In giving that order Hornblower made his sole acknowledgment of the women’s existence. During this flurry of work, and under the strain of the responsibility which he bore, he had neither the time nor the surplus energy to spare for conversation with Lady Barbara. He was tired, and the steamy heat drained his energies, but his natural reaction to these conditions, having in mind the need for haste, was to flog himself into working harder and harder, obstinately and unreasonably, so that the days passed in a nightmare of fatigue, during which the minutes he passed with Lady Barbara were like the glimpses a man has of a beautiful woman during delirium.
He drove his men hard from earliest dawn as long as daylight lasted, keeping them slaving away in the crushing heat until they shook their heads over him in rueful admiration. They did not grudge him the efforts he called for; that would have been impossible for British sailors led by a man who was so little prepared to spare himself. And besides, the men displayed the constant characteristics of British crews of working the more cheerfully the more unusual the conditions. Sleeping on beds of sand instead of in their far more comfortable hammocks, working on solid earth instead of on board ship, hemmed in by dense forest instead of engirdled by a distant horizon—all this was stimulating and cheering.
The fireflies in the forest, the strange fruits which were found for them by their impressed prisoners from the Natividad, the very mosquitoes which plagued them, helped at the same time to keep them happy. Down the cliff face beside one of the entrance batteries there tumbled a constant stream of clear water, so that for once in their lives the men were allowed as much fresh water as they could use, and to men who for months at a time had to submit to having a sentry standing guard over their drinking water this was an inexpressible luxury.
Soon, on the sandy shore, and as far as possible from the stored powder barrels, canvas covered and sentry guarded, there were fires lit over which was melted the pitch brought from the boatswain’s store. There had not been enough defaulters during those days to pick all the oakum required—some of the ship’s company had to work at oakum picking while the Lydia was hove over and the carpenter applied himself to the task of settling her bottom to rights. The shot holes were plugged, and strained seams caulked and pitched, the missing sheets of copper were replaced by the last few sheets which the Lydia carried in reserve. For four days the tiny bay was filled with the sound of the caulking hammers at work, and the reek of melting pitch drifted over the still water as the smoking cauldrons were carried across to the working parties.
At the end of that time the carpenter expressed himself as satisfied, and Hornblower, anxiously going over every foot of the ship’s bottom, grudgingly agreed with him. The Lydia was hove off, and still empty, was kedged and towed across the bay until she lay at the foot of the high cliff where one of the batteries was established—the shore was steep enough at this point to allow her to lie close in here when empty of guns and stores. At this point Lieutenant Bush had been busy setting up a projecting gallows, a hundred feet above, and vertically over, the ship’s deck. Painfully, and after many trials, the Lydia was manoeuvred until she could be moored so that the stump of her mizzen mast stood against the plumb line which Bush dropped from the tackles high above. Then the wedges were knocked out, the tackles set to work, and the stump was drawn out of her like a decayed tooth. That part of the work was easy compared with the next step. The seventy-five foot main yard had to be swayed up to the gallows, and then hung vertically down from them; if it had slipped it would have shot down like some monstrous arrow and would have sunk her for certain. When the yard was exactly vertical and exactly above the mizzen mast step it was lowered down, inch by inch, until its solid butt could be coaxed by anxious gangs through the maindeck and through the orlop until it came at last solidly to rest in its step upon the kelson. It only remained then to wedge it firmly in, to set up new shrouds, and the Lydia had once more a mizzen mast which could face the gales of the Horn.
Back at her anchorage, the Lydia could be ballasted once more, with her beef barrels and water barrels, her guns and her shot, save what was left in the entrance batteries. Ballasted and steady upon her keel, she could be re-rigged and her topmasts set up again. Every rope was re-rove, her standing rigging newly set up, replacements affected until she was as efficient a ship as when she had left Portsmouth newly commissioned.
It was then that Hornblower could allow himself time to draw breath and relax. The captain of a ship that is no ship, but only a mere hulk helpless in a landlocked inlet, cannot feel a moment’s peace. A heretic in an Inquisitor’s dungeon is happy compared with him. There is the menacing land all about him, the torment of helplessness as a perpetual goad, the fear of an ignominious siege to wake him in the night. Hornblower was like a man released from a sentence of death when he trod the Lydia’s deck once more and allowed his eye to rove contentedly upward and ever upward through the aspiring rigging, with the clangour of the pumps which had echoed in his ears during the last fortnight’s cruise completely stilled, happy in the consciousness of a staunch ship under his feet, comfortable in the knowledge that there would be no more campaigns to plan until he reached England.
At this very moment they were dismantling one of the entrance batteries, and the guns were being ferried out to the Lydia one by one. Already he had a broadside battery which could fire, a ship which could manoeuvre, and he could snap his fingers at every Spaniard in the Pacific. It was a glorious sensation. He turned and found Lady Barbara on the quarterdeck beside him, and he smiled at her dazzlingly.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said. “I trust you found your cabin comfortable again?”
Lady Barbara smiled back at him—in fact she almost laughed, so comical was the contrast between this greeting and the scowls she had encountered from him during the last eleven days.
“Thank you, Captain,” she said. “It is marvellously comfortable. Your crew has worked wonders to have done so much in so little time.”
Quite unconsciously he had reached out and taken both her hands in his, and was standing there holding them, smiling all over his face in the sunshine. Lady Barbara felt that it would only need a word from her to set him dancing.
“We shall be at sea before nightfall,” he said, ecstatically.
She could not be dignified with him, any more than she could have been dignified with a baby; she knew enough of men and affairs not to resent his previous preoccupation. Truth to tell, she was a trifle fond of him because of it.
“You are a very fine sailor, sir,” she said to him suddenly. “I doubt if there is another officer in the King’s service who could have done all you have done on this voyage.”
“I am glad you think so, ma’am,” he said, but the spell was broken. He had been reminded of himself, and his cursed self-consciousness closed in upon him again. He dropped her hands, awkwardly, and there was a hint of a blush in his tanned cheeks.
“I have only done my duty,” he mumbled, looking away.
“Many men can do that,” said Lady Barbara, “but few can do it well. The country is your debtor—my sincerest hope is that England will acknowledge the debt.”
The words started a sudden train of thought in Hornblower’s mind; it was a train he had followed up often before. England would only remember that his battle with the Natividad had been unnecessary; that a more fortunate captain would have heard of the new alliance between Spain and England before he had handed the Natividad over to the rebels, and would have saved all the trouble and friction and loss which had resulted. A frigate action with a hundred casualties might be glorious, but an unnecessary action with a hundred casualties was quite inglorious. No one would stop to think that it was his careful obedience to orders and skill in carrying them out which had been the reason of it. He would be blamed for his own merits, and life was suddenly full of bitterness again.
“Your pardon, ma’am,” he said, and he turned away from her and walked forward to bawl orders at the men engaged in swaying a
n eighteen pounder up from the launch.
Lady Barbara shook her head at his back.
“Bless the man!” she said to herself, softly. “He was almost human for a while.”
Lady Barbara was fast acquiring, in her forced loneliness, the habit of talking to herself like the sole inhabitant of a desert island. She checked herself as soon as she found herself doing so, and went below and rated Hebe soundly for some minor sin of omission in the unpacking of her wardrobe.
Chapter XXI
The rumour had gone round the crew that the Lydia was at last homeward bound. The men had fought and worked, first on the one side and then on the other, without understanding the trend of high politics which had decided whom they should fight and for whom they should work. That Spaniards should be first enemies, and then friends, and then almost hostile neutrals, had hardly caused one of them a single thought. They had been content to obey orders unthinkingly; but now, it seemed certain, so solidly based was the rumour, that the Lydia was on her way home. To the scatter-brained crew it seemed as if England was just over the horizon. They gave no thought to the five thousand stormy miles of sea that lay before them. Their heads were full of England. The pressed men thought of their wives; the volunteers thought of the women of the ports and of the joys of paying off. The sun of their rapture was not even overcast by any cloud of doubt as to the chances of their being turned over to another ship and sent off half round the world again before ever they could set foot on English soil.
They had flung themselves with a will into the labour of warping out of the bay, and not one of them looked back with regret to the refuge which alone had made their homeward voyage possible. They had chattered and played antics like a crew of monkeys when they dashed aloft to set sail, and the watch below had danced and set to partners through the warm evening while the Lydia bowled along with a favourable breeze over the blue Pacific. Then during the night the wind died away with its usual tropical freakishness, from a good breeze to a faint air, and from a faint air to a slow succession of fluky puffs which set the sails slatting and the rigging creaking and kept the watch continually at work at the braces trimming the sails.
Hornblower awoke in his cot in the cool hour before dawn. It was still too dark to see the tell-tale compass in the deck over his head, but he could guess from the long roll of the ship and the intermittent noises overhead that calm weather had overtaken them. It was almost time for him to start his morning walk on the quarterdeck, and he rested, blissfully free of all feeling of responsibility, until Polwheal came in to get out his clothes. He was putting on his trousers when a hail from the masthead lookout came echoing down through the scuttle.
“Sail ho! Broad on the larboard beam. It’s that there lugger again, sir.”
That feeling of freedom from worry vanished on the instant. Twice had that ill-omened lugger been seen in this very Gulf of Panama, and twice she had been the bearer of bad news. Hornblower wondered, with a twinge of superstition, what this third encounter would bring forth. He snatched his coat from Polwheal’s hands and put it on as he dashed up the companionway.
The lugger was there, sure enough, lying becalmed some two miles away; there were half a dozen glasses trained on her—apparently Hornblower’s officers shared his superstition.
“There’s something about that craft’s rig which gives me the horrors,” grumbled Gerard.
“She’s just a plain Spanish guarda-costa,” said Crystal. “I’ve seen ‘em in dozens. I remember off Havana—”
“Who hasn’t seen ‘em?” snapped Gerard. “I was saying—hullo! There’s a boat putting off.”
He glanced round and saw his captain appearing on the deck.
“Lugger’s sending a boat, sir.”
Hornblower did his best to make his expression one of sturdy indifference. He told himself that commanding, as he did, the fastest and most powerful ship on the Pacific coast, he need fear nothing. He was equipped and ready to sail half round the world, to fight any ship up to fifty guns. The sight of the lugger ought to cause him no uneasiness, but it did.
For long minutes they watched the boat come bobbing towards them over the swell. At first it was only a black speck showing occasionally on the crests Then the flash of the oar blades could be seen, as they reflected the rays of the nearly level sun, and then the oars themselves, as the boat grew like some great black water beetle creeping over the surface, and at last she was within hail, and a few minutes after for the third time the young Spanish officer in his brilliant uniform mounted to the Lydia’s deck and received Hornblower’s bow.
He made no attempt to conceal his curiosity, nor the admiration which blended with it. He saw that the jury mizzen mast had disappeared and had been replaced by a new spar as trim and as efficient as any set up in a navy yard; he saw that the shot holes had been expertly patched; he noticed that the pumps were no longer at work—that in fact during the sixteen days since he last saw her the ship had been entirely refitted, and, to his certain knowledge, without any aid from the shore and in no harbour save perhaps for some deserted inlet.
“It surprises me to see you here again, sir,” he said.
“To me,” said Hornblower, with perfect courtesy, “it is a pleasure as well as a surprise.”
“To me also it is a pleasure,” said the Spaniard quickly, “but I had thought you were far on your way home by now.”
“I am on my way home,” said Hornblower, determined to give no cause for offence if possible, “but as you see, sir, I have not progressed far as yet. However, I have effected, as perhaps you may notice, the repairs that were necessary, and now nothing will delay me from proceeding to England with the utmost despatch—unless, sir, there is some new development which makes it advisable, for the sake of die common cause of our two countries, for me to remain longer in these waters.”
Hornblower said these last words anxiously, and he was already devising in his mind excuses to free himself from the consequences of this offer if it were accepted. But thie Spaniard’s reply reassured him.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, “but there is no need for me to take advantage of your kindness. His Most Catholic Majesty’s dominions are well able to guard themselves. I am sure that His Britannic Majesty will be glad to see such a fine frigate returning to forward his cause.”
The two captains bowed to each other profoundly at this exchange of compliments before the Spaniard resumed his speech.
“I was thinking, sir,” he went on, “that perhaps if you would do me the great honour of visiting my ship for a moment, taking advantage of this prevailing calm, I should be able to show Your Excellency something which would be of interest and which would demonstrate our ability to continue without your kind assistance.”
“What is it?” asked Hornblower, suspiciously.
The Spaniard smiled.
“It would give me pleasure if I could show it to you as a surprise. Please, sir, would you not oblige me?”
Hornblower looked automatically round the horizon. He studied the Spaniard’s face. The Spaniard was no fool; and only a fool could meditate treachery when almost within range of a frigate which could sink his ship in a single broadside. And mad though most Spaniards were, they were not mad enough to offer violence to a British captain. Besides, he was pleased with the thought of how his officers would receive his announcement that he was going on board the lugger.
“Thank you, sir,” he said. “It will give me great pleasure to accompany you.”
The Spaniard bowed again, and Hornblower turned to his first lieutenant.
“I am going to visit the lugger, Mr. Bush,” he said. “I shall only be gone a short time. Call away the cutter and send her after me to bring me back.”
Hornblower was delighted to see how Bush struggled to conceal his consternation at the news.
“Aye aye, sir,” he said. He opened his mouth and shut it again; he wanted to expostulate and yet did not dare, and finally repeated feebly “Aye aye, sir.”
In the small boat rowing back to the lugger the Spaniard was the mirror of courtesy. He chatted politely about weather conditions. He mentioned the latest news of the war in Spain—it was quite undoubted that a French army had surrendered to the Spaniards in Andalusia, and that Spanish and British armies were assembling for a march into France. He described the ravages of yellow fever on the mainland. He contrived, all the same, to allow no single hint to drop as to the nature of the surprise which he was going to show Hornblower in the lugger.
The two captains were received with Spanish ceremony as they swung themselves up into the lugger’s waist. There was a great deal of bustle and parade, and two bugles and two drums sounded a resounding march horribly out of tune.
“All in this ship is yours, sir,” said the Spaniard with Castilian courtesy, and seeing no incongruity in his next sentence. “Your Excellency will take some refreshment? A cup of chocolate?”
“Thank you,” said Hornblower. He was not going to imperil his dignity by asking what was the nature of the surprise in store for him. He could wait—especially as he could see the launch already half-way towards the lugger.
The Spaniard was in no hurry to make the revelation. He was evidently savouring in anticipation the Englishman’s certain astonishment. He pointed out certain peculiarities in the lugger’s rig; he called up his officers to present to Hornblower; he discussed the merits of his crew—nearly all native Indians as on board the Natividad. In the end Hornblower won; the Spaniard could wait no longer to be asked.
“Would you please to come this way, sir?” he said. He led the way on to the foredeck, and there, chained by the waist to a ring bolt, with irons on his wrist and ankles, was el Supremo.
He was in rags—half naked in fact, and his beard and hair were matted and tangled, and his own filth lay on the deck about him.
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