The Happy Return hh-7

by Cecil Scott Forester

  Soon after midnight his sailor’s instinct called him definitely into complete wakefulness. Something was happening to the weather. He scrambled stiffly to his feet. The ship was rolling more wildly than ever, but as he sniffed round him he knew that there was an improvement. He walked across to the binnacle, and Bush looked vastly out of the darkness beside him.

  “Wind’s shifting southerly an’ moderating, sir,” said Bush.

  The shift of the wind was breaking up the long Pacific waves into steeper seas, as the Lydia’s antics displayed well enough.

  “Black as the Earl of Hell’s riding boots, all the same, sir,” grumbled Bush, peering into the darkness.

  Somewhere, perhaps twenty miles from them, perhaps only two hundred yards, the Natividad was combating the same gale. If the moon were to break through the scurrying clouds they might be at grips with her at any moment, yet while they were talking it was so dark that they could hardly make out the loom of the main topsail from the quarterdeck.

  “She was going away to leeward much faster than us when we saw her last,” said Bush meditatively.

  “I happened to notice that myself,” snapped Hornblower.

  In this present darkness, however much the gale might moderate, there was nothing they could do. Hornblower could foresee, awaiting them, another of those long intervals of time with nothing to do and everything ready which punctuate the life of a naval officer and which were so liable to irritate him if he allowed them to. He realised that here was another opportunity to show himself as an iron-nerved man whom no tension could disturb. He yawned elaborately.

  “I think I shall go to sleep again,” he said, speaking with the utmost unconcern. “See that the lookouts keep awake, if you please, Mr. Bush. And have me called as soon as it grows lighter.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Bush, and Hornblower went back to his boat cloak and his hammock chair.

  He lay there for the rest of the night, unsleeping, and yet staying rigidly still so that the quarterdeck officers might think him asleep and admire the steadiness of his nerves. His mind was busy on the task of guessing what Crespo might be planning in the Natividad.

  The latter was so badly crippled that probably he would be able to make no effective repairs while at sea. It would be much to his advantage to make for the Gulf of Fonseca again. There he could step a foremast and send up a new main topmast. If the Lydia tried to interfere with her there she could overwhelm her by her superior weight in those confined waters; and besides, she would have the assistance of shore boats and possibly even of shore batteries. Moreover he could land his wounded and refill the gaps in his crew caused by the recent action—even landsmen would be of use in a fight to a finish. Crespo was a man of sufficient flexibility of mind not to scorn a retreat if it were to his advantage. The doubtful point was whether Crespo would dare to face el Supremo after an unsuccessful action.

  Hornblower lay considering the matter, balancing his estimate of Crespo’s character against what he knew of el Supremo. He remembered Crespo’s glibness of tongue; that man would be able to convince even el Supremo that his return to his base with the Lydia undefeated was all part of a cunning plan for the more certain destruction of the enemy. Certainly his best course would be to return, and probably that would be the course he would adopt, and that course implied an attempted evasion of the Lydia. In that case he would—Hornblower’s mind began feverish calculations of the Natividad’s present position and future course. In consequence of her bigger bulk, and her two decks, she would have made far more leeway during the night—she was far to leeward at nightfall, for that matter. With the wind shifting and moderating as it was doing at present she would soon be able to make what sail her crippled condition would permit. The wind would be nearly foul for a run to the Gulf of Fonseca. Making for the mainland would be dangerous in Crespo’s opinion, for the Lydia could hem her in between sea and shore and compel her to fight. Most likely he would reach far out to sea, clawing southward at the same time as much as he could, and make for the Gulf of Fonseca by a long detour out of sight of land. In that case Hornblower must guess at what would be his position at dawn. He plunged into further tortuous mental calculations.

  Eight bells sounded; the watch was called; he heard Gerard come to take over the deck from Bush. The wind was dropping fast, although the sea showed no sign of moderating as yet. The sky as he looked up at it was perceptibly lighter—here and there he could see stars between the clouds. Crespo would certainly be able to make sail now and attempt his escape. It was time for Hornblower to come to a decision. He climbed out of the hammock chair and walked across to the wheel.

  “We will make sail, if you please, Mr. Bush.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Hornblower gave the course, and he knew as he gave it that it might be quite the wrong one. He might have completely miscalculated. Every yard that the Lydia was sailing now might be in a direction away from the Natividad. Crespo might at this very moment be heading past him to safety. He might never destroy the Natividad at all if she fortified herself in the Gulf of Fonseca. There would be some who would attribute his failure to incompetence, and there would be not a few who would call it cowardice.

  Chapter XVII

  From the Lydia’s masthead, in the clear daylight of the Pacific, a ship might be seen at a distance of as much as twenty miles, perhaps. A circle of twenty miles’ radius, therefore, covered the extent of sea over which she had observation. It kept Hornblower occupied, during the remaining hours of darkness, to calculate the size of the circle in which the Natividad would necessarily be found next morning. She might be close at hand; she might be as much as a hundred and fifty miles away. That meant that if pure chance dictated the positions of the ships at dawn, it was almost exactly fifty to one against the Natividad being in sight; fifty to one on the ruin of Hornblower’s professional reputation and only his professional abilities to counterbalance those odds. Only if he had guessed his enemy’s plans correctly would he stand justified, and his officers knew it as well as he. Hornblower was conscious that Gerard was looking at him with interest through the darkness, and the consciousness caused him to hold himself rigid and immobile on the deck, neither walking up and down nor fidgeting, even though he could feel his heart beating faster each time he realised that dawn was approaching.

  The blackness turned to grey. Now the outlines of the ship could be ascertained. The main topsail could be seen clearly. So could the fore topsail. Astern of them now the faintest hint of pink began to show in the greyness of the sky. Now the bulk of the grey waves overside could be seen as well as their white edges. Overhead by now the stars were invisible. The accustomed eye could pierce the greyness for a mile about the ship. And then astern, to the eastward, as the Lydia lifted on a wave, a grain of gold showed over the horizon, vanished, returned, and grew. Soon it became a great slice of the sun, sucking up greedily the faint mist which hung over the sea. Then the whole disk lifted clear, and the miracle of the dawn was accomplished.

  “Sail ho!” came pealing down from the masthead; Hornblower had calculated aright.

  Dead ahead, and ten miles distant, she was wallowing along, her appearance oddly at contrast with the one she had presented yesterday morning. Something had been done to give her a jury rig. A stumpy topmast had been erected where her foremast had stood, raked far back in clumsy fashion; her main topmast had been replaced by a slight spar—a royal mast, presumably—and on this jury rig she carried a queer collection of jibs and foresails and spritsails all badly set—“Like old Mother Brown’s washing on the line,” said Bush—to enable her to keep away from the wind with main course and mizzen topsail and driver set.

  At sight of the Lydia she put her helm over and came round until her masts were in line, heading away from the frigate.

  “Making a stern chase of it,” said Gerard, his glass to his eye. “He had enough yesterday, I fancy.”

  Hornblower heard the remark. He could understand Crespo’s psychology
better than that. If it were profitable to him to postpone action, and it undoubtably was, he was quite right to continue doing so, even at the eleventh hour. At sea nothing was certain. Something might prevent the Lydia’s coming into action; a squall of wind, the accidental carrying away of a spar, an opportune descent of mist—any one of the myriad things which might happen at sea. There was still a chance that the Natividad might get clear away, and Crespo was exploiting that chance to the last of his ability. That was logical though unheroic, exactly as one might expect of Crespo.

  It was Hornblower’s duty to see that the chance did not occur. He examined the Natividad closely, ran his eyes over the Lydia’s sails to see that every one was drawing, and bethought himself of his crew.

  “Send the hands to breakfast,” he said—every captain of a king’s ship took his men into action with full bellies if possible.

  He remained, pacing up and down the quarterdeck, unable to keep himself still any longer. The Natividad might be running away, but he knew well that she would fight hard enough when he caught her up. Those smashing twenty-four pounders which she carried on her lower deck were heavy metal against which to oppose the frail timbers of a frigate. They had wrought enough damage yesterday—he could hear the melancholy clanking of the pumps keeping down the water which leaked through the holes they had made; that clinking sound had continued without a break since yesterday. With a jury mizzen mast, and leaking like a sieve despite the sail under her bottom, with sixty-four of her attenuated crew hors de combat, the Lydia was in no condition to fight a severe battle. Defeat for her and death for him might be awaiting them across the strip of blue sea.

  Polwheal suddenly appeared beside him on the quarterdeck, a tray in his hand.

  “Your breakfast, sir,” he said, “seeing as how we’ll be in action when your usual time comes.”

  As he proffered the tray Hornblower suddenly realised how much he wanted that steaming cup of coffee. He took it eagerly and drank thirstily before he remembered that he must not display human weakness of appetite before his servant.

  “Thank you, Polwheal,” he said, sipping discreetly.

  “An’ ‘er la’ships’s compliments, sir, an’ please may she stay where she is in the orlop when the action is renooed.”

  “Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower, staring at him, thrown out of his stride by this unexpected question. All through the night he had been trying to forget the problem of Lady Barbara, as a man tries to forget an aching tooth. The orlop meant that Lady Barbara would be next to the wounded, separated from them only by a canvas screen—no place for a woman. But for that matter neither was the cable tier. The obvious truth was that there was no place for a woman in a frigate about to fight a battle.

  “Put her wherever you like as long as she is not in reach of shot,” he said, irritably.

  “Aye aye, sir. An’ ‘er la’ship told me to say that she wished you the best of good fortune today, sir, an’—an’—she was confident that you would meet with the success you—you deserve, sir.”

  Polwheal stumbled over this long speech in a manner which revealed that he had not been quite as successful in learning it fluently as he wished.

  “Thank you, Polwheal,” said Hornblower, gravely. He remembered Lady Barbara’s face as she looked up at him from the main deck yesterday. It was clean cut and eager—like a sword, was the absurd simile which came up in his mind.

  “Ha-h’m,” said Hornblower angrily. He was aware that his expression had softened, and he feared lest Polwheal should have noticed it, at a moment when he knew about whom he was thinking. “Get below and see that her ladyship is comfortable.”

  The hands were pouring up from breakfast now; the pumps were clanking with a faster rhythm now that a fresh crew was at work upon them. The guns’ crews were gathered about their guns, and the few idlers were crowded on the forecastle eagerly watching the progress of the chase.

  “Do you think the wind’s going to hold, sir?” asked Bush, coming on to the quarterdeck like a bird of ill omen. “Seems to me as if the sun’s swallowing it.”

  There was no doubting the fact that as the sun climbed higher in the sky the wind was diminishing in force. The sea was still short, steep, and rough, but the Lydia’s motion over it was no longer light and graceful. She was pitching and jerking inelegantly deprived of the steady pressure of a good sailing wind. The sky overhead was fast becoming of a hard metallic blue.

  “We’re overhauling ‘em fast,” said Hornblower, staring fixedly at the chase so as to ignore these portents of the elements.

  “Three hours and we’re up to ‘em,” said Bush. “If the wind only holds.”

  It was fast growing hot. The heat which the sun was pouring down on them was intensified by its contrast with the comparative coolness of the night before. The crew had begun to seek the strips of shade under the gangways, and were lying there wearily. The steady clanking of the pumps seemed to sound louder now that the wind was losing its force. Hornblower suddenly realised that he would feel intensely weary if he permitted himself to think about it. He stood stubborn on the quarterdeck with the sun beating on his back, every few moments raising his telescope to stare at the Natividad while Bush fussed about the trimming of the sails as the breeze began to waver.

  “Steer small, blast you,” he growled at the quartermaster at the wheel as the ship’s head fell away in the trough of a wave.

  “I can’t, sir, begging your pardon,” was the reply. “There aren’t enough wind.”

  It was true enough. The wind had died away so that the Lydia could not maintain the two knot speed which was sufficient to give her rudder power to act.

  “We’ll have to wet the sails. Mr. Bush, see to it, if you please,” said Hornblower.

  One division of one watch was roused up to this duty. A soaking wet sail will hold air which would escape if it were dry. Whips were rove through the blocks on the yards, and sea water hoisted up and poured over the canvas. So hot was the sun and so rapid the evaporation that the buckets had to be kept continually in action. To the clanging of the pumps was now added the shrilling of the sheaves in the blocks. The Lydia crept, still plunging madly, over the tossing sea and under the glaring sky.

  “She’s boxing the compass now,” said Bush with a jerk of his thumb at the distant Natividad. “She can’t compare with this beauty. She won’t find the new rig of hers any help, neither.”

  The Natividad was turning idly backwards and forwards on the waves, showing sometimes her broadside and sometimes her three masts in line, unable to steer any course in the light air prevailing. Bush looked complacently up at his new mizzen mast, a pyramid of canvas, and then across at the swaying Natividad, less than five miles away. The minutes crept by, their passage marked only by the monotonous noises of the ship. Hornblower stood in the scorching sunlight, fingering his telescope.

  “Here comes the wind again, by God!” said Bush, suddenly. It was sufficient wind to make the ship heel a little, and to summon a faint harping from the rigging. “’Vast heaving with those buckets, there.”

  The Lydia crept steadily forward, heaving and plunging to the music of the water under her bows, while the Natividad grew perceptibly nearer.

  “It will reach him quickly enough. There! What did I say?”

  The Natividad’s sails filled as the breeze came down to her. She straightened upon her course.

  “’Twon’t help him as much as it helps us. God, if it only holds,” commented Bush.

  The breeze wavered and then renewed itself. The Natividad was hull-up now across the water when a wave lifted her. Another hour—less than an hour—and she would be in range.

  “We’ll be trying long shots at her soon,” said Bush.

  “Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower, spitefully, “I can judge of the situation without the assistance of your comments, profound though they be.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said Bush, hurt. He flushed angrily for a moment until he noticed the anxiety in Hornblower’s
tired eyes, and then stumped away to the opposite rail to forget his rage.

  As if by way of comment the big main-course flapped loudly, once, like a gun. The breeze was dying away as motivelessly as it had begun. And the Natividad still held it; she was holding her course steadily, drawing away once more, helped by the fluky wind. Here in the tropical Pacific one ship can have a fair wind while another two miles away lies becalmed, just as the heavy sea in which they were rolling indicated that last night’s gale was still blowing, over the horizon, at the farther side of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Hornblower stirred uneasily in the blazing sun. He feared lest he should see the Natividad sail clean away from him; the wind had died away so much that there was no point in wetting the sails, and the Lydia was rolling and sagging about aimlessly now to the send of the waves. Ten minutes passed before he was reassured by the sight of the Natividad’s similar behaviour.

  There was not a breath of wind now. The Lydia rolled wildly, to the accompaniment of a spasmodic creaking of woodwork, flapping of sails, and clattering of blocks. Only the clangour of the pumps sounded steadily through the hot air. The Natividad was four miles away now—a mile and a half beyond the farthest range of any of the Lydia’s guns.

  “Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower. “We will tow with the boats. Have the launch and the cutter hoisted out.”

  Bush looked doubtful for a moment. He feared that two could play at that game. But he realised—as Hornblower had realised before him—that the Lydia’s graceful hull would be more amenable to towing than the Natividad’s ungainly bulk, even without counting the possibility that yesterday’s action might have left her with no boat left that would swim. It was Hornblower’s duty to try every course that might bring his ship into action with the enemy.