down, the brig looking pitifully small on the Boadicea's starboard beam and the sloop a mere wisp to port. Jack had given them plenty of time to feed and rest their hands; he knew that they were thoroughly prepared and well manned, and that their commanders understood his intentions beyond any sort of doubt.
He had foreseen a great many possibilities, and he stood on with a confidence that he had rarely felt so strongly before, a steady rising of his heart; but he had not foreseen what in fact took place. They were still a mile and a half away when the Astree passed the Iphigenia a towline and both frigates made sail. Abandoning the Africaine, they gathered away, packed on more sail and still more, hauled their wind and stretched to the eastwards as fast as they could go, the fine-sailing Astree keeping the Iphigenia's head right up to the wind, closer than ever the Boadicea could lie.
By coming to instantly it was conceivable that since she was somewhat to windward the Boadicea might bring
them to action at the end of a very long converging chase, in spite of the Astree's superiority on a bowline; but neither the Otter nor the Staunch could possibly keep up, and in the meanwhile it was probable that Hamelin's reinforcement, brought by the French brig, would be down for the Africaine. No: this, alas, was a time for discretion, and the Boadicea stood quietly on for the sad dismantled hulk, which lay wallowing on the swell with no more than her ensign-staff to show the French colours.
The Boadicea came alongside: the Africaine fired two guns to leeward and the French colours came down, to the sound of immense cheering from the prisoners still aboard her. 'Mr Seymour,' said Jack, with a feeling of anticlimax, yet with a deep glowing satisfaction beneath it, 'be so good as to take possession. What the devil is this?'
This was the sight of a score of Africalnes plunging into the sea, swimming across, and swarming up the side of the Boadicea. They were in a state of wild enthusiasm, joy and rage strangely mingled: nearly all sense of discipline was gone and they crowded dripping on the quarterdeck, begging the Commodore to renew the action-- they would fight his guns for him--they would be happy to serve under Captain Aubrey--not like under some brass bound buggers--they knew him--and they knew he could serve those French farts out for what they done--take on two of them at any time like kiss your hand -'I know you can do it, sir,' cried one with a bloody dressing round his upper arm, 'I was shipmates along of you in Sophie, when we fucked the big Spaniard. Don't say no, sir.'
'I am glad to see you, Herold,' said Jack, 'and I wish I could say yes, with all my heart. But you are a seaman--look how they lay. Three hours stern chase, and five French frigates to northwards ready to come down for the Africaine. I understand your feelings, lads, but it's no go. Bear a hand with a towline, and we shall take your barky into St Paul's and refit her: then you shall serve the Frenchmen out yourselves.' They looked longingly at the Astree and the Iphigenia, and they sighed; but as seamen they had nothing to say. 'How is Captain Corbetff asked Jack. 'Did the French take him aboard?'
Silence. Then, 'Don't know, sir.' He looked at them in surprise. In front of him was a row of closed faces: the rare, immediate, man-to-man contact was entirely gone: he had run straight into the brick wall of lower-deck dumbness, the covering-up solidarity he knew so well, often stupid, generally transparent, but always unbreakable. 'Don't know, sir,' was the only answer he would ever get.
CHAPTER NINE
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Slowly the Boadicea dragged the Africaine southwards through the rising swell: she behaved like a sodden treetrunk of enormous size, now lagging sullenly so that the Boadicea's masts complained and Seymour's hoarse whisper--all that was left of his voice--desired the hands 'to start that- sheet before everything carried away', now darting unpredictably at the Boadicea's stern and then slewing so that the towline jerked from the sea, a rigid bar of rope on the verge of rupture, squirting water from every strand; and above all she rolled, a dead lurching drunken gunwale-roll that made the surgeons' work even more hazardous and delicate than usual.
Stephen was there, helping poor Mr Cotton, an elderly cripple who had scarcely recovered from a bout of dysentery and who had been overcome with work from the first few minutes of the action. Even now, after a shocking number of deaths below, sixty or seventy cases remained, lying all along the berthdeck: there was plenty of room, at least, since the French had killed forty-nine men outright and had taken fifty prisoners away. The Africaines who remained, helped by a party from the Boadicea, were busily lashing what spars they possessed to the stumps of the masts, and towards nightfall they were able to set three staysails, which at once gave the frigate back her life, so that she moved like a sentient being once more, with no more of a roll than a reasonable ship.
'What a relief,' said Mr Cotton, plying his saw. 'At one time I feared I was about to be seasick again seasick after all these years afloat! A ligature, if you please. Are you subject to the seasickness, Dr Maturin?'
'I have known it in the Bay.'
'Ah, the Bay,' said Cotton, tossing the detached foot into a bucket held by his loblolly boy, 'that dismal tract. You may let him go,' he said to the patient's messmates, who had been holding him; and into the grey, sweating face he said, 'John Bates, it is all over now. You will do very well, and that foot will earn you a Greenwich pension or a cook's warrant.'
The grey, sweating face murmured in a tiny voice, thanking Mr Cotton, and might he keep the foot, for luck?
'That finishes our urgent cases,' said Mr Cotton, looking round. 'I am infinitely obliged to you, sir. Infinitely obliged; and I wish I had something better to offer you than a dish of tea. But the French stripped us, stripped us like a pack of savages, sir. Fortunately they do not care for tea.'
'A dish of tea would be most welcome,' said Stephen, and they walked aft to the deserted gunroom. 'A bloody action,' he observed.
'I have rarely seen a bloodier,' said Mr Cotton. 'Nor, I suspect, a more unnecessary waste of life. Still, the captain has paid for it, for what comfort that may be.'
'Killed he was?'
'Killed, or call it what you choose. At all events he is dead,' said Cotton. 'He was brought below at the very beginning--metacarpals of the left foot all abroad. I did what I could, and he insisted on being carried up again--he was a brave man, you know, with all his faults. Then he was hit a second time, but who fired the piece I will not say; nor will I absolutely assert that in the confusion of the night engagement his own people tossed him over the side; but in any case he disappeared. I dare say you have known similar cases.'
'I have heard of them, of course; and in this particular instance I had some hint of it long ago. Captain Corbett's reputation as a flogging captain had spread pretty wide, I believe.'
