Bombay and Venus, and the Devil's own job we had to bring them home: I had promised the men the other half of their grog should be served out with their ration for supper, which might have been well enough if they had not found their way into the enemy's spirit room, too. Lord, Sophie, we rolled back that night like a whole herd of Davey's sows, with seven Boadiceas and seven Africaines in irons, and most of the rest not fit to go aloft. Fortunately the Otter had Bombay in tow, or I doubt we should ever have brought them both in. As it was, any French brig in her right wits could have snapped us up.
'By the morning most of the hands were sober, and I harangued them on the beastly vice of inebriation; but I am afraid the effect of my words (and thundering good words they were) were quite lost because of the welcome they gave us ashore. Rockets, Bengal lights you could hardly see because of the sun though kindly intended, salvoes from all the fortifications, and three times three all round the port: the Governor, a capital determined fellow, with a good head on his shoulders, and thoroughly understands cooperation, was so pleased at the sight of two frigates bringing in that he would, though a tea-drinker himself, have made the men drunk again directly, if I had not represented to him, that we must make hay while the sun shone. Colonel Keating was positively overjoyed, and expressed himself in the most obliging manner; and he too thoroughly agreed that we must strike while the iron is hot.
'Nothing could exceed his zeal in harrying his staff officers and other slow bellies and in getting his men aboard with all their proper accoutrements and in the right order: for I will tell you, my dear (since no eye but yours will see this letter, and that only after the event), that we mean to invade the Mauritius the day after tomorrow; and we have a very fair hope of a happy outcome.' He cast a furtive glance at Stephen Maturin as he wrote these words, so offensive to all his friend's principles and so contrary to all his repeated injunctions, and Stephen, catching his eye, said, 'Should you like some encouragement, joy?'
'If you please,' said Jack.
'Then you must know that the captain of the ship the Jefferson B. Lowell--'
'The barque, Stephen. The American was a barque; and an amazing fine sailer, too.'
'Bah. Was so good as to tell me of the various rates he and his colleagues trading to St Louis have placed on Mauritius paper money. Before our arrival it was very nearly at par with cash; then it dropped to twenty-two per centum below, and so rose and fell according to the fortunes of the campaign, rising to ninety-three after the Ile de la Passe. But now it is not admitted upon any discount at all, and gold is absolutely insisted upon. There is cool, objective testimony for you.'
'I am delighted to hear it, Stephen: thank you very much,' said Jack. He returned to his letter, and Stephen to his 'cello.
'Keating would, I am sure, have been as busy as a bee in any event, out of zeal for our joint campaign (and never did army and navy work so well together, I believe, since ships were first found out); but in this case he was as busy as two or even more, from an uneasiness in his mind at what he had heard from the army officers we released from the Venus. They spoke of a General Abercrombie, who was to command them and a very considerable force gathered from all parts of India: it is difficult to make much sense of what they said, for their colonel was killed in the action, and the junior officers had only fag-ends of gossip; but the general notion is that they were to rendezvous at Rodriguez with several regiments from Fort William and some troops from the Cape and that they were then to make a descent on La Reunion; which, when you come to think of it, is absurd. Even so, Keating was much concerned: 'If any gouty old fool of a general comes along to snatch the bread out of my mouth again the very moment it is buttered,' cries he in a great passion, 'I shall sell my commission to the highest bidder, and be d-d to the service: to be choused out of the glory when we have done all the work, would be more than flesh and blood can bear.' And he told me again of the siege of some Indian city whose name I forget, where he had carried the approaches right up to the walls, had repelled sorties by the score, had made a practicable breach, and was on the eve of storming the place when a general appeared in a palanquin, took over, gave the order to attack, wrote a despatch giving himself all the credit for the victory, was promoted and.given the Bath, with an augmentation to his coat of arms. Keating added some pretty severe reflections on the Bath and old men who would do anything for a trumpery piece of ribbon, which I will not repeat, they being somewhat too warm.' Jack paused, meditating a witticism in which hot water should combine with Bath to produce a brilliant effect, but his genius did not lie that way, and having chewed his pen for some time, he carried on: 'For my own part, I could not make much more sense out of poor Graham of the Bombay, either. He had had a cruise after pirates in the Persian Gulf, and when he put in, precious short-handed, he was at once ordered to take a whole heap of soldiers aboard and to rendezvous with the Illustrious, 74, just south of the Eight Degree Channel--had nothing but ill-luck all the way- sprang a leak low down under his fore-peak ten days out, had to put back, beating up with the wind in his teeth, pumping hard and his men falling sick- endless delays in the yard--missed his first rendezvous, missed the next, so bore away, sick himself with a low fever, for Port-Louis, where he expected to find us blockading--and was taken, after a long and tolerably bloody running fight. I am afraid the heat and the wear and the anxiety and the action may have sent his wits astray, for the unfortunate wight absolutely struck to a sloop, which he took for a second frigate in the darkness. (It is true she was ship-rigged: our old sixteen-gun Victor, but a very mere cockle in fact.) Stephen was of my opinion about his intellects, filled him to the hatches with opium-draughts, shaving and blistering his head just before we left. But in any case, I cannot find that he ever had orders for Rodriguez; so it Is a hundred to one that Keating was nourishing a chimaera, as they say. But since it made him so desperate eager to present any lurking general, hungry for honours, with a fait accompli, viz. a conquered island with HM Governor already installed, and since his eagerness chimed in with my eagerness to get to sea before the French had the Minerve and Bellone afloat (there is a rumour that someone, a Royalist or Papist or both, damaged their bottoms with an infernal machine: but I find it hard to believe that even a foreigner could be so wicked)--why, I fairly caressed the chimaera of his. Stephen,' he called, over the growling 'cello, 'how do you spell chimaera?'
'Many people start with ch, I believe. Have you told her about my stink-pot petrel?'
'Is not stink-pot a hellish low expression for a letter, Stephen?'
'Bless you, my dear, a mother that tends her own babies will not boggle at stink-pot. But you may put thalassodrome, if you find it more genteel.'
The pen scratched on; the 'cello sang deep; a midshipman tapped on the door. He reported a sail on the starboard quarter, adding that from a curious patch in her foretopsail she was thought to be the Emma.
'Aye, no doubt,' said Jack. 'She has made amazing good time. Thank you, Mr Penn.' The Emma had been called in by aviso from her station off Rodriguez, but he had not looked for her sooner than Thursday. 'Tom Pullings will be aboard presently,' he said to Stephen. 'We must keep him for dinner. After all this to and fro-ing off Rodriguez he will be glad of a bite of fresh mutton.' He called out to Killick: the saddle of yesterday's sheep was to be ready at five bells precisely, together with half a dozen of the red Constantia and a drowned baby. They discussed Thomas Pullings, his indifferent prospects, his real deserts, his probable appetite; and the midshipman reappeared, breathless and staring: Staunch had just signalled four sail, bearing north-east.
'What says Emma?' asked Jack.
'I don't know, sir,' said the midshipman.
'Then be so good as to find out,' said the Commodore, with some asperity.
