'If you will ride over to St Paul's with me,' said Jack, 'I will tell you.'
'Alas, I have an audience of the Bishop in half an hour, and then an appointment at the printing-shop.'
'Maybe it is just as well. Things will be clearer in the morning. Bonden, cast off afore.'
Things were indeed clearer in the morning: the Commodore had seen all the officers concerned; he had all the facts distinctly arranged; and he received Stephen in a room filled with charts and maps.
'Here, do you see,' he said, pointing to an island three or four miles off Port South-East, 'is the Ile de la Passe. It lies on the reef at the very edge of the only deep-water channel into the port: a devilish channel, narrow, with a double dog-leg and any number of banks and rocks in its bed. The island is pretty strongly held--it mounts about twenty heavy guns--but the town is not. They expect us in the north, where we have been blockading all this while, and most of their forces are around Port-Louis: so if we knock out the Ile de la Passe--and a couple of frigates should be able to manage it--'
'In spite of the intricate navigation? These are very alarming shoals, brother. I see two and three fathoms marked for a couple of miles inside the reef; and here is a vast area with the words Canoe- passage at high-tide; while your channel is a mere serpent; a lean serpent at the best. But I am not to be teaching you your business.'
'It can be done. Clonfert and his black pilot know these waters perfectly. Look, here is the Jacotet anchorage just at hand, where he cut out the American. Yes, they should manage it well enough; though of course it must be done by boats and in the night; ships could not stand in against that fire, without being sadly mauled. Then once the island is seized, the French cannot easily retake it: their batteries cannot reach across the inner bay and since they have no ship of force in Port South-East, nor even gunboats, they have no means of getting their artillery any nearer. Nor can they starve it out, so long as we victual it from the sea. So if we hold the Ile de la Passe we deny the French their best harbour after Port-Louis; we have a base for our landing; and we open up all the country out of range of the batteries for your handing-out of broadsheets and culling simples. For their little garrisons in the town and along the coast will scarcely stir outside the reach of their own guns.'
'This is a very beautiful plan,' said Stephen.
'Ain't it?' said Jack. 'Keating has already sent some Bombay gunners and European troops into the Nereide, to garrison the place when we have taken it: for obviously the Nereide possesses more local knowledge than all the rest of the squadron put together.'
'You do not feel that Clonfert's oversetting of the little ship off the Riviere des Pluies throws a certain shade on his qualifications?'
'No, I do not. It could have happened to anyone in those circumstances, with the soldiers ready to call us shy. I should have tried it myself. But I am not going to give him his head at the Ile de la Passe; I do not want him to be coming it the Cochrane: Pyrn shall command. Pym may not be very wise, but he is a good, sound man, as regular as a clock; so Nereide, Iphigenia and perhaps Staunch -
'What is this Staunch?'
'She is a brig: came in last night from Bombay. A useful little brig, and in excellent order. Narborough has her, a most officer-like cove: you remember Narborough, Stephen?' Stephen shook his head. 'Of course you do,' cried Jack. 'Lord Narborough, a big black man with a Newfoundland dog, third of the Su?prise.'
'You mean Garron,' said Stephen.
'Garron, of course: you are quite right. Garron he was then, but his father died last year, and now he is called Narborough. So Nereide, Iphigenia, and perhaps Staunch if she can get her water in quick enough, are to run up to Port-Louis, where Pym is watching Hamelin's motions. lphigema will stay, and Sirius and Nereide will come south for the Ile de la Passe.'
'The Nereide is not to come back here, so?'
'To wait for the dark of the moon, you mean? No; we cannot afford the time.'
'Then in that case I had better go aboard her now. There is a great deal to be done in the Mauritius, and the sooner I get there the better. For I tell you, my dear, that though they are less lethal, my broadsheets are as effective as your--as your roundshot.'
'Stephen,' said Jack, 'I am convinced of it.'
'I had almost said, as effective as your broadsides, but I was afraid the miserable play upon words might offend an embryonic baronet; for Farquhar tells me that if this second campaign should succeed as well as the first the happy commander will certainly be so honoured. Should you not like to be a baronet, Jack?'
'Why, as to that,' said Jack, 'I don't know that I should much care for it. The Jack Aubrey of King James's time paid a thumping fine not to be a baronet, you know. Not that I mean the least fling against men who have won a great fleet action--it is right and proper that they should be peers--but when you look at the mass of titles, tradesmen, dirty politicians, moneylenders . . . why, I had as soon be plain Jack Aubrey--Captain Jack Aubrey, for I am as proud as Nebuchadnezzar of my service rank, and if ever I hoist my flag, I shall paint here lives Admiral Aubrey on the front of Ashgrove Cottage in huge letters. Do not think I am one of your wild democratical Jacobins, Stephen--do not run away with that notion--but different people look at these things in different lights.' He paused, and said with a grin, 'I'll tell you of one chap who would give his eye-teeth to be a baronet, and this is Admiral Bertie. He puts it down to Mrs Bcrtie, but the whole service knows how he plotted and planned for the Bath. Lord,' he said, laughing heartily, 'to think of crawling about St James's for a ribbon when you are an ancient man, past sixty. Though to be sure, perhaps I might think differently if I had a son: but I doubt it.'
In the afternoon of the next day, Dr Maturin, preceded by two bales of hand bills, proclamations and broadsheets, some printed in Cape Town and others so recently struck off in Saint-Denis that they were still damp from the press, came alongside the Nereide, six hours late. But the Nereide were not used to his ways; they were in a fuming hurry to be off in pursuit of the Iphigenia, which had sailed at crack of dawn; and they let him drop between the boat and the ship's side. In his fall he struck his head and back on the boat's gunwale, cracking two ribs and sinking stunned down through the warm clear water: the frigate was already under way, and although she heaved to at once not a man aboard did anything more valuable than run about shouting for some minutes, and by the time she had dropped her stern-boat Stephen would have been dead if one of the bale-carrying black men had not dived in and fetched him out.
He had had a shrewd knock, and although the weather was so kind, the sun so warm, an inflammation of the lungs kept him pinned to his cot for days. Or rather to the captain's cot, for Lord Clonfert moved from his own sleeping cabin and slung a hammock in the coach.
