Admiral Hornblower

by C. S. Forester

  ‘Silence, there!’ he roared. ‘You midshipman, there, can’t you keep your men under control? Mark their names for punishment, and I’ll mention yours to Mr Sefton.’

  Abashed, the seamen formed up quietly. Here came the punts, gliding like fate along the silent pool, towed by working parties scrambling along the bank.

  ‘Orders, My Lord?’ asked Sefton.

  Hornblower glanced finally round the terrain before issuing them. The sun was long past its zenith as eager men clambered up the trees to fix the tackles; soon the mortar hung dangling from a stout limb while the mortar bed was hoisted out and settled in a smooth spot, the gunner fussing over it with a spirit level to make sure it was horizontal. Then, with violent manual labour, the mortar was swung over and finally heaved up into position, and the gunner drove the keys through the eye-bolts.

  ‘Shall I open fire, My Lord?’ asked Sefton.

  Hornblower looked over at the distant seam in the face of the cliff across the river. The pirates there would be watching them. Had they recognised this squat object, inconsiderable in size, undistinguished in shape, which meant death to them? They might well not know what it was; they were probably peering over the parapet trying to make out what it was that had occupied the attention of so considerable a body of men.

  ‘What’s your elevation, gunner?’

  ‘Sixty degrees, sir – My Lord.’

  ‘Try a shot with a fifteen-second fuse.’

  The gunner went carefully through the process of loading, measuring the powder charge and wadding it down into the chamber, clearing the touch-hole with the priming iron and then filling it with fine-grain powder from the horn. He took his bradawl and drove it carefully into the wooden stem of the fuse at the selected point – these were very new-fangled fuses, graduated with ink lines to mark the time of burning – and screwed it into the shell. He lowered the shell down upon the wad.

  ‘Linstocks,’ he said.

  Someone had been chipping away with flint and steel to catch a spark upon the slow match. He transferred the glow to a second linstock which he handed to the gunner. The gunner, stooping, checked the pointing of the weapon.

  ‘Fuse!’ he said. His assistant touched his linstock down, and the fuse spluttered. Then the gunner thrust his glowing match upon the touch-hole. A roar and a billow of powder smoke.

  Standing far back from the mortar Hornblower already had his face turned to the sky to track the shell in its flight. Against that light blue there was nothing to be seen – no, there at the height of the trajectory there was a brief black streak, instantly invisible again. A further wait; an inevitable thought that the fuse had failed, and then a distant explosion and a fountain of smoke, down at the base of the cliff somewhat to the right of the cave. There was a groan from the watching seamen.

  ‘Silence, there!’ bellowed Sefton.

  ‘Try again, gunner,’ said Hornblower.

  The mortar was trained round a trifle on its bed. Its bore was sponged out and when the charge had been put in the gunner took a gill measure from his pocket and added a measure of powder to the charge. He pierced the fuse again, lowered the shell into the bore, gave his final order, and fired. A wait; and then a bold puff of smoke hung in the air, seemingly right in line with the seam in the cliff. The wretched people there were watching their fate creeping up on them.

  ‘Fuse a little short,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘Range short, I fancy, My Lord,’ said the gunner.

  At the next shot there was a cloud of dust and a small avalanche from the cliff face high above the seam, and instantly afterwards the burst of the shell on the ground at the near edge of the river where it had fallen.

  ‘Better,’ said Hornblower. He had seen the principles of ranging with a mortar – a huge thirteen-inch one – at the siege of Riga nearly twenty years before.

  Two more shots, both wasted – the shells exploded at the top of their trajectory, high, high up. Apparently those new-fangled fuses were not quite reliable. Fountains spouted momentarily from the river surface as fragments rained into it. But the pirates must by now be fully aware of what the mortar implied.

  ‘Give me that telescope, Gerard.’

  He trained the instrument on the seam in the face of the cliff. He could see every detail now, the rough stone parapet, the waterfall at one end, but he could see no sign of the garrison. They were at the back of the cave or crouching behind the parapet.

  ‘Fire another shot.’

  Fifteen long seconds after the report. Then he saw fragments flying from under the overhang.

  ‘Good shot!’ he called, still watching. The shell must have fallen right into the cave. But as he uttered the words a dark figure appeared at the parapet, the arms swinging together. He saw the tiny black disc of the shell against the background of rock curving downwards and then a burst of smoke. Someone had seized the hot shell in his two hands and slung it over the parapet in the nick of time. A desperate deed.

  ‘Pitch another shell there with a second’s less fuse and it will be all over,’ he said, and then – ‘Wait.’

  Surely those helpless people must surrender, and not stay to be massacred. What must he do to persuade them? He knew perfectly well.

  ‘Send a white flag forward, My Lord?’ asked Spendlove, voicing his thoughts.

  ‘I was thinking about it,’ said Hornblower.

  It would be a dangerous mission. If the pirates were determined not to surrender they would not respect a flag of truce, and would fire on the bearer of it. There were a score of muskets and at least one rifle up there. Hornblower wanted neither to order someone forward nor to ask for a volunteer.

  ‘I’ll do it, My Lord,’ said Spendlove. ‘They know me.’

  This was the price he had to pay, thought Hornblower, for his lofty position, for being an Admiral. He had to order his friends to their death. Yet on the other hand—

  ‘Very well,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘Let’s have your shirt and your pike, my man,’ said Spendlove.

  A white shirt tied by the sleeves to a pikestaff made a fair white flag. As Spendlove went forward with it, through the cordon of red-coated marines, Hornblower was tempted to call him back. It was only unconditional surrender that could be offered, after all. He went as far as to open his mouth, but closed it again without saying the words he had in mind. Spendlove walked towards the river bank, stopping every few seconds to wave the flag. Through the telescope Hornblower could see nothing up in the cave. Then he saw a flash of metal, and a line of heads and shoulders over the parapet. A dozen muskets were taking aim at Spendlove. But Spendlove saw them too, and halted, with a wave of his flag. There were long seconds of tension, and then Spendlove turned his back upon the muskets and began to retrace his steps. As he did so there was a puff of smoke from the parapet; the rifleman had fired as soon as he had seen there was no chance of luring Spendlove within musket shot. Spendlove came walking back, trailing the pike and the shirt.

  ‘He missed me, My Lord,’ he said.

  ‘Thank God,’ said Hornblower. ‘Gunner, fire.’

  The wind may have shifted a little, or the powder was not consistent. The shell burst in the air just below the level of the cave – so that the fuse must have been efficient – but some considerable distance from the cliff.

  ‘Fire again,’ said Hornblower.

  There it was. A burst of smoke, a fountain of fragments, right in the cave. Horrible to think of what was happening there.

  ‘Fire again.’

  Another burst right in the cave.

  ‘Fire again – No! Wait.’

  Figures were appearing on the parapet – there had been some survivors, then, from those two bursts. Two figures – tiny dolls in the field of the telescope – seemed to hang in the air as they leaped. The telescope followed them down. One struck water in a fountain of spray. The other fell on the rocky shore, broken and horrible. He raised the telescope again. There was the ladder being thrown over from the parapet. The
re was a figure – and another figure – climbing down. Hornblower shut the telescope with a snap.

  ‘Captain Seymour! Send a party forward to secure the prisoners.’

  He did not have to see the horrors of the cave, the mutilated dead and the screaming wounded. He could see them in his mind’s eye when Seymour made his report of what he found when he ascended the ladder. It was done, finished. The wounded could be bandaged and carried down to the beach on Utters to the death that awaited them, the un-wounded driven along with them with their wrists bound. A courier could be sent off to the Governor to say that the pirate horde had been wiped out, so that the patrols could be called in and the militia sent home. He did not have to set eyes on the wretched people he had conquered. The excitement of the hunt was over. He had set himself a task to do, a problem to solve, just as he might work out a longitude from lunar observations, and he had achieved success. But the measure of that success could be expressed in hangings, in dead and in wounded, in that shattered, broken-backed figure lying on the rocks, and he had undertaken the task merely on a point of pride, to re-establish his self-esteem after the indignity of being kidnapped. It was no comfort to argue with himself – as he did – that what he had done would otherwise have been done by others, at great cost in disease and in economic disturbance. That only made him sneer at himself as a hair-splitting casuist. There were few occasions when Hornblower could do what was right in Hornblower’s eyes.

  Yet there was some cynical pleasure to be derived from his lofty rank, to be able to leave all this after curt orders to Sefton and Seymour to bring the landing party back to the shore with the least delay and the shortest exposure to the night air, to go back on board and eat a comfortable dinner – even if it meant Fell’s rather boring company – and to sleep in a comfortable bed. And it was pleasant to find that Fell had already dined, so that he could eat his dinner merely in the company of his flag-lieutenant and his secretary. Nevertheless, there was one more unexpected crumpled petal in his roseleaf bed, and he discovered it, contrariwise, as a result of what he intended to be a kindly action.

  ‘I shall have to add a further line to my remarks about you to Their Lordships, Spendlove,’ he said. ‘It was a brave deed to go forward with that flag of truce.’

  ‘Thank you, My Lord,’ said Spendlove, who bent his gaze down on the tablecloth and drummed with his fingers before continuing, eyes still lowered in unusual nervousness.’ Then perhaps Your Lordship will not be averse to putting in a word for me in another quarter?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ replied Hornblower in all innocence. ‘Where?’

  ‘Thank you, My Lord. It was with this in mind that I did the little you have been kind enough to approve of. I would be deeply grateful if Your Lordship would go to the trouble of speaking well of me to Miss Lucy.’

  Lucy! Hornblower had forgotten all about the girl. He quite failed to conceal his surprise, which was clearly apparent to Spendlove when he lifted his glance from the tablecloth.

  ‘We jested about a wealthy marriage, My Lord,’ said Spendlove. The elaborate care with which he was choosing his words proved how deep were his emotions. ‘I would not care if Miss Lucy had not a penny. My Lord, my affections are deeply engaged.’

  ‘She is a very charming young woman,’ said Hornblower, temporising desperately.

  ‘My Lord, I love her,’ burst out Spendlove, casting aside all restraint. ‘I love her dearly. At the ball I tried to interest her in myself, and I failed.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘I could not but be aware of her admiration for you, My Lord. She spoke of Your Lordship repeatedly. I realised even then that one word from you would carry more weight than a long speech from me. If you would say that word, My Lord—’

  ‘I’m sure you over-estimate my influence,’ said Hornblower, choosing his words as carefully as Spendlove had done, but, he hoped, not as obviously. ‘But of course I will do all I can.’

  ‘There is no need for me to reiterate my gratitude, My Lord,’ said Spendlove.

  This pleading creature, this poor love-lorn fellow, was the Spendlove whose cool daring had risked a leap in the darkness down a sixty-foot precipice. Hornblower remembered Lucy’s lips on his hands, remembered how she had followed him on her knees across the floor. The less he had to do with any of this the better, he decided. But the passion of a child hardly out of the schoolroom for a man of mature years was likely to be fleeting, transient, and the memory of her lost dignity would later be as painful to her as it was to him. She would find need to assert herself, to show him that he was not the only man in the world – and how could she demonstrate that more plainly than by marrying someone else? To use a vulgar phrase, there was quite a chance that Spendlove might catch her on the rebound.

  ‘If good wishes can help,’ he said, ‘you have all mine, Spendlove.’

  Even an Admiral had to choose his words with care. Two days later he was announcing his immediate departure to the Governor.

  ‘I’m taking my squadron to sea in the morning, Your Excellency,’ he said.

  ‘Aren’t you going to stay for the hangings?’ asked Hooper in surprise.

  ‘I fear not,’ answered Hornblower, and added an unnecessary explanation. ‘Hangings don’t agree with me, Your Excellency.’

  It was not merely an unnecessary explanation; it was a foolish one, as he knew as soon as he saw the open astonishment in Hooper’s face. Hooper could hardly have been more surprised at hearing that hangings did not agree with Hornblower than he would have been if he had heard that Hornblower did not agree with hangings – and that was very nearly as correct.

  THE GUNS OF CARABOBO

  She was exactly like a British ship of war; naturally, perhaps, since she had been one most of her life until she was sold out of the service. Now, as she came up into the harbour, she could pass without question for a man-o’-war brig except that she flew the Royal Yacht Squadron burgee instead of a commission pendant. Hornblower put down the telescope through which he had been watching, curiously, her progress into Kingston harbour, and referred again to Barbara’s letter, two months old now, which had arrived a fortnight ago.

  My dearest husband (wrote Barbara. She sometimes misused her superlatives; that ‘dearest’, strictly, implied that she had at least three husbands, even though it also implied that Hornblower rated highest of the three).

  You are shortly going to have a visitor, a Mr Charles Ramsbottom, a millionaire, who has purchased an old ship of the Navy to use as a yacht, which he has named the ‘Bride of Abydos’, and in which he proposes to visit the West Indies. He has only lately made his appearance in society, having inherited his father’s fortune – Bradford wool and army clothing contracts! Yet despite this obscure origin he has succeeded in entering into society, perhaps because he is very young, very charming, unmarried, mildly eccentric, and, as I said, a millionaire. I have met him frequently of late, in very good houses, and I recommend him to you, dearest, if for no other reason than that he has won some small portion of my heart by a delightful mixture of deference and interest which I might have found irresistible were I not married to the most irresistible man in the world. He has, indeed, won golden opinions in society, both on the Government side and with the Opposition, and he might become an important factor in politics should he decide to enter into them. I have no doubt that he will bring you introductions from personages even more influential than your loving wife.…

  Hornblower had to read the letter through to the end, although it contained no further reference to Mr Charles Ramsbottom, but he returned again to the opening paragraph. It was the first time he had ever seen this new word ‘millionaire’, which occurred twice. He disliked it on sight. It was inconceivable that a man should have a million pounds, and presumably not in broad estates but in factories and in stocks and shares, probably with a huge holding in Consols and an immense balance at the bank as well. The existence of millionaires, whether in society or not, w
as something as distasteful as the word itself now called into existence. And this one had been charming to Barbara – he was not too sure if that really constituted a recommendation. He picked up the telescope again and watched the brig come to anchor. The rapidity with which she took in sail showed that she carried a large crew. Hornblower, as a Commander-in-Chief of a squadron and accountable to the niggardly Lords of the Admiralty for every penny expended, knew perfectly well what this sort of thing cost. This Mr Ramsbottom, to indulge himself in his naval toy, was expending enough money to maintain a thousand families in bread and beer and bacon.

  The brig rounded-to and anchored very neatly indeed; if she had been a vessel included in his command he would have grunted with grudging satisfaction. As it was he grunted with a mixture of envy and derision and turned away to await the inevitable call in the seclusion of Admiralty House.

  When it came he fingered the visiting card with its plain ‘Mr Charles Ramsbottom’ and found some small satisfaction in deciding that he had at last come across a name more unlovely than his own. But the owner of the name, when he was ushered in, made a better impression. In his very early twenties, he was small and slight and – for what it was worth – strikingly handsome, with black hair and eyes and what could only be described as ‘chiselled features’ deeply tanned after weeks at sea; not at all what might be expected of a Bradford wool manufacturer, while his dark-green coat and formal white breeches were in quiet good taste.

  ‘My wife wrote to me about you, Mr Ramsbottom,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘That was very kind of Lady Hornblower. But of course she is kindness personified. May I present my letters of introduction from Lord Liverpool and Bishop Wilberforce, My Lord?’

  Barbara was perfectly right, then, in predicting that Ramsbottom would win favour with both political parties – here were letters from the Prime Minister himself and a prominent member of the Opposition. Hornblower glanced through them, and was conscious of an undernote of cordiality despite their formal wording.