The Happy Return hh-7

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “Boats away!” roared Harrison. “Cutter’s crew, launch’s crew.”

  The pipes of his mates endorsed the orders. The hands tailed on to the tackles, and each boat in turn was swayed up into the air, and lowered outboard, the boats’ crews fending off as the Lydia rolled in the swell.

  There began for the boats’ crews a period of the most exhausting and exasperating labour. They would tug and strain at the oars, moving the ponderous boats over the heaving waves, until the tow ropes tightened with a jerk as the strain came upon them. Then, tug as they would, they would seem to make no progress at all, the oar blades foaming impotently through the blue water, until the Lydia consented to crawl forward a little and the whole operation could be repeated. The heaving waves were a hindrance to them—sometimes every man on one side of a boat would catch a simultaneous crab so that the boat would spin round and become a nuisance to the other one—and the Lydia, so graceful and willing when under sail, was a perfect bitch when being towed.

  She yawed and she sagged, falling away in the trough on occasions so much that the launch and the cutter were dragged, with much splashing from the oars, stern first after her wavering bows, and then changing her mind and heaving forward so fast after the two ropes that the men, flinging their weight upon the oar looms in expectation of a profitless pull, were precipitated backwards with the ease of progression while in imminent danger of being run down.

  They sat naked on the thwarts while the sweat ran in streams down their faces and chests, unable—unlike their comrades at the pumps—to forget their fatigues in the numbness of monotonous work when every moment called for vigilance and attention, tugging painfully away, their agonies of thirst hardly relieved by the allowance of water doled out to them by the petty officers in the sternsheets, tugging away until even hands calloused by years of pulling and hauling cracked and blistered so that the oars were agony to touch.

  Hornblower knew well enough the hardship they were undergoing. He went forward and looked down at the toiling seamen, knowing perfectly well that his own body would not be able to endure that labour for more than half an hour at most. He gave orders for an hourly relief at the oars, and he did his best to cheer the men on. He felt an uneasy sympathy for them—three-quarters of them had never been sailors until this commission, and had no desire to be sailors either, but had been swept up by the all-embracing press seven months ago. Hornblower was always able (rather against his will) to do what most of his officers failed to do—he saw his crew not as topmen or hands, but as what they had been before the press caught them, stevedores, wherry men, porters.

  He had waggoners and potters—he had even two draper’s assistants and a printer among his crew; men snatched without notice from their families and their employment and forced into this sort of labour, on wretched food, in hideous working conditions, haunted always by the fear of the cat or of Harrison’s rattan, and with the chance of death by drowning or by hostile action to seal the bargain. So imaginative an individualist as Hornblower was bound to feel sympathy with them even when he felt he ought not, especially as he (in common with a few other liberals) found himself growing more and more liberal-minded with the progress of years. But to counterbalance this weakness of his there was his restless nervous anxiety to finish off well any task he had set himself to do. With the Natividad in sight he could not rest until he had engaged her, and when a captain of a ship cannot rest his crew certainly cannot—aching backs or bleeding hands notwithstanding.

  By careful measurement with his sextant of the subtended angles he was able to say with certainty at the end of an hour that the efforts of the boats’ crews had dragged the Lydia a little nearer to the Natividad, and Bush, who had taken the same measurements, was in agreement. The sun rose higher and the Lydia crept inch by inch towards the enemy.

  “Natividad’s hoisting out a boat, sir,” hailed Knyvett from the foretop.

  “How many oars?”

  “Twelve, sir, I think. They’re taking the ship in tow.”

  “And they’re welcome,” scoffed Bush. “Twelve oars won’t move that old tub of a Natividad very far.”

  Hornblower glared at him and Bush retired to his own side of the quarterdeck again; he had forgotten his captain was in this unconversational mood. Hornblower was fretting himself into a fever. He stood in the glaring sun while the heat was reflected up into his face from the deck under his feet. His shirt chaffed him where he sweated. He felt caged, like a captive beast, within the limitations of practical details. The endless clanking of the pumps, the rolling of the ship, the rattle of the rigging, the noise of the oars in the rowlocks, were driving him mad, as though he could scream (or weep) at the slightest additional provocation.

  At noon he changed the men at the oars and pumps, and sent the crew to dinner—he remembered bitterly that he had already made them breakfast in anticipation of immediate action. At two bells he began to wonder whether the Natividad might be within extreme long range, but the mere fact of wondering told him that it was not the case—he knew his own sanguine temperament too well, and he fought down the temptation to waste powder and shot. And then, as he looked for the thousandth time through his telescope, he suddenly saw a disk of white appear on the high stern of the Natividad. The disk spread and expanded into a thin cloud, and six seconds after its first appearance the dull thud of the shot reached his ears. The Natividad was evidently willing to try the range.

  “Natividad carries two long eighteens aft on the quarterdeck,” said Gerard to Bush in Hornblower’s hearing. “Heavy metal for stern chasers.”

  Hornblower knew it already. He would have to run the gauntlet of those two guns for an hour, possibly, before he could bring the brass nine pounder on his forecastle into action. Another puff of smoke from the Natividad, and this time Hornblower saw a spout of water rise from the breast of a wave half a mile ahead. But at that long range and on that tossing sea it did not mean that the Lydia was still half a mile beyond the Natividad’s reach. Hornblower heard the next shot arrive, and saw a brief fountain of water rise no more than fifty yards from the Lydia’s starboard quarter.

  “Mr. Gerard,” said Hornblower. “Send for Mr. Marsh and see what he can do with the long nine forward.”

  It would cheer the men up to have a gun banging away occasionally instead of being merely shot at without making any reply. Marsh came waddling up from the darkness of the magazine, and blinked in the blinding sunshine. He shook his head doubtfully as he eyed the distance between the ships, but he had the gun cleared away, and he loaded it with his own hands, lovingly. He measured out the powder charge on the fullest scale, and he spent several seconds selecting the roundest and truest shot from the locker. He trained the gun with care, and then stood aside, lanyard in hand, watching the heave of the ship and the send of the bows, while a dozen telescopes were trained on the Natividad and every eye watched for the fall of the shot. Suddenly he jerked the lanyard and the cannon roared out, its report sounding flat in the heated motionless air.

  “Two cables’ lengths astern of her!” yelled Knyvett from the fore-top. Hornblower had missed the splash—another proof, to his mind, of his own incompetence, but he concealed the fact under a mask of imperturbability.

  “Try again, Mr. Marsh,” he said.

  The Natividad was firing both stern chasers together now. As Hornblower spoke there came a crash forward as one of the eighteen-pounder balls struck home close above the water line. Hornblower could hear young Savage, down in the launch hurling shrill blasphemies at the men at the oars to urge them on—that shot must have passed just over his head. Marsh stroked his beard and addressed himself to the task of reloading the long nine pounder. While he was so engaged, Hornblower was deep in the calculation of the chances of battle.

  That long nine, although of smaller calibre, was of longer range than his shorter main deck guns, while the carronades which comprised half of the Lydia’s armament were useless at anything longer than close range. The Lydia would have
to draw up close to her enemy before she could attack her with effect. There would be a long and damaging interval between the moment when the Natividad should be able to bring all her guns into action and the moment when the Lydia could hit back at her. There would be casualties, guns dismounted perhaps, serious losses. Hornblower balanced the arguments for and against continuing to try and close with the enemy while Mr. Marsh was squinting along the sights of the nine pounder. Then Hornblower scowled to himself, and ceased tugging at his chin, his mind made up. He had started the action; he would go through with it to the end, cost what it might. His flexibility of mind could crystallise into sullen obstinacy.

  The nine pounder went off as though to signal this decision.

  “Just alongside her!” screamed Knyvett triumphantly from the foretop.

  “Well done, Mr. Marsh,” said Hornblower, and Marsh wagged his beard complacently.

  The Natividad was firing faster now. Three times a splintering crash told of a shot which had been aimed true. Then suddenly a thrust as if from an invisible hand made Hornblower reel on the quarterdeck, and his ears were filled with a brief rending noise. A skimming shot had ploughed a channel along the planking of the quarterdeck. A marine was sitting near the taffrail stupidly contemplating his left leg, which no longer had a foot on the end of it; another marine dropped his musket with a clatter and clapped his hands to his face, which a splinter had torn open, with the blood spouting between his fingers.

  “Are you hurt, sir?” cried Bush, leaping across to Hornblower.

  “No.”

  Hornblower turned back to stare through his glass at the Natividad while the wounded were being dragged away. He saw a dark dot appear alongside the Natividad, and lengthen and diverge. It was the boat with which they had been trying to row—perhaps they were giving up the attempt. But the boat was not being hoisted in. For a second Hornblower was puzzled. The Natividad’s stumpy fore mast and main mast came into view. The boat was pulling the ship laboriously round so that her whole broadside would bear. Not two, but twenty-five guns would soon be opening their fire on the Lydia.

  Hornblower felt his breath come a little quicker, unexpectedly, so that he had to swallow in order to regulate things again. His pulse was faster, too. He made himself keep the glass to his eye until he was certain of the enemy’s manoeuvre, and then walked forward leisurely to the gangway. He was compelling himself to appear lighthearted and carefree; he knew that the fools of men whom he commanded would fight more diligently for a captain like that.

  “They’re waiting for us now, lads,” he said. “We shall have some pebbles about our ears before long. Let’s show ‘em that Englishmen don’t care.”

  They cheered him for that, as he expected and hoped they would do. He looked through his glass again at the Natividad. She was still turning, very slowly—it was a lengthy process to turn a clumsy two-decker in a dead calm. But he could see a hint of the broad white stripes which ornamented her side.

  “Ha-h’m,” he said.

  Forward he could hear the oars grinding away as the men in the boats laboured to drag the Lydia to grips with her enemy. Across the deck a little group of officers—Bush and Crystal among them—were academically discussing what percentage of hits might be expected from a Spanish broadside at a range of a mile. They were coldblooded about it in a fashion he could never hope to imitate with sincerity. He did not fear death so much—nor nearly as much—as defeat and the pitying contempt of his colleagues. The chiefest dread at the back of his mind was the fear of mutilation. An ex-naval officer stumping about on two wooden legs might be an object of condolence, might receive lip service as one of Britain’s heroic defenders, but he was a figure of fun, nevertheless. Hornblower dreaded the thought of being a figure of fun. He might lose his nose or his cheek and be so mutilated that people would not be able to bear to look at him. It was a horrible thought which set him shuddering while he looked through the telescope, so horrible that he did not stop to think of the associated details, of the agonies he would have to bear down there in the dark cockpit at the mercy of Laurie’s incompetence.

  The Natividad was suddenly engulfed in smoke, and some seconds later the air and the water around the Lydia and the ship herself, were torn by the hurtling broadside.

  “Not more than two hits,” said Bush, gleefully.

  “Just what I said,” said Crystal. “That captain of theirs ought to go round and train every gun himself.”

  “How do you know he did not?” argued Bush.

  As punctuation the nine pounder forward banged out its defiance. Hornblower fancied that his straining eyes saw splinters fly amidships of the Natividad, unlikely though it was at that distance.

  “Well aimed, Mr. Marsh!” he called. “You hit him squarely.”

  Another broadside came from the Natividad, and another followed it, and another after that. Time after time the Lydia’s decks were swept from end to end with shot. There were dead men laid out again on the deck, and the groaning wounded were dragged below.

  “It is obvious to anyone of a mathematical turn of mind,” said Crystal, “that those guns are all laid by different hands. The shots are too scattered for it to be otherwise.”

  “Nonsense!” maintained Bush sturdily. “See how long it is between broadsides. Time enough for one man to train each gun. What would they be doing in that time otherwise?”

  “A Dago crew—,” began Crystal, but a sudden shriek of cannon balls over his head silenced him for a moment.

  “Mr. Galbraith!” shouted Bush. “Have that main t’gallant stay spliced directly.” Then he turned triumphantly on Crystal. “Did you notice,” he asked, “how every shot from that broadside went high? How does the mathematical mind explain that?”

  “They fired on the upward roll, Mr. Bush. Really, Mr. Bush, I think that after Trafalgar—”

  Hornblower longed to order them to cease the argument which was lacerating his nerves, but he could not be such a tyrant as that.

  In the still air the smoke from the Natividad’s firing had banked up around about her so that she showed ghostly through the cloud, her solitary mizzen topmast protruding above it into the clear air.

  “Mr. Bush,” he asked, “at what distance do you think she is now?”

  Bush gauged the distance carefully.

  “Three parts of a mile, I should say, sir.”

  “Two-thirds, more likely, sir,” said Crystal.

  “Your opinion was not asked, Mr. Crystal,” snapped Hornblower.

  At three-quarters of a mile, even at two-thirds, the Lydia’s carronades would be ineffective. She must continue running the gauntlet. Bush was evidently of the same opinion, to judge by his next orders.

  “Time for the men at the oars to be relieved,” he said, and went forward to attend it. Hornblower heard him bustling the new crews down into the boats, anxious that the pulling should be resumed before the Lydia had time to lose what little way she carried.

  It was terribly hot under the blazing sun, even though it was now long past noon. The smell of the blood which had been spilt on the decks mingled with the smell of the hot deck seams and of the powder smoke from the nine pounder with which Marsh was still steadily bombarding the enemy. Hornblower felt sick—so sick that he began to fear lest he should disgrace himself eternally by vomiting in full view of his men. When fatigue and anxiety had weakened him thus he was far more conscious of the pitching and rolling of the ship under his feet. The men at the guns were silent now, he noticed—for long they had laughed and joked at their posts, but now they were beginning to sulk under the punishment. That was a bad sign.

  “Pass the word for Sullivan and his fiddle,” he ordered.

  The red-haired Irish madman came aft, and knuckled his forehead, his fiddle and bow under his arm.

  “Give us a tune, Sullivan,” he ordered. “Hey there, men, who is there among you who dances the best hornpipe?”

  There was a difference of opinion about that, apparently.

&n
bsp; “Benskin, sir,” said some voices.

  “Hall, sir,” said others.

  “No, MacEvoy, sir.”

  “Then we’ll have a tournament,” said Hornblower. “Here, Benskin, Hall, MacEvoy. A hornpipe from each of you, and guinea for the man who does it best.”

  In later years it was a tale told and retold, how the Lydia was towed into action with hornpipes being danced on her maindeck. It was quoted as an example of Hornblower’s cool courage, and only Hornblower knew how little truth there was in the attribution. It kept the men happy, which was why he did it. No one guessed how nearly he came to vomiting when a shot came in through a forward gun-port and spattered Hall with a seaman’s brains without causing him to miss a step.

  Then later in that dreadful afternoon there came a crash from forward, followed by a chorus of shouts and screams overside.

  “Launch sunk, sir!” hailed Galbraith from the forecastle, but Hornblower was there as soon as he had uttered the words.

  A round shot had dashed the launch practically into its component planks, and the men were scrambling in the water, leaping up for the bobstay or struggling to climb into the cutter, all of them who survived wild with fear of sharks.

  “The Dagoes have saved us the trouble of hoisting her in,” he said, loudly. “We’re close enough now for them to feel our teeth.”

  The men who heard him cheered.

  “Mr. Hooker!” he called to the midshipman in the cutter. “When you have picked up those men, kindly starboard your helm. We are going to open fire.”

  He came aft to the quarterdeck again.

  “Hard a-starboard,” he growled at the quartermaster. “Mr. Gerard, you may open first when your guns bear.”

  Very slowly the Lydia swung round. Another broadside from the Natividad came crashing into her before she had completed the turn, but Hornblower actually did not notice it. The period of inaction was now over. He had brought his ship within four hundred yards of the enemy, and all his duty now was to walk the deck as an example to his men. There were no more decisions to make.