Patrick O'Brian - The Mauritius Command

Stephen was already up, sitting there clean, shaven and respectably dressed under the swinging lamp. He said, "There is the strange look about you, brother?"

"A strange feeling, too," said Jack. "Do you know, Stephen, that in about one hour's time the dust will begin to fly, and what I shall do is just lie there in the road and give orders while the other men do the work? It has never happened to me before, and I don't relish it, I find. Though to be sure, Sophie would approve."

"She would also beg you to drink your coffee while it is hot: and she would be in the right of it. There are few things more discouraging to the mind that likes to believe it is master in its own house, than the unquestionable effect of a full belly. Allow me to pour you a cup."

The banging of the carpenters" mallets came closer as the bulk-heads went down and the cabins vanished to give a clean sweep fore and aft: not that the poor old Raisonable could do much, clean sweep or not; but even so the familiar sound, the coffee and the toast brought his heart back to something like a natural state. The carpenter himself appeared at the door, begged pardon, hesitated. "Carry on, Mr Gill," said Jack pleasantly. "Don't mind us."

It is irregular, sir, I know," said the carpenter, not carrying on at all but advancing towards the table, "and I beg you will forgive the liberty. But I fair dread the notion of a battle, sir. Man and boy I've been in the Raisonable these six and twenty year; I know her timbers, and I know her butt-heads; and with respect, sir, I make so bold as to say, the firing-off of they old guns will start �m."

"Mr Gill," said Jack, "I promise you I will use her reasonable. Reasonable, eh, you smoke if?" A ghost of his old merriment showed for a moment; a ghost of a smile appeared on the carpenter's face; but not much conviction.

On deck again, and now the world was full of growing light. The squadron was already right into the broad shallow bay: on the larboard quarter the cape stretched out far westwards into the sea; at the bottom of the bay stood the town of St Paul's, now no more than five miles away; behind rose the savage mountains of La Reunion, barring the eastern horizon; and in the offing lay the Boadicea. The wind was steady in the south-east out here, but the different patterns of the sea inshore showed odd local breezes blowing. Jack took his glass, searching for the Nereide : he swung it along the cape, the Pointe des Galets--a moderate surf on the outer reef, far less on the beach itself--and all at once he saw her, almost becalmed in the lee of -the headland, working slowly out from behind an island against the scend of the sea. At the same moment the signal-lieutenant caught sight of her, made out her hoist, and reported, "Nereide, sir: troops on shore."

"Very good, Mr -" The young man's name escaped him. His glass ran along the coast, along the causeway that traversed a long stretch of flat watery ground, farther and farther along, and there they were: three bodies of them: first an exact column of red; then the seamen in a smaller, irregular, but compact blueish mass; and then the sepoys. Already they were much nearer to St Paul's than he had dared to hope: but could they ever take the batteries by surprise? Viewed from the sea, the red coats were horribly conspicuous.

"Boadicea signalling, sir," said the lieutenant again. "Enemy in sight, bearing due east."

That meant that the Caroline had not slipped out. "Thank you, Mr Graham," said Jack--the name came to him this time--"Reply Stand in: and to the squadron Make more sail." As he spoke a flaw in the wind shivered the Raisonable's jib: he and every other man on board glanced up at the clouds gathering over the island: the dark masses had a look that none of them much cared for. Was the wind going to come foul at last? But in a moment the gust had passed, and the squadron, Sirius, Raisonable and Otter, ran fast and true straight for St Paul's and the powerful batteries guarding the port. And as they ran, so every eye aboard, furtively or openly, watched that distant progress on the land, for a long, long half hour.

The trim columns far over there were losing shape: they were advancing at the double now, closer and closer to the first battery guarding St Paul's, the Lambousie're, closer and closer until they were hidden from Jack by a screen of trees. In a barely tolerable suspense he waited for the sound of the heavy French guns sending grape into the close-packed companies; but what he heard was a remote crackle of musketry, a faint wind-borne cheering. The red coats were swarming all over the battery, and already the sailors were beyond it, racing for the next, La Centiere Still in their dead silence the three ships stood on, Boadicea converging upon them from the west, Nereide tearing up from the north. In five minutes they would be within the extreme range of the third battery, La Neuve, right by the town, with its forty guns: now the harbour was wide open; there lay the Caroline, and there lay the Indiamen; and Jack could see boats plying between the frigate and the shore. She was landing troops. Beyond her the two Indiamen, a brig-of-war, several smaller vessels--total confusion there. Confusion too just outside the town, where the musketry-fire was spreading fast, two distinct lines of fire, as though the French soldiers had formed at last, and were standing firm. Musketry, and then Jack saw the Caroline begin to turn; there had been some order amidst all that turmoil, for she had evidently laid out a spring: in his glass he could see the hands at her capstan, slewing her; and as her guns bore so she fired at the English troops, a steady, rapid independent fire. The brig was firing too. Yet scarcely had her first guns spoken but there was an answer from the Lambousiere battery: the seamen had turned the guns on the shipping in the port, and they had sent up the union flag. Immediately afterwards the musket-fire round the Centiere reached a paroxysm; the British colours ran up on the battery, and its guns joined in. The smoke drifted wide, a cloud with flashes in its heart.

Jack glanced up and down his line. The Boadicea had reached her station ahead: the Nereide was still half a mile astern. He must stand on past the guns of the third battery, tack and stand closer in. Although his guns would easily fetch the town by now he dared not fire into the melee at this range; even a broadside at the Caroline meant the risk of hitting his own people, directly behind. The inaction, the passive waiting, was extraordinarily painful, above all as the English soldiers seemed to be falling back. Slowly, slowly on, and silently; they were coming abreast of La Neuve. The waiting would not last much longer: roundshot would be all about their ears at any moment now. The battery glided by, full on the beam, and he could see the mouths of the guns. But not one spoke, and not a man was there to serve them: the gunners had either run, or they had joined the defenders. The confusion in the town now had a pattern, the French line had broken, and they were retreating up the hill. Yet for all that the round- shot came flying from the harbour. The Caroline, still firing fast from her starboard broadside, now gave the squadron her whole tier of larboard guns. She concentrated her fire on the pendant-ship, and at her first discharge she hulled the Raisonable three times and struck her maintop. Wreckage, a studdingsail-boom, and some blocks came hurtling down into the splinter-netting over the quarterdeck. The next sent a dozen hammocks flying amidships; yet still the squadron could not reply.

"You have noted the time, Mr Peter?" asked Jack, knotting a stray signal halliard.

"Immediately, sir," cried Peter. The secretary was a yellowish white, made all the more evident by his black clothes: his morning's beard showed strongly against his skin. "Seventeen minutes after eight," he said.