The Mauritius Command by Patrick O’Brian Page A

should add good fortune too, though luck don't bear talking about." He touched wood, considered for a while, and then said, "Listen, Aubrey, before your Mr Farquhar comes aboard--before we start getting entangled in political considerations--I shall lay the position before you as clearly as I can. There are four French frigates based on Mauritius and Reumon, in addition to the force they had there last year: they can use Port Louis or Port South-East in Mauritius and Saint-Paul in Reunion, and separately or in pairs they can range out as far as the Nicobars and beyond--the whole Indian Ocean. You can't catch them out there; we can't convoy all the Eastern trade--we do not possess the ships; and you can't blockade them for ever. So you must either destroy them in detail in their home waters or eventually you must take their bases away from them. Now with this in mind, we have seized and garrisoned Rodriguez with part of the Fifty-Sixth and some Bombay sepoys, for your water in the first place, and in the second as a base for the reinforcements that are supposed to come from India in time. There are only about four hundred men on the island at present, but we hope for more next year--it is a question of transports. You know Rodriguez?"
    "Yes, sir. I have not touched there, however." Rodriguez: a remote and tolerably barren speck of land alone in the ocean, three hundred and fifty miles eastward of Mauritius: he had viewed it from the masthead of his dear Surpiise.
    "So at least you have your water. As for ships, you have Boadicea, of course; Sirius, with a good steady captain in Pym, as regular as a clock; Nereide--she is only a twelve-pounder, and getting on in years, but Corbett keeps her in very good order though he is rather undermanned; Otter, a fast, useful eighteen-gun sloop, in very good order too. Lord Clonfert has her: she should be in any moment now. And I can let you have Raisonable except in the hurricane months, for she cannot bear a hard blow. She is not all she was when I was a boy, but we careened her a few weeks ago, and she is quite fast. At least she is a match for the Canonniere, who is older still; and she makes a show. I might conceivably be able to add the Magicienne from Sumatra, in time, and the Victor, another sloop. But even without them, I conceive that, Raisonable cancelling out Canonniere, three well worked-up frigates and a powerful sloop would not be reckoned out of the way for dealing with four Frenchmen."
    "Certainly not, sir," said Jack. The Admiral was speaking as though Jack's pendant were a certainty.
    "No one will pretend it is an easy task, however. The Frenchmen are Venus, Manche, Caroline--it was she who took the last two Indiamen--and Bellone, all new forty-gun frigates. As for the rest, they have the Canonniere, as I have said, still mounting her fifty guns, our brig the Grappler, several avisos and a few smaller things. And I warn you, Aubrey, if you hoist your pendant, I cannot let you have a captain under you. If you shift into the Raisonable for the time being, Eliot can replace you in Boadicea; but I cannot let you have a captain under you." Jack bowed. He had scarcely relied upon it: on the remoter stations there were few post-captains to spare; and then again if a commodore did have a captain under him, that commodore was entitled to a third of the Admiral's share of prize-money.
    "May I ask whether we have any intelligence of their landforces, sir?" he said.
    "Yes, but I wish it were more exact. On Mauritius General Decaen has the best part of two regiments of the line, and his militia may amount to ten thousand or so. Our information from Reunion is more scanty, but is seems that General Desbrusleys has much the same. Oh, it is a tough nut to crack, I grant you; but cracked it must be, and at the earliest possible moment. You have to strike hard and fast with your forces concentrated while theirs are dispersed: in a word, you have to go in and win. Government will be in a