Book 4 - The Mauritius Command

by Patrick O'Brian

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

  '—when I perceived a ship sailing down from Port-Louis in the direction of La Réunion. 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 Vénus and a smaller frigate—'

  'Pardon me, sir,' said Bonden, 'Vénus 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 Vénus 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 Vénus 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 Vénus 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 Vénus 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 Vénus too, her decks were that crowded with men. Well now, Vénus 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 Vénus lose her foretopmast and her gaff, and Bombay, she lost her main and mizzen 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; pennant 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 Vénus and the Victor had certainly taken the Bombay, having reduced her to her lower masts alone: the Vénus had paid heavily, however, losing not only her fore and main topmasts but the greater part of her mizzen too. The sloop had not suffered at all. There was great activity aboard the Vénus, 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 mizzen. 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 Vénus 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 Réunion 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 Vénus, 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.'
r />   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 Vénus 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.

  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 Vénus; 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 Vénus 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 gun-ports 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 Vénus, with no more sail than she c
ould 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 Vénus's 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 Vénus 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 Vénus 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 Vénus 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 Vénus's 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 Vénus'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.