‘None that I could see in Memel.’
That delirious patient must be very violent for his shrieks to reach Hornblower’s ears at this distance against the wind. Hornblower heard them again. Was it possible for one man to make all that noise? It sounded more like a muffled chorus to Hornblower. Hornblower felt a sudden wave of suspicion surging up within him. The white-trousered figure on the Maggie Jones’s poop was altogether too glib, too professional in his talk. A naval officer might possibly discuss the chances of war in the Baltic as coldly as this man was doing, but a merchant captain would put more feeling in his words. And more than one man was making that noise in her forecastle. The captain could easily have offered his information about the Czar’s meeting with Bernadotte as a red herring to distract Hornblower’s attention from the cries below deck. Something was wrong.
‘Captain Bush,’ said Hornblower, ‘send a boat with a boarding-party over to that ship.’
‘Sir!’ protested Bush, wildly. ‘Sir – she has smallpox on board – sir! Aye aye, sir.’
Bush’s protests died an uneasy death at the look on Hornblower’s face. Bush told himself that Hornblower knew as well as he did the frightful possibilities of the introduction of smallpox into Nonsuch. Hornblower knew the chances he was taking. And one more look at Hornblower’s face told Bush that the decision had not been an easy one.
Hornblower put the trumpet to his lips again.
‘I’m sending a boat to you,’ he shouted. It was hard at twenty yards’ distance to detect any change in the manner of the man he was addressing, especially when hampered with a speaking-trumpet, but Hornblower thought he could see the captain start a little. Certainly there was a decided pause before he answered.
‘As you wish, sir. I have warned you of smallpox. Could you send a surgeon and medicines?’
That was exactly what he should have said. But all the same, there was that suspicious pause before answering, as if the man had been taken by surprise and had searched round in his mind for the best reply to make. Bush was standing by, with misery in his face, hoping that Hornblower would countermand his order, but Hornblower made no sign. Under the orders of the boatswain the whaler rose to the pull of the tackles, was swayed outboard, and dropped into the sea. A midshipman and a boat’s crew dropped down into her, sulkily. They would have gone cheerfully to board an armed enemy, but the thought of a loathsome disease unmanned them.
‘Push off,’ ordered the officer of the watch, after a last glance at Hornblower. The whaler danced over the waves towards the Maggie Jones, and then Hornblower saw the captain dash his speaking-trumpet to the deck and look round wildly as though for some means of escape.
‘Stay hove-to, or I’ll sink you,’ roared Hornblower, and with a gesture of despair the captain stood still, drooping in defeat.
The whaler hooked on to the Maggie Jones’s main-chains and the midshipman led his party on to the decks with a rush. There was no sign of any opposition offered, but as the seamen ran aft there was the sudden pop of a pistol, and Hornblower saw the midshipman bending over the writhing, white-trousered body of the captain. He found himself taking an oath that he would break that midshipman, court martial him, ruin him, and have him begging his bread in the gutter if he had want only killed the captain. Hornblower’s hunger and thirst for news, for facts, for information, was so intense that the thought of the captain escaping him by death roused him to ferocious bitterness.
‘Why the devil didn’t I go myself?’ he demanded of no one in particular. ‘Captain Bush, I’ll be obliged if you’ll have my barge called away.”
‘But the smallpox, sir—’
‘Smallpox be damned. And there’s none on board that ship.’
The midshipman’s voice came across the water to them.
‘Nonsuch ahoy! She’s a prize. Taken yesterday by a French privateer.’
‘Who’s that captain I was speaking to?’ demanded Hornblower.
‘A renegade Englishman, sir. He shot himself as we came on board.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘Mr Hurst,’ said Bush, ‘send the surgeon over. I’ll give him one minute to get his gear together. I want that renegade’s life saved so that we can see how he looks at a yardarm.’
‘Send him in my barge,’ said Hornblower, and then, through the speaking-trumpet, ‘Send the prisoners and the ship’s officers over to me.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘And now I’ll get some clothes on, by God,’ said Hornblower; he had only just realised that he had been standing naked on the quarterdeck for an hour or more – if he had obeyed his first impulse and gone over in his barge he would have boarded the Maggie Jones without a stitch on.
The captain and the two mates were ushered down into Hornblower’s cabin, where he and Bush questioned them eagerly, the chart of the Baltic spread out before him.
‘We heard that renegade tell you the truth, sir,’ said the captain. ‘We were ten days out from Memel, bound for the Belt, when he pounced on us yesterday – big ship-rigged privateer, ten guns a side, flush-decked. Name Blanchefleur, whatever way you say it. What the Frogs call a corvette. French colours. They put a prize crew on board under that renegade – Clarke’s his name, sir – an’ I think we were headed for Kiel when you caught us. They shut us up in the lazarette. God, how we yelled, hoping you’d hear us.’
‘We heard you,’ said Bush.
‘How were things at Memel when you left?’ demanded Hornblower.
The captain’s face wrinkled; if he had been French he would have shrugged his shoulders.
‘The same as ever. Russian ports are still closed to us, but they’ll give anyone a licence to trade who asks for it. It’s the same with the Swedes on the other side.’
‘What about war between Bonaparte and Russia?’
This time the tangle of doubt really made the captain shrug.
‘Everyone’s talking about it, but nothing definite yet. Soldiers everywhere. If Boney really fights ’em he’ll find ’em as ready as Russians ever are.’
‘Do you think he will?’
‘I wish you’d tell me, sir. I don’t know. But it was true what Clarke told you, sir. The Czar and Bernadotte are meeting soon. Perhaps you can guess what that means. It means nothing to a plain man like me, sir. There have been so many of these meetings and conferences and congresses.’
So there it was; Sweden and Russia were still in the equivocal position of being nominal enemies of England and nominal allies of Bonaparte, pretending to make war, pretending to be at peace, half belligerent, half neutral, in the strange manner which seemed to have become fashionable nowadays. It was still doubtful whether Bonaparte would take the tremendous step of waging war on Russia. No one could analyse Bonaparte’s motives. One might think that he would do better for himself by turning all his vast resources towards finishing off the war in Spain and endeavouring to strike down England before attempting the conquest of the East; but on the other hand a swift decisive blow at Russia might free him from the menace of a powerful and doubtfully friendly nation at his back. Bonaparte had conquered so often; he had struck down every nation in Europe – except England – and it hardly seemed likely that Russia could withstand the impact of his massed forces. With Russia beaten he would have no enemies left on the mainland at all. There would only be England left to oppose him, single-handed. It was comforting that England had not taken active measures in support of Finland when Russia attacked her, all the same. That made a working alliance with Russia far more practicable now.
‘Now tell me more about this Blanchefleur,’ said Hornblower, bending over the chart.
‘She nabbed us off Rügen, sir. Sassnitz bore so’west, eight miles. You see, sir—’
Hornblower listened to the explanation with attention. A twenty-gun corvette under a good French captain was a serious menace loose in the Baltic. With the trade beginning to move on the melting of the ice it would be his first duty to capture
her or drive her into port and blockade her. A ship of that force would be able to put up a good fight even against one of his sloops. He hoped he could entrap her, for she would be far too fast for Nonsuch to overhaul her in a stern chase. She was sending her prizes into Kiel, for there they could dispose of the prisoners, pick up a French crew, and start the hazardous voyage round Denmark to the west – Bonaparte needed naval stores, with ships of war building in every port from Hamburg to Trieste.
‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I’ll not detain you longer. Captain Bush, we’ll talk to the prisoners next.’
But there was little to learn from the seamen of the captured prize crew, even though they were brought in separately for questioning. Four of them were Frenchmen; Hornblower conducted his own examination of them, with Bush looking on admiringly. Bush had already succeeded in forgetting all the little French he had so painfully learned during his enforced sojourn in France. Two were Danes, and two were Germans; Mr Braun was called in to interpret while they were questioned. They were all experienced seamen, and as far as Hornblower could gather they had all been driven to take service in the Blanchefleur sooner than be conscripted into Bonaparte’s navy or army. Even though they were faced with what might well be a lifetime in an English prison the Frenchmen refused any offer to serve in the British Navy, but the others accepted immediately Braun put the suggestion to them. Bush rubbed his hands at acquiring four prime seamen in this fashion to help fill his chronically undermanned ships. They had picked up a little French in the Blanchefleur, and they would soon pick up enough English in the Nonsuch or the Lotus; certainly they would under the stimulus of a rope’s end handled by an experienced petty officer.
‘Take ’em away and read ’em in, Mi Hurst,’ said Bush, rubbing his hands again. ‘Now, sir, shall we take a look at that damned renegade Englishman?’
Clarke was lying on the maindeck of the Nonsuch, to which he had been hoisted from the boat by a tackle at the yardarm, and the surgeon was still bending over him. He had tried to blow out his brains, but he had only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw. There was blood on his blue coat and on his white trousers, and his whole head was swathed in bandages, and he lay tossing in agony on the canvas sheet in which he had been hoisted. Hornblower peered down at him. The features he could see, chalk white so that the tan looked like a coat of dirt, were pinched and refined and weak, a thin nose and hollow cheeks, brown eyes like a woman’s, with scanty sandy eyebrows above them. What little hair Hornblower could see was scanty and sandy too. Hornblower wondered what combination of circumstances could have led him into betraying his country and taking service with Bonaparte. Hatred of imprisonment, perhaps – Hornblower had known what it was to be a prisoner, in Ferrol and Rosas and in France. Yet that over-refined face did not seem to indicate the sort of personality that would fret itself to pieces in confinement. It might have been a woman, perhaps, who had driven him or led him to this, or he might be a deserter from the Navy who had fled to escape punishment – it would be interesting to see if his back was scarred with the cat-o’-nine-tails. He might perhaps be an Irishman, one of those fanatics who in their desire to hurt England refused to see that the worst England had ever done to Ireland would be nothing compared with what Bonaparte would do to her if she were once in his power.
Whatever might be the case, he was a man of ability and quick wit. As soon as he had seen that Lotus had cut him off from escape to the mainland he had resolutely taken the only course that gave him any chance of safety. He had steered the Maggie Jones as innocently as kiss-your-hand up to Nonsuch; that suggestion of smallpox had been an ingenious one, and his conversation by speaking-trumpet had been very nearly natural.
‘Is he going to live?’ asked Bush of the surgeon.
‘No, sir. The mandible is extensively comminuted on both sides – I mean his jaw is shattered, sir. There is some splintering of the maxilla as well, and his tongue – the whole glossopharyngeal region, in fact – is in rags. The haemorrhage may prove fatal – in other words the man may bleed to death, although I do not think he will, now. But I do not think anything on earth can stop mortification – gangrene, in other words, sir – which in this area will prove immediately fatal. In any event the man will die of inanition, of hunger and thirst that is to say, even if we could keep him alive for a while by injections per rectum.’
It was ghoulish to smile at the surgeon’s pomposity, to make the inevitable light speech.
‘It sounds as if nothing could save him, then.’
It was a human life they were discussing.
‘We must hang him, sir, before he dies,’ said Bush, turning to Hornblower. ‘We can convene a court martial—’
‘He cannot defend himself,’ replied Hornblower.
Bush spread his hands in a gesticulation which for him was vastly eloquent.
‘What defence has he to offer, sir? We have all the evidence we need. The prisoners have supplied it apart from the obvious facts.’
‘He might be able to rebut the evidence if he could speak,’ said Hornblower. It was an absurd thing to say. There could be no possible doubt of Clarke’s guilt – his attempt at suicide proved it even if nothing else did; but Hornblower knew perfectly well that he was quite incapable of hanging a man who was physically unable to make any defence.
‘He’ll slip through our fingers if we wait, sir.’
‘Then let him.’
‘But the example to the men, sir—’
‘No, no, no,’ flared Hornblower. ‘What sort of example would it be to the men to hang a dying man – a man who would not know what was being done to him, for that matter?’
It was horrible to see the faint play of expression in Bush’s face. Bush was a kindly man, a good brother to his sisters and a good son to his mother, and yet there was that hint of the lust of cruelty, the desire for a hanging. No, that was not quite fair. What Bush lusted for was revenge – revenge on a traitor who had borne arms against their common country.
‘It would teach the men not to desert, sir,’ said Bush, still feebly raising arguments. Hornblower knew – he had twenty years of experience – how every British captain was plagued by desertion, and spent half his waking hours wondering first how to find men and second how to retain them.
‘It might,’ said Hornblower, ‘but I doubt it very much.’
He could not imagine any good being done, and he certainly could picture the harm, if the men were forced to witness a helpless man, one who could not even stand on his feet, being noosed about the neck and swung up to the yardarm.
Bush still hankered for blood. Even though he had no more to say, there was still a look in his face, there were still protests trembling on his lips.
‘Thank you, Captain Bush,’ said Hornblower. ‘My mind is made up.’
Bush did not know, and might never learn, that mere revenge, objectless, retaliatory, was always stale and unprofitable.
VIII
The Blanchefleur would most likely still be hovering round the island of Rügen. Cape Arcona would be a profitable haunt – shipping coming down the Baltic from Russian and Finnish ports would make a landfall there, to be easily snapped up, hemmed in between the land and the two-fathom shoal of the Adlergrund. She would not know of the arrival of a British squadron, nor guess that the immediate recapture of the Maggie Jones had so quickly revealed her presence here.
‘I think that is all perfectly plain, gentlemen?’ said Hornblower, looking round his cabin at his assembled captains.
There was a murmur of assent. Vickery of the Lotus and Cole of the Raven were looking grimly expectant. Each of them was hoping that it would be his ship that would encounter the Blanchefleur – a successful single-ship action against a vessel of so nearly equal force would be the quickest way to be promoted captain from commander. Vickery was young and ardent – it was he who had commanded the boats at the cutting-out of the Sevres – and Cole was grey-headed and bent. Mound, captain of the Harvey, and Duncan, captain of th
e Moth, were both of them young lieutenants; Freeman, of the cutter Clam, swarthy and with long black hair like a gypsy, was of a different type; it would be less surprising to hear he was captain of a smuggling craft than captain of a King’s ship. It was Duncan who asked the next question.
‘If you please, sir, is Swedish Pomerania neutral?’
‘Whitehall would be glad to know the answer to that question, Mr Duncan,’ said Hornblower, with a grin. He wanted to appear stern and aloof, but it was not easy with these pleasant boys.
They grinned back at him; it was with a curious pang that Hornblower realised that his subordinates were already fond of him. He thought, guiltily, that if they only knew all the truth about him they might not like him so much.
‘Any other questions, gentlemen? No? Then you can return to your ships and take your stations for the night.’
At dawn when Hornblower came on deck there was a thin fog over the surface of the sea; with the dropping of the westerly wind the cold water flowing out from the melting ice-packs of the Gulf of Finland had an opportunity of cooling the warm damp air and condensing its moisture into a cloud.
‘It could be thicker, sir, but not much,’ grumbled Bush. The foremast was visible from the quarterdeck, but not the bowsprit. There was only a faint breeze from the north, and the Nonsuch, creeping along before it, was very silent, pitching hardly at all on the smooth sea, with a rattle of blocks and cordage.
‘I took a cast with the deep-sea lead at six bells, sir,’ reported Montgomery. ‘Ninety-one fathoms. Grey mud. That’ll be the Arcona deep, sir.’
‘Very good, Mr Montgomery,’ said Bush. Hornblower was nearly sure that Bush’s curt manner to his lieutenants was modelled on the manner Hornblower used to employ towards him when he was first lieutenant.
‘Nosing our way about with the lead,’ said Bush, disgustedly. ‘We might as well be a Dogger Bank trawler. And you remember what the prisoners said about the Blanchefleur, sir? They have pilots on board who know these waters like the palms of their hands.’
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