The Mauritius Command

  The conquest of Mauritius ran its leisurely course, with the regiments marching and countermarching in a scientific manner that pleased the generals on either side. The infantrymen sweated, but few of them bled. They had been landed smoothly, without opposition, and they presented General Decaen with an insuperable problem. His numerous Militia was no use to him at all: most of its members had read Stephen's broadsheets, many of them had already seen copies of Governor Farquhar's proposed proclamation, all of them were more concerned with the revival of their strangled trade than with the welfare of Buonaparte's empire. His Irish troops were clearly disaffected; his French regulars were outnumbered by well over five to one; and his navy was blockaded by an overwhelming force of ships. His only concern was to delay General Abercrombie's advance until his surrender should meet certain arcane military requirements, so that he should be able to justify his conduct at home and obtain honourable terms at Port-Louis for himself and his men.

  He succeeded to admiration, and Abercrombie particular praised his orderly retreat on the night of Thursday, when his flanking battalions fell back from Terre Rouge and the Long Mountain, changing face at the double in the most professional way. 'That is real soldiering,' said the General.

  While these rural gestures were being made the emissaries passed to and fro, and although Port-Louis was still nominally French Stephen Maturin walked up to the military hospital without his usual detour; and there he found McAdam on the verandah. 'How is our patient this morning?' he asked.

  'Och, the night was good enough, with your draught,' said McAdam, though with no great satisfaction. 'And the eye shows some wee improvement. It is the neck that keeps me so anxious—slough, slough and slough again, and this morning it looked as ugly as ever. He will pluck at the dressing in his sleep. Dr Martin suggests sewing flaps of healthy skin across the whole morbid area.'

  'Martin is a fool,' said Stephen. 'What we are concerned with is the artery wall itself, not the gross exfoliation. Rest is the answer, clean dressings, lenitives and peace of mind: there is physical strength in galore. How is the agitation?'

  'Fair enough this morning; and he has been sleeping since my early rounds.'

  'Very good, very good. Then we must certainly not disturb him; there is nothing like sleep for repair. I shall come back about noon, bringing the Commodore. He has a letter from Lady Clonfert at the Cape; he wishes to deliver it himself, and to tell Clonfert how the fleet praises his noble defence of the Néréide.' McAdam whistled and screwed up his face. 'Do you think it imprudent?' asked Stephen.

  McAdam scratched himself: he could not say—Clonfert had been very strange these days—did not talk to him—no longer opened his mind—remained silent, listening for gunfire hour after hour. 'Maybe it would be best if you was to come a few minutes ahead. We can sound him out, and if we judge the excitement would not be too much, the Commodore can see him. It might do him a world of good. He liked seeing you,' said McAdam with a burst of generosity that he instantly balanced by asking in a sneering voice, 'I suppose your Big Buck Aubrey is prancing about on shore, the lord of creation? How are things going along down there, will you tell me?'

  'Much as we had expected. Mr Farquhar has landed from the Otter, and I dare say the capitulation will be signed before dinner.'

  They talked about other wounded Néréides: some were doing well, some were at death's door. Young Hobson, a master's mate emasculated late in the battle, had passed through it that night, thankful to go. Stephen nodded, and for a while he watched two geckoes on the wall, paying some attention to McAdam's account of the French surgeon's words about the impossibility of saving patients when the vital spring was gone. After a long pause he said, 'McAdam, you know more about this aspect of medicine than I do: what do you say to a patient with no physical injury, no tangible lesion, who loses all real concern with his life? Who takes a disgust to the world? A scholar, say, who has edited Livy, Livy his sole study and his delight: he stumbles on the lost books, carries them home, and finds he has not the courage, the spirit, to open even the first. He does not care about Livy's lost books, nor about his books that are known, nor about any books or authors at all. They do not interest him. He will not lift the cover; and he sees that very soon his own animal functions will not interest him either. Do you understand me? Have you seen cases of this sort in your practice?'

  'Certainly I have. And they are not so rare, neither, even in men that are kept busy.'

  'What is the prognosis? How do you see the nature of the malady?'

  'I take it that here we are to leave grace to one side?'

  'Just so.'

  'As to the nature, why, I believe he perceives the void that has always surrounded him, and in doing so he falls straight into a pit. Sometimes his perception of the void is intermittent; but where it is not, then in my experience spiritual death ensues, preceding physical death sometimes by ten years and more. Occasionally he may be pulled out by his prick.'

  'You mean he may remain capable of love?'

  'As between men and women I use the term "lust": but call it what you like: desire, a burning desire for some slut may answer, if only he burns hard enough. In the early stages, however,' said McAdam, leering at the geckoes, 'he may tide himself over with opium, for a while.'

  'Good day to you, now, Dr McAdam.'

  On his way down through the growing heat Stephen overtook two crippled boys, the one with his leg taken off at the knee, the other with an empty sleeve pinned over his breast, midshipmen of the Néréide. 'Mr Lomax,' he cried, 'sit down at once. This is madness: your stitches will burst. Sit down at once on that stone: elevate your limb.'

  Pale young wraithlike Lomax, propped by his crutch and his companion, hopped to the stone, the mounting stone outside a rich-looking house, and sat upon it. 'It is only another hundred yards, sir,'he said. 'All the Néréides are there. You can see the ship from the corner; and we are to go aboard the minute her colours go up.'

  'Nonsense,' said Stephen. But having considered for a while he knocked at the door: a little later he came out with a chair, a cushion, and two stout anxious care-worn black men. He put Lomax into the chair, properly padded, and the black men carried it down to the turn in the road where the little group of mobile survivors looked down on their frigate, tight-packed among the Indiamen, the merchant ships and the men-of-war in Port-Louis harbour. Some of their eager life seeped into him. 'Mr Yeo,' he said to a lieutenant with a great bandage covering most of his face, 'you may do me an essential service, if you will be so kind. I was obliged to leave a valuable bolster in your ship, and I should be most grateful if you would order the strictest search when you go aboard. I have already mentioned it to the Admiral and the Commodore, but—'His words were cut off by cheering away to the right, a cheering that spread as the French colours came down on the citadel, and that redoubled when the union flag replaced them. The Néréides cheered too, thin and piping, a poor volume of sound that was lost in the salvoes of artillery and then in a deep rolling thunder from the guns of the fleet.

  'I shall not forget, sir,' said Yeo, shaking Stephen by the hand. 'Pass it on, there: the Doctor's bolster to be preserved.'

  Stephen walked on, now quite through the town, where the closed shutters gave an impression of death, and where the few white people in the streets looked oppressed, as though the plague were abroad; only the blacks, whose lot could scarcely change for the worse, showed any liveliness or curiosity. He attended to various points of business, and met Jack at their appointed place. 'The capitulation is signed, I collect?' he said.

  'Yes,' said Jack. 'Uncommon handsome terms, too: they march out with colours flying, match burning, drum beating—all the honours of war—and they are not to be prisoners. Tell me, how did you find Clonfert? I have his wife's letter here in my pocket.'

  'I did not see him this morning: he was asleep. McAdam seems to think his general state to be much the same. He should come through, I believe, barring accidents: but of course he will be horribly
disfigured. That will have a bearing on his state of mind, and in these cases the patient's mind is of great importance. I propose leaving you under the trees near the gate, while I attend to his dressings with McAdam. He may be in no state to receive you.'

  They made their way up the hill, talking of the ceremony. 'Farquhar was astonished you had not been invited,' said Jack. 'He checked the Admiral so hard we all looked away—said your work had saved innumerable lives and that the slight must be repaired: you should be given the place of honour at his official dinner. The Admiral looked concerned, and salaamed, and said he would instantly do everything in his power—would mention you with the greatest respect in his despatch; and then he ran off like a boy to start writing it—had been itching to do so since dawn. And a precious document it will be, I am sure, ha, ha, ha. Much the same as most of 'em, only more so; but it will certainly have a whole Gazette to itself.'

  'Who is to carry it?'

  'Oh, his nephew, I dare say, or one of his favourite captains: it is the greatest plum to carry these last five years and more—attendance at court, kind words and a tip from the King, dinner at Guldhall, freedom of this and that: promotion of course or a damned good billet. I shall give the lucky man my letters to Sophie—he will go like the wind, cracking on regardless, homeward bound with such welcome news, the dog.'

  Jack's mind flew off to Hampshire, and it was still there when Stephen said in a louder tone, 'I repeat, what do you think is our next destination?'

  'Eh? Oh, Java, no doubt, to have a crack at the Dutchmen.'

  'Java: oh, indeed. Listen, now: here are your trees. There is a bench. I shall be with you directly.'

  The hospital courtyard was in a strange state of disorder: not only the confusion of a defeat, with people making the most of a vacation of power to carry off everything portable, but something quite out of the common. Stephen walked faster when he heard McAdam's raucous northern voice calling out, and he pushed through a knot of attendants staring up at the verandah. McAdam was drunk, but not so drunk that he could not stand, not so drunk that he did not recognize Stephen.—'Make a lane, there,' he cried. 'Make a lane for the great Dublin physician. Come and see your patient, Dr Maturin, you whore.'

  In the low-ceilinged room the shutters drawn against the noonday sun made Clonfert's blood show almost black: no great pool, but all there was in his small, wasted body. He lay on his back, arms spread out and dangling, the unshattered side of his face looking beautiful and perfectly grave, even severe. The bandage had been torn from his neck.

  Stephen bent to listen for any trace of a heart-beat, straightened, closed Clonfert's eyes, and pulled up the sheet. McAdam sat on the side of the bed, weeping now, his fury gone with his shouting; and between his sobs he said, 'It was the cheering that woke him. What are they cheering for? says he, and I said the French have surrendered. Aubrey will be here and you shall have your Néréide back. Never, by God, says he, not from Jack Aubrey: run out McAdam and see are they coming. And when I stepped out of the door so he did it, and so bloody Christ he did it.' A long silence, and he said, 'Your Jack Aubrey destroyed him. Jack Aubrey destroyed him.'

  Stephen crossed the blazing courtyard again, and under the trees Jack stood up, expectant. His smile vanished when Stephen said, 'He is dead,' and they paced down in silence through the town. A town busier now, with the shops opening, men posting up the proclamation, large numbers of people walking about, companies of soldiers marching, parties of bluejackets, queues forming outside the brothels, several French officers who saluted punctiliously, putting the best face they could on defeat. Stephen stopped to kneel as the Sacrament passed by to a deathbed, a single priest and a boy with a bell.

  'I trust he went easy?' said Jack in a low voice, at last.

  Stephen nodded, and he looked at Jack with his pale, expressionless eyes, looking objectively at his friend, tall, sanguine, almost beefy, full of health, rich, and under his kindly though moderate concern happy and even triumphant. He thought, 'You cannot blame the bull because the frog burst: the bull has no comprehension of the affair,' but even so he said, 'Listen, Jack: I do not much care for the taste of this victory. Nor any victory, if it comes to that. I shall see you at dinner.'

  The dinner was nothing in comparison with those usually eaten at Government House under the rule of General Decaen: many of his cooks and all of his plate had vanished in the brief interregnum, and a stray mortar bomb had destroyed part of the wall. But even so the creole dishes made a pleasant contrast with the hard fare of recent days, and above all the ceremony provided an ideal occasion for speeches.

  Something, reflected Jack, something came over officers who reached flag rank or the equivalent, something that made them love to get up on their hind legs and produce long measured periods with even longer pauses between them. Several gentlemen had already risen to utter slow compliments to themselves, their fellows, and their nation, and now General Abercrombie was struggling to his feet, with a sheaf of notes in his hand. 'Your Excellency, my lords, Admiral Bertle, and gentlemen. We are met here together,' two bars of silence, 'on this happy, eh, occasion,' two more bars, 'to celebrate what I may perhaps be permitted to call, an unparalleled feat, of combined operations, of combination, valour, organization, and I may say, of indomitable will.' Pause. 'I take no credit to myself.' Cries of No, no; and cheers. 'No. It is all due,' pause, 'to a young lady in Madras.'

  'Sir, sir,' hissed his aide-de-camp, 'you have turned over two pages. You have come to the joke.'

  It took some time to get the General back to his eulogy of Abercrombie and all present, and in the interval Jack looked anxiously at his friend, one of the few black coats present, sitting on the Governor's right. Stephen loathed speeches, but though paler than usual he seemed to be bearing up, and Jack noticed with pleasure that as well as his own he was secretly drinking the wine poured into the abstinent Governor's glass.

  The General boomed on, came to a close, a false close, rallied and began again, and at last sank into his chair, glared round in surly triumph and drank like a camel with a broad desert before it.

  A broad desert threatened, to be sure, for here was Admiral Bertle, fresh and spry, game for a good half hour: and his first words about his inability to match the gallant General's eloquence struck a chill to Jack's heart. His mind wandered during the Admiral's compliments to the various corps that made up the force, and he was in the act of building an observatory-dome of superior design on the top of Ashgrove hill—he had of course purchased the hill and felled the trees on the summit—when he heard Mr Bertie's voice take on a new and unctuous tone.

  'In the course of my long career,' said the Admiral, 'I have been compelled to give many orders, which, though always for the good of the service, have sometimes been repugnant to my finer feelings. For even an Admiral retains finer feelings, gentlemen.' Dutiful laughter, pretty thin. 'But now, with His Excellency's permission, I shall indulge myself by giving one that is more congenial to the spirit of a plain British sailor.' He paused and coughed in a suddenly hushed atmosphere of genuine suspense, and then in an even louder voice he went on, 'I hereby request and require Captain Aubrey to repair aboard the Boadicea as soon as he has finished his dinner, there to receive my despatches for the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and to convey them to Whitehall with all the diligence in his power. And to this, gentlemen'—raising his glass—'I will append a toast: let us all fill up to the brim, gunwales under, and drink to England, home and beauty, and may Lucky Jack Aubrey reach 'em with fair winds and flowing sheets every mile of the way.'

  Jack Aubrey’s Ships

  BRIAN LAVERY

  PATRICK O’BRIAN, unlike other writers of naval fiction often uses real ships as the basis for his plots. In the Hornblower stories of C. S. Forester, for example, the hero serves on only one real ship—the Indefatigable, which really was the ship commanded by Captain Pellew during the time when the hero served under him as midshipman.

  Several of the Aubrey stories are bas
ed on real incidents and use real ships: in particular, The Mauritius Command, is based on the real campaign in that area. The use of real ships which have a past adds to the effect of the story: the cutting out of the Hermione in the case of the Surprise, and the incident between the Leopard and the USS Chesapeake in 1807, which led to difficulties after Jack Aubrey’s capture by the Americans in The Fortune of War.

  The Royal Navy of Napoleonic Wars had nearly 1,000 ships at its peak in 1814. These were divided into six rates, according to size and gunpowder, with numerous smaller vessels which were unrated.

  In general the rates were divided as follows:

  Unrated ships included sloops of 10—18 guns, brigs, bomb vessels, fire-ships, storeships, cutters, schooners, luggers, hospital ships, prison ships, and gunboats.

  After service as a midshipman and lieutenant, a successful naval officer would expect to take command of a sloop, with the rank of Commander. After promotion to Post Captain, he would rise through ships of the different rates, perhaps reaching a third rate after seven to ten years in command of frigates. In the early stages, Jack Aubrey’s career roughly conforms to this. As a commander he began in the tiny sloop Sophie and, after a period on the beach, he continued in the Polychrest. Following his promotion, Aubrey took temporary command of the 38-gun fifth rate, the Lively. This was rather a large ship for a newly promoted captain, but the command was temporary and the circumstances were exceptional. He then went to the Surprise, a sixth rate of 28 guns, a ship more appropriate to his seniority. His next ship was the Boadicea, a fifth rate of 38 guns. After that his career in frigates might have ended. With six or seven years of seniority he was offered the Ajax, a ship-of-the-line of 74 guns, but turned it down in order to go to sea more quickly in the Leopard, a 50-gun ship.