sunset, looking like a scarecrow with only her lower masts standing and a few scraps of canvas aboard, far away right under the land, creeping in with her tattered forecourse alone. But unhappily the land to which she was creeping was the entrance to Grand-Port; and when the land-breeze set in, blowing straight in her teeth, the Magicienne had the mortification of seeing the Vinus towed right under the guns of the Ile de la Passe, at the entrance to the haven.
'By the next morning, sir, when I could stand in,' said Curtis apologetically, 'she was half way up to the far end, and with my ammunition so low--only eleven rounds to a gun--and the Indiaman in such a state, I did not think it right to follow her.'
'Certainly not,' said Jack, thinking of that long inlet, guarded by the strongly fortified Ile de la Passe, by batteries on either side and at the bottom and even more by a tricky, winding fairway fringed with reefs: the Navy called it Port South-East, as opposed to Port-Louis in the north-west, and he knew it well. 'Certainly not. It would have meant throwing the Magicienne away; and I need her. Oh, yes, indeed, I need her, now they have that thumping great Minerva. You will dine with me, Curtis? Then we must bear away for Port- Louis.' They passed the Indianian a tow, and lugging their heavy burden through the sea they stood on, the wind just abaft the beam.
Stephen Maturin had been deeply mistaken in supposing that Jack, older and more consequential, now looked upon ships as lodgings, more or less comfortable: the Raisonable had never been truly his; he was not wedded to her. The Boadicea was essentially different; he entered into her; he was one of her people. He knew them all, and with a few exceptions he liked them all: he was delighted to be back, and although Captain Eliot had been a perfectly unexceptionable officer, they were delighted to have him. They had in fact led Eliot a sad life of it, opposing an elastic but effective resistance to the slightest hint of change: 'The Commodore had always liked it this way; the Commodore had always liked it that; it was Captain Aubrey that had personally ordered the brass bow-chasers to be painted brown.' Jack particularly valued Mr Fellowes, his bosun, who had clung even more firmly than most to Captain Aubrey's sail-plan and his huge, ugly snatch-blocks that allowed hawsers to be instantly set up to the mastheads, there to withstand the strain of an extraordinary spread of canvas; and now that the Boadicea's hold had been thoroughly restowed, her hull careened, and her standing-rigging rerove with the spoils of St Paul's, she answered their joint hopes entirely. In spite of her heavy burden she was now making nine knots at every heave of the log.
'She is making a steady nine knots,' said Jack, coming below after quarters.
'How happy you make me, Jack,' said Stephen. 'And you might make me even happier, should you so wish, by giving me a hand with this. The unreasonable attitude, or lurch, of the ship caused me to overset the chest.'
'God help us,' cried Jack, gazing at the mass of gold coins lying in a deep curve along the leeward side of the cabin. 'What is this?'
'It is technically known as money,' said Stephen. 'And was you to help me pick it up, instead of leering upon it with a stunned concupiscencc more worthy of Danae than a king's officer, we might conceivably save some few pieces before they all slip through the cracks in the floor. Come, come, bear a hand, there.'
They picked and shovelled busily, on all fours, and when the thick squat iron bound box was full again, Stephen said, 'They are to go into these small little bags, if you please, by fifties: each to be tied with string. Will I tell you what it is, Jack?' he said, as the heavy bags piled up.
'If you please.'
'It is the vile corrupting British gold that Buonaparte and his newspapers do so perpetually call out against. Sometimes it exists, as you perceive. And, I may tell you, every louis, every napoleon, every ducat or doubloon is sound: the French sometimes buy services or intelligence with false coin or paper. That is the kind of thing that gives espionage a bad name.'
'If we pay real money, it is to be presumed we get better intelligence?' said Jack.
'Why, truly, it is much of a muchness: your paid agent and his information are rarely of much consequence. The real jewel, unpurchasable, beyond all price, is the man who hates tyranny as bitterly as I do: in this case the royalist or the true republican who will risk his life to bring down that Buonaparte. There are several of them on La Reunion, and I have every reason to believe there are more on the Mauritius. As for your common venal agents,' said Stephen, shrugging, 'most of these bags are for them; it may do some good; indeed it probably will, men rarely being all of a piece. Tell me, when shall you be able to set me down? And how do you reckon the odds at present?'
'As to the first,' said Jack, 'I cannot say until I have believe they are looked into Port-Louis. The odds? I still about evens for the moment. If they have gained the Minerva, we have gained the Magicienne. You will tell me that the Minerva is the heaviest of the two, and that the Magicienne only carries twelve-pounders; but Lucius Curtis is a rare plucked 'un, a damned good seaman. So let us say evens for the moment. For the moment, I say, because the hurricane-season is coming, and if they lie snug in port and we outside, why, there is no telling how we shall stand in a few weeks' time.'
During the night they brought the wind aft as they went north about Mauritius, and when Stephen woke he found the Boadicea on an even keel; she was pitching gently, and the urgent music that had filled her between decks these last days was no longer to be heard. He washed his face perfunctorily, passed his hand over his beard, said 'It will do for today,' and hurried into the day-cabin, eager for coffee and his first little paper cigar of the day. Killick was there, gaping out of the stern-window, with the coffee- pot in his hand.
'Good morning, Killick,' said Stephen. 'Where's himself?'
'Good morning, sir,' said Killick. 'Which he's still on deck.'
'Killick,' said Stephen, 'what's amiss? Have you seen the ghost in the bread-room? Are you sick? Show me your tongue.'
When Killick had withdrawn his tongue, a flannelly object of inordinate length, he said, paler still, 'Is there a ghost in the bread-room, sir? Oh, oh, and I was there in the middle watch. Oh, sir, I might a seen it.'
'There is always a ghost in the bread-room. Light along that pot, will you now?'
'I durs'nt, sir, begging your pardon. There's worse news than the ghost, even. Them wicked old rats got at the coffee, sir, and I doubt there's another pot in the barky.'
'Preserved Killick, pass me that pot, or you will join the ghost in the bread room, and howl for evermore.'
With extreme unwillingness Killick put the pot on the very edge of the table, muttering, 'Oh, I'll cop it: oh, I'll cop It.'
Jack walked in, poured himself a cup as he bade Stephen good morning, and said,
