of an island near Sumatra but had always been disappointed until this happy moment--and now he found the realization of his wishes even more gratifying than he had hoped.
J am glad you was pleased,' said Lord Clonfert, 'and I hope it may be some lay-off against my wretched news. Sirius has queered our pitch: see where she lays.'
Stephen took his bearings. Four or five miles away on his right hand rose the south-east coast of Mauritius, with the Pointe du Diable running into the sea: also on his right hand, but within a hundred yards, the long reef stretched out fore and aft, sometimes dry, sometimes buried under the white rollers, with the occasional island standing on it or rising from the paler shallow water inside; and at the far end, where Clonfert was pointing, there lay the Sirius, close to a fortified island from whose walls, clear in the telescope, flew the union jack.
In spite of his pleasure at Stephen's delight, it was clear that Clonfert was profoundly disappointed and put out. 'They must have gained twenty leagues on us, while we were beating up off the cape,' he said. 'But if Pym had had any bowels he would have waited for tonight: after all, I did lend him my pilot.' However, as an attentive host he checked any bitter reflections that might have occurred to him, and asked Stephen whether he would like his breakfast.
'You are very good, my lord,' said Stephen, 'but I believe I shall stay here in the hope of seeing another siren. They are usually found in the shallow water by a reef, I am told; and I should not miss one for a dozen breakfasts.'
'Clarges will bring it to you here, if you are quite sure you are strong enough,' said Clonfert. 'But I must send for McAdam to survey you first.'
McAdam looked singularly unappetizing in the morning light, ill-conditioned and surly: apprehensive too, for he had some confused recollection of harsh words having passed the night before. But, having beheld the mermaid, Stephen was in charity with all men, and he called out, 'You missed the mermaid, my dear colleague; but perhaps, if we sit quietly here, we may see another.'
'I did not,' said McAdam, 'I saw the brute out of the quarter-gallery scuttle; and it was only a manatee.'
Stephen mused for a while, and then he said, 'A dugong, surely. The dentition of the dugong is quite distinct from that of the manatee: the manatee, as I recall, has no incisors. Furthermore, the whole breadth of Africa separates their respective realms.'
'Manatee or dugong, 'tis all one,' said McAdam. 'As far as my studies are concerned, the brute is of consequence only in that it is the perfect illustration of the strength, the irresistible strength, of suggestion. Have you been listening to their gab, down there in the waist?'
'Not I,' said Stephen. There had been much talk among the men working just out of sight forward of the quarterdeck rail, cross, contentious talk; but the Nirgiide was always a surprisingly chatty ship, and apart from putting this outburst down to vexation at their late arrival, he had not attended to it. 'They seem displeased, however,' he added.
'Of course they are displeased: everyone knows the ill-luck a mermaid brings. But that is not the point. Listen now, will you? That is John Matthews, a truthful, sober, well-judging man; and the other is old Lemon, was bred a lawyer's clerk, and understands evidence.'
Stephen listened, sorted out the voices, caught the thread of the argument: the dispute between Matthews and Lemon, the spokesmen of two rival factions, turned upon the question of whether the mermaid had held a comb in her hand or a glass.
'They saw the flash of that wet flipper,' said McAdam, land have translated it, with total Gospel-oath conviction, into one or other of these objects. Matthews offers to fight Lemon and any two of his followers over a chest in support of his belief.'
'Men have gone to the stake for less,' said Stephen: and walking forward to the rail he called down, 'You are both of you out entirely: it was a hairbrush.'
Dead silence in the waist. The seamen looked at one another doubtfully, and moved quietly away among the boats on the booms with many a backward glance, thoroughly disturbed by this new element.
'Sirius signalling, sir, if you please,' said a midshipman to the officer of the watch, who had been picking his teeth with a pertinacity so great that it had rendered him deaf to the dispute. 'Captain to come aboard.'
'I am anxious to see whether the Sirius has any prisoners,' said Stephen, when the Captain appeared, 'and if I may, I will accompany you.'
Pym welcomed them with less than his usual cheerfulness: it had been a bloody little action, one in which he had lost a young cousin, and although the frigate's decks were now as trim as though she were lying at St Helen's, there was a row of hammocks awaiting burial at sea, while her boats still lay about her in disorder, all more or less battered and one with a dismounted carronade lying in a red pool. The anxiety of the night had told on Pym and now that the stimulus of the victory was dying he looked very tired. Furthermore, the Iphigenia had sent an aviso with word that the three frigates in Port-Louis were ready for sea, and the Sirius was extremely busy, preparing her return. Her captain found time to be affable to Stephen, but his preoccupation made his words to. Clonfert seem particularly curt and official. When Clonfert, having offered his congratulations, began to say that the Nereide felt she might have been allowed to take part, Pym cut him short: 'I really cannot go into all that now. First come first served is the rule in these matters. Here are the French commandant's signals; he did not have time to destroy them. As for your orders, they are very simple: you will garrison the island with a suitable force-- the French had about a hundred men and two officers--and hold it until you receive further instructions; and in the meantime you will carry out such operations ashore as seem appropriate after consultation with Dr Maturin, whose advice is to be followed in all political matters. Doctor, if you choose to see the French commandant, my dining- cabin is at your disposition.'
When Stephen returned after questioning poor Captain
Duvallier, he gained the impression that Clonfert had been rebuked for his tardiness or for some professional fault to do with the Nereide's sailing; and this impression was strengthened as they pulled back in the barge, together with the black Mauritian pilot; for Clonfert was silent, his handsome face ugly with resentment.
Yet Clonfert's moods were as changeable as a weatherglass, and very shortly after the Sirius and Staunch had vanished over the western horizon, with Pym flying back to blockade the French frigates in Port-Louis, he blossomed out in a fine flow of spirits. They had cleared up the bloody mess in the fort, blasting holes in the coral rock for the dead soldiers; they had installed the Bombay gunners and fifty grenadiers of the 69th, reordering the heavy guns so that one battery commanded the narrow channel and the other all the inner anchorage that was within their range; they had taken the Nereide through the narrow channel into a snug berth behind the fort; and now he was a free man, his own master, with the whole of the nearby coast upon which to distinguish himself. No doubt he was directed to advise with Dr Maturin; but Dr Maturin, having required him to harangue the men on the
