."
"Sir, sir," hissed his aide-de-camp, "you have turned over two pages. You have come to the joke."
It took some time to get the General back to his eulogy of Abercrombie and all present, and in the interval Jack looked anxiously at his friend, one of the few black coats present, sitting on the Governor's right. Stephen loathed speeches, but though paler than usual he seemed to be bearing up, and Jack noticed with pleasure that as well as his own he was secretly drinking the wine poured into the abstinent Governor's glass.
The General boomed on, came to a close, a false close, rallied and began again, and at last sank into his chair, glared round in surly triumph and drank like a camel with a broad desert before it.
A broad desert threatened, to be sure, for here was Admiral Bertie, fresh and spry, game for a good half hour: and his first words about his inability to match the gallant General's eloquence struck a chill to Jack's heart. His mind wandered during the Admiral's compliments to the various corps that made up the force, and he was in the act of building an observatory-dome of superior design on the top of Ashgrove hill--he had of course purchased the hill and felled the trees on the summit--when he heard Mr Bertie's voice take on a new and unctuous tone.
"In the course of my long career," said the Admiral, "I have been compelled to give many orders, which, though always for the good of the service, have sometimes been repugnant to my finer feelings. For even an Admiral retains finer feelings, gentlemen." Dutiful laughter, pretty thin. "But now, with His Excellency's permission, I shall indulge myself by giving one that is more congenial to the spirit of a plain British sailor." He paused and coughed in a suddenly hushed atmosphere of genuine suspense, and then in an even louder voice he went on, "I hereby request and require Captain Aubrey to repair aboard the Boadicea as soon as he has finished his dinner, there to receive my despatches for the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and to convey them to Whitehall with all the diligence in his power. And to this, gentlemen"--raising his glass -'I will append a toast: let us all fill up to the brim, gunwales under, and drink to England, home and beauty, and may Lucky Jack Aubrey reach "em with fair winds and flowing sheets every mile of the way."
The End