back: and there was not a man in the squadron who did not know that two captured Indiamen lay in Port-Louis, together with a large number of only slightly less magnificent prizes, and that the appearance--the totally unnecessary appearance--of a seventy-four, eight frigates, four sloops, and maybe a dozen regiments of lobsters, would reduce the share of all who had done the real work to half a pint of small beer, if that.
The indignation increased with brooding, and as the two bodies slowly converged, meeting at Rodriguez, it grew to such a pitch that when the Boadicea's salute to the flag roared out, the gunner said, 'And I wish they was loaded with grape, you old--'without a word of reproach from the officers near at hand. When the last gun had been fired, and before the flagship began her reply, Jack said,
'Strike the pendant. Hoist out my barge.' Then, a mere post-captain again, he stepped into the cabin and called for his breeches, cocked hat and number one coat to go aboard the Admiral. It had been a hard moment, the striking of his pendant--for a pendant could not fly in the presence of a flag without the unusual compliment of a direct invitation--but little comfort did he meet with below. Killick's sense of injustice had been inflamed by the extra ration of grog served out to all hands. It now overflowed on to the principal victim, and in his old shrewish voice he said, 'You ain't got no number one coat, sir. All bloody and mucked up, with figuring away aboard the Vinus, when two minutes would of changed it. The scraper will pass with a shove'- spitting on the lace of the cocked hat and rubbing it with his sleeve 'but you'll have to wear it athwartships, on account of the rats. As for coats and breeches, this is the best I can do--I've shipped the old epaulettes--and if any jumped up new-come son of a Gosport fart don't like it, he may--'
'Bear a hand, bear a hand,' cried Jack. 'Give me my stockings and that packet, and don't stand muttering there all day.'
The same sullen resentment was obvious in the bargemen who pulled Captain Aubrey across to the Illustrious; it was evident in his coxswain's rigour, in the vicious stab of the boathook that clamped on to the two- decker's chains, removing a good hand's-breadth of paint, and in the expressionless reserve that met the friendly advances of the seamen peering out of her lowerdeck ports.
Admiral Bertie expected it; he knew very well what he was doing, and he was fully armoured against all reaction except cheerfulness. From the outset he adopted an attitude of jovial bonhomie, with a good deal of laughter: he spoke as though it were the most natural thing in the world to find a ready and willing compliance, no trace of ill-feeling or resentment; and to his astonishment he did find it. The Naval Instructions clearly laid down that he must find it, and that anything less than total abnegation, total perfection of conduct, would render a subordinate liable to punishment; but his whole service life had proved that there was a world of difference between the Navy in print and the Navy in practice, and that although in theory a senior post-captain must be as submissive to an admiral as a newly-joined midshipman, in fact an oppressed commodore, growing froward under ill usage, might make things extremely awkward for his oppressor and still keep the right side of the law: he had himself used obstruction in all its refinements often enough to know what it could accomplish. He had been prepared to meet the cunningest ploys or the most violent expressions of dissent (his secretary was there to note down any choleric word): none appeared: he was taken aback, rendered uneasy. He probed a little deeper, asking whether Aubrey was not surprised to see so many ships coming to queer his pitch? And when Jack, with equal joviality, replied that he was not, that the greater the number the less the bloodshed (so repugnant to him, as to all right-feeling men), and that the more the merrier was his motto, the Admiral glanced at his secretary, to see whether Mr Shepherd shared his suspicion that Captain Aubrey was somewhat disguised, cheerfully disguised, in wine.
The suspicion could not be maintained. As soon as the captains of the fleet were assembled aboard the flagship, at the Admiral's request Jack Aubrey delivered to them a singularly lucid, cogent account of the situation, with all the facts, all the figures at instant command. To the anxious words about the notorious difficulty of the reefs surrounding Mauritius, the wicked surf that beat upon them, and the paucity of harbours, he replied with a chart, a little masterpiece of hydrography, showing Flat Island and the Grande Baie, exactly surveyed by himself, with triple-sextant-bearings and doubled checked soundings showing plenty of room and clean anchorage for seventy ships, as well as sheltered beaches for a very great number of men. He ended his exposition by observing that in view of the lateness of the season he would respectfully suggest an immediate descent.
The Admiral was by no means so sure of that: long before Captain Aubrey was born the Admiral's old nurse had told him 'The more hurry, the less speed.' He would take the matter under consideration urgent consideration- and advise with General Abercrombie and the gentlemen of his staff.
When the meeting broke up he kept Jack for a while, by way of plumbing his mind: for Aubrey was either a nonpareil of docility (and that was not his reputation at all), or he had something up his sleeve. It made the Admiral uneasy. It seemed to him that beneath all his proper deference Jack regarded him with a certain detachment and something not far from a secret amused contempt; and since the Admiral was not altogether a scrub, he found this extremely disagreeable. Then again, Mr Bertie had invariably met with hostility from those he had over-reached, a hostility that gave him a retrospective justification; and here there was none--continuing cheerfulness, even benignity. It made him feel nervous, and on parting with Jack he said, 'By the way, Aubrey, it was quite right to strike your pendant, of course; but you must hoist it again the moment you set foot aboard the Boadicea.'
Admiral Bertie was more uneasy still by the time he reached his cot. In the interval, as the fleet lay at anchor in the road of Rodriguez and the visiting boats passed to and fro, Mr Peter had called upon his near relation Mr Shepherd. Mr Peter had seen a good deal of Dr Maturin, a simpler, more penetrable man than he had been led to suppose, particularly since this last flood of letters and information from home: and from Maturin's casual remarks, some of them really far from discreet, Peter had formed the conviction that General Aubrey, the Commodore's father and a member of parliament, was probably playing a very deep game, that he might be about to change sides, that he was secretly very well with the ministry, and that it was by no means impossible that he might shortly appear in an office connected with honours and patronage, if not on the Board of Admiralty itself. Stephen had poisoned too many sources of intelligence to derive much satisfaction from this elementary exercise; but in fact the sneaking underhand little tale was admirably suited to the ears that received it a few minutes after Peter's departure. It explained Aubrey's disconcerting nonchalance: a man with such allies must be handled with care.
In the morning a council, attended by the captains and the senior army officers, considered the plan of attack worked out by Jack and Colonel Keating. General Abercomble's plea for delay, strongly supported by his staff, was brushed aside with even greater strength by the Admiral himself. The General looked surprised and even injured: he was a stout old gentleman, and he stared across the table at nothing in particular, with a look of hostile stupidity in his protuberant eyes, as though he did not quite understand what had happened. But having repeated himself for the space of about three quarters of an hour he yielded to the Admiral's insistence; and the plan, scarcely mangled in any important respect, was agreed to, though with very little grace. Half an hour later the flagship stood out to sea, with a fine topgallant breeze to send her north about Mauritius for Flat Island and the beaches up the coast from Port-Louis.
The conquest of Mauritius ran its leisurely course, with the regiments marching and countermarching in a scientific manner that pleased the generals on either side. The infantrymen sweated, but few of them bled. They had been landed smoothly, without opposition, and they presented General Decaen with an insuperable problem. His numerous Militia was no use to him at all: most of its members had read Stephen's broadsheets, many of them had already seen copies of Governor Farquhar's proposed proclamation, all of them were more concerned with the revival of their strangled trade than with the welfare of Buonaparte's empire. His Irish troops were clearly
