The Mauritius Command Read online

  It was many, many years since he had last been here, a midshipman, an oldster, in the Resolution, yet how exactly he remembered it all; there were a few more civilian houses in the village at the bottom of the bay, but everything else was just the same--the steady beat of the surf, the mountains, the men of- war's boats crossing to and fro, the hospital, the barracks, the arsenal: he might himself have been a lanky boy, returning to the Resolution after catching Roman-fish off the rocks. He was filled with a pleasurable excitement, with countless memories, yet at the same time with an apprehension that he could not define.

  "Boat ahoy?" asked the Raisonable.

  "Boadicea," replied the acting coxswain in a voice of brass; and then more quietly he said, "Rowed of all." The gig kissed against the tall flank of the flagship, the sideboys ran down with their scarlet man- ropes, the bosun started his call, and Jack was piped aboard. As he took off his cocked hat he realized with a shock that the tall bowed white-haired figure who answered his salute was the Admiral Bertie he had last seen in Port of Spain as the lithe, lively, wenching captain of the Renown; and some part of his busy mind said to him, beneath all the rest, "Perhaps you are not so very young yourself, either, Jack Aubrey."

  "Here you are at last, Aubrey," said the Admiral, shaking his hand. "I am very happy to see you. You know Captain Elioff

  "Yes, sir; we were shipmates in the Leander in ninety-eight. How do you do, sir?"

  Before Eliot could reply with anything more than an extension of the friendly smile that he had worn ever since Jack's face appeared, the Admiral went on, "I dare say those papers are for me? Come along; let's have a look at them in the cabin." Splendour; opulence; carpets; a portrait of Mrs Bertie, looking plump and comfortable. "Well," he said, wrestling with the outer covers, "so you had a tedious passage of it: but did you have any luck on your way down? They used to call you Lucky Jack Aubrey in the Mediterranean, I remember. God damn these seals."

  "We saw barely a sail, sir; but we did have a little brush off the Dry Salvages, and retook the old Hyaena."

  "Did you? Did you, indeed? Well, I am heartily glad of it . . ." The papers were free now, and as he glanced through them he said, "Yes. I have been expecting these. We must take them along to the Governor at once. But you have a politico aboard, I see? A Mr Farquhar? Ile must come too: I shall send my barge, by way of compliment; you cannot be too careful with these political gents. You had better order some cool clothes, too; it is a twenty mile ride to Cape Town. The Governor will not object to nankeen trousers and a round jacket." He gave his orders and called for a bottle of wine. "This is the right Diamant of the year one, Aubrey," he said, sitting down again. "Too good for you young fellows but you did retake the old Hyaena

  I was a midshipman in her. Yes." His washed-out blue eyes looked back over forty-five years, and he observed, "That was in the days before carronades." Returning to the present he drank his wine, saying, "I trust your luck will hold, Aubrey: you need it, on this station. Welt, and so we shall have to fag over that damned mountain, a wearying ride in this infernal dust--dust everywhere, rain or shine; a whole nation of swabbers would never come to an end of it. I wish we did not have to go. If it were not for the political side, I should get you to sea the minute you had your water aboard. The situation is far worse than ever it was before you left England--far worse than when these orders were written. The French have snapped up two more Indiamen, this side of the Ten Degree channel, the Europe and the Streatham: homeward-bound Indiamen, worth a mint of money."

  "Lord, sir, that is very bad," cried Jack.

  "Yes, it is," said the Admiral, "and it is going to get even worse unless we bring it up with a round turn, and smartly at that. That is what we must do: it is feasible, and it must be done. Oh, yes, it is feasible, with a certain amount of initiative . . . and maybe I should add good fortune too, though luck don't bear talking about." He touched wood, considered for a while, and then said, "Listen, Aubrey, before your Mr Farquhar comes aboard--before we start getting entangled in political considerations--I shall lay the position before you as clearly as I can. There are four French frigates based on Mauritius and Reumon, in addition to the force they had there last year: they can use Port Louis or Port South-East in Mauritius and Saint-Paul in Reunion, and separately or in pairs they can range out as far as the Nicobars and beyond--the whole Indian Ocean. You can't catch them out there; we can't convoy all the Eastern trade--we do not possess the ships; and you can't blockade them for ever. So you must either destroy them in detail in their home waters or eventually you must take their bases away from them. Now with this in mind, we have seized and garrisoned Rodriguez with part of the Fifty-Sixth and some Bombay sepoys, for your water in the first place, and in the second as a base for the reinforcements that are supposed to come from India in time. There are only about four hundred men on the island at present, but we hope for more next year--it is a question of transports. You know Rodriguez?"

  "Yes, sir. I have not touched there, however." Rodriguez: a remote and tolerably barren speck of land alone in the ocean, three hundred and fifty miles eastward of Mauritius: he had viewed it from the masthead of his dear Surpiise.

  "So at least you have your water. As for ships, you have Boadicea, of course; Sin'us, with a good steady captain in Pym, as regular as a clock; Nereide--she is only a twelve-pounder, and getting on in years, but Corbett keeps her in very good order though he is rather undermanned; Otter, a fast, useful eighteen-gun sloop, in very good order too. Lord Clonfert has her: she should be in any moment now. And I can let you have Raisonable except in the hurricane months, for she cannot bear a hard blow. She is not all she was when I was a boy, but we careened her a few weeks ago, and she is quite fast. At least she is a match for the Canonniere, who is older still; and she makes a show. I might conceivably be able to add the Magicienne from Sumatra, in time, and the Victor, another sloop. But even without them, I conceive that, Raisonable cancelling out Canonniere, three well worked-up frigates and a powerful sloop would not be reckoned out of the way for dealing with four Frenchmen."

  "Certainly not, sir," said Jack. The Admiral was speaking as though Jack's pendant were a certainty.

  "No one will pretend it is an easy task, however. The Frenchmen are Venus, Manche, Caroline--it was she who took the last two Indiamen--and Bellone, all new forty-gun frigates. As for the rest, they have the Canonniere, as I have said, still mounting her fifty guns, our brig the Grappler, several avisos and a few smaller things. And I warn you, Aubrey, if you hoist your pendant, I cannot let you have a captain under you. If you shift into the Raisonable for the time being, Eliot can replace you in Boadicea; but I cannot let you have a captain under you." Jack bowed. He had scarcely relied upon it: on the remoter stations there were few post-captains to spare; and then again if a commodore did have a captain under him, that commodore was entitled to a third of the Admiral's share of prize-money.

  "May I ask whether we have any intelligence of their landforces, sir?" he said.

  "Yes, but I wish it were more exact. On Mauritius General Decaen has the best part of two regiments of the line, and his militia may amount to ten thousand or so. Our information from Reunion is more scanty, but is seems that General Desbrusleys has much the same. Oh, it is a tough nut to crack, I grant you; but cracked it must be, and at the earliest possible moment. You have to strike hard and fast with your forces concentrated while theirs are dispersed: in a word, you have to go in and win. Government will be in a rare old taking when the news of the Europe and the Streatham reaches England, and this is the kind of situation where you must produce results at once. I do not mention the country's interests, of course; but I do say that from a purely personal point of view there is probably a knighthood or even a baronetcy if you succeed; and if you don't, why it is the beach and half-pay for the rest of your life."

  A midshipman darted in. "The captain's duty, sir," said he, "and should you wish a compliment to the gentleman in the barge?"

  "Certainly," s
aid the Admiral. "As to a flag." In the pause that followed he gazed abstractedly at his wife's portrait. "Should you not like a baronetcy, Aubrey? I am sure I would. Mrs Bertie fairly longs to wipe her sister's eye."

  The unofficial part of Simon's Town, though little more than a hamlet, had drinking-booths, wine- shops and places of entertainment enough for a town of moderate size; and into one of those, at dusk, walked Stephen Maturin, bearing a bunch of orchids. He was tired, thirsty, and covered from head to foot with African dust; but he was happy, having spent his first half-day ashore walking up a mountain clothed with a vegetation largely unknown to him and inhabited by remarkable birds, some of which he recognized from their published descriptions: he had also seen three quarters of a female spotted hyaena, and he found the remaining piece, including its wistful face, removed to some distance, in the act of being devoured by his old friend the bearded vulture--a pleasant combination of the present and the past, of two far-distant worlds.

  He called for wine and water, mingled them in proportion to his thirst, placed his orchids in the water- jug, and drank until at last he began to sweat again. Apart from the landlord and three pretty Malay girls at the bar, there were only two other people in the twilit room, a very large officer in a uniform he could not make out, a vast gloomy man with a great deal of dark whisker, not unlike a melancholy bear, and his smaller, inconspicuous companion, who sat at his ease in shirtsleeves, with his breeches unbuttoned at the knee. The sad officer spoke a fluent though curious English devoid of articles: the smaller man's harsh and grating accent was clearly that of Ulster. They were discussing the Real Presence, but he had not made out the thread of their discourse before they both burst out "No Pope, no Pope, no Pope," the sad officer in the deepest bass that Stephen had ever heard. At the bar the Malay girls politely echoed "No Pope" and as though it were a signal they brought candles and set them about the room. The light fell on Stephen's orchids and upon the contents of his handkerchief, fourteen curious beetles, collected for his friend Sir Joseph Blaine, formerly the chief of naval intelligence; he was considering one, a bupestrid, when he became aware of a darkness by his side, the melancholy bear, gently swaying. "Golovnin, fleet lieutenant, captain of Imperial Majesty's sloop Diana," said he, clicking his heels.

  Stephen rose, bowed, and said, "Maturin, surgeon of Britannic Majesty's ship Boadicea. Please to take chair."

  "You have soul," observed Golovnin, nodding at the orchids. "I too have soul. Where did you find them, flowers?"

  "In mountain," said Stephen.

  Golovnin sighed; and taking a small cucumber from his pocket he began to eat it. He made no reply to Stephen's proffer of wine, but after a while he said, "What is their name, flowers?"

  "Disa grandiflora," said Stephen, and a long silence fell. It was broken by the Ulsterman, who, tired of drinking alone, brought his bottle over and set it on Stephen's table without the least ceremony. "I am McAdam, of the Otter," he remarked, sitting down. "I saw you at the hospital this morning." Now, by the light of the candle, Stephen recognized him, not from that morning but from many years ago: William McAdam, a maddoctor with a considerable reputation in Belfast, who had left Ireland after the failure of his private asylum. Stephen had heard him lecture, and had read his book on hysteria with great applause. "He will not last long," observed McAdam, referring to Golovmn, now weeping on to the orchids.

  "Nor will you, colleague," thought Stephen, looking at McAdam's pallid face and bloodshot eye.

  "Will you take a wee drink?"

  "Thank you, sir," said Stephen, "I believe I shall stay with my negus. What is it that you have in your bottle, pray?"

  "Och, it's a brandy they distill hereabouts. Raw, rot-gut stuff; I drink it experimentally, not from indulgence. He"--pointing an unsteady finger at Golovmn -'drinks it from nostalgia, as the nearest to his native vodka; I encourage him."

  "You alluded to an experiment?" said Stephen.

  "Yes. Strobenius and others allege that a man dead drunk on grain-spirits falls backwards: on brandy he falls forwards. And if that is true, it tells us something about the motor centres, if you understand the expression. This gentleman here is my corpus vile. Yet it is wonderful how he holds out. This is our third bottle, and he has drunk glass for glass with me."

  "I honour your devotion to science, sir."

  "I do not give a fart in hell for science," said McAdam. "Art is all. Medicine is an art or it is nothing. Medicine of the mind, I mean; for what is your physical medicine, apart from purges and mercury and bark, what your murderous chirurgical tricks? They may, with luck, suppress symptoms: no more. On the other hand, where is the true fons et origo of nine tenths of your vicious constitutions of body? The mind, that's where it is," he said, tapping his forehead. "And what heals the mind? Art: nothing else. Art is all. That is my realm."

  It occurred to Stephen that McAdam was perhaps a somewhat seedy practitioner of this or any other art; a man furthermore whose inward torments were clearly printed on his face. But as they talked of the interaction of mind and body, of interesting cases they had seen--false pregnancies--inexplicable remissions--their experience afloat--the inverse relationship of constipation and courage--the proved efficacity of placebos- his opinion of McAdam rose: indeed, a mutual esteem came into being, and McAdam's arrogant, didactic tone grew even civil. He was telling Stephen about his patients aboard the Otter--most of the Otters were, sensu stricto, mentally deranged, and there was one case that McAdam would describe and name, were it not for professional secrecy, a fascinating and particularly subtle chain of symptoms--when without any warning Golovnin fell off his chair, grasping the orchids. He lay motionless, still in the attitude of sitting; but he fell sideways, a wholly inconclusive result. At the sound of the crash the landlord paced to the door and whistled. Two enormous sailors walked in, and murmuring, "Come, Vasily Mikhailovitch; come, little father," they carried their captain out into the darkness.

  "He has not hurt my flowers, however," said Stephen, smoothing their petals. "They are, in their essentials, quite intact. You have no doubt remarked the curious spiral convolution of the ovary, so typical of the whole order. Though perhaps your realm does not extend to botany, at all?"

  "It does not," said McAdam. "Though twisted ovaries are well within it; and twisted testicles too--I speak in figure, you understand: I am jocose. No. The proper study of mankind is man. And I may observe, Dr Maturin, that this eager prying into the sexual organs of vegetables on your part seems to me . . . "

  What it seemed to Dr McAdam did not appear, for his tide too had now reached the full. He rose; his eyes closed, and he pitched straight into Stephen's arms, falling, as Stephen noted, forwards.

  The landlord brought one of the wheelbarrows that he kept under the porch, and with the help of a black, Stephen wheeled McAdam towards the pier, passing several bodies of cheerful liberty-men as he went. He hailed each party in turn, asking for any Otters; but no man chose to leave the sheltering darkness and sacrifice a moment of his shore-leave, and Stephen heard nothing but facetious replies -'Otter's bound for the Rio Grande'- "Otter's paid off at the Nore"--"Otter was broke up for firewood last Wednesday week"--until he met a group of Nereides A familiar voice cried, "It's the Doctor," and there was the powerful form of Bonden at his side, Jack Aubrey's coxswain from his earliest command.

  "Bonden, sir. Do you remember me?"

  "Of course I remember you, Bonden," said Stephen, shaking his hand. "And am delighted to see you again. I- low do you do?"

  "Pretty spry, thank you, sir; and I hope I see you the same? Now just you shove off, Darkie"--to the black--"I'll take care of this here barrow."

  "The question is, Bonden," said Stephen, giving the black two stuivers and a penny, "the question is, how shall I find the means of conveying my charge to his ship, always supposing that his ship is here at all, which seems to be a matter of some doubt? He is the surgeon of the Otter, Bonden, a learned man, though somewhat original; and at the moment disguised in dr
ink."

  "Otter, sir? She come in on the turn of the tide, not ten minutes ago. Never you fret, I'll square our boatkeeper directly and take him out." He hurried away: a little later the Nereide's jolly-boat appeared at the step, and Bonden carried the body into it. In spite of the dimness Stephen noticed that Bonden moved stiffly; and this stiffness became more apparent as he pulled out across the harbour towards the distant sloop.

  "You are stiff, Barret Bonden," said Stephen. "In another man I should say he had certainly been flogged; but that can scarcely be the case with you. I trust this is not a wound, or a rheumatism from the falling damps?"

  Bonden laughed, but without much mirth, and said, "Oh, it was four dozen at the gangway, all right, sir, and two more for luck: brass on the lock of the number seven gun not bright enough."

  "I am amazed, Bonden: amazed," said Stephen, and indeed he was. Bonden had never been flogged to his knowledge; and even in a flogging ship fifty lashes was a savage punishment for anything but a most serious crime. "And grieved. Let us row over to the Boadicea, and I shall give you some salve."

  "It's all right now, sir, thanking you kindly. I was aboard you this afternoon, but it was not for no salve: you will find the letter we wrote, a-laying there in your cabin."

  "What is it all about, tell?"

  "Well, s1r," said Bonden, resting on his oars: but by this time they were close to the larboard side of the Otter, and in reply to her hall Bonden called, "Your doctor coming aboard: request a line." The Otter was perfectly used to this: a whip with a bowline appeared over the side; Bonden slipped it under McAdam's arms; and the surgeon vanished upwards.

  "Well, sir," said Bonden again, pulling slowly towards the Boadicea, "this is the way of it. When me and Killick, on the Leeward Islands station, heard the Captain was afloat again, we went to join him, in course: and there was plenty more in other ships did likewise--old Sophies, old Surprises, even an old Polychrest, Bolton, that slab-sided cove the Captain pulled out of the sea. Oh, was he to new- commission a ship, he'd have no trouble finding a ship's company: not like some--"He swallowed the coarse expression with a cough and went on, "Howsoever, we put in our request, and Captain Dundas, a very affable gent and a friend of the Captain's as you know full well, sir, discharged us into Nirjide , Captain Corbett, for the Cape: which he was so kind as to say he was sorry to lose us, and give Killick a pot of guava-jelly for the Captain. But Nereide's short-handed: because why? because the men run whenever they can. There was Joe Lucas, of our mess, as swam three mile, with bladders, off St Kitts, sharks and all: was brought back, flogged, and swum it again, with his back like a raw steak. And today, with only twelve liberty-men out of the whole crew, two of "em are off for the mountain, in spite of all them wild beasts, I know for certain fact, leaving thirty-eight months" pay and their prize-money. So, do you see, we are afraid, Killick and me and the rest, that Captain Corbett will not discharge us into the Boadicea; and so we wrote this letter to you, sir. Because not liking to put ourselves in the Captain's way, being that he's to hoist his pendant any minute as they say, and therefore too busy, we hoped you might put in a good word, just casual, at the right moment."