Stephen looked at his watch, uttered a low howl, and set off at a shambling run for the harbour, where the Pearl of the Mascarenes, the fastest aviso in the island, lay champing at her buoy.
At dawn on Sunday the two quartermasters at the signalstation high above Saint-Denis were weighing the probabilities of duff today: last Sunday they, like all the Boadiceas and all the Africaines, Staunches and Otters, had been deprived of their duff, on account of the furious pace of work in the dockyards; and it looked very much as though the same might happen today. As they leaned out to peer at the yard below the strong land-breeze whipped their pigtails forward, obscuring their view: automatically they grasped them with their teeth and peered on: judging by the feverish activity down there, the parties of blacks and seamen and artificers and soldiers already toiling like so many ants, Sunday duff seemed as remote as wedding cake. Even beef was by no means certain.
'Some foreign mess again,' said William Jenkins, 'and ate cold, no doubt. How Goldilocks does crack on. Slavedriving ain't in it, when you consider two weeks of no duff; and it was much the same in Simon's Town. Hurry, hurry, hurry, and don't you dare sweat the glass.'
Goldilocks was Jack Aubrey's nickname in the service, and the other quartermaster, Henry Trecothick, had sailed with him when the locks were indeed golden, rather than their present dull sun-bleached yellow. He felt that Jenkins was coming it a little high, and he said coldly, 'He's got a job of work to do, ain't he? And dogged does it. Though I must say a man likes a hot dinner, as being more natural and Bill, what do you make of that craft out there?'
'Where away?'
'Nor-nor-east: just coming round the point. Behind the islands. She's dowsed her mainsail.'
'I can't see nothing.'
'What a wall-eyed slab-sided Dutch-built bugger you are, to be sure, Bill Jenkins. Behind the islands.'
'Behind the islands? Why didn't you say so? She's a fisherman, that's what she is. Can't you see they're a- pulling? Ain't you got no eyes?'
'Light along the glass, Bill,' said Trecothick. And having stared fixedly he said, 'She ain't no fisherman. They're pulling like Dogget's coat and badge; pulling right into the wind's eye like it was a race for a thousand pound. No fisherman ever pulled like that.' A pause. 'I tell you what, Bill Jenkins, she's that little old aviso, Pearl by name.'
'You and your fancies, Henry. Pearl ain't due back this tide, no, nor the next. Was that thunder? A drop of rain would--'
'Christ, she's broke out a signal. Get your fat arse out of the way. Enemy in sight--what's red white chequer?--due north. Bill, jump down and rouse out Mr Ballocks. I'll fix the hoist. Bear a hand, mate, bear a hand.'
Up flew the signal, out banged the gun: the station above St Paul's repeated within a matter of seconds, and into the dining-cabin of the Boadicea darted the midshipman of the watch, who found the Commodore pink and cheerful, surrounded by papers and already dictating to his blear-eyed, unshaved secretary as he devoured his first, or sunrise, breakfast, 'Mr Johnson's duty, sir,' he cried,' St Paul's repeating from Saint-Denis enemy in sight, bearing due north.'
'Thank you, Mr Bates,' said Jack. 'I shall be on deck directly.'
There he found the whole quarterdeck motionless, all faces turned towards the distant flagstaff: he said, 'Prepare to slip, Mr Johnson,' and then he too fixed his eyes on the hill. Two full minutes passed with no further hoist, and he said to the signal-midshipman, 'Repeat to Saint-Denis, Staunch and Otter proceed to sea immediately: attend to pendant's motions.' Then stepping to the taffrail he hailed the Africaine. 'Mr Tullidge, I have room for fifty volunteers, no more.'
The Africaines were less remarkable for their discipline than their ferocious eagerness to serve the Frenchmen out, and now began a disorderly savage jostling race, whose fifty winners, headed by a powerful master's mate with a face like a baboon, came aboard the Boadicea by boat or strong swimming as her buoyed cable ran smoking from her hawse and she cast to the fine land-breeze.
The sails came crowding on; she gathered way, and the good breeze carried them up towards Cape Bernard, the high land that barred out all the ocean due north of Saint-Denis as well as the town itself. With studdingsails on either side, the Boadicea threw a bow-wave that came creaming down to the mainchains, but even so the cape moved tediously slow, and Jack found it something of a relief to have his impatience distracted by the ugly scene that developed when it was rumoured that the Africaines were to take over the forward starboard guns. Loud angry voices, rarely raised aboard the Boadicea, could be heard on the forecastle, disturbing the holy calm of a well-run man-of-war: the bosun came hurrying aft, spoke to the first lieutenant, and Seymour, crossing the quarterdeck to the rail where Jack was staring at the station in the hope of some more definite signal, coughed and said, 'I beg your pardon, sir, but the men of Mr Richardson's division believe that their guns are to be taken from them, and with the utmost respect they wish to represent that they would find this a little hard.'
'Let the hands come aft, Mr Seymour,' said Jack, with his telescope still trained on the flagstaff, now at the far limit of his view. When he clapped the glass to and turned there they were before him, the whole waist of the ship crowded with men, whose utmost respect (though genuine) was for the moment scarcely discernible beneath their rage at injustice.
'What a precious set of old women you are, upon my word,' he said testily. 'You clap on to a silly buzz with no truth in it and set about one another like a parcel of fish-fags. Look at Eames there, with a bloody nose and on a Sunday too, for shame. And all this before we know whether the enemy is anything more than some stray sloop, or whether he will be so polite as to stay until you have stopped clawing one another. Now I tell you what it is: if we have the good fortune to come into action, every team is going to fight the gun it's used to. That's justice. But if any Boadicea is hurt, then an Africaine takes his place: and if we board, then the Africaines board first. That's flat and that's fair all round. Mr Seymour, be so good as to have cutlasses and boarding-axes served out to the Africaines.'
The general opinion was that this was fair enough: and although for the present the Boadiceas could not be brought to love the Africaines, they did at least treat their guests with a distant civility--no oaths, no blows, little more than a covert kick or nudge, accidental done a purpose.
Cape Bernard at last, and the frigate rounded it, shaving the reef so close that a lobbed biscuit might have reached the wicked breakers. And as she rounded it, opening new skies, so her people heard the sound of gunfire, the growling of heavy guns a great way off in the north.
'Jump up to the masthead, Mr Richardson,' said Jack, 'and tell me what you see.'
