am most unwillingly obliged to give you this short summary. In any other event I should infinitely have preferred the news to reach you through the proper channels, without the least explanation--your provisional orders are at the port-admiral's office this minute--for not only does this require speaking openly of what should not be mentioned at all, but I am extremely averse to appearing in the role of fairy godmother, a purely fortuitous fairy godmother in this case. It can inflict an apparent, though fallacious, burden of obligation, and cause great damage to a relationship.'
'Not to ours, brother,' said Jack, 'not to ours. And I will not thank you, since you don't like it; but Lord, Stephen, I am a different man.' He was indeed. Taller, younger, pinker, his eyes blazing with life. His stoop had gone, and a great boyish grin kept ruining his attempted gravity.
'You will not mention this to Sophie, nor to any other person,' said Stephen, with a cold, penetrating glare.
'Must I not even start looking to my sea-chest?' 'What a fellow you are, jack!'cried Stephen, in great disgust. 'Of course you must not, not until the port admiral's messenger is come. Cannot you see the obvious cause and effect? I should have thought it plain even to the meanest intelligence.'
? ship!' cried Jack, springing heavily into the air. There were tears in his eyes, and Stephen saw that he might wish to shake hands at any minute. He disliked all effusion, privately thinking the English far too much given to weeping and the flow of soul; he pursed his lips with a sour expression, and put his hands behind his back. He said, 'Plain to the meanest intelligence: I appear--you have a ship. What must Sophie conclude? Where is my character?'
'How long do you think the port-admiral's messenger will be, Stephen?' asked Jack, with nothing but a loving smile at these harsh words.
'Let us hope he outpaces Lady Clonfert by a few minutes at least, if only to prove that casual gossip does not necessarily have to run faster than official orders every single time. How we shall ever win this war I cannot tell. In Whitehall they know perfectly well that success in the Mauritius enterprise is of capital importance, and yet some fool must be prating. I cannot express my abhorrence of their levity. We reinforce the Cape, and tell them so: they instantly reinforce the Ile de France, that is to say, Mauritius. And so it runs, all, all of a piece throughout: Mr. Congreve invents a military rocket with vast potentialities--we instantly inform the world, like a hen that has laid an egg, thus throwing away all the effect of surprise. The worthy Mr. Snodgrass finds out a way of rendering old ships serviceable in a short time and at little expense: without a moment's pause we publish his method in all the papers, together with drawings, lest some particular should escape our enemy's comprehension.'
Jack looked as solemn as he could, and shook his head; but very soon he turned a beaming face to Stephen and asked, 'Do you imagine this will be one of your standoff-and-on capers? Ordered to sea at a moment's notice, recalled, turned on shore for a month, all your hands drafted elsewhere, and then sent to the Baltic at last in your hot-weather clothes?'
'I do not. Quite apart from the absolute importance of the operation, there are many members of the Board and of the ministry that have their money in East India stock: ruin the Company and you ruin them. No, no: there is likely to be a wonderful degree of celerity in this case, I believe.'
Jack laughed aloud with pleasure, and then observed that they must be getting back to the house--the boy from the Crown was waiting for an answer. 'I shall have to give that wretched woman a lift,' he added. 'You cannot refuse a brother-officer's wife, the wife of a man you know; but Lord, how I wish I could get out of it. Come, let us walk in.'
'I cannot advise it,' said Stephen. 'Sophie would detect you instantly. You are as transparent as a bride. Stay here till I desire Sophie to make your joint reply to Lady Clonfert: you cannot be seen until you have your orders.'
'I shall go to the observatory,' said Jack.
It was here that Stephen found him some minutes later, with his telescope trained on the Portsmouth road. 'Sophie has answered,' said Stephen, 'and every woman in the house is now scrubbing the parlour and changing the lace window-curtains; they turned me out with very little ceremony, I can tell you.'
The promised rain began to fall, drumming briskly on the copper dome: there was just room for them both, and there they crouched in silence for a while. Beneath the bubbling current of his pure joy, Jack longed to ask whether Stephen had in some way arranged Captain Loveless's tenesmus; but although he had known Stephen intimately these many, many years, there was something about him that forbade questioning. Presently, his mind sobering, he reflected on the Indian Ocean, on the fine blue-water sailing with the southeast trade-wind, the perilous inshore navigation among the coral reefs surrounding La Reunion and Mauritius; on the typical Admiralty decision to send one frigate to counterbalance four; on the immense difficulty *of maintaining even a blockade, above all in the hurricane months, let alone that of landing upon those islands, with their few harbours (and those fortified), their. broad reefs, the perpetual heavy surf on their inhospitable shores; on the question of water, and on the nature of the force likely to oppose him. To oppose him, that is to say, if ever he reached the station. Furtively stretching out to touch a piece of wood, he said, 'This hypothetical squadron, Stephen, have you any idea of its strength, and what it might have to deal with?'
'I wish I had, my dear,' said Stephen. 'The Nereide and the Sirius were mentioned, to be sure, together with the Otter and the possibility of another sloop; but beyond that everything is nebulous. Vessels that Admiral Bertie had at the time of his latest despatches, dated more than three months ago, may very well be off Java by the time the squadron is actually formed. Nor can I speak to what Decaen may have had in Mauritius before this reinforcement, apart from the Canonniere and possibly the Semillante they range so wide. On the other hand I can tell you the names of their new frigates. They are the Venus, Manche, Bellone and Caroline.'
Venus, Manche, Bellone, Caroline,' said Jack, frowning. 'I have never heard of a single one of 'em.'
'No. As I said, they are new, quite new: they carry forty guns apiece. Twenty four pounders, at least in the case of the Bellone and the Manche: perhaps in the others too.'
'Oh, indeed?' said Jack, his eye still to his telescope. The rosy glow in his mind had strange lurid edges to it now. Those were in fact the French navy's most recent, very heavy frigates, the envy of the British dockyards. Buonaparte had all the forests of Europe at his command, splendid Dalmatian oak, tall northern spars, best Riga hemp; and although the man himself was the merest soldier, his ship-builders turned out the finest vessels afloat and he had some very capable officers to command them. Forty guns apiece. The Nereide had thirty-six, but only twelve-pounders: Boadicea and Sirius, with their eighteen-pounders, might be a match for the Frenchmen, particularly if the French crews were as new as their ships; but even so, that was a hundred and sixty guns to a hundred and ten to say nothing of the broadside weight of metal. Everything would depend on how those guns were handled. The other forces at the Cape hardly entered into the line of count. The flagship, the ancient Raisonable, 64, could no more be considered a fighting unit than the antique French Canonniere: he could not offhand recall the smaller vessels on the station, apart from the Otter, a pretty eighteen-gun ship-sloop: but in any case, if it came to a general action, the frigates alone must bear the brunt. The Nereide he knew of, the crack frigate of the West Indies station, and in Corbett she had a fighting captain; Pym he knew by reputation; but
