The Mauritius Command (11 page)

He was drawing on the breeches of his best full-dress uniform when Stephen walked in. "I thought you might like to see something new," he said, adding, not without pride, Ex Africa surgit semper aliquid novo,--novi, eh?"

"To what do you rcfer?" asked Stephen, gazing about the cabin.

"Cannot you see anything that strikes you dumb with awe, the mark of a living commodore, very nearly the most exalted being on the face of the earth?"

"The ornamental cloth? Oh, that: I had understood you to say something new. That cloth I saw daily in the bosun's cabin when his bowels were disturbed, long ago: I took it for a sign of his office, or perhaps the banner of some bosuns" guild." Then, feeling obscurely that he had not quite fulfilled his friend's expectations, he added, "But it is an amazingly handsome flag, upon my honour; and so neatly sewn. I dare say you will hang it up, presently; and sure it will do us all great credit, the pretty thing."

If there had been little secrecy aboard the frigate, there was even less in the squadron. No one had failed to remark the flag-lieutenant's arrival, nor his prolonged stay in the Boadicea, nor the subsequent desertion of the flagship by a troop of the Admiral's servants and followers, nor yet Captain Aubrey's passage across the harbour: when the swallow-tailed pendant broke out at the Raisonable's masthead, therefore, not a ship or vessel present let a second go by before starting the thirteen-gun salute due to the man it symbolized. The salutes merged with one another and with their echoes, filling the bay with a sullen roar, a cloud of smoke that drifted over Jack as he stood there on the poop, not directly looking at his pendant, but feeling its presence with oh such intensity: the moment his thunderous reply was done, he returned to the signal lieutenant and said, "All captains, Mr Swiney."

He received them in the Admiral's great cabin: the Raisonable was not the Hibernia nor yet the Victory, but still this was a noble room, full of dappled reflected light, and as they filed in their blue and white and gold made it look nobler still. Pym of the Sirius came first, a big man, as tall as Jack and fatter; his congratulations were as frank and unreserved as his fine friendly open face, and Jack's heart warmed to him. Corbett followed, a small dark round-headed man whose set expression of determined, angry authority was now softened into a look of the deference and the pleasure proper to this occasion. He had fought several most creditable actions in the West Indies, and in spite of Bonden Jack looked at him with respect: with hopeful anticipation, too. Corbett's good wishes were almost as cordial as Pym's, although there might have been the slightest hint of resentment, of merit and local knowledge passed over: but in any event they were far more hearty than Clonfert's formal "Allow me to offer my felicitations, sir."

"Now, gentlemen,'said Commodore Aubrey, when this stage was over, "I am happy to tell you that the squadron is to proceed to sea with the utmost dispatch. I should therefore be obliged for a statement of each ship's readiness, her condition: not a detailed statement, you understand--that can come later--but a general notion. Lord Clonfert?"

"The sloop I have the honour to command is always ready to put to sea," said Clonfert. That was mere rodomontade: no ship was always ready to put to sea unless she never used up any water, stores, powder or shot; and the Otter had just come in from a cruise. They all knew it, Clonfert as well as any once the words were out of his mouth. Without allowing the awkward pause to last more than a moment, however, Jack went straight on, receiving a more rational account from Pym and Corbett, from which it appeared that the Sirius, though well-found in general, badly needed careening, and that she was having great trouble with her water-tanks, new-fangled iron affairs that had been wished on her in Plymouth and that leaked amazingly. "If there is one thing that I detest more than anything," said Captain Pym, staring round the table, "it is innovations." The Sirius had rummaged her hold to come at the tanks, so even with the best will in the world, and working double-tides, she could scarcely be ready for sea before Sunday. The Nereide, though apparently fit to sail the moment she had filled her water, was really in a much sadder way: she was old, as the Commodore knew, and according to Captain Corbett's carpenter her navel-futtocks could be removed with a shovel; while she was certainly iron- sick fore and aft, if not amidships too; but far worse than that, she was shockingly undermanned. Captain Corbett was sixty-three hands short of his complement: a shocking figure.

Jack agreed that it was a very shocking figure, to be sure. "But let us hope that the next homeward- bound Indiaman to put in will solve the difficulty with sixty-three prime hands and a few supernumaries."

"You are forgetting, sir, that ever since their disagreement with Government about the running of the colony the Company's ships no longer touch at the Cape."

"Very true," said Jack, with a covert glance at Clonfert. He covered his lapse by saying that he should visit their ships in the course of the afternoon, when he would hope to see their detailed statements of condition, and suggested that they should now discuss some claret that he had taken from a Frenchman on his way down. The last of the Lafite appeared, together with something in the farinaceous line from the Boadicea's galley.

"Capital wine," said Pym.

"As sound as a nut," said Corbett. "So you found a Frenchman, sir?"

"Yes," said Jack, and he told them about the Hibi it was not much of an action, but the mere talk of banging guns, the Hyaena restored to the list, the prize neatly salvaged, caused the formal atmosphere to relax. Reminiscence flowed with the claret: comparable actions and old shipmates were called to mind: laughter broke out. Jack had never served with either Pym or Corbett, but they had many acquaintances in common throughout the service: when they had spoken of half a dozen, Jack said, "You knew Heneage Dundas in the West Indies, of course, Captain Corbett?" thinking that this might jog his mind.

"Oh, yes, sir," said Corbett: but no more.

"That will not wash, however," said Jack within: and aloud, "Lord Clonfert, the bottle stands by you."

All this time Clonfcrt had been sitting silent. A shaft of light, failing on his star, sent a constellation of little prismatic dots flashing high: now, as he leant forwards to the bottle, they all swept down. He filled his glass, passed the bottle on, and moved perhaps by some notion of repairing his unpleasant relationship with Corbett and possibly at the same time of winning an ally in this meeting where he could not but feel at a disadvantage, he said, "Captain Corbett, a glass of wine with you."

"I never drink a glass of wine with any man, my lord," replied Corbett.

"Captain Corbett," said Jack quickly, "I was astonished to learn about the Russian brig lying inside the Nereide, and even more astonished when the Admiral told me that her captain had served under you."

"Yes, sir, he was in the Seahorse when I had her, serving as a volunteer to learn our ways: and he picked them up pretty well, I must confess. His people are scarcely what we should rate ordinary, but I dare say he will knock some seamanship into them in time. They have a fine sense of discipline in those parts: a thousand lashes are not uncommon, I believe."

The talk ran on about the unfortunate Diana--her sailing from the Baltic on a voyage of discovery at a time of peace between England and Russia--her arrival, all unsuspecting, in Simon's Town to learn that war had been declared--her curious status--her curious build--her people's curious ways ashore.

Eight bells struck: they all stood up. Jack detained Corbett for a moment and said, "Before I forget it, Captain Corbett, my coxswain and some other men are aboard the

Nereide. Here, I have jotted down their names. You will oblige me by having "em sent over."

"Certainly, sir," said Corbett. "Of course... But I beg you will not think I intend the least disrespect if I venture to repeat that I am cruelly short handed."

"So I understand," said Jack. "But I do not mean to rob you: far from it. You shall have an equal number from the Boadicea, and I believe I may even be able to let you have a few more. We pressed some good men among the Hibi's prisoners."

"I should be most uncommon grateful, sir,'said Corbett, brightening at once. "And I shall send your men back the moment I reach the ship."

It was with his own coxswain at his side, therefore, that the Commodore put off for his tour of the squadron. "This is like old times, Bonden," he said, as they approached the Sirius. "Yes, sir; only better," murmured Bonden: and then, in answer to the frigate's hall, he roared "Pendant," in a voice to wake the dead.

It did not startle the Sirius, however: from the moment of Captain Pym's return all hands had turned to--dinner cut short, grog gulped down--in order to give her an entirely artificial and fallacious appearance, designed to make her appear what she was not. They had done so with a will, being proud of their ship, and although there had been no time for any lavish repainting, the Sirius that the Commodore beheld was as unlike her workaday self as the concentrated effort of two hundred and eighty- seven men and several women (some regular, others less so) could make her. Seeing that she was virtually disembowelled because of her tanks, they had not been able to turn her into a larger version of a royal yacht, as they could have wished; but apart frorm the pyramids of nameless objects on deck, decently shrouded with awnings and tarpaulins, she was very presentable, and Jack was pleased with what he saw. He did not believe it, of course; nor was he expected to believe it: the whole thing, from the whitewashed coal in the galley to the blackened balls in the shot-garlands, was a ritual disguise. Yet had a relationship to the facts, and he gained the impression of a fine steady ship in moderately good order with competent officers and a decent crew largely composed of man-of-war's men--she had been in commission these three years and more. Captain Pym had set up a splendid array of bottles and cakes in his cabin, and as Jack lowered a Bath bun whose specific gravity somewhat exceeded that of platinum he reflected that its consistency was in all likelihood a fair symbol of the ship--steady, regular, rather old-fashioned, reliable; though perhaps not apt to set the Indian Ocean in a blaze.

Next the Nereide. She had had no real need to turn to in order to achieve the full effect that the Sirius had aimed at, yet from the mute, weary sullenness of her crew and the anxious, laded, harassed look of her officers, every man jack aboard had been hard at it, gilding the lily for this occasion. Jack liked a taut ship, and of course a clean ship, but the total perfection of the Nereide's vast expanse of brass alone oppressed him: he went through with his inspection, that being due to those who had tolled so hard and to so little purpose, but he made his tour of the silent, rigid frigate with no pleasure at all. His real business lay below, however, among the navel-futtocks; and there in the depths with the captain, his nervous first lieutenant and his nervous carpenter, he found that Corbett had not exaggerated greatly. Her timbers were indeed in a bad way: yet, he reflected as he prodded about with a spike, the Simon's Town surveyor might be right in saying that they would last another two or three seasons, whereas unless Jack was out in his reckoning the rot on the upper deck would spread more rapidly than that. As a young fellow, a midshipman in those very waters, he had been disrated for misconduct, for venery, and turned before the mast: infinitely against his will he had been a foremast jack for six months. That ship's standard of spit and polish had been nothing remotely like the Nereide's, but she had had a tartar of a captain and a driving first lieutenant, and he knew to his cost just what it took in labour to produce even half this result. And those months, so wretched at first and indeed most of the time, had also given him something that few officers possessed: an intimate understanding of life at sea from the men's point of view, a comprehension from within. He knew their language, spoken and silent; and his interpretation of the looks he had seen before coming below, the constraint, the veiled sideways glances, the scarcely perceptible nods and signs, the total lack of anything resembling cheerfulness, depressed him extremely.

Corbett was a brisk man with figures, however: he produced his detailed statement of the Nereide's condition, neatly ruled in black and red, at the same time as his Madeira and sweet biscuits. "You are very well found in powder and shot, I see," Jack remarked, glancing over the columns.

"Yes, sir," said Corbett. "I don't believe in flinging it into the ocean: besides, your genuine recoil does so plough up the deck."

"It does; and the Nereide's deck is a most remarkable sight, I must confess. But do you not find it answers, to have your men handy with the guns- accurate at a distance?"

"Why, sir, as far as my experience goes, it don't make much odds. I have always engaged yardarm to yardarm, when they could not miss if they tried. But I don't have to tell you anything about close engagement, sir, not after your action with the Cacafuego, ha, ha."

"Still, there is something to be said for the other school of thought- something to be said for knocking away the enemy's sticks from a mile off and then lying athwart his hawse," observed Jack mildly.

"I am sure you are right, sir," said Corbett, without the least conviction.

If the Nereide had been as like a royal yacht as a man-of-war could very well be, the Otter, at first glance, was the yacht itself. Jack had never, in all his life, seen such a display of gold leaf; and rarely had he seen all shrouds and stays wormed with vermilion yarn and the strops of the blocks covered with red leather. At second glance it seemed perhaps a little much, touching on the showy, just as the perfection of tailoring on Clonfert's quarterdeck--even the midshipmen had laced cocked hats, breeches, and Hessian boots with gold tassels--had a hint of costume rather than of uniform about it: and as he stood there Jack noticed to his surprise that Clonfert's officers appeared rather a vulgar set. They could not help their undistinguished faces, of course, but their stance, now too rigid, like tailor's dummies, now too lounging and easy by far, was something else again; so was their under-bred open staring, their direct listening to what their captain had to say to him. On the other hand, no great perspicacity was required to see that the atmosphere aboard the Otter was as unlike that in the Nereide as possible: the lower-deck Otters were a cheerful, smiling crew, and it was clear that they liked their captain; while the standing officers, the bosun, the gunner and the carpenter (those essential pillars), seemed steady, valuable, experienced men. The Otter's decks, rigging and gingerbread-work had surprised him; her cabin surprised him even more. Its not inconsiderable size was much increased by looking glasses in gilt frames; these reflected a remarkable number of cushions piled up on a Turkish sofa, and the Arabian Nights were even more strongly called to mind by scimitars hanging on the bulkhead against a Persian carpet, a gilt mosque- lamp swinging from the beam, and a hubblebubble. Among all this the two twelve-pounders looked homely, brutish, drab, and ill-at-ease.