A whiff of wood smoke came to his nostrils, sharply distinct from the acrid powder smoke which was drifting by from the guns. They had lit the furnaces for heating shot, but the commandant would be a fool if he allowed his guns to fire red-hot shot in these conditions. French ships were as inflammable as English ones, and just as likely to be hit in a close battle like this. Then his grip tightened on the stonework of the parapet, and he stared and stared again with aching eyes towards what had attracted his notice. It was the tiniest, most subdued little red glow in the distance. The English had brought in fire ships in the wake of their fighting squadron. A squadron at anchor like this was the best possible target for a fire ship, and Martin had planned his attack well in sending in his ships of the line first to clear away guard boats and beat down the French fire and occupy the attention of the crews. The red glow suddenly increased, grew brighter and brighter still, revealing the hull and masts and rigging of a small brig; still brighter it grew as the few daring spirits who remained on board flung open hatches and gun-ports to increase the draught. The tongues of flame which soared up were visible even to Hornblower on the ramparts, and they revealed to him, too, the form of the Turenne alongside her – the one French ship which had emerged from the previous battle with all her masts. Whoever the young officer in command of the fire ship might be, he was a man with a cool head and determined will, thus to select the most profitable target of all.
Hornblower saw points of fire begin to ascend the rigging of the Turenne until she was outlined in red like some setpiece in a firework display. Sudden jets of flame showed where powder charges on her deck were taking fire; and then the whole set-piece suddenly swung round and began to drift before the gentle wind as the burnt cables gave way. A mast fell in an upward torrent of sparks, strangely reflected in the black water all round. As once the sparkle of gunfire in the other French ships began to die away as the crews were called from their guns to deal with the drifting menace, and a slow movement of the shadowy forms lit by the flames revealed that their cables had been cut by officers terrified of death by fire.
Then suddenly Hornblower’s attention was distracted to a point closer in to shore, where the abandoned wreck of the Sutherland lay beached. There, too, a red glow could be seen, growing and spreading momentarily. Some daring party from the British squadron had boarded her and set her on fire, too, determined not to leave even so poor a trophy in the hands of the French. Farther out in the bay three red dots of light were soaring upwards slowly, and Hornblower gulped in sudden nervousness lest an English ship should have caught fire as well, but he realised next moment that it was only a signal – three vertical red lanterns – which was apparently the prearranged recall, for with their appearance the firing abruptly ceased. The blazing wrecks lit up now the whole of this corner of the bay with a lurid red in whose light could be distinctly seen the other French ships, drifting without masts or anchors towards the shore. Next came a blinding flash and a stunning explosion as the magazine of the Turenne took fire. For several seconds after the twenty tons of gunpowder had exploded Hornblower’s eyes could not see nor his mind think; the blast of it had shaken him, like a child in the hands of an angry nurse, even where he stood.
He became aware that daylight was creeping into the bay, revealing the ramparts of Rosas in hard outlines, and dulling the flames from the wreck of the Sutherland. Far out in the bay, already beyond gunshot of the fortress, the five British ships of the line were standing out to sea in their rigid line-ahead. There was something strange about the appearance of the Pluto; it was only at his second glance that Hornblower realised that she had lost her main topmast – clear proof that one French shot at least had done damage. The other ships revealed no sign of having received any injury during one of the best-managed affairs in the long history of the British Navy. Hornblower tore his gaze from his vanishing friends to study the field of battle. Of the Turenne and the fire ship there was no sign at all; of the Sutherland there only remained a few blackened timbers emerging from the water, with a wisp of smoke suspended above them. Two ships of the line were on the rocks to the westward of the fortress, and French seamanship would never make them seaworthy again. Only the three-decker was left, battered and mastless, swinging to the anchor which had checked her on the very edge of the surf. The next easterly gale would see her, too, flung ashore and useless. The British Mediterranean fleet would in the future have to dissipate none of its energies in a blockade of Rosas.
Here came General Vidal, the governor of the fortress, making his rounds with his staff at his heels, and just in time to save Hornblower from falling into a passion of despair at watching the English squadron disappear over the horizon.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded the General, checking at the sight of him. Under the sternness of his expression could be read the kindly pity which Hornblower had noticed in the faces of all his enemies when they began to suspect that a firing party awaited him.
‘The officer of the grand guard allowed me to come up here,’ explained Hornblower in his halting French. ‘I gave him my parole of honour not to try to escape. I will withdraw it again now, if you please.’
‘He had no business to accept it, in any case,’ snapped the General, but with that fateful kindliness still apparent. ‘You wanted to see the battle, I suppose?’
‘Yes, General.’
‘A fine piece of work your companions have done.’ The General shook his head sadly. ‘It will not make the government in Paris feel any better disposed towards you, I fear, Captain.’
Hornblower shrugged his shoulders; he had already caught the infection of that gesture during his few days’ sojourn among Frenchmen. He noted, with a lack of personal interest which seemed odd to him even then, that this was the first time that the Governor had hinted openly at danger threatening him from Paris.
‘I have done nothing to make me afraid,’ he said.
‘No, no, of course not,’ said the Governor hastily and out of countenance, like a parent denying to a child that a prospective dose of medicine would be unpleasant.
He looked round for some way of changing the subject, and fortunate chance brought one. From far below in the bowels of the fortress came a muffled sound of cheering – English cheers, not Italian screeches.
‘That must be those men of yours, Captain,’ said the General, smiling again. ‘I fancy the new prisoner must have told them by now the story of last night’s affair.’
‘The new prisoner?’ demanded Hornblower.
‘Yes, indeed. A man who fell overboard from the admiral’s ship – the Pluto, is it not? – and had to swim ashore. Ah, I suspected you would be interested, Captain. Yes, off you go and talk to him. Here, Dupont, take charge of the captain and escort him to the prison.’
Hornblower could hardly spare the time in which to thank his captor, so eager was he to interview the new arrival and hear what he had to say. Two weeks as a prisoner had already had their effect in giving him a thirst for news. He ran down the ramp, Dupont puffing beside him, across the cobbled court, in through the door which a sentry opened for him at a gesture from his escort, down the dark stairway to the iron-studded door where stood two sentries on duty. With a great clattering of keys the doors were opened for him and he walked into the room.
It was a wide, low room – a disused storeroom, in fact – lit and ventilated only by a few heavily barred apertures opening into the fortress ditch. It stank of closely confined humanity and it was at present filled with a babel of sound as what was left of the crew of the Sutherland plied questions at someone hidden in the middle of the crowd. At Hornblower’s entrance the crowd fell apart and the new prisoner came forward; he was naked save for his duck trousers and a long pigtail hung down his back.
‘Who are you?’ demanded Hornblower.
‘Phillips, sir. Maintopman in the Pluto.’
His honest blue eyes met Hornblower’s gaze without a sign of flinching. Hornblower could guess that he was neither a desert
er nor a spy – he had borne both possibilities in mind.
‘How did you come here?’
‘We was settin’ sail, sir, to beat out o’ the bay. We’d just seen the old Sutherland take fire, an’ Cap’n Elliott he says to us, he says, sir, “Now’s the time, my lads. Top’sls and to’gar’ns.” So up we went aloft, sir, an’ I’d just taken the earring o’ the main to’garn’n when down came the mast, sir, an’ I was pitched off into the water. So was a lot o’ my mates, sir, but just then the Frenchy which was burnin’ blew up, an’ I think the wreckage killed a lot of ’em, sir, ’cos I found I was alone, an’ Pluto was gone away, an’ so I swum for the shore, an’ there was a lot of Frenchies what I think had swum from the burning Frenchy an’ they took me to some sojers an’ the sojers brought me here, sir. There was a orficer what arst me questions – it’d ’a made you laugh, sir, to hear him trying to speak English – but I wasn’t sayin’ nothin’, sir. An’ when they see that they puts me in here along with the others, sir. I was just telling ’em about the fight, sir. There was the old Pluto, an’ Caligula, sir, an’—’
‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Hornblower, shortly. ‘I saw that Pluto had lost her main topmast. Was she knocked about much?’
‘Lor’ bless you, sir, no, sir. We hadn’t had half a dozen shot come aboard, an’ they didn’t do no damage, barrin’ the one that wounded the Admiral.’
‘The Admiral!’ Hornblower reeled a little as he stood, as though he had been struck. ‘Admiral Leighton, d’you mean?’
‘Admiral Leighton, sir.’
‘Was – was he badly hurt?’
‘I dunno, sir. I didn’t see it meself, o’ course, sir, seein’ as how I was on the main deck at the time. Sailmaker’s mate, he told me, sir, that the Admiral had been hit by a splinter. Cooper’s mate told him, sir, what helped to carry him below.’
Hornblower could say no more for the present. He could only stare at the kindly stupid face of the sailor before him. Yet even in that moment he could take note of the fact that the sailor was not in the least moved by the wounding of his Admiral. Nelson’s death had put the whole fleet into mourning, and he knew of half a dozen other flag officers whose death or whose wounding would have brought tears into the eyes of the men serving under him. If it had been one of those, the man would have told of the accident to him before mentioning his own misadventures. Hornblower had known before that Leighton was not beloved by his officers, and here was a clear proof that he was not beloved by his men either. But perhaps Barbara had loved him. She had at least married him. Hornblower forced himself to speak, to bear himself naturally.
‘That will do,’ he said, curtly, and then looked round to catch his coxswain’s eye. ‘Anything to report, Brown?’
‘No, sir. All well, sir.’
Hornblower rapped on the door behind him to be let out of prison, to be conducted by his guard back to his room again, where he could walk up and down, three steps each way, his brain seething like a pot on a fire. He only knew enough to unsettle him, to make him anxious. Leighton had been wounded, but that did not mean that he would die. A splinter wound – that might mean much or little. Yet he had been carried below. No admiral would have allowed that, if he had been able to resist – not in the heat of a fight, at any rate. His face might be lacerated or his belly torn open – Hornblower, shuddering, shook his mind free from the memories of all the horrible wounds he had seen received on shipboard during twenty years’ service. But, coldbloodedly, it was an even chance that Leighton would die – Hornblower had signed too many casualty lists to be unaware of the chances of a wounded man’s recovery.
If Leighton were to die, Barbara would be free again. But what had that to do with him, a married man – a married man whose wife was pregnant? She would be no nearer to him, not while Maria lived. And yet it assuaged his jealousy to think of her as a widow. But then perhaps she would marry again, and he would have to go once more through all the torment he had endured when he had first heard of her marriage to Leighton. In that case he would rather Leighton lived – a cripple, perhaps mutilated or impotent; the implications of that train of thought drove him into a paroxysm of too-rapid thinking from which he only emerged after a desperate struggle for sanity.
In the cold reaction which followed he sneered at himself for a fool. He was the prisoner of a man whose empire extended from the Baltic to Gibraltar. He told himself he would be an old man, that his child and Maria’s would be grown up before he regained his liberty. And then with a sudden shock he remembered that he might soon be dead – shot for violation of the laws of war. Strange how he could forget that possibility. Sneering, he told himself that he had a coward’s mind which could leave the imminence of death out of its calculations because the possibility was too monstrous to bear contemplation.
There was something else he had not reckoned upon lately, too. If Bonaparte did not have him shot, if he regained his freedom, even then he still had to run the gauntlet of a court martial for the loss of the Sutherland. A court martial might decree for him death or disgrace or ruin; the British public would not hear lightly of a British ship of the line surrendering, however great the odds against her. He would have liked to ask Phillips, the seaman from the Pluto, about what had been said in the fleet regarding the Sutherland’s action, whether the general verdict had been one of approval or not. But of course it would be impossible to ask; no captain could ask a seaman what the fleet thought of him, even if there was a chance of hearing the truth – which, too, was doubtful. He was compassed about with uncertainties – the uncertainties of his imprisonment, of the possibility of his trial by the French, of his future court martial, of Leighton’s wound. There was even an uncertainty regarding Maria; she was pregnant – would the child be a girl or a boy, would he ever see it, would anyone raise a finger to help her, would she be able to educate the child properly without his supervision?
Once more the misery of imprisonment was borne in upon him. He grew sick with longing for his liberty, for his freedom, for Barbara and for Maria.
III
Hornblower was walking next day upon the ramparts again; the sentries with their loaded muskets stood one each end of the sector allotted to him, and the subaltern allotted to guard him sat discreetly against the parapet so as not to break in upon the thoughts which preoccupied him. But he was too tired to think much now – all day and nearly all night yesterday he had paced his room, three paces up and three paces back, with his mind in a turmoil. Exhaustion was saving him now, and he could think no more.
He welcomed as a distraction a bustle at the main gate, the turning out of the guard, the opening of the gate, and the jingling entrance of a coach drawn by six fine horses. He stood and watched the proceedings with all the interest of a captive. There was an escort of fifty mounted men in the cocked hats and blue-and-red uniforms of Bonaparte’s gendarmerie, coachmen and servants on the box, an officer dismounting hurriedly to open the door. Clearly the new arrival must be a man of importance. Hornblower experienced a faint feeling of disappointment when there climbed out of the coach not a Marshal with plumes and feathers, but just another officer of gendarmerie. A youngish man with a bullet black head, which he revealed as he held his cocked hat in his hand while stooping to descend; the star of the Legion of Honour on his breast; high black boots with spurs. Hornblower wondered idly why a colonel of gendarmerie who was obviously not crippled should arrive in a coach instead of on horseback. He watched him go clinking across the courtyard to the Governor’s headquarters.
Hornblower’s walk was nearly finished when one of the young French aides-de-camp of the Governor approached him on the ramparts and saluted.
‘His Excellency sends you his compliments, sir, and he would be glad if you could spare him a few minutes of your time as soon as it is convenient to you.’
Addressed to a prisoner, as Hornblower told himself bitterly, these words might as well have been ‘Come at once.’
‘I will come now, with the greatest of pl
easure,’ said Hornblower, maintaining the solemn farce.
Down in the Governor’s office the colonel of gendarmerie was standing conversing alone with His Excellency; the Governor’s expression was sad.
‘I have the honour of presenting to you, Captain,’ he said, turning, ‘Colonel Jean-Baptiste Caillard, Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour, and one of His Imperial Majesty’s personal aides-de-camp. Colonel, this is Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy.’
The Governor was clearly worried and upset. His hands were fluttering and he stammered a little as he spoke, and he made a pitiful muddle of his attempt on the aspirates of Hornblower’s name. Hornblower bowed, but as the colonel remained unbending he stiffened to attention. He could recognise that type of man at once – the servant of a tyrant, and in close personal association with him, modelling his conduct not on the tyrant’s, but on what he fancied should be the correct behaviour of a tyrant, far out-Heroding Herod in arbitrariness and cruelty. It might be merely a pose – the man might be a kind husband and the loving father of a family – but it was a pose which might have unpleasant results for anyone in his power. His victims would suffer in his attempt to prove, to himself as well as to others, that he could be more stern, more unrelenting – and therefore naturally more, able – than the man who employed him.
Caillard ran a cold eye over Hornblower’s appearance.
‘What is he doing with that sword at his side?’ he asked of the Governor.
Admiral Hornblower Page 2