The Mauritius Command (6 page)

"Frigate signalling, sir, if you please," said the signal midshipman. "Permission to part company."

"Say carry on," replied Jack. "And add happy return."

The Hyaena dropped her topsails neatly, sheeted them home and gathered way, followed by the Guineaman a cable's length to leeward; and having watched them for a while, true on their course for Gibraltar, Jack gave orders that would carry the Boadicea slanting away towards the tropic line, close- hauled on the freshening breeze, and walked into his great cabin. The bulkheads, knocked down when the frigate cleared for action, were already back in place, and the two massive eighteen-pounders were housed again, fore and aft; but the starboard gun was still warm, and the smell of powder and slow- match hung about the air, the most exhilarating scent by land or sea. The beautiful room was all his own, with its noble space and its gleaming curve of stern-windows, in spite of his distinguished passenger; for although Mr Farquhar was to be a governor, his status was still highly theoretical, since it depended on the defeat of a powerful French squadron and on the conquest of the islands he was to govern; and for the moment he had to be content with what would otherwise have been the captain's dining-cabin. Jack threw one last loving glance at his captures, dwindling northwards over the sparkling light-blue sea, and called out, "Pass the word for Mr Seymour, Mr Trollope and Mr Johnson." Seymour, the second lieutenant, and Trollope, the third, followed by Johnson, a master's mate, hurried in, looking pleased but somewhat apprehensive: they knew very well that the Boadicea, though successful, had not distinguished herself, particularly in the operation of hauling the Hyaena off her innocuous ledge of rock and towing her clear of the channel and they were by no means sure what their new captain would have to say. Seymour and Johnson might almost have been brothers, short, pink, chubby men with round heads and fresh open faces upon which their expression of respectful sobriety seemed less natural than cheerfulness: they were the kind of men Jack had seen a hundred times in his career, and he was happy to have them aboard. He had seen other Trollopes too; Trollope was a big man, black-haired, with a dark, unhumorous, determined face and a strong jaw; he might be a right hard- horse lieutenant under the wrong kind of commander, or a devil of a captain himself, if ever he reached post rank. But for the moment he was young; he was not yet set. They were all young, though Johnson might be nearing thirty--old for his station.

Jack knew very well what was in their minds; as a lieutenant he had often been summoned to bear the blame for others" shortcomings. But what he did not know was that the deferential expression on the faces of these capable, enterprising, seasoned young men was the outcome not merely of respect for his rank but of something resembling awe of his reputation in the service: in his fourteen-gun brig the Sophie he had taken the thirty-two-gun Spanish Cacafuego; he was one of the few frigate-captains who had ever attacked a French ship of the line, a seventyfour; as acting-captain of the Lively he had compelled the Clara and the Fama, Spaniards of equal force, to strike to him in the memorable frigate- action off Cadiz; and in cutting-out operations and in generally harassing the enemy he had few equals among those of his standing In the Navy list. Jack neither knew it nor suspected it, partly because he still felt very much their contemporary, and partly because he sincerely regarded his more outstanding actions as the effect of luck: he had happened to be on the spot, and in his place any other sea- officer would have done the same. This was not false modesty: he had known officers by the score, good officers, excellent seamen, their courage beyond question, who had served throughout the wars without any chance of distinguishing themselves; men on convoy-duty, in transports, or even in the ships of the line perpetually blockading Brest and Toulon, who very often encountered danger, but from the violence of the sea rather than that of the enemy, and who therefore remained obscure, often unpromoted and always poor: had they been in the right place at the right time, they would have done as well or better: it was a question of luck.

"Well, gentlemen," he said, "this is quite a pleasant beginning to a voyage. But we have lost Mr Akers. Mr Seymour, you will be so good as to take his place."

"Thank you, sir," said Seymour.

"And Mr Johnson, you have passed for lieutenant, I believe?"

"Oh, yes, sir. On the first Wednesday in August, 1802," said Johnson, blushing and then turning remarkably pale. He had passed, but as it happened for so many other midshipmen with no influence, the longed-for commission had never come. All these years he had been a master's mate, a senior midshipman, no more, the likelihood of promotion fading with every birthday; it had almost vanished now, and he seemed fated to end his career as a master at the best, a mere warrant-officer until he was thrown on the beach, with never a command of his own. And in the Boadicea there were midshipmen with claims far higher than his own: Captain Loveless had shipped the godson of one admiral, the nephew of another, and the heir of the member for Old Sarum; whereas Johnson's father was only a retired lieutenant. "Then," said Jack, "I shall give you an order as acting lieutenant, and let us hope the Admiral at the Cape will confirm it."

Johnson, flushed scarlet now, brought out his acknowledgments, and Jack hurried on, "For I will not disguise from you, gentlemen, that the Cape is our destination. And what you may not know, is that there are four French forty gun frigates waiting for us round the other side of it. Now today's little brush was very well in its way. It pleased the raw hands--entered "em, as you might say--and it clapped a stopper over the Hibi's capers; she had been playing Old Harry with our trade these past few weeks. So I believe we may drink a glass of wine to it. Probyn!" he called, Probyn being his steward. "Rouse out a bottle of Madeira and then jump forward and see that the French captain's cook is comfortably stowed: use him civil. Here's to the Hyaena, ex-Hibi, then; and a safe landfall to her." They drank gravely, certain that this was by no means all the Captain had to say. "Very well in its way," he continued, "but I scarcely suppose that any one of you would have called it pretty."

"Not quite in your Minorca style, sir," said Trollope.

Jack looked hard at the lieutenant. Had they ever been shipmates? He could not recall his face.

"I was a midshipman in Amelia, sir, when you brought the Cacafuego into Mahon. Lord, how we cheered the Sophie!"

"Was you, though?" said Jack, somewhat embarrassed. "Well, I am glad it was not the Cacafuego we came upon today, let alone one of those Frenchmen round the Cape; because although the Boadiceas seem a willing, decent set upon the whole--no sign of shyness that I could see--their gunnery is pitiful beyond all description. And as for pulling, never, never have I seen so many creatures in human shape incapable of handling an oar: in the red cutter there was not one single man apart from old Adams and a Marine that knew how to pull. But it is the gunnery that is my chief concern: pitiful, pitiful... Broadside after broadside at five hundred yards and even less; and where did they go? Not aboard the Frenchman, gentlemen. The only shot that told was the one fired from the bow-chaser, and that was pointed by Jack of the breadroom, who had no business to be on deck at all. Now do but imagine that we had run into a well worked-up French frigate, hulling us with her twenty four-pounders at the best part of a mile: for their practice is devilish accurate, as I dare say you know." In the solemn pause that followed he refilled their glasses and went on, "But thank God this happened early: it could not have fallen better. The raw hands are over their sea-sickness; they are all pleased with themselves, poor honest lubbers; and every foremast Jack is richer by a year's pay, all won in a sunny morning. They must be made to understand that by teaching them their duty we are putting them in the way of getting more. They will attend now, with a good heart; no need for rattans and the rope's end. By the time we reach the Cape, gentlemen, I trust that every man and boy on the ship's books will at least be able to pull an oar, hand and reef a sail, load, point and fire a musket and a gun: and if they can learn no more than that, and to be obedient to command, why, we shall be in a fair way to meet any French frigate on the far side of it."

With the lieutenants gone, Jack considered for a while. He had no doubt that they were entirely with him; they were the sort of men he knew and liked; but there was still a great deal to be done. With their help he might make the Boadicea into a most lethal floating battery of tremendous power; but still she had to be brought to the scene of action, brought as rapidly as the elements would allow. He sent for the master and the bosun, and to them he stated that he was not satisfied with the frigate's sailing, either in the article of speed or in that of lying close to the wind.

There followed a highly technical conference in which he encountered steady resistance from Buchan, the master, an elderly man set in his ways, who would not admit that any restowing of the hold, any attempt to bring her by the head, would have the least favourable effect. Slow she had always been and slow she always would be: he had always stowed the hold in exactly the same way, ever since he had been in her. The bosun, on the other hand, a young man for his important office, a seaman through and through, brought up in the North Sea colliers, was as eager as his captain to get the best out of the Boadicea, even if it meant trying something new. He spoke feelingly on the good effect of cat-harpins, well-sniftered in; he entirely agreed with the plan for raking the foremast; Jack's heart warmed to him.

At least a part of Mr Buchan's sullenness arose from hunger. The gunroom dined at one o'clock, an hour now long past; and although today dinner would have been indifferent in any case, its absence rendered the master positively morose. The bosun had dined at noon together with the carpenter and the gunner, and Buchan, smelling both food and grog upon him, hated his cheerful face; even more his steady flow of talk.

Jack too was somewhat given to worshipping his belly, and when he had dismissed them he walked into the coach: here he found Stephen and Mr Farquhar, eating cake. "Do I interrupt you?" he asked: not at all, they said, clearing a space for him among the books, documents, maps, proclamations and broadsheets that they were trying to reassemble after the abrupt disappearance and reappearance of their quarters. "I hope I see you well, sir?" he said to Mr Farquhar, who had suffered more than most in the Bay of Biscay and who had spent much of the time since rising from his cot in conference with Dr Maturin, the two of them deep in papers, talking foreign to the intense vexation of their servants, two ship's boys told off to look after them, who liked to indulge their natural curiosity--a curiosity much stimulated by their shipmates before the mast, eager to know what was afoot. Farquhar had lost a stone, and his lean, intelligent, hook-nosed face still had a greenish tinge, but he replied that he had never felt better in his life, that the tremendous din of battle, the more than Jovian thunder of the guns, had completed the work--with a civil bow to Stephen--of Dr Maturin's preternatural physic, so that he felt like a boy again; he had a boy's appetite, a restless eagerness to be at table. "But," he went on, "you must first allow me to congratulate you most heartily upon your splendid victory. Such instant decision, such a determined onslaught, and such a happy issue!"

"You are too kind, sir, too kind by half. But as for the happy issue that you are so obliging as to mention, it has one aspect that cannot but rejoice us all. We have the French captain's cook aboard, and I am come"--turning towards Stephen -'to ask whether you think he might be persuaded... ?"

"I have already attended to him," said Stephen. "A sucking pig, one of a large surviving farrow, was one of the few casualties aboard the Hibi, and I understand that it is to provide a first example of his powers. I have also seen to it that Monsieur Bretonniere's wine and comforts have been transferred: to these I thought fit to add his late captain's stores; foie gras in jars, truffles in goose-grease, pieces of goose in goose-grease, a large variety of dried sausages, Bayonne hams, potted anchovies; and among the rest of the wine, twenty-one dozens of Margaux of "88, with the long cork, together with an almost equal quantity of Chiteau Lafite. Sure, I cannot tell how we shall ever get through them all; yet it would be the world's shame to let such noble wine go back, and in these conditions another year must see it the mere ghost of itself."

The claret never saw another year, however, nor did that splendid vintage go to waste: with steady application and with some help from Bretonniere and other guests from the gunroom Jack and Stephen drank almost every drop as the days went by. And there were days enough in all conscience, since the kind winds of their departure deserted them well north of the line, and sometimes they would lie on the oily, heaving sea, drifting slowly towards America on the equatorial current, with the Boadicea's figurehead simpering all round the compass and the frigate nearly rolling her masts by the board. Ten days on end when she wallowed with flaccid sails on the stagnant water, clean in herself but so surrounded by the filth of three hundred men--by Admiral Brown as the old hands called it--and by her own empty beef -casks, peelings and general rubbish that Jack was obliged to take the jolly-boat a quarter of a mile away for his morning's swim, while at the same time he caused the crew to tow their ship, thus rendering the view more agreeable and training them in the art of managing an oar, so beating two birds with one bush, as he put it, or even three, since after they had pulled her for an hour or two it was the Boadicea's custom to lower a sail into the pure, tepid water, buoying its outer corners and thereby making a shallow pool in which those who could not swim--the great majority--might splash about and enjoy themselves, perhaps learning how to stay afloat in the process.

But they crossed the line itself in style, with studdingsails aloft and alow, and with more than the usual merriment, for when they reduced sail to let Neptune come aboard, accompanied by an outrageously lewd Amphitrite and Badger-Bag, he found no less than a hundred and twenty-three souls who had to be made free of the equator by being lathered with rancid grease--tar was forbidden, being in short supply--and shaved with a piece of barrel-hoop before being ducked.