Book 4 - The Mauritius Command Page 5

  Chapter Two

  Upon that damp element, always unstable, often treacherous, but for the moment both warm and kind, Captain Aubrey dictated an official letter to his happy clerk:

  'Boadicea, at sea

  Sir,

  I have the honour to acquaint you, that at dawn on the seventeenth instant, the Dry Salvages bearing SSE two leagues, His Majesty's ship under my command had the good fortune to fall in with a French national ship of war with a prize in company. On the Boadicea's approach she bore up, abandoning her prize, a snow, whose topmasts were struck down on deck. Every exertion was made in this ship to come up with the enemy, who endeavoured to lead us among the shoals of the Dry Salvages; but missing stays in consequence of the loss of her mizzen topmast, she struck upon a reef. Shortly afterwards, the wind having fallen to a flat calm, and the rocks sheltering her from the Boadicea's guns, she was boarded and carried by the boats, when she proved to be the Hébé, formerly His Majesty's twenty-eight-gun frigate Hyaena but now mounting twenty-two twenty-four-pounders, carronades, and two long nines, with a complement of 214 men, commanded by Mons. Bretonniere, lieutenant de vaisseau, her captain having been killed in the action with the prize. She was thirty-eight days out of Bordeaux, on a cruise, and had taken the English vessels named in the margin.

  My first lieutenant, Mr Lemuel Akers, an old 52 and deserving officer, commanded the Boadicea's boats and led the attack in the most gallant manner; while Lieutenant Seymour and Mr Johnson, master's mate, displayed great activity. Indeed I am happy to say, that the conduct of the Boadicea's people gave me great satisfaction, and I have no greater loss to deplore than two men slightly wounded.

  The snow was secured without delay: she is the Intrepid Fox of Bristol, A. Snape master, from the Guinea Coast, laden with elephants' teeth, golddust, grains of Paradise, hides, and skins. In view of the value of her cargo, I have thought proper to send her into Gibraltar, escorted by the Hyaena under the command of Lieutenant Akers.

  I have the honour to be, etc.

  Captain Aubrey watched his clerk's flying pen with great benevolence. The letter was true in essence, but like most official letters it contained a certain number of lies. Jack did not think Lemuel Akers a deserving officer, and the lieutenant's gallantry had in fact been confined to roaring at the Hébé from the stern-sheets of the launch, to which his wooden leg confined him, while the conduct of several of the Boadicea's people had filled their new captain with impatience, and the snow had not been secured without delay.

  'Do not forget the wounded at the bottom of the page, Mr Hill,' he said. 'James Arklow, ordinary, and William Bates, Marine. Now be so good as to let Mr Akers know that I shall have a couple of private letters for him to take to Gibraltar.'

  Left alone in the great cabin he glanced out of the stern-window at the calm, crowded, sunlit sea, with his prizes lying upon it and boats plying to and fro, the Hébé's or rather the Hyaena's rigging full of men putting the last touches to her repairs, the shrouds of her new mizzen rattled down already: he had a first-rate bosun in John Fellowes. Then he reached out for a sheet of paper and began: 'Sweetheart—a hasty line to bring you my dear love and tell you all is well. We had an amazing prosperous voyage down as far as 35°30', with a fine double-reefed topsail quartering breeze—Boadicea's best point of sailing in her present trim—all the way from the moment we sank Rame Head right across the Bay and almost to Madeira. We put into Plymouth at the height of flood on Monday night—black, with squalls of sleet and blowing hard—and since we had made our number to Stoke Point, Mr Farquhar was ready waiting, bag and baggage, at the Commissioner's office. I sent to Lady Clonfert's inn, desiring her to be at the quay by twenty minutes past the hour; but through some mistake she did not appear, and I was obliged to proceed to sea without her.

  'However, to cut things short, this pretty wind carried us across the Bay, where the Boadicea proved she was a dry, wholesome ship, and at one time I thought we should raise the Island in just over a week. But then it backed into the south-cast and I was obliged to stretch away for Tenerife, cursing my luck: and at four bells in the morning watch I happened to be on deck to make sure the master, an ignorant old man, did not run us on the Dry Salvages as he had nearly run us on Penlee Point, when there, right under our lee at the dawn of day, was a Frenchman, lying to with her prize. She had scarcely a chance, for the prize, a well-armed Guineaman, had mauled her briskly before she was taken; her rigging was all ahoo, she was bending a new foretopsail, and many of her people were in the Guineaman, setting her to rights: and of course she was not half our size. And since we had the weather-gage we could afford to yaw and let fly with our bow guns: not that it did her much harm, apart from flustering her people. However, she did her best, peppering us with her stern-chaser and trying to lead us into the four-fathom water of the Dog-Leg Passage. But I sounded that channel when I was a midshipman in the Circe, and since we draw twenty-three foot, I did not choose to follow her, although there was no swell worth speaking of. Had she got through, we might have lost her, Boadicea being a trifle sluggish (though you will not repeat that anywhere, my dear); but we knocked away her mizzen topmast—she missed stays in the turn of the passage—ran on to the reef, and there being no wind could not beat across. So we lowered the boats and took her without much trouble, though I am sorry to say her commanding officer was wounded— Stephen is patching him up at this moment, poor fellow.

  'There was no glory in it, sweetheart, not the least hint of danger; but the charming thing is, that she can just be called a frigate. She was our old Hyaena, a jackass twenty-eight as ancient as the Ark, that the French took when I was a boy: she was overgunned, of course, and they reduced her to what they rate a corvette, with twenty-four pounder carronades and a couple of long nines—I scarcely recognized her at first, she was so changed. But she is still a frigate for us, and of course she will be bought into the service (she is a fine sailer too, particularly on the wind, and we hauled her clear with no damage at all, bar a fathom or two of her copper being scraped off). And then there is head-money, and above all this Guineaman. She is no prize to us, being English, but she is salvage, and she does represent a certain amount of cash, which, the kitchen copper being in the state it is, will not be unwelcome. Unfortunately the Admiral shares. Although mine were Admiralty orders, the cunning old dog added some nonsense of his own, to make sure of one of my eights if I took anything; and this he did in the most barefaced way, after dinner, laughing cheerfully, ha, ha. All admirals are tarred with the same brush, I fear, and I dare say we shall find the same thing at the Cape.' He had scarcely written the last word before Stephen's grave warnings about close counsel came to his mind: he carefully changed it to 'our destination', and then returned to the Guineaman. 'Ordinarily she would have been crammed with blacks for the West Indies, which would have added much to her value; but perhaps it was just as well that there were none. Stephen grows so outrageous the minute slavery is mentioned, that I dare say I should have been obliged to set them ashore to prevent his being hanged for mutiny. Only the last time I dined in the gun-room, Akers, the first lieutenant, got on to the subject, and Stephen handled him so severely, I was obliged to intervene. Mr Farquhar is of the same opinion with Stephen, and I am sure they are right it is a very ugly thing to see, indeed—yet sometimes cannot help feeling that a couple of biddable, able-bodied young blacks that attended to their duty and could give no month's warning might come in uncommon handy at Ashgrove Cottage. And now I am on the cottage, I have written to Ommaney to send you all he will advance on the Hyaena directly, with which I beg you will instantly buy yourself a pelisse and tippet against its infernal draughts, and . . .' There followed a list of domestic improvements to be made: the copper, of course; the parlour chimney to be rebuilt; Goadby to be set to work on the roof; a newly-calved Jersey cow to be bought with Mr Hick's advice. 'My dear, time is flying,' he went on. 'They are hoisting in Hyaena's boats, and the snow has won her anchor. We may touch at St Helena, but other
wise I must take my leave until we reach our port. God bless and keep you, sweetheart, and the children.' He sighed, smiled, and was about to seal when Stephen walked in, looking mean and pinched. 'Stephen,' he said, 'I have just written to Sophie. Have you any message?'

  'Love, of course. And compliments to Mrs Williams.'

  'Lord,' cried Jack, writing fast, 'thank you for reminding me. I have explained about Lady Clonfert,' he observed, as he closed the letter up.

  'Then I trust you kept your explanation short,' said Stephen. 'Circumstantial details destroy a tale entirely. The longer, the less credible.'

  'I merely stated that she did not appear at the rendezvous, and passed on.'

  'Nothing about three o'clock in the morning, the hocus-pocus at the inn, signals disregarded, the boat being made to row as though we were escaping from the Day of judgment, and the lady ditched?' asked Stephen, with the unpleasant creaking noise that was his nearest approach to a laugh.

  'What a rattle you are, to be sure,' said Jack. 'Come now, Stephen, how is your patient?'

  'Why, he has lost a great deal of blood, it cannot be denied; but then on the other hand I have rarely seen a man with so much blood to lose. He should do very well, with the blessing. He has the late captain's cook with him, a famous artist, and desires he may be kept aboard, if agreeable to the gallant victor.'

  'Capital, capital. A famous artist in the galley will set the crown on a very pretty morning's work. Was it not a very pretty morning's work, Stephen?'

  'Well,' said Stephen, 'I wish you joy of your capture with all my heart; but if by "pretty" we are to understand an elegant economy of means, I cannot congratulate you. All this banging of great guns for so pitiful a result as the mizzen topmast of a little small slip of a thing, and it embarrassed among the rocks, the creature—Armageddon come before its time. And the infamous backing and filling before the Guineaman is even approached, in spite of her captain's ardent pleas; and all this interminable while no one is allowed to set foot upon these rocks, on the grounds that not a minute is to be lost. Not a minute, forsooth: and forty-seven are wantonly thrown away—forty-seven minutes of invaluable observation that will never be made up.'

  'What I know, Stephen, and what you don't know,' began Jack, but a messenger interrupted him: with the Captain's leave, Mr Akers was ready to go aboard. On deck Jack found the south-west breeze setting in steadily, just as If it had been ordered, a perfect breeze to waft the Hyaena and her charge to Gibraltar. He gave his letters to the first lieutenant, again recommended the utmost vigilance, and urged him towards the side. Mr Akers displayed a tendency to linger, to express his extreme gratitude for his command (and indeed the recovered Hyaena meant his promotion) and to assure Captain Aubrey that if a single prisoner showed his nose above the hatchway it should instantly be blown off with his own grapeshot, but presently he was gone; and leaning over the rail Jack watched the Boadicea's boats carrying him and his companions away. Some went to the man-of-war, to work the ship and guard the prisoners; some to the Intrepid Fox, to strengthen her sickly and diminished crew: a surprising number of men in both cases.

  Few captains, far from a press-gang, a receiving-ship or any other source of hands, could have smiled at the sight of so many of them pulling awkwardly away to other vessels, never, in all probability, to be seen again, but Jack beamed like the rising sun. Captain Loveless had had excellent connections, and the Boadicea a plethoric crew: a good average crew, upon the whole, with no more than a fair share of landsmen and with a gratifying proportion of hands who deserved their rating of able seaman; yet with a number of hard cases too, not worth the food they ate nor the space they occupied, while the last draft had been made up entirely of quota-men from Bedfordshire, odd misfits, petty criminals and vagrants, not one of whom had ever used the sea. The Hébé's English prisoners, right sallormen taken out of British ships for the most part, together with a couple of prime hands pressed from the Intrepid Fox, far more than compensated for their loss; and now, with real satisfaction, Jack watched eight sodomites, three notorious thieves, four men whose wits were quite astray, and a parcel of inveterate skulkers and sea-lawyers go off for good. He was also happy to be rid of a great lout of a midshipman who made the youngsters' lives a burden to them: but above all he was delighted to be seeing the last of his first lieutenant. Mr Akers was a harsh, greying, saturnine man with one leg; the pain from his wound often made him savagely ill-tempered; and he did not see eye to eye with Jack on a number of matters, including flogging. Yet far more important, honourable wound or not, Akers was no seaman: when Jack had first stepped aboard the frigate he found her lying with two round turns and an elbow in her cables, a very disgusting sight; they had lost an hour and twenty minutes clearing their hawse, with Boadicea's signal to proceed to sea flying all the time, reinforced by guns at frequent intervals: and this impression of busy, angry inefficiency had grown stronger day by day.

  So there it was: he had made two charming captures; at the same time he had freed himself of men whose presence would have gone far towards preventing the frigate's becoming a fully efficient instrument for distressing the enemy, let alone a happy ship, and he had done so in a way that would confer the utmost benefit on Mr Akers. That was where the prettiness lay. He was now in command of a crew whose collective seamanship was already tolerably good in spite of the remaining fifty or sixty raw hands, and whose gunnery, though of the lowest standard, as It so often was under officers whose one idea of action was a yardarm-to-yardarm engagement where no shot could miss, was certainly capable of improvement. 'Vast capabilities, ma'am, vast capabilities,' he murmured; and then his smile changed to an inward chuckle as he recollected that for once his low cunning had over reached Stephen Maturin: for what Jack knew, and what Stephen did not, was that those forty-seven minutes had made all the difference between salvage and no salvage, between the Boadicea's right to an eighth of the Guineaman's value and a mere letter of thanks from her owners. The Intrepid Fox had been taken at forty-six minutes past ten on Tuesday, and if he had accepted the surrender of the French prize-master one moment before twenty-four hours had passed, by sea-law the Guineaman would not have been salvage at all. And as for Stephen's passing three quarters of an hour on the Dry Salvages, searching for problematical bugs, Jack had set him down on remote oceanic rocks before now, and had been obliged to have him removed by armed force, long, long after the appointed time: but, however, he would make it up to him—there were coral reefs in plenty on the far side of the Cape.

  '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: t
hey 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.