than a hundred and fifty of them: twenty-seven had already died below, but he had hopes for about a hundred of the rest: the Dear knew how many had been killed outright on deck and thrown overboard. Seventy or so, he thought. He roused Mr Fenton, who was sleeping with his head on his arms, leaning on the chest that formed their operating-table, and together they looked to their dressings.
They were still busy when the sun rose and the Bellone began to fire at the Nereide again: on and on, in spite of repeated hails. The gunner came below with a gushing splinter-wound in his forearm, and while Stephen applied the tourniquet and tied the artery the gunner told him that the Nereide colours had not in fact been struck: they were flying still, and they could not be hauled down. There was a rumour that they had been nailed to the mast, but the gunner knew nothing of it, and the bosun, who would have had the true word, he was dead. 'And not a scrap of rigging to come at them, 'he said. 'So his lordship's told the carpenter to cut the mizen away. Thank you kindly, sir: that's a right tidy job. I'm much obliged. And, Doctor,' he said in a low rumble behind his hand, 'if you don't much care for a French prison, there's some of us topping our boom in the cutter, going aboard of Sirius.'
Stephen nodded, looked over his worst cases, and made his way through the wreckage to the cabin. Clonfert was not there. He found him on the quarterdeck, sitting on an upturned match-tub and watching the carpenters ply their axes. The mizenmast fell, carrying the colours with it, and the Bellone's fire ceased. 'There, I have done it properly,' said Clonfert in a barely intelligible murmur, out of the side of his ruined, bandaged face. Stephen looked at his most dangerous wound, found him sensible, though by now at a far remove, and said, 'I wish to go to the Sirius, my lord: the remaining boat is fit to leave, and I beg you will give an order to that effect.'
'Make it so, Doctor Maturin,' said Clonfert. 'I wish you may get away. Thank you again. 'They shook hands. Stephen took some papers from his cabin, destroyed others, and made his way to the boat. It was no great climb down, for the Nereide had settled on the sea-bed.
Although Pym received him kindly aboard the stranded Sirius, his conduct did not raise Stephen's opinion of him as a commander or as a man of sense. The Iphigenia, having at last warped herself free of the long shoal that had stood between her and the Minerve, sent to ask permission to stand in, to attack the immobilized French ships, boarding them with extra hands from Sirius and Magicienne, and not only taking them but rescuing the Nereide too. No, said Pym, who needed her help to heave his own ship off, she must go on warping towards the Sirius. Twice he sent back this categorical reply, each time as a direct order. With the Iphigenia warping out, the French fire concentrated on the Magicienne, hard and fast on her reef, badly holed, with nine foot of water in her hold and only a few guns that could be brought to bear. The French shot poured in upon her, and sometimes upon the other ships, and upon the frantically busy, exhausted hands in the remaining boats all that long, appalling, bloody day. It was impossible to get her off; it was impossible that she should swim if she were got off. Her men were ordered into the Iphigenia, and after sunset she was set on fire, blowing up in doleful splendour about midnight.
The next day the French had a new battery ready on shore, closer to, and the battery and the ships began to fire on the Iphigenia and the Sirius as they strove to heave Pym's frigate off her reef. At last, after incessant labour all in vain, and after some ugly scenes with the captain of the Iphigenia, who was utterly convinced (and Stephen, together with many better-qualified observers, agreed with him) that his plan would have meant a total victory and who could barely bring himself to speak civilly to the man who had forbidden it, Pym realized that the Sirius could not be saved. Her ship's company were taken into the Iphigenia and the Sirius too was set on fire, Pym thereby relinquishing his command, twenty-four hours too late; and the now solitary Iphigenia returned to her warping.
She was obliged to warp--to carry out an anchor on the end of a cable, drop it, and wind herself up to it by the capstan--because never in the daylight did the wind cease blowing dead on shore. She could make no progress whatsoever in any other way, for when the land-breeze got up before dawn she dared not attempt the dark and unseen channel, and it always died with the rising of the sun. So hour after hour her boats, carrying the ponderous great anchors, dragged out the sodden nine-inch hawsers; and if the anchors held, if the ground was not foul, she then crept a very little way, rarely more than fifty yards, because of the turns. But often the ground was foul, and sometimes the anchors came home or were broken or were lost altogether; and all this exhausting labour had to be carried out in the blazing sun by a dispirited crew. Meanwhile the French ships in Port South-East had been heaved off, and a French brig was sighted beyond the Ile de la Passe, probably the forerunner of Hamelin's squadron from Port- Louis.
However, there was nothing for it, and the Iphigenia warped on and on towards the fort, fifty yards by fifty yards with long pauses for the recovery of fouled anchors, the whole length of that vast lagoon. It was two full days before she reached a point about three quarters of a mile from the island, and here she anchored for the night. The next day, when the Bellone and Minerve had profited by the land-breeze to advance fair into the lagoon whose channels they knew so well, and had there anchored, she set to again; and by eight o'clock, when she was within a thousand feet of the fort, of the open sea and the infinite delight of sailing free, she saw three ships join the French brig outside the reef: the Vinus, Manche and Astrie. They were exchanging signals with the Bellone and Minerve ; and the wind, still right in the Iphigenia? teeth, was bearing them fast towards the Ile de la Passe, where they would lie to, just out of range.
The Iphigenia at once sent the soldiers and many of the seamen to the fort and cleared for action. She had little ammunition, however: even before the end of the Port South-East battle she had had to send to the Sirius for more, and since then she had fired away so much that half an hour's engagement would see her locker bare. The clearing was therefore largely symbolic, and it was carried out, as her captain told Stephen privately, to let -the French see that he would not surrender unconditionally, that he still had teeth, an that if he could not get decent terms he would use them.
'That being so,' said Stephen, 'I must ask you for a sailing-boat before the Vinus and her consorts close the entrance to the channel.'
'For Reunion, you mean? Yes, certainly. You shall have the launch and my own coxswain, an old whaling hand, and young Craddock to navigate her: though I should not carry the news that you must take, no, not for a thousand pound.' He gave orders for the preparation of the launch--stores, instruments, charts, water--and returning he said, You would oblige me extremely, Dr Maturin, by carrying a letter for my wife: I doubt I shall see her again this war.'
The launch pulled along the wicked channel in the darkness, touching twice for all their care; pulled out well beyond the reef, set her lugsail and bore away south-west. She carried ten days' provisions, but although she had many of the Iphigenia's hungry young gentlemen and ship's boys aboard--their captain could not see them spend those years in a prison--the stores were almost intact when, after a perfect voyage, Stephen made his laborious way up the Boadicea's side as she lay at single anchor in the road of St Paul's, close by the Windham and the Bombay transport.
'Why, Stephen, there you are!' cried Jack, springing from behind a mass of papers as Stephen walked into the cabin. 'How happy I am to see you- another couple of hours and I should have been off to Flat Island with Keating and his men--Stephen, what's amiss?'
'I must tell you what's amiss, my dear,' said Stephen: but he sat down and paused a while before going on. 'The attack on Port South-East has failed. The Nereide is taken; the Sirius and Magicienne are burnt; and by now the Iphigenta and the Ile de ]a Passe will almost certainly have surrendered.'
