Patrick O'Brian - The Mauritius Command

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Farquhar with him: to his intense relief he found that Keating was still in command--no glum, over-cautious general had superseded him. 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'.

When her captain had gloated over the squat, thick object for a while he said, "She's my first command, sir. A wonderful brig on a bowline; and she draws so amazing little water, she can run up the smallest creek. Will you honour us with a visit?

"I should be very happy, Captain," said Stephen. "And since you are in command, might I beg the favour of a shovel, a crowbar, and a stout man of fair average understanding?"

The Commodore and the Colonel worked on their plan of campaign; the staff officers worked on their lists; the soldiers polished their buttons, formed in squares, formed in fours, and marched off by the right into the boats, filling the transports and the frigates until the harassed sailors could scarcely holystone the decks, let alone come at the rigging; and Dr Maturin, with two Gropers of fair average understanding dug out the remains of the solitaire from the caves into which she had retired from hurricanes, only to be overwhelmed by the ensuing deluge of now rock-like mud.

The last soldier left the beach, a crimson major in charge of the operation; and as he set his weary foot on the Boadicea's quarterdeck he looked at his watch and cried, "One minute fifty-three seconds a man, sir: that beats Wellington by a full two seconds!" A single gun to windward from the Commodore, the signal Make sail, and the fourteen transports began to file through the narrow opening in the reef to join the men-of-war.

By the evening they had sunk the island. They were sailing towards the setting sun with a fine topgallantsail breeze on the larboard quarter; and nothing but open sea lay between them and the beaches of La Reunion. The enterprise was now in train. Jack was far too busy with Colonel Keating and his maps for anything but the living present, but Stephen felt the long hours of gliding towards the inevitable future more than he had expected. He had been intimately concerned in matters of greater moment, but none in which the issue would be so clear cut--total success, or total failure with a shocking loss of life--in a matter of hours.

He was not altogether happy about the plan to attack, which assumed that they would be expected at St Paul's, a restored, strengthened St Paul's, and which required a feint and then a landing at two points, the one east and the other south-west of Saint-Denis, the capital, the second being designed to cut off communication between SaintDenis and St Paul's; nor was Jack, who feared the surf. But since Colonel Keating, a man in whom they had great confidence, and one who had fought over some of the terrain, strongly urged its strategic importance, and since he was supported by the other colonels, the Commodore had yielded, neither Stephen nor Farquhar saying anything, except when they stressed the importance of respect for civilian and ecclesiastical property.

The hours dropped by. At every heave of the log La Reunion was seven or eight miles nearer. Mr Farquhar was busy with his proclamation, and Stephen paced the quarterdeck, silently hating Buonaparte and all the evil he had brought into the world. "Good only for destruction--has destroyed all that was valuable in the republic, all that was valuable in the monarchy--is destroying France with daemonic energy this tawdry, theatrical empire--a deeply vulgar man nothing French about him--insane ambition--the whole world one squalid tyranny. His infamous treatment of the Pope! Of this Pope and the last. And when I think of what he has done to Switzerland and to Venice, and to God knows how many other states, and what he might have done to Ireland--the Hibernian Republic, divided into departments--one half secret police, the other informers--conscription--the country bled white--" A subaltern of the 86th caught his pale wicked glare full in the eye and backed away, quite shocked.

In the afternoon of the day after the council three ships were sighted from the masthead: Sirius, Iphigenia and Magicienne, exact to the rendezvous, having seen no sign of the Bellone or Minerve, nor any hint of movement in Port-Louis. That evening they began to take chosen troops aboard over an easy, gentle sea: and Jack summoned the captains to explain the course of action. While the main force made a demonstration before Sainte-Marie, the Sirius was to land Colonel Fraser's brigade and the howitzers at Grande- Chaloupe, a beach on the leeward side of the island between Saint-Denis and St Paul's. At the same time part of the brigades under Colonel Keating were to be landed at the Riviere des Pluies, thus placing Saint-Denis between two fires; and here the other troops should also be landed as the transports came in; for the frigates were now to press on alone under all the sail they could bear.

They pressed on, still over this long easy swell, in a gentle breeze with studding-sails aloft and alow: a magnificent sight in their perfect line stretching over a mile of sea, the only white in that incomparable blue. They pressed on, never touching a sail except to make it draw better, from sunset until the morning watch; and all the time the Commodore took his sights on the great lambent stars hanging there in the velvet sky, checking his position again and again with the real help of Richardson and the nominal help of Mr Buchan the master, calling for the log at every glass, and perpetually sending below for the readings of the chronometers and the barometer. At two bells in the morning watch he gave orders to reduce sail; and coloured lanterns, with a leeward gun, bade the squadron do the same.