The Mauritius Command

by Patrick O'Brian

  Captain Pym protested that he had not intended the least reflection upon surgeons—a capital body of men, essential in a ship, and on shore too, no doubt: he would not meddle with analogies any more; but still perhaps he might adventure to say that it was a hard service, and it needed a hard discipline.

  'There was a man,' remarked Captain Eliot, 'who was sentenced to death for stealing a horse from a common. He said to the judge, that he thought it hard to be hanged for stealing a horse from a common; and the judge answered, 'You are not to be hanged for stealing a horse from a common, but that others may not steal horses from commons.

  'And do you find,' asked Stephen, 'that in fact horses are not daily stolen from commons? You do not. Nor do I believe that you will make captains braver or wiser by hanging or shooting them for cowardice or erroneous judgment. It should join the ordeal of the ploughshare, floating or pricking to prove witchcraft, and judicial combat, among the relics of a Gothic past.'

  'Dr Maturin is quite right,' cried Lord Clonfert. 'A capital execution seems to me a revolting spectacle. Surely a man could be . . .'

  His words were drowned in the general flow of talk that Stephen's word 'shooting' had set going; for Admiral Byng had been shot to death on his own quarterdeck. Almost everybody was speaking, except for Captain Woolcombe, who ate in wolfish silence, his first meal without anxiety; and the names of Byng and Keppel flew about.

  'Gentlemen, gentlemen,' cried Jack, who saw the far more recent Gambler and Hervey and the unfortunate engagement in the Basque roads looming ahead, 'let us for Heaven's sake keep to our humble level, and not meddle with admirals or any other god-like beings, or we shall presently run foul of politics, and that is the end of all comfortable talk.'

  The noise diminished, but Clonfert's excited voice could be heard carrying on, '. . . the possibility of judicial error, and the value of human life—once it is gone, it cannot be brought back. There is nothing, nothing, so precious.'

  He addressed himself to his neighbours and to those sitting opposite him; but none of the captains seemed eager to be the recipient, and there was the danger of an embarrassing silence, particularly as Stephen, convinced that two hundred years of talk would not shift his kind, bloody-minded companions an inch, had taken to rolling bread pills.

  'As for the value of human life,' said Jack, 'I wonder whether you may not over-estimate it in theory; for in practice there is not one of us here, I believe, who would hesitate for a moment over pistoling a boarder, nor think twice about it afterwards. And for that matter, our ships are expressly made to blow as many people into Kingdom Come as possible.'

  'It is a hard service, and it requires a hard discipline,' repeated Pym, peering through his claret at the enormous joint.

  'Yes, it is a hard service,' said Jack, 'and we often call our uniform buttons the curse of God; but a man—an officer—enters it voluntarily, and if he don't like the terms he can leave it whenever he chooses. He takes it on himself—he knows that if he does certain things, or leaves them undone, he is to be cashiered or even hanged. If he has not the fortitude to accept that, then he is better out of the service. And as for the value of human life, why, it often seems to me that there are far too many people in the world as it is; and one man, even a post-captain, nay'—smiling—'even a commodore or a jack-in-the-green, is not to be balanced against the good of the service.'

  'I entirely disagree with you, sir,' said Clonfert.

  'Well, my lord, I hope it is the only point upon which we shall ever differ,' said Jack.

  'The Tory view of a human life . . .' began Clonfert.

  'Lord Clonfert,' called Jack in a strong voice, 'the bottle stands by you.' And immediately afterwards, aiming at bawdy, in which all could share, and quickly attaining it, he spoke of the striking increase—the potential increase—in the population of the colony since the squadron's arrival: 'a single member of my midshipmen's berth has already contrived to get two girls with child: one brown, the other isabella-coloured.' The others turned with equal relief to similar accounts, to reminiscences of burning wenches in Sumatra, at Port au-Prince, in the Levantine ports; to rhymes, to conundrums; and the afternoon ended in general merriment.

  The Néréide, her topgallantmasts and her new gig on board at last, left Simon's Town for Mauritius that evening: and as they stood watching her out of the bay, Stephen said to Jack, 'I am sorry I started that hare; it gave you some uneasiness, I am afraid. Had I recollected, I should not have asked it in public, for it was a private question—I asked for information sake. And now I do not know whether the public answer was that of the Commodore or of the plain, unpennanted Jack Aubrey.'

  'It was something of both,' said Jack. 'I do in fact dislike hanging more than I said, though more for myself than for the hanged man: the first time I saw a man run up to the yardarm with a night cap over his eyes and his hands tied behind his back, when I was a little chap in the Ramillies, I was as sick as a dog. But as for the man himself, if he has deserved hanging, deserved it by our code, I find it don't signify so very much what happens to him. It seems to me that men are of different value, and that if some are knocked on the head, the world is not much the poorer.

  'Sure, it is a point of view.'

  'Perhaps it sounds a little hard; and perhaps I came it a little over-strong and righteous, when I was speaking, speaking as a commodore, to Clonfert.'

  'You certainly gave him an impression of unbending severity and perfect rectitude.'

  'Yes, I was pompous: yet I did not speak far beyond my own mind. Though I must confess he vexed me with his tragic airs and his human life—he has a singular genius for hitting the wrong note; people will accept that kind of thing from a learned man, but not from him; yet he will be prating. I hope he did not resent my checking him: I had to, you know, once he got on to Whigs and Tories. But I did it pretty civil, if you remember. I have a regard for him—few men could have got the Néréide out so quickly. Look, she is going about to weather the point. Prettily done—stays as brisk as a cutter, stays in her own length—he has a very good officer in his master: and he would be one himself too, with a little more ballast—a very good officer, was he a little less flighty.'

  'It is curious to reflect,' wrote Stephen in his diary that night, 'that Jack Aubrey, with so very much more to lose, should value life so very much more lightly than Clonfert, whose immaterial possessions are so pitifully small, and who is partly aware of it. This afternoon's exchange confirms all I have observed in my acquaintance with both. It is to be hoped, if only from a medical point of view, that some resounding action will soon give Clonfert a real basis—a sounder basis than his adventitious consequence. Nothing, as Milton observes, profits a man like proper self-esteem: I believe I have mangled the poor man; but here is Mr Farquhar, the all-knowing, who will set me right. If only there were another thousand men on Rodriguez, I might write Governor Farquhar with some confidence even now.'

  Mr Farquhar came aboard, but with no ceremony and with so small a train—one secretary, one servant—that it was clear he had been listening to the military men in Cape Town, who had little opinion of the sepoy in his own country and none at all of his fighting qualities elsewhere. Their considered opinion was that the French officers were right when they said that five regiments of European troops, supported by artillery, would be needed for a successful attack; that the hazards of landing on such a shore were so great that even five regiments were scarcely adequate, particularly as communication between the sea and the land might be cut off from one day to the next, and with it the troops' supplies; and that perhaps it would be better, all things considered, to wait for further reinforcements at the next monsoon.

  'I wish I could share your sanguine outlook,' he said to Stephen, when at last he was in a fit condition to say anything at all (the Boadicea had had heavy weather until she reached the twenty-fifth parallel), 'but perhaps it is based upon more information than I possess?'

  'No: my reports were tolerably complete, 'said St
ephen. 'But I am not sure that you or the soldiers attach the same weight to our present superiority in ships. If, as it appears likely, two of their frigates are away from the scene of action, our local advantage is five to two; a very great advantage, and in this I do not count the Leopard, which is, I am told, only a smaller Raisonable, the kind of vessel that is facetiously termed a coffin-ship by the sailors, of questionable use even as a transport. It was long before I came to appreciate the prodigious force represented by a man-of-war of the larger kind: we can all envisage the dreadful power of a battery, of a fortress belching fire; but a ship seems so peaceful an object, and to the untutored eye so very like the Holyhead packet writ large, that perhaps one does not easily see it as a vast battery in itself, and what is more a moveable battery that can turn its resistless fire in various directions, and then, its work of destruction completed, glide smoothly off to begin again elsewhere. The three frigates, my dear sir, the three frigates by which we presumably outnumber our adversaries, represent an enormous train of artillery, a train that is not painfully dragged by innumerable horses, but is borne by the wind. I have seen them in action upon this very coast, and I have been amazed. There are also the enemy's lines of supply to be considered: superiority at sea means that they may readily be severed.'

  'I take your point,' said Farquhar. 'But the decisive battle must be fought on land; and the few regiments we possess must be put down on that land.'

  'Yes,' said Stephen. 'What you say is very true. And I admit that these considerations would make me more doubtful of the issue than in fact I am, were I not supported by what you would perhaps term an illogical source of hope.'

  'It would be benevolent in you to share your comfort.'

  'As you may know, in the service our Commodore is known as Lucky Jack Aubrey. I am not prepared to enter into the concept of luck, as it is vulgarly called: philosophically it is indefensible; in daily experience we see it to exist. All I will say is, that Captain Aubrey seems to possess it in an eminent degree; and it is that which cheers my sometimes pensive nights.'

  'How I hope you are right,' cried Farquhar. 'How sincerely I hope you are right.' After a pause he added, 'For countless reasons: among them the fact that I do not touch emolument or allowance until I enter into my functions.' He paused again, passed his hand over his eyes, and swallowed painfully.

  'Let us take a turn on deck, 'said Stephen. 'The greenish pallor is invading your face again, no doubt induced by melancholy thoughts as much as by the motion of the ship. The brisk trade-wind will blow them away.'

  The brisk trade-wind instantly picked off Mr Farquhar's hat and wig. They flew forward, to be caught—a miracle of dexterity—by the bosun, who rose from the new best bower, seized the one in his right hand, the other in his left, and sent them aft by a midshipman. For his own part Mr Fellowes had preferred to keep the full length of the gangway between himself and the quarterdeck ever since a memorable day in Simon's Town, when the Commodore had had a private word with him, if private is quite the term for an explosion of honest rage that resounded from the after-cabin to the cutwater, filling the ship's company with mirth, glee, and apprehension, evenly mingled.

  Covered once more, Mr Farquhar hooked himself into the rigging at Stephen's side; and as he gazed about him the corpse-like appearance faded from his face: the Boadicea was leaning over so that her lee chains were under the tearing white water and her weather side showed a broad streak of new copper; ahead of her the Sirius, under the same cloud of sail, kept as precisely to her station as though the two ships were joined by an iron bar; and together they were racing away to the north-east in the track of the Néréide to join the Magicienne and the Iphigenia off Port-Louis. They had already passed the Leopard, which had had two days' start (and which, since her captain was related to the Admiral, was strongly suspected of being present only to share in any prize money that might be going), and they were cracking on as though they meant to run off the two thousand miles and more in under a fortnight—a real possibility, they having picked up the powerful trade so soon. 'Celerity is everything, in these operations,' he said, 'and here we have celerity given form. How we fly! It is exhilarating! It is like a race for a thousand pound! It is like wrestling with a handsome woman!'

  Stephen frowned; he disliked Mr Farquhar's warmer similes. 'Sure celerity is all,' he said. 'Yet a great deal also depends upon our finding the other ships at the rendezvous. The sea is so uncommonly vast, the elements so capricious, the instruments for finding the latitude so imperfect, or so imperfectly used, that I have known a vessel cruise ten days and more without finding her consorts.'

  'Let us put our trust in the Commodore's mathematical powers, 'said Mr Farquhar. 'Or his luck: or both. I believe, Dr Maturin, that if you would so far indulge me, I could relish a little, a very little, of your portable soup again, with just a sippet of toast; and I promise that if ever I come to govern my island, my first care, after the new constitution, shall be to repay you in turtle.'

  Their trust was not misplaced. The day after they had seen the mountains of La Réunion piercing the white trade-clouds far to the leeward the two frigates went north about Mauritius, and there, true to the appointed coordinates, they found the rest of the squadron. Lambert, the senior captain, came aboard at once: the position in Port-Louis was just what they had expected, with the Vénus, the Manche, and the Entreprenant corvette lying snug in port and the Bellone and Minerve still far away; but on the other hand Clonfert, sent to cruise off the south-east of the island, had discovered a new French frigate, the 38-gun Astrée, moored under the batteries of the Rlvière Noire in an impregnable position, obviously aware of the blockade of Port-Louis and unwilling to emerge. He had also cut out a four-hundred-ton merchantman from Jacotet spiking the guns of the little batteries and taking some officers prisoner. It was true that the ship had proved to be a neutral, an American, one of the many Americans who used these seas, almost the only neutrals and almost the only source of casual information available to either side: but even so, said Lambert, it was a most dashing affair.

  'This is a damned unfortunate object for dashing at and a damned odd moment to choose for dashing,' said Jack afterwards. 'If the Néréide had been knocked about in this cutting-out lark (for it was no more), we should have been put to our shifts to cover the landing, above all now that they have the Astrée. I wonder at Lambert, sending him off alone: though indeed it is plain that he knows these waters, and that he don't want conduct. Jacotet is a hellish awkward anchorage to get into. However, I think we must take Clonfert with us to Rodriguez as soon as we have watered, to keep his ardent spirits out of the way of temptation until there is a proper scope for 'em. He may dash till he goes blue in the face, once the real battle is engaged.'

  They watered at Flat Island, and the Boadicea and the Néréide stretched away to the cast for Rodriguez, leaving Pym in command with orders to fade imperceptibly away by night with the Iphigenia and Magicienne, leaving the Leopard and two avisoes off Port-Louis to bring instant warning if the Bellone and Minerve should return from the Bay of Bengal. 'For there's the rub,' said Jack. 'If those two heavy frigates, together with Vénus, Manche and Astrée were to fall on our rear at the wrong moment, with the troops half on shore and half off, we should be like Jackson, hard up in a clinch, and no knife to cut the seizing.'

  Ordinarily Rodriguez presented the appearance of a desert island; perhaps somewhat larger than the ideal desert island, being a good ten miles long, and perhaps somewhat greyer and more sterile inland than might have been wished, though pleasant enough after a long voyage with no sight of land; but now the bay was crowded with shipping, and on the shore exactly squared streets of tents stretched away in all directions, while in these streets hundreds and even thousands of men moved about, their red coats visible from a great way off.

  Jack was first ashore, taking Stephen and Farquhar with him: to his intense relief he found that Keating was still in command—no glum, over-cautious general had superseded h
im. The two commanders instantly and with great goodwill plunged into the details of moving soldiers, ammunition, stores, provisions, arms, and even some howitzers in due order to the scene of action, and Stephen slipped silently away. 'The solitaire could never have borne this,' he reflected as he made his way through the crowded camp. 'And even the tortoise-park is sadly diminished.'

  He had not gone a hundred yards before a voice behind him called out, 'Doctor! Doctor!'

  'Not again?' he muttered angrily, walking faster among the screw-pines and drawing his head down between his shoulders. But he was pursued, run down; and in his overtaker he instantly recognized the tall, lank, and still very boyish form of Thomas Pullings, a shipmate from his first day at sea. 'Thomas Pullings,' he cried, with a look of real pleasure replacing the first malignant glare. 'Lieutenant Pullings, upon my word and honour. How do you do, sir?'

  They shook hands, and having inquired tenderly after the Doctor's health and the Commodore's, Pullings said, 'I remember you was the first that ever called me Lieutenant P, sir, back in dear old Pompey. Well, now, if you chose to tip it the most uncommon civil, you could say Captain.'

  'You do not tell me so? And are you indeed a captain already?'

  'Not by land, sir; I am not Captain P by land. But at sea I am the captain of the Groper transport. You can see her from here, if you stand from behind the tree. Hey, you, the lobster there,' he called to an intervening soldier, 'your dad worn't no glazier. We can't see through you. There, sir: the brig just beyond the snow. She's only a transport, but did you ever see such lovely lines?'

  Stephen had seen just such lines in a Dutch herringbuss, but he did not mention the fact, saying no more than 'Elegant, elegant'.