The Mauritius Command by Patrick O’Brian Read Free Book Online Page B

of getting her out on this tide. No, my dear; perhaps you are right. Perhaps I should not go aboard until tomorrow. But tomorrow, sweetheart," he said, looking fondly down, tomorrow at the crack of dawn you lose your husband to his natural element."

CHAPTER TWO
    Upon that damp element, always unstable, often treacherous, but for the moment both warm and kind, Captain Aubrey dictated an official letter to his happy clerk:
    Boadicea, at sea
    Sir,
    I have the honour to acquaint you, that at dawn on the seventeenth instant, the Dry Salvages bearing SSE two leagues, His Majesty's ship under my command had the good fortune to fall in with a French national ship of war with a prize in company. On the Boadicea's approach she bore up, abandoning her prize, a snow, whose topmasts were struck down on deck. Every exertion was made in this ship to come up with the enemy, who endeavoured to lead us among the shoals of the Dry Salvages; but missing stays in consequence of the loss of her mizen topmast, she struck upon a reef. Shortly afterwards, the wind having fallen to a flat calm, and the rocks sheltering her from the Boadicea's guns, she was boarded and carried by the boats, when she proved to be the Hibi, formerly His Majesty's twenty-eight-gun frigate Hyaena but now mounting twenty-two twenty-four-pounders, carronades, and two long nines, with a complement of 214 men, commanded by Mons. Bretonniere, lieutenant de Vaisseau, her captain having been killed in the action with the prize. She was thirtyeight days out of Bordeaux, on a cruise, and had taken the English vessels named in the margin. My first lieutenant, Mr Lemuel Akers, an old 52 and deserving officer, commanded the Boadicea's boats and led the attack in the most gallant manner; while Lieutenant Seymour and Mr Johnson, master's mate, displayed great activity. Indeed I am happy to say, that the conduct of the Boadicea's people gave me great satisfaction, and I have no greater loss to deplore than two men slightly wounded. The snow was secured without delay: she is the Intrepid Fox of Bristol, A. Snape master, from the Guinea Coast, laden with elephants" teeth, golddust, grains of Paradise, hides, and skins. In view of the value of her cargo, I have thought proper to send her into Gibraltar, escorted by the Hyaena under the command of Lieutenant Akers. I have the honour to be, etc.
    Captain Aubrey watched his clerk's flying pen with great benevolence. The letter was true in essence, but like most official letters it contained a certain number of lies. Jack did not think Lemuel Akers a deserving officer, and the lieutenant's gallantry had in fact been confined to roaring at the Hibi from the stern-sheets of the launch, to which his wooden leg confined him, while the conduct of several of the Boadicea's people had filled their new captain with impatience, and the snow had not been secured without delay.
    "Do not forget the wounded at the bottom of the page, Mr Hill," he said. "James Arklow, ordinary, and William Bates, Marine. Now be so good as to let Mr Akers know that I shall have a couple of private letters for him to take to Gibraltar."
    Left alone in the great cabin he glanced out of the stern-window at the calm, crowded, sunlit sea, with his prizes lying upon it and boats plying to and fro, the Hibi's or rather the Hyaena's rigging full of men putting the last touches to her repairs, the shrouds of her new mizen rattled down already: he had a first-rate bosun in John Fellowes. Then he reached out for a sheet of paper and began: "Sweetheart--a hasty line to bring you my dear love and tell you all is well. We had an amazing prosperous voyage down as far as 35'30', with a fine double-reefed topsail quartering breeze--Boadicea's best point of sailing in her present trim--all the way from the moment we sank Rame Head right across the Bay and almost to Madeira. We put into Plymouth at the height of flood on Monday night--black, with squalls of sleet and blowing hard -and since we