Patrick O'Brian - The Mauritius Command

"Buggery? No. I should certainly know it. There is repeated venereal commerce with the other sex, and always has been. Though indeed," he said, standing while Stephen grubbed up a plant and wrapped it in his handkerchief, "it is the wise man that can always separate male and female. Certainly men affect him far more than women; he has more women than he can do with--they pursue him in bands--they cause him much concern--but it is the men he really minds: I have seen it again and again. This crisis, now: I know it was brought on by your Captain Aubrey's checking him. Corbett is bad enough, but Aubrey ... I had heard of him often and often, long before he ever came out to the Cape--every mention of him or of Cochrane in the Gazette, every piece of service gossip, analysed, diminished, magnified, praised, decried, compared with his own doings--cannot leave them alone, any more than a man can leave a wound in peace . . . Och, be damned to his whimsies--why does he have to be Alexander? Do you want a drink?" asked McAdam, in a different voice, pulling out a case-bottle.

"I do not," said Stephen. Until now the decent conventions of medical conversation had restrained McAdam's language and even his harsh, barbarous dialect; but spirits worked very quickly upon his sodden frame, and Stephen found the liberated McAdam tedious. In any event, the sun was no more than a hand's-breadth above the horizon. He turned, walked quickly through the almost deserted camp, down the now empty beach with McAdam blundering after him, and into the boat.

"I beg you will take notice, Commodore," he said, darting on to the poop, "that I am come aboard seven minutes before my time, and desire it may be made up, whenever the requirements of the service next permit."

For the time being the service required Stephen, his shipmates, and three hundred and sixty-eight soldiers to bowl along the twentieth parallel, and to cover the hundred leagues between Rodriguez and the rest of the squadron as briskly as ever the Nereide, with her heavy load, could be induced to pass through the sea. It would have been far more convenient to stow the troops in the spacious Raisonable, but here everything depended upon speed, and Jack dreaded the loss of time in transferring them to the Nereide, perhaps with the sea running high: for he had fixed upon Corbett's landing-place, and the Nereide, replete with local knowledge and drawing little water, was to set them ashore at the Pointe des Galets; she therefore ran westward horribly crowded and trailing a smell of Oriental cooking.

Cracking on as though yards, booms, gaffs and even topmasts were to be had for the asking in the nearest port, they ran off the distance in two days, and on the evening of the second they found the Boadicea and Sirius north east of Mauritius, exact to the rendezvous and, as far as could be told, undetected from the land. This Jack learnt from the soaking Captain Pym, whom he summoned aboard the Raisonable in the most pitiless way through an ugly crosssea, with a close-reef topsail wind sending warm green water over the waist of the two-decker. Pym had some solid intelligence, gained from two separate fishing- boats taken far off shore: the Canonniare, condemned by the surveyors as a man-of-war, had had all her guns but fourteen taken out and was refitting to carry a commercial cargo back to France in a month or so; on the other hand, only one of the powerful new frigates, the Bellone, was in Port-Louis, the Manche and the Vinus having sailed north-eastwards some time before, with six months provisions aboard.

The heavy sea, the increasing wind, the sudden tropical darkness made it impossible to gather a council of war; and having seen the half-drowned Pym regain his ship, Jack called the Boadicea under his lee and in a voice that carried loud and clear over the general roar he desired Captain Eliot to proceed to St Paul's with the utmost dispatch, the utmost dispatch, to lie there In the offing, and to "bottle'em up until we join you--never mind about carrying away a spar or two." The Boadicea, with her fire-power, would hold them if there was any attempt at getting away.

By the next day the squadron had left Saint-Louis far astern; they were clear of the disturbed winds and currents to the leeward of Mauritius, and in the moderate sea the Marines and a hundred seamen went aboard the Nereide to join the rest of the landing-party. The captains gathered with the Colonel and his staff in the great cabin of the Raisonable, and the Commodore ran over the plan of attack once more. Stephen was there, and Jack presented him, as casually as possible, as the political adviser to the governor-designate: this earned him a broad stare from Corbett and a curiously agreeable smile from Clonfert, but it aroused no emotion in the others, taken up as they were with the coming event. Lord Clonfert was looking pale and drawn, but much stronger than Stephen had expected: before the conference he had taken Dr Maturin aside and had thanked him for his care with an obliging warmth that was evidently intended to convey more than common civility. For most of the meeting he sat silent: only towards the end, moved by some impulse that Stephen could not make out, did he put forward the suggestion that he should lead the detachment of seamen--he had some knowledge of the country, and he spoke French. It made sense: Jack agreed, looked round the table, asked whether anyone had any further point to make, caught Stephen's eye, and said "Dr Maturin?"

"Yes, sir," said Stephen. "I have only this to say: in the event of the capture of St Paul's, it is of the first political consequence that the inhabitants should be well treated. Any looting, rape, or disorderly conduct would have the most prejudicial effect upon the political ends in view."

They all looked grave, murmuring a general agreement, and shortly afterwards Jack stood up. He wished them all a very good night's sleep, he said, "for it will be a busy day tomorrow, gentlemen; and if this blessed wind holds, it will start precious early. For my part I shall cut quarters and turn in the minute hammocks are piped down."

He turned in, but it was not to sleep. For the first time in his sea-going life he lay awake, listening to the wind, watching the tell-tale compass over his cot, and going on deck every hour or so to look at the sky. The blessed wind never faltered, still less did it veer into the dreaded west; indeed it strengthened so much that early in the middle watch he reduced sail.

At the change of the watch he was on deck again. He could feel the loom of the land somewhere on the larboard bow, and as his eyes grew used to the darkness he could in fact see the mountains of La Reunion clear against the starlit sky. He looked at his watch by the binnacle lamp; paced up and down the quarterdeck; called out "Sharp the bowlines, there," and heard the answering "One, two, three, belay oh!" "Bowlines hauled, sir," said the officer of the watch, and the hands returned to their cleaning of the decks. "I wonder what Corbett will do about it," he thought, "with seven hundred people aboard and not an inch to shove a swab." He looked at his watch again, stepped into the master's day-cabin to check it with the chronometer, checked his reckoning once more, and said, "Signal Nereide carry on." The coloured lanterns soared up, Nereide acknowledged and a few moments later he saw the dim form of the frigate shake out her reefs, set her topgallant salls, haul her wind two points, and stretch away for the land, away from the squadron, trailing her string of boats.

According to the plan she was to go in alone to avoid suspicion: the landing parties were to take the batteries commanding the roadstead, and the squadron was then to sail in and deal with the men-of-war and the town. So far the timing was perfect. Corbett would have just light enough to see: Jack disliked the man, but he believed in his knowledge of the coast. But the waiting was going to be hard and long, since the troops had seven miles to march: he resumed his pacing. Seven miles to march, and all he could do in the meantime was to stand in quietly for St Paul's under topsails alone. He watched the sand in the half-hour glass: the top emptied, the glass was turned, the bell rang clear; again the sand began its busy journey, tumbling grain by grain, millions of grains. If all had gone well they should be on their way by now. The glass turned and turned again, and slowly the sky lightened in the east. Another turn, another bell: "You may pipe the hands to breakfast, Mr Grant, and then clear the ship for action," he said, and with a fair show of unconcern he walked into his cabin, into the smell of toast and coffee. How had Killick guessed?