Patrick O'Brian - The Mauritius Command

"You and your fancies, Henry. Pearl ain't due back this tide, no, nor the next. Was that thunder? A drop of rain would--"

"Christ, she's broke out a signal. Get your fat arse out of the way. Enemy in sight--what's red white chequer?--due north. Bill, jump down and rouse out Mr Ballocks. I'll fix the hoist. Bear a hand, mate, bear a hand."

Up flew the signal, out banged the gun: the station above St Paul's repeated within a matter of seconds, and into the dining-cabin of the Boadicea darted the midshipman of the watch, who found the Commodore pink and cheerful, surrounded by papers and already dictating to his blear-eyed, unshaved secretary as he devoured his first, or sunrise, breakfast, "Mr Johnson's duty, sir," he cried," St Paul's repeating from Saint-Denis enemy in sight, bearing due north."

"Thank you, Mr Bates," said Jack. "I shall be on deck directly."

There he found the whole quarterdeck motionless, all faces turned towards the distant flagstaff: he said, "Prepare to slip, Mr Johnson," and then he too fixed his eyes on the hill. Two full minutes passed with no further hoist, and he said to the signal-midshipman, "Repeat to Saint-Denis, Staunch and Otter proceed to sea immediately: attend to pendant's motions." Then stepping to the taffrail he hailed the Africaine. "Mr Tullidge, I have room for fifty volunteers, no more."

The Africaines were less remarkable for their discipline than their ferocious eagerness to serve the Frenchmen out, and now began a disorderly savage jostling race, whose fifty winners, headed by a powerful master's mate with a face like a baboon, came aboard the Boadicea by boat or strong swimming as her buoyed cable ran smoking from her hawse and she cast to the fine land-breeze.

The sails came crowding on; she gathered way, and the good breeze carried them up towards Cape Bernard, the high land that barred out all the ocean due north of Saint-Denis as well as the town itself. With studdingsails on either side, the Boadicea threw a bow-wave that came creaming down to the mainchains, but even so the cape moved tediously slow, and Jack found it something of a relief to have his impatience distracted by the ugly scene that developed when it was rumoured that the Africaines were to take over the forward starboard guns. Loud angry voices, rarely raised aboard the Boadicea, could be heard on the forecastle, disturbing the holy calm of a well-run man-of-war: the bosun came hurrying aft, spoke to the first lieutenant, and Seymour, crossing the quarterdeck to the rail where Jack was staring at the station in the hope of some more definite signal, coughed and said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but the men of Mr Richardson's division believe that their guns are to be taken from them, and with the utmost respect they wish to represent that they would find this a little hard."

"Let the hands come aft, Mr Seymour," said Jack, with his telescope still trained on the flagstaff, now at the far limit of his view. When he clapped the glass to and turned there they were before him, the whole waist of the ship crowded with men, whose utmost respect (though genuine) was for the moment scarcely discernible beneath their rage at injustice.

"What a precious set of old women you are, upon my word," he said testily. "You clap on to a silly buzz with no truth in it and set about one another like a parcel of fish-fags. Look at Eames there, with a bloody nose and on a Sunday too, for shame. And all this before we know whether the enemy is anything more than some stray sloop, or whether he will be so polite as to stay until you have stopped clawing one another. Now I tell you what it is: if we have the good fortune to come into action, every team is going to fight the gun it's used to. That's justice. But if any Boadicea is hurt, then an Africaine takes his place: and if we board, then the Africaines board first. That's flat and that's fair all round. Mr Seymour, be so good as to have cutlasses and boarding-axes served out to the Africaines."

The general opinion was that this was fair enough: and although for the present the Boadiceas could not be brought to love the Africaines, they did at least treat their guests with a distant civility--no oaths, no blows, little more than a covert kick or nudge, accidental done a purpose.

Cape Bernard at last, and the frigate rounded it, shaving the reef so close that a lobbed biscuit might have reached the wicked breakers. And as she rounded it, opening new skies, so her people heard the sound of gunfire, the growling of heavy guns a great way off in the north.

"Jump up to the masthead, Mr Richardson," said Jack, "and tell me what you see."

As the midshipman vanished aloft Saint-Denis came into sight: the Staunch was still working out of the harbour, and the Otter was only a mile ahead of her. Jack frowned; he was about to call the signalmidshipman when he saw fresh canvas break out aboard both of them. It was true that neither had been ready for action, ready to slip at a moment's notice, as the Boadicea had been these last twenty-four hours; it was true that they must have had most of their hands ashore or in the yard; but even so he was not pleased, and he meditated a rebuke. "Am I growing pompous?" he wondered, and the answer "Probably" had taken disagreeable form in his mind when Spotted Dick, after a scrupulous examination of the distant northern sea, hailed him. "On deck, there. Sir, I believe I can make out three ships hulldown two points on the larboard bow." And as if to confirm his words, the distant thunder growled again. Every man aboard listened with all his might, strained ears trying to pierce through the song of the rigging and the slap of the sea to the underlying silence; and every man aboard heard the popping of a musket, weak, but nothing near so remote as the great guns.

Again the masthead hailed the deck, reporting, perhaps a little late, the presence of the aviso a couple of miles away, almost invisible against the reef. She was still pulling strongly against the wind, still announcing that the enemy was in sight, with a musket-shot to underline the signal.

"Close the aviso, Mr Seymour," said Jack.

As the Boadicea swept down the Pearl set her jib and mainsall, spun about and ran quartering before the wind, clear of the reef and its islands, so that when the two vessels converged they were both running fast on almost parallel courses--Dr Maturin could be restored to the frigate without the loss of a moment.

His standard of seamanship being tolerably well-known aboard the Boadicea, no orders were required for his reception: there was not time for a bosun's chair, but a whip appeared at the mainyardarm; and now, as they tore along together with no more than a few feet of foaming, heaving sea between them, Bonden, poised on the rail of the Pearl, seized the line, made Stephen fast, adjured him "to take it easy', called out "Heave away, there: cheerly now', sprang across the gulf and ran up the frigate's side like a cat to receive the Doctor as he came aboard. He had timed the roll exactly, and all would have gone well if Stephen, with some notion of steadying himself, had not grasped at the Pearl's rigging. A slack slabline at once took a turn about his dangling legs and jerked him into a maze of cordage that he could neither name nor disentangle. A fairly heavy swell was running, and for a moment it seemed that Stephen must come aboard in two pieces. A nimble Pearl raced aloft and at great cost to the aviso's rigging cut him free; but this he did at the very moment when the Boadiceas, realizing that they were tearing their surgeon apart, let go; and Stephen therefore swung in a sickening downward curve to strike the frigate's side a little below the waterline. Now, urged by cries, they heaved again, but he stuck under the chains, and the ship's next roll plunged him deep. Unfortunately for Stephen he counted none but friends aboard, and a large proportion of these sprang to his rescue; powerful hands pulled him in different directions by the arms, legs and hair, and only the violent intervention of the Commodore preserved him. He reached the deck at last, more dead than alive, oozing blood from scratches inflicted by the barnacles; they emptied some of the water out of him, carried him below, and plucked off his clothes.