The Happy Return hh-7

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “She’s hauling ‘em down, all the same,” he retorted, glad to be the first to notice it.

  “So she is, sir,” said Bush, a little puzzled, and then—“There they go again, sir. No! What do you make of that, sir?”

  “White flag over Spanish colours now,” said Hornblower. “That’ll mean a parley. No, I don’t trust ‘em. Hoist the colours, Mr. Bush, and send the hands to quarters. Run out the guns and send the prisoners below under guard again.”

  He was not going to be caught unaware by any Spanish tricks. That lugger might be as full of men as an egg is of meat, and might spew up a host of boarders over the side of an unprepared ship. As the Lydia’s gun ports opened and she showed her teeth the lugger rounded-to just out of gunshot, and lay wallowing, hove-to.

  “She’s sending a boat, sir,” said Bush.

  “So I see,” snapped Hornblower.

  Two oars rowed a dinghy jerkily across the dancing water, and a man came scrambling up the ladder to the gangway—so many strange figures had mounted that ladder lately. This new arrival, Hornblower saw, wore the full dress of the Spanish royal navy, his epaulette gleaming in the sun. He bowed and came forward.

  “Captain Hornblower?” he asked.

  “I am Captain Hornblower.”

  “I have to welcome you as the new ally of Spain.”

  Hornblower swallowed hard. This might be a ruse, but the moment he heard the words he felt instinctively that the man was speaking the truth. The whole happy world by which he had been encompassed up to that moment suddenly became dark with trouble. He could foresee endless worries piled upon him by some heedless action of the politicians.

  “We have had the news for the last four days,” went on the Spanish officer. “Last month Bonaparte stole our King Ferdinand from us and has named his brother Joseph King of Spain. The Junta of Government has signed a treaty of perpetual alliance and friendship with His Majesty of England. It is with great pleasure. Captain, that I have to inform you that all ports in the dominions of His Most Catholic Majesty are open to you after your most arduous voyage.”

  Hornblower still stood dumb. It might all be lies, a ruse to lure the Lydia under the guns of Spanish shore batteries. Hornblower almost hoped it might be—better that than all the complications which would hem him in if it were the truth. The Spaniard interpreted his expression as implying disbelief.

  “I have letters here,” he said, producing them from his breast. “One from your admiral in the Leeward Islands, sent overland from Porto Bello, one from His Excellency the Viceroy of Peru, and one from the English lady in Panama.”

  He tendered them with a further bow, and Hornblower, muttered an apology—his fluent Spanish had deserted him along with his wits—began to open them. Then he pulled himself up; on deck under the eye of the Spanish officer was no place to study these documents. With another muttered apology he fled below to the privacy of his cabin.

  The stout canvas wrapper of the naval orders was genuine enough. He scrutinised the two seals carefully, and they showed no signs of having been tampered with; and the wrapper was correctly addressed in English script. He cut the wrapper open carefully and read the orders enclosed. They could leave him in no doubt. There was the signature—Thomas Troubridge, Rear Admiral, Bart. Hornblower had seen Troubridge’s signature before, and recognised it. The orders were brief, as one would expect from Troubridge—an alliance having been concluded between His Majesty’s Government and that of Spain Captain Hornblower was directed and required to refrain from hostilities towards the Spanish possessions, and, having drawn upon the Spanish authorities for necessary stores, to proceed with all dispatch to England for further orders. It was a genuine document without any doubts at all. It was marked ‘Copy No. 2’; presumably other copies had been distributed to other parts of the Spanish possessions to ensure that he received one.

  The next letter was flamboyantly sealed and addressed—it was a letter of welcome from the Viceroy of Peru assuring him that all Spanish America was at his disposal, and hoping that he would make full use of all facilities so that he would speedily be ready to help the Spanish nation in its sacred mission of sweeping the French usurper back to his kennel.

  “Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower—the Spanish viceroy did not know yet about the fate of the Natividad, nor about the new enterprise of el Supremo. He might not be so cordial when he heard about the Lydia’s part in these occurrences.

  The third letter was sealed merely with a wafer and was addressed in a feminine hand. The Spanish officer had spoken about a letter from the English lady in Panama—what in the world was an English lady doing there? Hornblower slit open the letter and read it.

  The Citadel,

  Panama.

  Lady Barbara Wellesley presents her compliments to the captain of the English frigate. She requests that he will be so good as to convey her and her maid to Europe, because Lady Barbara finds that owing to an outbreak of yellow fever on the Spanish Main she cannot return home the way she would desire.

  Hornblower folded the letter and tapped it on his thumb nail in meditation. The woman was asking an impossibility, of course. A crowded frigate sailing round the Horn was no place for females. She seemed to have no doubt about it, all the same; on the contrary, she seemed to assume that her request would be instantly granted. That name Wellesley, of course, gave the clue to that. It had been much before the public of late. Presumably the lady was a sister or an aunt to the two well-known Wellesleys—the Most Hon. the Marquis Wellesley, K.P., late Governor General of India and now a member of the Cabinet, and General the Hon. Sir Arthur Wellesley, K.B., the victor of Assaye and now pointed at as England’s greatest soldier after Sir John Moore. Hornblower had seen him once, and had noticed the high arched arrogant nose and the imperious eye. If the woman had that blood in her she would be the sort to take things for granted. So she might, too. An impecunious frigate captain with no influence at all would be glad to render a service to a member of that family. Maria would be pleased as well as suspicious when she heard that he had been in correspondence with the daughter of an Earl, the sister of a Marquis.

  But this was no time to stop and think about women. Hornblower locked the letters in his desk and ran up on deck; forcing a smile as he approached the Spanish captain.

  “Greeting to the new allies,” he said. “Señor, I am proud to be serving with Spain against the Corsican tyrant.”

  The Spaniard bowed.

  “We were very much afraid, Captain,” he said, “lest you should fall in with the Natividad before you heard the news, because she has not heard it either. In that case your fine frigate would have come to serious harm.”

  “Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower. This was more embarrassing than ever; he turned and snapped out an order to the midshipman of the watch. “Bring the prisoners up from the cable tier. Quickly!”

  The boy ran, and Hornblower turned back again to the Spanish officer.

  “I regret to have to tell you, señor, that by evil chance the Lydia met the Natividad a week ago.”

  The Spanish captain looked his surprise. He stared round the ship, at the meticulous good order, the well set up rigging. Even a Spaniard frigate captain could see that the frigate had not been engaged in a desperate action lately.

  “But you did not fight her, Captain?” he said. “Perhaps—”

  The words died away on his lips as he caught sight of a melancholy procession approaching them along the gangway. He recognised the captain and the lieutenants of the Natividad. Hornblower plunged feverishly into an explanation of their presence; but it was not easy to tell a Spanish captain that the Lydia had captured a Spanish ship of twice her force without receiving a shot or a casualty—it was harder still to go on and explain that the ship was now sailing under the flag of rebels who had determined to destroy the Spanish power in the new world. The Spaniard turned white with rage and injured pride. He turned upon the captain of the Natividad and received confirmation of Hornblower’s story from that
wretched man’s lips; his shoulders were bowed with sorrow as he told the story which would lead inevitably to his courtmartial and his ruin.

  Bit by bit the newcomer from the lugger heard the truth about recent events, about the capture of the Natividad, and the success of el Supremo’s rebellion. He realised that the whole of the Spanish overlordship of the Americas was in jeopardy, and as he realised that, a fresh and harassing aspect of the situation broke in upon him.

  “The Manila galleon is at sea!” he exclaimed. “She is due to arrive at Acapulco next month. The Natividad will intercept her.”

  One ship a year crossed the wide Pacific from the Philippines, never bearing less than a million sterling in treasure. Her loss would cripple the bankrupt Spanish government hopelessly. The three captains exchanged glances—Hornblower was telling himself that this was why el Supremo had agreed so readily to the Lydia sailing south westward; he had doubtless been pleased at the thought of the Natividad to the north eastward acquiring this wealth for him. It would take the Spaniards months to bring round the Horn a ship capable of dealing with the Natividad, and in the interval el Supremo would enjoy all those advantages of sea power which Hornblower had foreseen for the Lydia. The rebellion would be so firmly rooted that nothing would put it down, especially as, apparently, the Spaniards of Spain were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Bonaparte and would have neither ships nor men to spare for America. Hornblower could see where lay his duty.

  “Very well,” he announced abruptly. “I will take my ship back to fight the Natividad.”

  All the Spanish officers looked their relief at that.

  “Thank you, Captain,” said the officer of the lugger. “You will call in at Panama to consult the Viceroy first?”

  “Yes,” snapped Hornblower.

  In a world where news took months to travel, and where complete upheavals of international relationships were not merely possible but likely, he had learned now by bitter experience to keep in the closest contact with the shore; his misery was in no way allayed by the knowledge that the present difficulties were occasioned merely by his strict obedience to orders—and he knew, too, that the Lords of the Admiralty would not allow that point to influence them in their opinion of a captain who could cause such terrible trouble.

  “Then,” said the captain of the lugger. “I will bid you good-bye for the time. If I reach Panama first, I will be able to arrange a welcome for you. Perhaps you will allow my compatriots to accompany me?”

  “No I won’t,” rasped Hornblower. “And you, sir, will keep under my lee until we drop anchor.”

  The Spaniard shrugged and yielded. At sea one can hardly argue with a captain whose guns are run out and whose broadside could blow one’s ship out of the water, especially as all Englishmen were as mad and as domineering as el Supremo. The Spaniard had not enough intuition to enable him to guess that Hornblower still had a lurking fear that the whole business might be a ruse to inveigle the Lydia helpless under the guns of Panama.

  Chapter IX

  It was not a ruse at all. In the morning when the Lydia came stealing before a three knot breeze into the roadstead of Panama the only guns fired were the salutes. Boatloads of rejoicing Spaniards came out to greet her, but the rejoicing was soon turned to wailing at the news that the Natividad now flew el Supremo’s flag, that San Salvador had fallen, and that all Nicaragua was in a flame of rebellion. With cocked hat and gold-hilted sword (’a sword of the value of fifty guineas’, the gift of the Patriotic Fund for Lieutenant Hornblower’s part in the capture of the Castilla six years ago) Hornblower had made himself ready to go ashore and call upon the Governor and the Viceroy, when the arrival of yet one more boat was announced to him.

  “There is a lady on board, sir,” said Gray, one of the master’s mates, who brought the news.

  “A lady?”

  “Looks like an English lady, sir,” explained Gray. “She seems to want to come aboard.”

  Hornblower went on deck; close alongside a large rowing boat tossed and rolled; at the six oars sat swarthy Spanish Americans, bare armed and straw hatted, while another in the bows, boat hook in hand, stood waiting, face upturned for permission to hook on to the chains. In the stem sat a negress with a flaming red handkerchief over her shoulders, and beside her sat the English lady Gray had spoken about. Even as Hornblower looked, the bowman hooked on, and the boat closed in alongside, two men fending off. Somebody caught the rope ladder, and the next moment the lady, timing the movement perfectly, swung on to it and two seconds later came on deck.

  Clearly she was an Englishwoman. She wore a wide shady hat trimmed with roses, in place of the eternal mantilla, and her grey-blue silk dress was far finer than any Spanish black. Her skin was fair despite its golden tan, and her eyes were grey-blue, of just the same evasive shade as her silk dress. Her face was too long for beauty and her nose too high arched, to say nothing of her sunburn. Horn-blower saw her at that moment as one of the horsefaced mannish women whom he particularly disliked; he told himself that all his inclinations were towards clinging incompetence. Any woman who could transfer herself in that fashion from boat to ship in an open roadstead, and could ascend a rope ladder unassisted, must be too masculine for his taste. Besides, an Englishwoman must be unsexed to be in Panama without a male escort—the phrase ‘globe trotting’, with all its disparaging implications, had not yet been invented, but it expressed exactly Hornblower’s feeling about her.

  Hornblower held himself aloof as the visitor looked about her. He was going to do nothing to help her. A wild squawk from overside told that the negress had not been as handy with the ladder, and directly afterwards this was confirmed by her appearance on deck wet from the waist down, water streaming from her black gown on to the deck. The lady paid no attention to the mishap to her maid; Gray was nearest to her and she turned to him.

  “Please be so good, sir,” she said, “as to have my baggage brought up out of the boat.”

  Gray hesitated, and looked round over his shoulder at Hornblower, stiff and unbending on the quarterdeck.

  “The captain’s here, ma’am,” he said.

  “Yes,” said the lady. “Please have my baggage brought up while I speak to him.”

  Hornblower was conscious of an internal struggle. He disliked the aristocracy—it hurt him nowadays to remember that as the doctor’s son he had had to touch his cap to the squire. He felt unhappy and awkward in the presence of the self-confident arrogance of blue blood and wealth. It irritated him to think that if he offended this woman he might forfeit his career. Not even his gold lace nor his presentation sword gave him confidence as she approached him. He took refuge in an icy formality.

  “Are you the captain of this ship, sir?” she asked, as she came up. Her eyes looked boldly and frankly into his with no trace of downcast modesty.

  “Captain Hornblower, at your service, ma’am,” he replied, with a stiff jerk of his neck which might charitably be thought a bow.

  “Lady Barbara Wellesley,” was the reply, accompanied by a curtsy only just deep enough to keep the interview formal. “I wrote you a note, Captain Hornblower, requesting a passage to England. I trust that you received it.”

  “I did, ma’am. But I do not think it is wise for your ladyship to join this ship.”

  The unhappy double mention of the word ‘ship’ in this sentence did nothing to make Hornblower feel less awkward.

  “Please tell me why, sir.”

  “Because, ma’am, we shall be clearing shortly to seek out an enemy and fight him. And after that, ma’am, we shall have to return to England round Cape Horn. Your ladyship would be well advised to make your way across the Isthmus. From Porto Bello you can easily reach Jamaica and engage a berth in the West India packet which is accustomed to female passengers.”

  Lady Barbara’s eyebrows arched themselves higher.

  “In my letter,” she said, “I informed you that there was yellow fever in Porto Bello. A thousand persons died there of it last
week. It was on the outbreak of the disease that I removed from Porto Bello to Panama. At any day it may appear here as well.”

  “May I ask why your ladyship was in Porto Bello, then?”

  “Because, sir, the West India packet in which I was a female passenger was captured by a Spanish privateer and brought there. I regret, sir, that I cannot tell you the name of my grandmother’s cook, but I shall be glad to answer any further questions which a gentleman of breeding would ask.”

  Hornblower winced and then to his annoyance found himself blushing furiously. His dislike for arrogant blue blood was if anything intensified. But there was no denying that the woman’s explanations were satisfactory enough—a visit to the West Indies could be made by any woman without unsexing herself, and she had clearly come to Porto Bello and Panama against her will. He was far more inclined now to grant her request—in fact he was about to do so, having strangely quite forgotten the approaching duel with the Natividad and the voyage round the Horn. He recalled them just as he was about to speak, so that he changed at a moment’s notice what he was going to say and stammered and stuttered in consequence.

  “B-but we are going out in this ship to fight,” he said. “Natividad’s got twice our force. It will be d-dangerous.”

  Lady Barbara laughed at that—Hornblower noted the pleasing colour contrast between her white teeth and her golden sunburn; his own teeth were stained and ugly.

  “I would far rather,” she said, “be on board your ship, whomsoever you have got to fight, than be in Panama with the vomita negro.”

  “But Cape Horn, ma’am?”

  “I have no knowledge of this Cape Horn of yours. But I have twice rounded the Cape of Good Hope during my brother’s Governor-Generalship, and I assure you, captain, I have never yet been seasick.”

  Still Hornblower stammered and hesitated. He resented the presence of a woman on board his ship. Lady Barbara exactly voiced his thoughts—and as she did so her arched eyebrows came close together in a fashion oddly reminiscent of el Supremo although her eyes still laughed straight into his.