Flying Colours h-9

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “The coach will leave in an hour’s time,” he announced. “The surgeon will be here in half an hour. You gentlemen will please be ready.”

  Bush was obviously feverish; Hornblower could see that at his first glance as he bent over him, still in his embroidered silk nightshirt. But Bush stoutly affirmed that he was not ill.

  “I’m well enough, thank you, sir,” he said; but his face was flushed and yet apprehensive, and his hands gripped his bedclothes. Hornblower suspected that the mere vibration of the floor as he and Brown walked about the room was causing pain to the unhealed stump of his leg.

  “I’m ready to do anything you want done,” said Hornblower.

  “No, thank you, sir. Let’s wait till the doctor comes, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  Hornblower washed and shaved in the cold water in the wash-hand stand jug; during the time which had elapsed since he had left the Sutherland he had never been allowed hot. But he yearned for the cold shower bath he had been accustomed to take under the jet of the wash-deck pump; his skin seemed to creep when he stopped to consider it, and it was a ghoulish business to make shift with washing glove and soap, wetting a few inches at a time. Brown dressed himself unobtrusively in his own corner of the room, scurrying out like a mouse to wash when his captain had finished.

  The doctor arrived with his leather satchel.

  “And how is he this morning?” he asked, briskly; Hornblower saw a shade of concern pass over his face as he observed Bush’s evident fever.

  He knelt down and exposed the stump, Hornblower beside him. The limb jerked nervously as it was grasped with firm fingers; the doctor took Hornblower’s hand and laid it on the skin above the wound.

  “A little warm,” said the doctor. It was hot to Hornblower’s touch. “That may be a good sign. We shall know now.”

  He took hold of one of the ligatures and pulled at it. The thing came gliding out of the wound like a snake.

  “Good!” said the doctor. “Excellent!”

  He peered closely at the debris entangled in the knot, and then bent to examine the trickle of pus which had followed the ligature out of the wound.

  “Excellent,” repeated the doctor.

  Hornblower went back in his mind through the numerous reports which surgeons had made to him regarding wounded men, and the verbal comments with which they had amplified them. The words ‘laudable pus’ came up in his mind; it was important to distinguish between the drainage from a wound struggling to heal itself and the stinking ooze of a poisoned limb. This was clearly laudable pus, judging by the doctor’s comments.

  “Now for the other one,” said the doctor. He pulled at the remaining ligature, but all he got was a cry of pain from Bush—which seemed to go clean through Hornblower’s heart—and a convulsive writhing of Bush’s tortured body.

  “Not quite ready,” said the doctor. “I should judge that it will only be a matter of hours, though. Is your friend proposing to continue his journey to-day?”

  “He is under orders to continue it,” said Hornblower in his limping French. “You would consider such a course unwise?”

  “Most unwise,” said the doctor. “It will cause him a great deal of pain and may imperil the healing of the wound.”

  He felt Bush’s pulse and rested his hand on his forehead.

  “Most unwise,” he repeated.

  The door opened behind him to reveal the gendarmerie sergeant.

  “The carriage is ready.”

  “It must wait until I have bandaged this wound. Get outside,” said the doctor testily.

  “I will go and speak to the Colonel,” said Hornblower.

  He brushed past the sergeant who tried too late to intercept him, into the main corridor of the inn, and out into the courtyard where stood the coach. The horses were being harnessed up, and a group of gendarmes were saddling their mounts on the farther side. Chance dictated that Colonel Caillard should be crossing the courtyard, too, in his blue and red uniform and his gleaming high boots, the star of the Legion of Honour dancing on his breast.

  “Sir,” said Hornblower.

  “What is it now?” demanded Caillard.

  “Lieutenant Bush must not be moved. He is very badly wounded and a crisis approaches.”

  The broken French came tumbling disjointedly from Hornblower’s lips.

  “I can do nothing in contravention of my orders,” said Caillard. His eyes were cold and his mouth hard.

  “You were not ordered to kill him,” protested Hornblower.

  “I was ordered to bring you and him to Paris with the utmost dispatch. We shall start in five minutes.”

  “But, sir—Cannot you wait even to-day?”

  “Even as a pirate you must be aware of the impossibility of disobeying orders,” said Caillard.

  “I protest against those orders in the name of humanity.”

  That was a melodramatic speech, but it was a melodramatic moment, and in his ignorance of French Hornblower could not pick and choose his words. A sympathetic murmur in his ear attracted his notice, and, looking round, he saw the two aproned maids and a fat woman and the innkeeper all listening to the conversation with obvious disapproval of Caillard’s point of view. They shut themselves away behind the kitchen door as Caillard turned a terrible eye upon them, but they had granted Hornblower a first momentary insight into the personal unpopularity which Imperial harshness was causing to develop in France.

  “Sergeant,” said Caillard abruptly. “Put the prisoners into the coach.”

  There was no hope of resistance. The gendarmes carried Bush’s stretcher into the courtyard and perched it up on the seats, with Brown and Hornblower running round it to protect it from unnecessary jerks. The surgeon was scribbling notes hurriedly at the foot of the sheaf of notes regarding Bush’s case which Hornblower had brought from Rosas. One of the maids came clattering across the courtyard with a steaming tray which she passed in to Hornblower through the open window. There was a platter of bread and three bowls of a black liquid which Hornblower was later to come to recognize as coffee—what blockaded France had come to call coffee. It was no pleasanter than the infusion of burnt crusts which Hornblower had sometimes drunk on shipboard during a long cruise without the opportunity of renewing cabin stores, but it was warm and stimulating at that time in the morning.

  “We have no sugar, sir,” said the maid apologetically.

  “It doesn’t matter,” answered Hornblower, sipping thirstily.

  “It is a pity the poor wounded officer has to travel,” she went on. “These wars are terrible.”

  She had a snub nose and a wide mouth and big black eyes—no one could call her attractive, but the sympathy in her voice was grateful to a man who was a prisoner. Brown was propping up Bush’s shoulders and holding a bowl to his lips. He took two or three sips and turned his head away. The coach rocked as two men scrambled up on to the box.

  “Stand away, there!” roared the sergeant.

  The coach lurched and rolled and wheeled round out of thegates, the horses’ hoofs clattering loud on the cobbles, and the last Hornblower saw of the maid was the slight look of consternation on her face as she realized that she had lost the breakfast tray for good.

  The road was bad, judging by the way the coach lurched; Hornblower heard a sharp intake of breath from Bush at one jerk. He remembered what the swollen and inflamed stump of Bush’s leg looked like; every jar must be causing him agony. He moved up the seat to the stretcher and caught Bush’s hand.

  “Don’t you worry yourself, sir,” said Bush. “I’m all right.” Even while he spoke Hornblower felt him grip tighter as another jolt caught him unexpectedly.

  “I’m sorry, Bush,” was all he could say; it was hard for the captain to speak at length to the lieutenant on such personal matters as his regret and unhappiness.

  “We can’t help it, sir,” said Bush, forcing his peaked features into a smile.

  That was the main trouble, their complete helplessness. Hornblower realized th
at there was nothing he could say, nothing he could do. The leather-scented stuffiness of the coach was already oppressing him, and he realized with horror that they would have to endure this jolting prison of theirs for another twenty days, perhaps, before they should reach Paris. He was restless and fidgety at the thought of it, and perhaps his restlessness communicated itself by contact to Bush, who gently withdrew his hand and turned his head to one side, leaving his captain free to fidget within the narrow confines of the coach.

  Still there were glimpses of the sea to be caught on one side, and of the Pyrenees on the other. Putting his head out of the window Hornblower ascertained that their escort was diminished to-day. Only two troopers rode ahead of the coach, and four clattered behind at the heels of Caillard’s horse. Presumably their entry into France made any possibility of a rescue far less likely. Standing thus, his head awkwardly protruding through the window, was less irksome than sitting in the stuffiness of the carriage. There were the vineyards and the stubble field to be seen, and the swelling heights of the Pyrenees receding into the blue distance. There were people, too—nearly all women, Hornblower noted—who hardly looked up from their hoeing to watch the coach and its escort bowling along the road. Now they were passing a party of uniformed soldiers—recruits and convalescents, Hornblower guessed, on their way to their units in Catalonia—shambling along the road more like sheep than soldiers. The young officer at their head saluted the glitter of the star on Caillard’s chest and eyed the coach curiously at the same time.

  Strange prisoners had passed along that road before him; Alvarez, the heroic defender of Gerona, who died on a wheelbarrow—the only bed granted him—in a dungeon on his way to trial, and Toussaint 1’Ouverture, the Negro hero of Hayti, kidnapped from his sunny island and sent to die, inevitably, of pneumonia in a rocky fortress in the Jura; Palafox of Zaragoza, young Mina from Navarre—all victims of the tyrant’s Corsican rancour. He and Bush would only be two more items in a list already notable. D’Enghien who had been shot in Vincennes six years ago was of the blood-royal, and his death had caused a European sensation, but Bonaparte had murdered plenty more. Thinking of all those who had preceded him made Hornblower gaze more yearningly from the carriage window, and breathe more deeply of the free air.

  Still in sight of sea and hills—Mount Caingou still dominating the background—they halted at a posting inn beside the road to change horses. Caillard and the escort took new mounts; four new horses were harnessed up to the coach, and in less than a quarter of an hour they were off again, breasting the steep slopes before them with renewed strength. They must be averaging six miles to the hour at least, thought Hornblower, his mind beginning to make calculations. How far Paris might be he could only guess—five or six hundred miles, he fancied. From seventy to ninety hours of travel would bring them to the capital, and they might travel eight, twelve, fifteen hours a day. It might be five days, it might be twelve days, before they reached Paris—vague enough figures. He might be dead in a week’s time, or he might still be alive in three weeks. Still alive! As Hornblower thought those words he realized how greatly he desired to live; it was one of those moments when the Hornblower whom he observed so dispassionately and with faint contempt suddenly blended with the Hornblower who was himself, the most important and vital person in the whole world. He envied the bent old shepherd in the distance with the plaid rug over his shoulders, hobbling over the hillside bent over his stick.

  Here was a town coming—there were ramparts, a frowning citadel, a lofty cathedral. They passed through a gateway and the horses’ hoofs rang loudly on cobblestones as the coach threaded its way through narrow streets. Plenty of soldiers here, too; the streets were filled with variegated uniforms. This must be Perpignan, of course, the French base for the invasion of Catalonia. The coach stopped with a jerk in a wider street where an avenue of plane trees and a flagged quay bordered a little river, and, looking upward, Hornblower read the sign ‘Hôtel de la Poste et du Perdrix. Route Nationale 9. Paris 849’. With a rush and bustle the horses were changed, Brown and Hornblower were grudgingly allowed to descend and stretch their stiff legs before returning to attend to Bush’s wants—they were few enough in his present fever. Caillard and the gendarmes were snatching a hasty meal—the latter at tables outside the inn, the former visible through the windows of the front room. Someone brought the prisoners a tray with slices of cold meat, bread, wine, and cheese. It had hardly been handed into the coach when the escort climbed upon their horses again, the whip cracked and they were off. The coach heaved and dipped like a ship at sea as it mounted first one hump-backed bridge and then another, before the horses settled into a steady trot along the wide straight road bordered with poplars.

  “They waste no time,” said Hornblower, grimly. “No, sir, that they don’t!” agreed Brown. Bush would eat nothing, shaking his head feebly at the offer of bread and meat. All they could do for him was to moisten his lips with wine, for he was parched and thirsty; Hornblower made a mental note to remember to ask for water at the next posting house, and cursed himself for forgetting anything so obvious up to now. He and Brown shared the food, eating with their fingers and drinking turn and turn about from the bottle of wine, Brown apologetically wiping the bottle’s mouth with the napkin after drinking. And as soon as the food was finished Hornblower was on his feet again craning through the carriage window, watching the countryside drifting by. A thin chill rain began, soaking his scanty hair as he stood there, wetting his face and even running in trickles down his neck, but still he stood there, staring out at freedom.

  The sign of the inn where they stopped at nightfall read ‘Hôtel de la Poste de Sigean. Route Nationale 9. Paris 805. Perpignan 44’. This place Sigean was no more than a sparse village, straggling for miles along the high road, and the inn was a tiny affair, smaller than the posting stables round the other three sides of the courtyard. The staircase to the upper rooms was too narrow and winding for the stretcher to be carried up them; it was only with difficulty that the bearers were able to turn with it into the salon which the innkeeper reluctantly yielded to them. Hornblower saw Bush wincing as the stretcher jarred against the sides of the door.

  “We must have a surgeon at once for the lieutenant,” he said to the sergeant.

  “I will inquire for one.”

  The innkeeper here was a surly brute with a squint; he was ungracious about clearing his best sitting-room of its spindly furniture, and bringing beds for Hornblower and Brown, and producing the various articles they asked for to help make Bush comfortable. There were no wax candles nor lamps; only tallow dips which stank atrociously.

  “How’s the leg feeling?” asked Hornblower, bending over Bush.

  “All right, sir,” said Bush, stubbornly, but he was so obviously feverish and in such obvious pain that Hornblower was anxious about him.

  When the sergeant escorted in the maid with the dinner he asked, sharply:

  “Why has the surgeon not come?”

  “There is no surgeon in this village.”

  “No surgeon? The lieutenant is seriously ill. Is there no—no apothecary?”

  Hornblower used the English word in default of French.

  “The cow-doctor went across the hills this afternoon and will not be back to-night. There is no one to be found.”

  The sergeant went out of the room, leaving Hornblower to explain the situation to Bush.

  “All right,” said the latter, turning his head on the pillow with the feeble gesture which Hornblower dreaded. Hornblower nerved himself.

  “I’d better dress that wound of yours myself,” he said. “We might try cold vinegar on it, as they do in our service.”

  “Something cold,” said Bush, eagerly.

  Hornblower pealed at the bell, and when it was eventually answered he asked for vinegar and obtained it. Not one of the three had a thought for their dinner cooling on the side table.

  “Now,” said Hornblower.

  He had a saucer of vinegar beside
him, in which lay the soaking lint, and the clean bandages which the surgeon at Rosas had supplied were at hand. He turned back the bedclothes and revealed the bandaged stump. The leg twitched nervously as he removed the bandages; it was red and swollen and inflamed, hot to the touch for several inches above the point of amputation.

  “It’s pretty swollen here, too, sir,” whispered Bush. The glands in his groin were huge.

  “Yes,” said Hornblower.

  He peered at the scarred end, examined the dressings he had removed, with Brown holding the light. There had been a slight oozing from the point where the ligature had been withdrawn yesterday; much of the rest of the scar was healed and obviously healthy. There was only the other ligature which could be causing this trouble; Hornblower knew that if it were ready to come out it was dangerous to leave it in. Cautiously he took hold of the silken thread. The first gentle touch of it conveyed to his sensitive fingers a suggestion that it was free. It moved distinctly for a quarter of an inch, and judging by Bush’s quiescence, it caused him no sudden spasm of pain. Hornblower set his teeth and pulled; the thread yielded very slowly, but it was obviously free, and no longer attached to the elastic artery. He pulled steadily against a yielding resistance. The ligature came slowly out of the wound, knot and all. Pus followed it in a steady trickle, only slightly tinged with blood. The thing was done.

  The artery had not burst, and clearly the wound was in need of the free drainage open to it now with the withdrawal of the ligature.

  “I think you’re going to start getting well now,” he said, aloud, making himself speak cheerfully. “How does it feel?”

  “Better,” said Bush. “I think it’s better, sir.”

  Hornblower applied the soaking lint to the scarred surface. He found his hands trembling, but he steadied them with an effort as he bandaged the stump—not an easy job, this last, but one which he managed to complete in adequate fashion. He put back the wicker shield, tucked in the bedclothes, and rose to his feet. The trembling was worse than ever now, and he was shaken and sick, which surprised him.