Hornblower in the West Indies h-12

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “Put two men to tend your line. The steward had better be one of ‘em,” he said. “Mr. Mate, come for’rard with me. We want to get sail on this ship as soon as may be.”

  That was the beginning of a voyage which was destined to become legendary, just as did the hurricane which had just passed—it was called Hornblower’s Hurricane, singled out not only because Hornblower was involved in it but also because its unexpected arrival caused widespread damage. Hornblower never thought that the voyage itself was particularly notable, even though it was made in a waterlogged hulk precariously balanced upon bales of coir. It was only a matter of getting the hulk before the wind; a spare jib-boom (the only spare spar surviving the storm) made a jury mast when fished to the stump of the foremast, and the sacking from coir bales provided sails. Spread on the jury foremast these enabled them to get the Pretty Jane before the trade wind, to creep along at a mile an hour while they set to work on extemporising aftersails that doubled her speed.

  There were no navigating instruments—even the compass had been dashed from its gimbals during the storm—and on the first two days they had no idea where they were, except that somewhere to leeward lay the chain of the Antilles, but the third day proved fine and clear and dawn had hardly broken before a hand at the mainmast-head saw the faintest, tiniest dark streak on the horizon far ahead. It was land; it might be the high mountains of San Domingo far off, or the low mountains of Puerto Rico somewhat nearer; there was no knowing at present, and even when the sun had set they were still ignorant—and they were thirsty, with small appetite for the meagre ration of corned beef that Hornblower doled out to them from the recovered stores.

  And despite fatigue they could sleep that night on their coir mattresses on the deck that an occasional small wave still swept. Next morning the land was nearer still, a low profile that seemed to indicate it might be Puerto Rico, and it was in the afternoon that they saw the fishing boat. It headed for them, puzzled at the strange vessel bearing down upon it, and it was not long before it was alongside, the mulatto fishermen staring at the group of strange figures waving to them. Hornblower had to urge his dazed mind, stupid with lack of sleep and fatigue and hunger, to remember his Spanish as he hailed them. They had a breaker of water on board, and they had a jar of cold garbanzos as well; there was a can of corned beef to add to the feast. Barbara caught, even though she spoke no Spanish, two words of the excited conversation that went on.

  “Puerto Rico?” she asked.

  “Yes, dear,” said Hornblower. “Not very surprising—and much more convenient for us than San Domingo. I wish I could remember the name of the Captain-General there—I had dealings with him in the affair of the Estrella del Sur. He was a marquis. The Marques de—de—Dearest, why don’t you lie down and close your eyes? You’re worn out.”

  He was shocked anew at her pallor and look of distress.

  “I’m well enough, thank you, dear,” replied Barbara, even though the strained tone of her voice denied her words. It was one more proof of her indomitable spirit.

  It was when they were discussing what to do next that the second mate showed the first sign of any spirit. They could all desert the waterlogged hulk and sail into Puerto Rico in the fishing boat, but he stoutly refused to do so. He knew the law about salvage, and there might be some value still in the poor hull, and certainly in its cargo. He would work the Pretty Jane in tomorrow himself, and he insisted on staying on board with the hands.

  Hornblower faced a decision of a sort he had never yet encountered in a varied career. To leave the ship now savoured of desertion, but there was Barbara to think of. And his first reaction, that he would not dream of deserting his men, was promptly ended by his reminding himself that they were not ‘his men’ at all.

  “You’re only a passenger, My Lord,” said the mate—it was odd how ‘My Lord’ seemed to come naturally again now that they were in touch with civilisation.

  “That’s so,” agreed Hornblower. Nor could he possibly condemn Barbara to another night on the deck of this waterlogged hulk.

  So they came sailing into San Juan de Puerto Rico, two years after Hornblower had last visited the place in very different circumstances. Not unnaturally their arrival set the whole place in an uproar. Messengers sped to the Fortaleza, and it was only a few minutes later that a figure appeared on the quay which Hornblower’s swimming eyes contrived to recognise, tall and thin, with a thin moustache.

  “Mendez-Castillo,” he said, saving Hornblower any further trouble about remembering his name. “It grieves me greatly to see Your Excellencies in such distress, even while I have much pleasure in welcoming Your Excellency again to Puerto Rico.”

  Some sort of formalities had to be observed, even in these conditions.

  “Barbara, my dear, allow me to present Señor—Major—Mendez-Castillo, aide-de-camp to His Excellency the Captain-General.” Then he continued in Spanish. “My wife, la Baronesa Hornblower.”

  Mendez-Castillo bowed deeply, his eyes still busy estimating the extent of the weakness of the new arrivals. Then he reached the very important decision.

  “If Your Excellencies are agreeable, I would suggest that your formal welcome by His Excellency should be postponed until Your Excellencies are better prepared for it.”

  “We are agreeable,” said Hornblower. In his exasperation he was about to burst out violently regarding Barbara’s need for rest and care, but Mendez-Castillo, now that the point of etiquette was settled, was all consideration.

  “Then if Your Excellencies will give yourselves the trouble of stepping down into my boat I shall have the pleasure of escorting you to make your informal entrance into the Palace of Santa Catalina. Their Excellencies will receive you, but formal etiquette need not be observed, and Your Excellencies will be able to recover from the dreadful experiences I fear Your Excellencies have undergone. Would Your Excellencies be so kind as to come this way?”

  “One moment, first, if you please, señor. The men out there in the ship. They need food and water. They may need help.”

  “I will give an order for the port authorities to send out to them what they need.”

  “Thank you.”

  So they went down into the boat for the brief trip across the harbour; despite his mortal fatigue Hornblower was able to note that every fishing boat and coasting craft there was hurriedly getting to sea, presumably to examine the chances of salvaging or plundering the Pretty Jane; the second mate had been perfectly right in refusing to leave her. But he did not care, now. He put his arm about Barbara as she drooped beside him. Then up through the water-gate of the Palace, with attentive servants awaiting them. Here were His Excellency and a dark, beautiful woman, his wife: she took Barbara under her protection instantly. Here were cool, dark rooms, and more servants scurrying about in obedience to the orders His Excellency volleyed out. Valets and maids and body servants.

  “This is Manuel, my principal valet, Your Excellency. Any orders Your Excellency may give him will be obeyed as if they came from me. My physician has been sent for and will be here at any moment. So now my wife and I will withdraw and leave Your Excellencies to rest, assuring Your Excellencies that our sincerest hope is for your rapid recovery.”

  The crowd thinned away. For one more moment Hornblower had to keep his faculties alert, for the doctor came bustling in, to feel pulses and to look at tongues. He produced a case of lancets and was making preparations to draw blood from Barbara and it was only with difficulty that Hornblower stopped him, and with further difficulty prevented him from substituting leeches for venesection. He could not believe that bleeding would hasten the cure of the lacerations Barbara bore on her body. He thanked the doctor and saw him out of the room again with a sigh of relief and mental reservations regarding the medicines he promised to send in. The maids were waiting to relieve Barbara of the few rags she wore.

  “Do you think you will sleep, darling? Is there anything more I can ask for?”

  “I shall sleep, dearest.” T
hen the smile on Barbara’s weary face was replaced by something more like a grin, perfectly un-ladylike. “And as nobody else but us here can speak English I am free to tell you that I love you, dearest. I love you, I love you, more than any words that I know can tell you.”

  Servants or no servants, he kissed her then before he left her to go into the adjoining room where the valets awaited him. His body was crisscrossed with angry welts still raw where, during the storm, the force of the waves had flung him against the ropes that held him to the mast. They were horribly painful as he was sponged with warm water. He knew that Barbara’s sweet, tender body must be marked in the same fashion. But Barbara was safe; she would soon be well, and she had said that she loved him.—And—and she had said more than that. What she had told him in that deckhouse had drawn out all the pain from a mental wound far, far, deeper than the physical hurts he now bore. He was a happy man as he lay down in the silk nightshirt with the elaborate heraldic embroidery which the valet had ready for him. His sleep was at first deep and untroubled, but conscience awoke him before dawn, and he went out on to the balcony in the first light, to see the Pretty Jane creeping into the harbour, escorted by a dozen small craft. It irked him that he was not on board, until he thought again of the wife sleeping in the next room.

  There were happy hours still to come. That balcony was deep and shaded, looking out over harbour and sea, and there he sat in his dressing-gown an hour later, rocking idly in his chair, with Barbara opposite him, drinking sweet chocolate and eating sweet rolls.

  “It is good to be alive,” said Hornblower; there was a potency, an inner meaning, about those words now—it was no hackneyed turn of speech.

  “It is good to be with you,” said Barbara.

  “Pretty Jane came in this morning safely,” said Hornblower.

  “I peeped out at her through my window,” said Barbara.

  Mendez-Castillo was announced, presumably having been warned that His Excellency’s guests were awake and breakfasting. He made enquiries on behalf of His Excellency, to receive every assurance of a rapid recovery, and he announced that news of the recent events would be despatched at once to Jamaica.

  “Most kind of His Excellency,” said Hornblower. “Now, as regards the crew of the Pretty Jane. Are they being looked after?”

  “They have been received into the military hospital. The port authorities have stationed a guard on board the vessel.”

  “That is very well indeed,” said Hornblower, telling himself that now he need feel no more responsibility.

  The morning could be an idle one now, only broken by a visit from the doctor, to be dismissed, after a new feeling of pulses and looking at tongues, with grateful thanks for his un-tasted medicines. There was dinner at two o’clock, a vast meal served ceremoniously but only sampled. A siesta, and then supper eaten with more appetite, and a peaceful night.

  Next morning was busier, for there was now the question of clothes to be dealt with. Dressmakers were sent in to Barbara by Her Excellency, so that Hornblower found all the mental exercise he needed in acting as interpreter over matters demanding a vocabulary he did not possess, and shirt-makers and tailors sent in to him by His Excellency. The tailor was somewhat disappointed on being told that Hornblower did not wish him to make a complete uniform for a British Rear Admiral, gold lace and all. As a half-pay officer, with no appointment, Hornblower did not need anything of the sort.

  After the tailor came a deputation, the mate and two members of the crew of Pretty Jane.

  “We’ve come to enquire after Your Lordship’s health, and Her Ladyship’s,” said the mate.

  “Thank you. You can see Her Ladyship and I are quite recovered,” said Hornblower. “And you? Are you being well looked after?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “You’re master of the Pretty Jane now,” commented Hornblower.

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  It was a strange first command for a man to have.

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “I’m having her hauled out today, My Lord. Maybe she can be patched up. But she’ll have lost all her copper.”

  “Very likely.”

  “I expect I’ll have to sell her for what she’ll fetch, hull and cargo,” said the mate, with a note of bitterness in his voice—that was to be expected in a man who had received his first command only to face losing it instantly.

  “I hope you’re lucky,” said Hornblower.

  “Thank you, My Lord.” There was a moment’s hesitation before the next words came. “And I have to thank Your Lordship for all you did.”

  “The little I did I did for my own sake and Her Ladyship’s,” said Hornblower.

  He could smile as he said it; already, in these blissful surroundings, the memory of the howl of the hurricane and the crash of the waves sweeping Pretty Jane’s deck was losing its painful acuteness. And the two seamen could grin back at him. Here in a vice-regal palace it was hard to remember how he had stood, with bared teeth and drawn knife, disputing with them possession of a single green coconut. It was pleasant that the interview could end with smiles and goodwill, so that Hornblower could lapse back into delightful idleness with Barbara beside him.

  Seamstresses and tailors must have worked hard and long, for next day some of the results of their efforts were ready to be tried on.

  “My Spanish grandee!” said Barbara, eyeing her husband dressed in coat and breeches of Puerto Rican cut.

  “My lovely señora,” answered Hornblower with a bow. Barbara was wearing comb and mantilla.

  “The señoras of Puerto Rico wear no stays, fortunately,” said Barbara. “I could bear nothing of the sort at present.”

  That was one of the few allusions Barbara made regarding the lacerations and bruises that she bore all over her body. She was of a Spartan breed, trained in a school which scorned to admit physical weakness. Even in making her mock-formal curtsey to him as she spoke she was careful to betray none of the pain the movement cost her; Hornblower could hardly guess at it.

  “What am I to tell Mendez-Castillo today when he comes to make his enquiries?” asked Hornblower.

  “I think, dear, that now we can safely be received by Their Excellencies,” said Barbara.

  Here in little Puerto Rico was to be found all the magnificence and ceremonial of the court of Spain. The Captain-General was the representative of a king in whose veins ran the blood of Bourbons and Habsburgs, of Ferdinand and Isabella, and his person had to be surrounded by the same ritual and etiquette, lest the mystic sanctity of his master should be called into question. Even Hornblower did not come to realise, until he began to discuss the arrangements with Mendez-Castillo, the enormous condescension, the extreme strain put upon palace etiquette, involved in the back-stairs visit Their Excellencies had paid to the battered castaways who had claimed their hospitality. Now that was all to be forgotten in their formal reception.

  There was amusement to be found in Mendez-Castillo’s apologetic and nervous mentioning of the fact that Hornblower could not expect the same formalities as had welcomed him on his last visit. Then he had been a visiting Commander-in-Chief; now he was only a half-pay officer, a distinguished visitor (Mendez-Castillo hastened to add) but an unofficial one. It dawned upon him that Mendez-Castillo expected him to flare out and to be offended at being told that this time he would be received only by flourishes and not by a full band, by the salutes of the sentries instead of by the turning out of the whole guard. He was able to confirm his reputation for tact by declaring quite truthfully—his candour was mistaken for the most diplomatic concealment of his own feelings—that he did not care in the least.

  So it turned out. Barbara and Hornblower were smuggled unobtrusively out of the postern gate of the Palace and escorted into a boat, to be rowed round to the massive water-gate where Hornblower had made his previous entrance. There with slow and solemn step they passed in through the gate, Barbara on Hornblower’s left arm. On either hand the se
ntries presented arms and Hornblower acknowledged the salute by taking off his hat. As they came into the courtyard beyond they were welcomed by the flourishes that Mendez-Castillo had promised. Even Hornblower’s tone-deaf ear could assure him that there was no stinting of those flourishes. Long drawn out, continued until Hornblower wondered how the trumpeter’s breath could last so long; and he could guess from the variation between squeakiness and dullness that the trumpeter was displaying a considerable virtuosity. Two more sentries stood at the foot of the steps beyond, presenting arms; the trumpeter stood at the top of the steps over to one side, and he put his instrument to his lips for a further series of fanfares as Hornblower removed his hat again and he and Barbara began the climb. Tremendous, those flourishes were; even though Hornblower was bracing himself to make his ceremonial entrance into the great hall he could not help but dart a glance at the trumpeter. One glance called for a second glance. Pigtailed and powdered; dressed in a glittering uniform; what was there about that figure to demand his attention? He felt Barbara on his arm stiffen and miss her step. The trumpeter took his instrument from his lips. It was—it was Hudnutt. Hornblower almost dropped his hat with surprise.

  But they were over the threshold of the great door, and he must walk steadily forward with Barbara if he were not to ruin all the precious ceremonial. A voice bellowed their names. Ahead of them at the end of an avenue of halberdiers were two chairs of state backed by a semicircle of uniforms and court gowns, with Their Excellencies sitting awaiting them. On Hornblower’s last visit the Captain-General had risen and taken seven steps forward to meet him, but that had been when he was a Commander-in-Chief; now he and Barbara were only private persons and Their Excellencies remained sitting, as he and Barbara went through the moves they had been instructed to make. He bowed to His Excellency, having already been presented to him; he waited while Barbara was presented and made her two curtsies; he bowed again as he was presented to Her Excellency; then they drew a little to one side to await Their Excellencies’ words.