The Young Hornblower Omnibus

by C. S. Forester

  “Here’s the other pistol, sir,” he said, handing it to Buckland, who took it, at the same time drawing its fellow from his pocket; he stood rather helplessly with them in his hands.

  “Shall I relieve you of those, sir?” asked Hornblower, taking them. “And Wellard might be of help to me with the marine’s deposition. Can I take him with me, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Buckland.

  Hornblower turned to go below, followed by Wellard.

  “Oh, Mr. Hornblower—” said Buckland.

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing,” said Buckland, the inflection in his voice revealing the indecision under which he laboured.

  “Pardon, sir, but I should take some rest if I were you,” said Hornblower, standing at the head of the companionway. “You’ve had a tiring night.”

  Bush was in agreement with Hornblower; not that he cared at all whether Buckland had had a tiring night or not, but because if Buckland were to retire to his cabin there would be no chance of his betraying himself—and his associates—by an unguarded speech. Then it dawned upon Bush that this was just what Hornblower had in mind. And at the same time he was aware of regret at Hornblower’s leaving them, and knew that Buckland felt the same regret. Hornblower was level-headed, thinking fast whatever danger menaced him. It was his example which had given a natural appearance to the behaviour of all of them since the alarm down below. Perhaps Hornblower had a secret unshared with them; perhaps he knew more than they did about how the captain came to fall down the hold—Bush was puzzled and anxious about that—but if such was the case Hornblower had given no sign of it.

  “When in God’s name is that damned doctor going to report?” said Buckland, to no one in particular.

  “Why don’t you turn in, sir, until he does?” said Bush.

  “I will.” Buckland hesitated before he went on speaking. “You gentlemen had best continue to report to me every hour as the captain ordered.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Bush and Roberts.

  That meant, as Bush realized, that Buckland would take no chances; the captain must hear, when he should recover consciousness, that his orders had been carried out. Bush was anxious—desperate—as he went below to try to snatch half an hour’s rest before he would next have to report. He could not hope to sleep. Through the slight partition that divided his cabin from the next he could hear a drone of voices as Hornblower took down the marine corporal’s statement in writing.

  V

  Breakfast was being served in the wardroom. It was a more silent and less cheerful meal even than breakfast there usually was. The master, the purser, the captain of marines, had said their conventional “good mornings” and had sat down to eat without further conversation. They had heard—as had everyone in the ship—that the captain was recovering consciousness.

  Through the scuttles in the side of the ship came two long shafts of sunlight, illuminating the crowded little place, and swinging back and forward across the wardroom with the easy motion of the ship; the fresh, delightful air of the northeast trades came in through the hooked-open door. The coffee was hot; the biscuit, only three weeks on board, could not have been more than a month or two in store before that, because it had hardly any weevils in it. The wardroom cook had intelligently taken advantage of the good weather to fry the remains of last night’s salt pork with some of the ship’s dwindling store of onions. A breakfast of fried slivers of salt pork with onions, hot coffee and good biscuit, fresh air and sunshine and fair weather; the wardroom should have been a cheerful place. Instead there was brooding anxiety, apprehension, tense uneasiness. Bush looked across the table at Hornblower, drawn and pale and weary; there were many things Bush wanted to say to him but they had to remain unsaid, at least at present, while the shadow of the captain’s madness darkened the sunlit ship.

  Buckland came walking into the wardroom with the surgeon following him, and everyone looked up questioningly—practically everyone stood up to hear the news.

  “He’s conscious,” said Buckland, and looked round at Clive for him to elaborate on that statement.

  “Weak,” said Clive.

  Bush looked round at Hornblower hoping that he would ask the questions that Bush wanted asked. Hornblower’s face was set in a mask without expression. His glance was fixed penetratingly on Clive, but he did not open his mouth. It was Lomax, the purser, who asked the question in the end.

  “Is he sensible?”

  “Well—” said Clive, glancing sidelong at Buckland. Clearly the last thing Clive wanted to do was to commit himself definitely regarding the captain’s sanity. “He’s too weak at present to be sensible.”

  Lomax fortunately was inquisitive enough and bull-headed enough not to be deterred by Clive’s reluctance.

  “What about this concussion?” he asked. “What’s it done to him?”

  “The skull is intact,” said Clive. “There are extensive scalp lacerations. The nose is broken. The clavicle—that’s the collar-bone—and a couple of ribs. He must have fallen headfirst down the hatchway, as might be expected if he tripped over the coaming.”

  “But how on earth did he come to do that?” asked Lomax.

  “He has not said,” answered Clive. “I think he does not remember.”

  “What?”

  “That is a usual state of affairs,” said Clive. “One might almost call it symptomatic. After a severe concussion the patient usually displays a lapse of memory, extending back to many hours before the injury.”

  Bush stole a glance at Hornblower again. His face was still expressionless, and Bush tried to follow his example, both in betraying no emotion and in leaving the questioning to others. And yet this was great, glorious, magnificent news which could not be too much elaborated on for Bush’s taste.

  “Where does he think he is?” went on Lomax.

  “Oh, he knows he’s in this ship,” said Clive, cautiously.

  Now Buckland turned upon Clive; Buckland was hollow-cheeked, unshaven, weary, but he had seen the captain in his berth, and he was in consequence a little more ready to force the issue.

  “In your opinion is the captain fit for duty?” he demanded.

  “Well—” said Clive again.

  “Well?”

  “Temporarily, perhaps not.”

  That was an unsatisfactory answer, but Buckland seemed to have exhausted all his resolution in extracting it. Hornblower raised a mask-like face and stared straight at Clive.

  “You mean he is incapable at present of commanding this ship?”

  The other officers murmured their concurrence in this demand for a quite definite statement, and Clive, looking round at the determined faces, had to yield.

  “At present, yes.”

  “Then we all know where we stand,” said Lomax, and there was satisfaction in his voice which was echoed by everyone in the wardroom except Clive and Buckland.

  To deprive a captain of his command was a business of terrible, desperate importance. King and Parliament had combined to give Captain Sawyer command of the Renown, and to reverse their appointment savoured of treason, and anyone even remotely connected with the transaction might be tainted for the rest of his life with the unsavoury odour of insubordination and rebellion. Even the most junior master’s mate in later years applying for some new appointment might be remembered as having been in the Renown when Sawyer was removed from his command and might have his application refused in consequence. It was necessary that there should be the appearance of the utmost legality in an affair which, under the strictest interpretation, could never be entirely legal.

  “I have here Corporal Greenwood’s statement, sir,” said Hornblower, “signed with his mark and attested by Mr. Wellard and myself.”

  “Thank you,” said Buckland, taking the paper; there was some slight hesitation in Buckland’s gesture as though the document were a firecracker likely to go off unexpectedly. But only Bush, who was looking for it, could have noticed the hesitation. It was only a few hours since Bu
ckland had been a fugitive in peril of his life, creeping through the bowels of the ship trying to avoid detection, and the names of Wellard and Greenwood, reminding him of this, were a shock to his ears. And like a demon conjured up by the saying of his name, Wellard appeared at that moment at the wardroom door.

  “Mr. Roberts sent me down to ask for orders, sir,” he said.

  Roberts had the watch, and must be fretting with worry about what was going on below decks. Buckland stood in indecision.

  “Both watches are on deck, sir,” said Hornblower, deferentially.

  Buckland looked an inquiry at him.

  “You could tell this news to the hands, sir,” went on Hornblower.

  He was making a suggestion, unasked, to his superior officer, and so courting a snub. But his manner indicated the deepest respect, and nothing besides but eagerness to save his superior all possible trouble.

  “Thank you,” said Buckland.

  Anyone could read in his face the struggle that was going on within him; he was still shrinking from committing himself too deeply—as if he was not already committed!—and he was shrinking from the prospect of making a speech to the assembled hands, even while he realized the necessity of doing so. And the necessity grew greater the more he thought about it—rumours must be flying about the lower deck, where the crew, already unsettled by the captain’s behaviour, must be growing more restive still in the prevailing uncertainty. A hard, definite statement must be made to them; it was vitally necessary. Yet the greater the necessity the greater the responsibility that Buckland bore, and he wavered obviously between these two frightening forces.

  “All hands, sir?” prompted Hornblower, very softly.

  “Yes,” said Buckland, desperately taking the plunge.

  “Very well, Mr. Wellard,” said Hornblower.

  Bush caught the look that Hornblower threw to Wellard with the words. There was a significance in it which might be interpreted as of a nature only to be expected when one junior officer was telling another to do something quickly before a senior could change his mind—that was how an uninitiated person would naturally interpret it—but to Bush, clairvoyant with fatigue and worry, there was some other significance in that glance. Wellard was pale and weak with fatigue and worry too; he was being reassured. Possibly he was being told that a secret was still safe.

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Wellard, and departed.

  The pipes twittered through the ship.

  “All hands! All hands!” roared the bosun’s mates. “All hands fall in abaft the mainmast! All hands!”

  Buckland went nervously up on deck, but he acquitted himself well enough at the moment of trial. In a harsh expressionless voice he told the assembled hands that the accident to the captain, which they all must have heard about, had rendered him incapable at present of continuing in command.

  “But we’ll all go on doing our duty,” said Buckland, staring down at the level plain of upturned faces.

  Bush, looking with him, picked out the grey head and paunchy figure of Hobbs, the acting-gunner, the captain’s toady and informer. Things would be different for Mr. Hobbs in future—at least as long as the captain’s disability endured. That was the point; as long as the captain’s disability endured. Bush looked down at Hobbs and wondered how much he knew, how much he guessed—how much he would swear to at a court-martial. He tried to read the future in the fat old man’s face, but his clairvoyance failed him. He could guess nothing.

  When the hands were dismissed there was a moment of bustle and confusion, as the watches resumed their duties and the idlers streamed off below. It was there, in the noise and confusion of a crowd, that momentary privacy and freedom from observation could best be found. Bush intercepted Hornblower by the mizzen-mast bitts and could ask the question that he had been wanting to ask for hours; the question on which so much depended.

  “How did it happen?” asked Bush.

  The bosun’s mates were bellowing orders; the hands were scurrying hither and thither; all round the two of them was orderly confusion, a mass of people intent on their own business, while they stood face to face, isolated, with the beneficent sunshine streaming down on them, lighting up the set face which Hornblower turned towards his questioner.

  “How did what happen, Mr. Bush?” said Hornblower.

  “How did the captain fall down the hatchway?”

  As soon as he had said the words Bush glanced back over his shoulder in sudden fright lest he should have been overheard. These might be hanging words. When he looked back Hornblower’s face was quite expressionless.

  “I think he must have overbalanced,” he said, evenly, looking straight into Bush’s eyes; and then he went on. “If you will excuse me, sir, I have some duties to attend to.”

  Later in the day every wardroom officer was introduced in turn to the captain’s cabin to see with his own eyes what sort of wreck lay there. Bush saw only a feeble invalid, lying in the half-light of the cabin, the face almost covered with bandages, the fingers of one hand moving minutely, the other hand concealed in a sling.

  “He’s under an opiate,” explained Clive in the wardroom. “I had to administer a heavy dose to enable me to try and set the fractured nose.”

  “I expect it was spread all over his face,” said Lomax brutally. “It was big enough.”

  “The fracture was very extensive and comminuted,” agreed Clive.

  There were screams the next morning from the captain’s cabin, screams of terror as well as of pain, and Clive and his mates emerged eventually sweating and worried. Clive went instantly to report confidentially to Buckland, but everyone in the ship had heard those screams or had been told about them by men who had; the surgeon’s mates, questioned eagerly in the gunroom by the other warrant officers, could not maintain the monumental discretion that Clive aimed at in the wardroom. The wretched invalid was undoubtedly insane; he had fallen into a paroxysm of terror when they had attempted to examine the fractured nose, flinging himself about with a madman’s strength so that, fearing damage to the other broken bones, they had had to swathe him in canvas as in a strait-jacket, leaving only his left arm out. Laudanum and an extensive bleeding had reduced him to insensibility in the end, but later in the day when Bush saw him he was conscious again, a weeping, pitiful object, shrinking in fear from every face that he saw, persecuted by shadows, sobbing—it was a dreadful thing to see that burly man sobbing like a child—over his troubles, and trying to hide his face from a world which to his tortured mind held no friendship at all and only grim enmity.

  “It frequently happens,” said Clive pontifically—the longer the captain’s illness lasted the more freely he would discuss it—“that an injury, a fall, or a burn, or a fracture, will completely unbalance a mind that previously was a little unstable.”

  “A little unstable!” said Lomax. “Did he turn out the marines in the middle watch to hunt for mutineers in the hold? Ask Mr. Hornblower here, ask Mr. Bush, if they thought he was a little unstable. He had Hornblower doing watch and watch, and Bush and Roberts and Buckland himself out of bed every hour day and night. He was as mad as a hatter even then.”

  It was extraordinary how freely tongues wagged now in the ship, now that there was no fear of reports being made to the captain.

  “At least we can make seamen out of the crew now,” said Carberry, the master, with a satisfaction in his voice that was echoed round the wardroom. Sail drill and gun drill, tautened discipline and hard work, were pulling together a crew that had fast been disintegrating. It was what Buckland obviously delighted in, what he had been itching to do from the moment they had left the Eddystone behind, and exercising the crew helped to lift his mind out of the other troubles that beset it.

  For now there was a new responsibility, that all the wardroom discussed freely in Buckland’s absence—Buckland was already fenced in by the solitude that surrounds the captain of a ship of war. This was Buckland’s sole responsibility, and the wardroom could watch Buckland wrestling
with it, as they would watch a prizefighter in the ring; there even were bets laid on the result, as to whether or not Buckland would take the final plunge, whether or not he would take the ultimate step that would proclaim himself as in command of the Renown and the captain as incurable.

  Locked in the captain’s desk were the captain’s papers, and among those papers were the secret orders addressed to him by the Lords of the Admiralty. No other eyes than the captain’s had seen those orders as yet; not a soul in the ship could make any guess at their contents. They might be merely routine orders, directing the Renown perhaps to join Admiral Bickerton’s squadron; but also they might reveal some vital diplomatic secret of the kind that no mere lieutenant could be entrusted with. On the one hand Buckland could continue to head for Antigua, and there he could turn over his responsibilities to whoever was the senior officer. There might be some junior captain who could be transferred to the Renown; to read the orders and carry off the ship on whatever mission was allotted her. On the other hand Buckland could read the orders now; they might deal with some matter of the greatest urgency. Antigua was a convenient landfall for ships to make from England, but from a military point of view it was not so desirable, being considerably to leeward of most of the points of strategic importance.

  If Buckland took the ship down to Antigua and then she had to beat back to windward he might be sharply rapped on the knuckles by My Lords of the Admiralty; yet if he read the secret orders on that account he might be reprimanded for his presumption. The wardroom could guess at his predicament and each individual officer could congratulate himself upon not being personally involved while wondering what Buckland would do about it.

  Bush and Hornblower stood side by side on the poop, feet wide apart on the heaving deck, as they steadied themselves and looked through their sextants at the horizon. Through the darkened glass Bush could see the image of the sun reflected from the mirror. With infinite pains he moved the arm round, bringing the image down closer and closer to the horizon. The pitch of the ship over the long blue rollers troubled him, but he persevered, decided in the end that the image of the sun was just sitting on the horizon, and clamped the sextant. Then he could read and record the measurement. As a concession to new-fangled prejudices, he decided to follow Hornblower’s example and observe the altitude also from the opposite point of the horizon. He swung round and did so, and as he recorded his reading he tried to remember what he had to do about half the difference between the two readings. And the index error, and the “dip”. He looked round to find that Hornblower had already finished his observation and was standing waiting for him.