Captain Hornblower R. N.

by C. S. Forester

  ‘My sailor acted hastily,’ said Hornblower, ‘but I think you will admit, Colonel, that he was in part justified. He will tender a profound apology, and then, perhaps, you will issue strict orders against smoking near the powder.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Claros.

  Hornblower turned to Gray.

  ‘Say to the officer “God save our gracious king, señor.” Say it humbly.’

  Gray looked startled.

  ‘Go on, man,’ said Hornblower testily. ‘Do what I say.’

  ‘God save our gracious king, señor,’ said Gray, in a tone that was at least unnatural, if not humble.

  ‘The man wishes to express to you his profound regret for his rudeness,’ explained Hornblower to the officer, and Claros nodded approvingly, spat out a couple of brief orders, and turned away. The crisis was over, and no feelings hurt on either side. The sailors were grinning and cheerful, while the Catalans looked proudly down upon the lighthearted barbarians.

  XVIII

  Captain Hornblower checked his horse on the top of the last of the hitherto interminable rocky undulations. The August sun was blazing overhead, and innumerable flies plagued him and his horse and his companions. At his side rode Claros, behind them Longley and Brown sat uneasily their rawboned Rosinantes along with the three Spanish staff officers. Far back along the path was a solid block of scarlet. Major Laird had his marines formed up as an advance guard, while here and there on the grey-green hills scarlet dots showed where he had posted pickets as a precaution against surprise. Farther back still could be seen a caterpillar of men, naked to the waist, labouring at their task of improving the path for the guns, and beyond that a sort of multiple caterpillar with a black dot at the end showed where the first gun had reached. In five hours it had travelled little more than three miles. Hornblower, looking up at the sun, saw that he had an hour and a half left in which to keep his appointment – in which to haul his guns over a mile of rock and over a mile of the plain which lay below him. He felt a twinge of conscience at the thought that he would probably be a little late with the first of the guns, and he certainly would not be able to open fire against the walls before five or six o’clock in the evening.

  There below him, a mile away but seemingly much nearer in the clear air, lay the town of Rosas. Hornblower could recognise all the features of the place which his map indicated. To the right was the citadel – from his elevated position Hornblower could see the pentagonal outline of its grey ramparts, with the blue sea behind. In the centre was the town itself, a single long street lying close to the shore, with a line of earthworks guarding it on the landward side. To the left was the high tower of Fort Trinidad on the other flank. The weakest point was undoubtedly the centre, but it would be of little use assailing that, as the citadel and the Trinidad could hold out independently. The best course would be to take the bull by the horns and breach and storm the citadel by an attack delivered from close by the water’s edge. The town could not be held if the citadel fell, although the Trinidad might cause further trouble.

  Hornblower had allowed his thoughts to run away with him. He had been so busy planning the reduction of Rosas that he had not even noticed the general peacefulness of the scene. The tricoloured flags flapped idly from the flagstaffs in the citadel and the Trinidad, and they were the most warlike things in sight. There was no sign on the bare plain of any besieging army. Meanwhile it could only be a question of hours before the garrison discovered how near to them lay a valuable convoy, and how weak was the force guarding it.

  ‘Where is the army of Catalonia?’ Hornblower demanded angrily, of Claros. He received a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘I do not know, Captain.’

  To Hornblower it meant that his precious convoy, and his far more precious landing party, were strung out over three miles of country within easy reach of any column which the governor of Rosas might send out.

  ‘You told me Colonel Rovira was marching on Rosas last night!’

  ‘He seems to have been delayed.’

  ‘The messenger – the one you said you would send at dawn – has he returned?’

  Claros, by a raising of his eyebrows and a jerk of the head, passed this question on to the chief of staff.

  ‘He did not go,’ said this officer.

  ‘What?’ said Hornblower in English. He had to fight down his bewilderment and struggle with his dazed senses in order to speak Spanish again. ‘Why not?’

  ‘It would have put the officer to unnecessary trouble,’ said the chief of staff. ‘If Colonel Rovira comes, he comes. If he cannot, no message of ours will bring him.’

  Hornblower pointed over to the right. In a fold of the hills a line of some fifty picketed horses and a few groups of seated men indicated the position of the squadron of cavalry which had been watching the town since yesterday.

  ‘Why did they not report that Colonel Rovira had not arrived?’ he demanded.

  ‘The officer commanding had my orders to report when he did arrive,’ answered Claros.

  He was showing no signs of indignation at the barely concealed contempt in Hornblower’s expression, but Hornblower kept his rage in hand for a little longer in his endeavour to keep the enterprise alive.

  ‘We are in a very considerable danger here,’ he said.

  Claros shrugged his shoulders again at the Englishman’s timidity.

  ‘My men are used to the mountains. If the garrison comes out to attack us we can get away by goat paths over there,’ he answered, pointing away to the precipitous sides of the mesa in the distance. ‘They will never dare to follow us there, and if they did they would never catch us.’

  ‘But my guns? My men?’

  ‘In war there is always danger,’ said Claros loftily.

  Hornblower’s answer was to turn to Longley.

  ‘Ride back at once,’ he said to the boy. ‘Halt the guns. Halt the convoy. Halt every man on the path. Nothing is to move a yard farther without orders from me.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Longley wheeled his horse round and clattered off; the boy had somewhere learned to ride well before coming to sea. Claros and his staff, Hornblower and Brown, all watched him go, and then turned back to face each other. The Spaniards could guess what were the orders that had been given him.

  ‘Not a gun or a man of mine will stir,’ said Hornblower, ‘until I see Colonel Rovira’s army on the plain there. Will you be good enough to send a message to him now?’

  Claros tugged at his long moustache and then gave the order to his staff; his junior officers argued sulkily with each other before one of them took the note written by the chief of staff and set off with it. Clearly no one relished the prospect of a ride of perhaps twenty miles under a hot sun in search of Rovira’s column.

  ‘It is nearly the hour for dinner,’ said Claros. ‘Will you have my men’s food served out to them, Captain?’

  Hornblower’s jaw dropped at that. He had thought nothing more could surprise him, and he was proved wrong. Claros’ tobacco-brown face gave no indication that he thought there was anything other than what was strictly ordinary in his assumption that his thousand men were to feed on the stores laboriously landed from the squadron. It was on the tip of Hornblower’s tongue to refuse pointblank, but he stopped to consider. He guessed that if they were not fed, Claros’ men would simply melt away in search of food, and there was still a faint chance that Rovira might arrive and the siege be taken in hand. For the sake of that chance, it was as well to make this concession and make the most of the few hours granted them before their presence should be discovered.

  ‘I will give orders for it,’ he said, and the dignified colonel’s expression showed no change at either demanding or receiving favours from the Englishman with whom he had just been on the verge of quarrelling.

  Soon sailors and Catalans were all of them eating heartily. Even the squadron of cavalry smelt food from afar, like vultures, and rode hastily back to join in the feast, leaving on
ly an unhappy half dozen to continue the watch over Rosas. Claros and his staff seated themselves in a group ministered to by orderlies. And as was to be expected, comida was followed by siesta – after a vast meal every Spaniard stretched himself in the shade which the shrub afforded, and snored, flat on his back, with a Peninsula disregard for the flies which buzzed over his open mouth.

  Hornblower neither ate nor slept. He dismounted and gave his horse over into Brown’s charge, and then hobbled up and down on his hill top looking down at Rosas, with his heart full of bitterness. He had written carefully to the admiral to explain the reason of his halt – carefully, because he did not want to belong to the type of officer who sees difficulties at every turn – and the answer had simply enraged him. Was it not possible, Leighton had asked in his reply, to attempt something against the fortress with the fifteen hundred men he had in hand? Where was Colonel Rovira? The tone of that question indicated that Hornblower was somehow at fault regarding Rovira’s non-arrival. Captain Hornblower must remember the need to work in the closest and most cordial co-operation with England’s allies. The squadron could not possibly continue to supply Rovira’s force with food for long; Hornblower must tactfully call Colonel Rovira’s attention to the need of drawing upon his own sources of supplies. It was highly important that the arrival of the British squadron should be signalised by a great success, but on no account was any operation to be undertaken which might imperil the safety of the landing party. Leighton’s letter was a completely futile piece of writing, having regard for the present facts, but a Court of Inquiry who knew nothing of them would consider it eminently sane and sensible.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Brown, suddenly. ‘The Froggies down there is on the move.’

  Startled, Hornblower looked down at Rosas. There were three serpents issuing out of the fortress – three long narrow columns of troops creeping out on to the plain, one each from the citadel, the village, and the Trinidad. A hoarse shout from the Spanish cavalry picket proclaimed that they had seen the same phenomenon; the little party left their post and rode headlong back to the scattered Spanish army. Hornblower went on staring for two more minutes; the columns showed no sign of ending, but wound on interminably out of the fortifications. Two were heading towards him, while the one from the citadel was taking a different route, off to his right, with the clear intention of cutting off the Spanish retreat to the mainland. Hornblower’s eye caught the flash of musket barrels in the sunlight; still the columns were winding out – there must be a thousand men at least in each. The Spanish information which had estimated the garrison’s strength at two thousand as a maximum must be as faulty as all the rest.

  Claros came clattering up with his staff to gaze out over the plain. He paused only for an instant to take in the significance of what he saw – every man with him pointed simultaneously to the outflanking column – and then he wheeled about and spurred back again. As he wheeled his eyes met Hornblower’s; they were expressionless as ever, but Hornblower knew what he intended. If he abandoned the convoy and marched his men with all haste for the mesa, he could just get away in time, and he was set upon it. Hornblower knew in that instant that there was not the least use appealing to him to cover the retreat of the convoy, even if the Catalans were steady enough to fight a rearguard action against greatly superior numbers.

  The safety of the landing party was dependent solely on its own exertions, and there was not a moment to be lost. Hornblower scrambled on to his horse – the heads of the French columns were well out on to the plain now, and some would be soon ascending the steep escarpment of the plateau – and dashed back after Claros. Then, as he neared the place where Major Laird had his marines already drawn up into line, he checked the pace of his weary horse to a sober trot. It would never do to display too much haste or anxiety. That would only unsteady the men.

  And he had a difficult problem to decide, too. The obvious best course was to abandon everything, guns, stores, and all, and march his men back to the ship headlong. The lives of trained seamen were too valuable to be lightly thrown away, and if he did as common sense directed he would have every man safely on board before the French column caught them up; in any matter-of-fact scale of relative values even a few seamen were worth more than ten twenty-four pounders, and their ammunition and whatever food stuffs had been landed. Yet in war the matter-of-fact frequently held only second place. A headlong flight to the ships, and abandonment of guns and stores, would depress the spirits of the men inordinately; a fighting retreat with next to no loss would raise them. He made up his mind as he halted his horse beside Major Laird.

  ‘We’ll have three thousand French on us in an hour, Laird,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll have to hold them back while we get the stores on board again.’

  Laird nodded. He was a tall red-faced Scot, red-haired and inclined to stoutness; his cocked hat was tilted back off his forehead and he mopped his face with a lilac-coloured silk handkerchief which clashed dreadfully in the sunlight with his red coat and sash.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘We’ll do that.’

  Hornblower spared a second to glance down the double line of marines, the homely brown faces under the shakos, and the white cross belts in Euclidean line. The disciplined composure the marines displayed was comforting and reassuring. He kicked his heels into the shaggy sides of his horse and trotted down the path. Here came Longley, tearing back on his pony.

  ‘Ride to the beach, Longley. Tell the admiral it is necessary to re-embark the men and stores, and ask that all the boats of the squadron should be ready to take us off.’

  A column of Spaniards was already hurrying off in disorderly fashion up a cross path towards the mainland. A Spanish petty officer was collecting the remainder of his men; a British petty officer was looking on in puzzled fashion as they unhitched a team of horses from one of the guns and began to lead them away.

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Hornblower, riding up in the nick of time and delving hurriedly into his mind for adequate Spanish. ‘We shall keep those horses. Here, Sheldon, Drake, bring those horses back. Brown, ride on. Tell every officer that the Spaniards can go, but they’re not to take a mule or horse with them.’

  There were sullen looks among the Spaniards. In a country in whose every corner war had raged bitterly for two years draught and pack animals were of the utmost imaginable value. The meanest Spanish peasant in the ranks knew it, knew that the loss of those animals would mean an empty belly for him in some new campaign a month off. But the British sailors were equally determined. They handled their pistols and cutlasses with every intention of using them if necessary, and the Spaniards remembered the French column which was marching to cut off their retreat. All down the path they abandoned the animals and drew off, sulkily, while Hornblower kicked his weary horse into renewed activity, as he rode along, turning back towards the beach all the guns and material which had been dragged so far with such exertion. He reached the head of the steep gully and rode down it to the beach. On that tranquil afternoon the sea was blue and smooth like enamel; far out the squadron rode peacefully at anchor, and below him lay the golden sand of the beach, while over the enamelled surface plied the boats of the squadron like huge beetles. All round him grasshoppers were singing deafeningly. The beach party was already hard at work re-embarking the beef barrels and bread bags piled there. He could safely leave this part of the work to Cavendish, and he turned back again and rode up the gully. At the top a party of seamen arrived with the first of the mule train. He left orders for the animals to be brought back to the guns as soon as their loads were taken off, and rode on.

  The nearest gun was within half a mile of the gully, men and horses labouring to drag it up the path – for this half mile the land sloped away fairly steeply inland from the top of the cliffs. The men gave him a cheer, and he waved his hand and tried to sit his horse as if he were an accomplished rider; it was comforting to think that Brown behind him was an even worse horseman, so that the contrast might help.
Then a distant pop-pop-popping, its tone unnatural in the heated air, told him that Laird’s rearguard was in action.

  He rode hastily along the path, Brown and Longley at his heels, past the other gun teams labouring on the steep hillsides, towards the firing. At one point along the path there was a long line of cannon-balls, lying where the Spanish carrying party had dropped them when the alarm came. Those would have to be lost – there was no chance at all of getting them back to the ship. He arrived unexpectedly at the scene of the firing. Here the country was a succession of short steep ups and downs, the rocky soil covered with a dense undergrowth, amid which grasshoppers were still singing loudly through the musketry. Laird had his men strung out along the summit of one of the major ridges; Hornblower came upon him standing on a lump of rock overlooking the path, the lilac handkerchief still in one hand and his sword in the other, and muskets banging away all along the ridge on either side of him. He had the air of a man completely enjoying himself, and he looked down at Hornblower with the irritation of a man disturbed while composing a work of art.

  ‘All well?’ said Hornblower.

  ‘Aye,’ said Laird, and then, grudgingly, ‘come up and see for yourself.’

  Hornblower got off his horse and scrambled up the rock, balancing precariously on its slippery summit beside the major.

  ‘Ye’ll observe,’ said Laird, academically, and rolling his r’s, ‘the formed troops must keep to the paths in this terrain. Moreover, detached skirmishers lose their sense of direction rapidly, and this thorny vegetation is admirably adapted to hinder free movement.’

  From the rock Hornblower looked down upon a sea of green – the nearly impenetrable maquis which clothes the stony hillsides of Mediterranean Spain – through which the red coats of the marines, shoulder deep in the scrub, were hardly visible. Here and there puffs of white smoke, drifting over the surface, marked where recently there had been firing. On the opposite hillside there were other puffs of smoke and faint stirrings among the undergrowth. Hornblower saw white faces, and blue coats, and sometimes even white breeches over there where the French struggled through the thorny scrub. Much farther back he could see part of a column of troops waiting on a section of the path. Two or three musket bullets came whizzing through the air close over his head.