Flying Colours h-9

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “I was aware of it,” answered Gambier. “Please go on, Captain.”

  Hornblower told of how he witnessed the destruction of the French squadron, of how Caillard arrived to take him to Paris, of his escape, first from his escort and then from drowning. He made only a slight mention of Count de Graçay and of his voyage down the Loire—that was not an admiral’s business—but he descended to fuller details when he told of his recapture of the Witch of Endor. Details here were of importance, because in the course of the manifold activities of the British Navy it might easily happen that a knowledge of harbour arrangements at Nantes and of the navigational difficulties of the lower Loire might be useful.

  “Good God Almighty, man,” said Calendar, “how can you be so cold-blooded about it? Weren’t you—”

  “Captain Calendar,” interrupted Gambier, “I have requested you before not to allude to the Deity in that blasphemous fashion. Any repetition will incur my serious displeasure. Kindly continue, Captain Hornblower.”

  There was only the brush with the boats from Noirmoutier to be described now. Hornblower continued, formally, but this time Gambier himself interrupted him.

  “You say you opened fire with a six-pounder,” he said. “The prisoners were at the sweeps, and the ship had to be steered. Who laid the gun?”

  “I did, my lord. The French pilot helped me.”

  “M’m. And you frightened ‘em off?”

  Hornblower confessed that he had succeeded in sinking two out of the three boats sent against him. Calendar whistled his surprise and admiration, but the hard lines in Gambier’s face only set harder still.

  “Yes?” he said. “And then?”

  “We went on under sweeps until midnight, my lord, and then we picked up a breeze. We sighted Triumph at dawn.”

  There was silence in the cabin, only broken by the noises on deck, until Gambier stirred in his chair.

  “I trust, Captain,” he said, “that you have given thanks to the Almighty for these miraculous preservations of yours. In all these adventures I can see the finger of God. I shall direct my chaplain at prayers this evening to make a special mention of your gratitude and thankfulness.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Now you will make your report in writing. You can have it ready by dinner time—I trust you will give me the pleasure of your company at dinner? I will then be able to enclose it in the packet I am about to despatch to Their Lordships.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Gambier was still thinking deeply.

  “Witch of Endor can carry the despatches,” he said. Like every admiral the world over, his most irritating and continuous problem was how to collect and disseminate information without weakening his main body by detachments; it must have been an immense relief to him to have the cutter drop from the clouds as it were, to carry these despatches. He went on thinking.

  “I will promote this lieutenant of yours, Bush, into her as Commander,” he announced.

  Hornblower gave a little gasp. Promotion to Commander meant almost certain post rank within the year, and it was this power of promotion which constituted the most prized source of patronage an Admiral in command possessed. Bush deserved the step, but it was surprising that Gambier should give it to him—Admirals generally had some favourite lieutenant, or some nephew or some old friend’s son awaiting the first vacancy. Hornblower could imagine Bush’s delight at the news that he was at last on his way to becoming an admiral himself if he lived long enough.

  But that was not all, by no means all. Promotion of a captain’s first lieutenant was a high compliment to the captain himself. It set the seal of official approval on the captain’s proceedings. This decision of Gambier’s was a public—not merely a private—announcement that Hornblower had acted correctly.

  “Thank you, my lord, thank you,” said Hornblower.

  “She is your prise, of course,” went on Gambier. “Government will have to buy her on her arrival.”

  Hornblower had not thought of that. It meant at least a thousand pounds in his pocket.

  “That coxswain of yours will be in clover,” chuckled Calendar. “He’ll take all the lower deck’s share.”

  That was true, too. Brown would have a quarter of the value of the Witch of Endor for himself. He could buy a cottage or land and set up in business on his own account if he wished to.

  “Witch of Endor will wait until your report is ready,” announced Gambier. “I will send my secretary in to you. Captain Calendar will provide you with a cabin and the necessities you lack. I hope you will continue to be my guest until I sail for Portsmouth next week. It would be best, I think.”

  The last words were a delicate allusion to that aspect of the matter which had occupied most of Hornblower’s thoughts on his arrival, and which had not as yet been touched upon—the fact that he must undergo court martial for the loss of the Sutherland, and was of necessity under arrest until that time. By old established custom he must be under the supervision of an officer of equal rank while under arrest; there could be no question of sending him home in the Witch of Endor.

  “Yes, my lord,” said Hornblower.

  Despite all Gambier’s courtesy and indulgence towards him, despite Calendar’s open admiration, he still felt a constriction of the throat and a dryness of the mouth at the thought of that court martial; they were symptoms which persisted even when he tried to settle down and compose his report with the aid of the competent young clergyman who made his appearance in the cabin to which Calendar conducted him.

  “Arma virumque cano,” quoted the Admiral’s secretary after the first halting sentences—Hornblower’s report naturally began with the battle of Rosas. “You begin in medias res, sir, as every good epic should.”

  “This is an official report,” snapped Hornblower. “It continues the last report I made to Admiral Leighton.”

  His tiny cabin only allowed him to walk three paces each way, and crouching nearly double at that—some unfortunate lieutenant had been turned out to make room for him. In a flagship, even in a big three-decker like the Victory, the demand for cabins always greatly exceeded the supply, what with the Admiral, and the Captain of the Fleet, and the flag lieutenant, and the secretary, and the chaplain, and the rest of the staff. He sat down on the breech of the twelve-pounder beside the cot.

  “Continue, if you please,” he ordered. “’Having regard to these conditions, I therefore proceeded—’”

  It was finished in the end—it was the third time that morning that Hornblower had recounted his adventures, and they had lost all their savour for him now. He was dreadfully tired—his head drooped forward at his breast as he squatted on the gun, and then he woke with a snort. He was actually falling asleep while he sat.

  “You are tired, sir,” said the secretary.

  “Yes.”

  He forced himself to wake up again. The secretary was looking at him with eyes shining with admiration, positive hero-worship. It made him feel uncomfortable.

  “If you will just sign this, sir, I will attend to the seal and the superscription.”

  The secretary slipped out of the chair and Hornblower took the pen and dashed off his signature to the document on whose evidence he was soon to be tried for his life.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the secretary, gathering the papers together.

  Hornblower had no more attention to spare for him. He threw himself face downward on to the cot, careless of appearances. He went rushing giddily down a tremendous slope into blackness—he was snoring before the secretary had reached the door, and he never felt the touch of the blanket with which the secretary returned, five minutes later, tiptoeing up to the cot to spread it over him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Something enormously painful was recalling Hornblower to life. He did not want to return. It was agony to wake up, it was torture to feel unconsciousness slipping away from him. He clung to it, tried to recapture it, unavailingly. Remorselessly it eluded him. Somebody was gently sh
aking his shoulder, and he came back to complete consciousness with a start, and wriggled over to see the Admiral’s secretary bending over him.

  “The Admiral will dine within the hour, sir,” he said. “Captain Calendar thought you might prefer to have a little time in which to prepare.”

  “Yes,” grunted Hornblower. He fingered instinctively the long stubble on his unshaven chin. “Yes.”

  The secretary was standing very stiff and still, and Hornblower looked up at him curiously. There was an odd, set expression on the secretary’s face, and he held a newspaper imperfectly concealed behind his back.

  “What’s the matter?” demanded Hornblower.

  “It is bad news for you, sir,” said the secretary.

  “What news?”

  Hornblower’s spirits fell down into the depths of despair. Perhaps Gambier had changed his mind. Perhaps he was going to be kept under strict arrest, tried, condemned, and shot. Perhaps—

  “I remembered having seen this paragraph in the Morning Chronicle of three months ago, sir,” said the secretary. “I showed it to his Lordship, and to Captain Calendar. They decided it ought to be shown to you as early as possible. His Lordship says—”

  “What is the paragraph?” demanded Hornblower, holding out his hand for the paper.

  “It is bad news, sir,” repeated the secretary, hesitatingly.

  “Let me see it, damn you.”

  The secretary handed over the newspaper, one finger indicating the paragraph.

  “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away,” he said. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

  It was a very short paragraph.

  We regret to announce the death in childbed, on the seventh of this month, of Mrs Maria Hornblower, widow of the late Captain Horatio Hornblower, Bonaparte’s martyred victim. The tragedy occurred in Mrs Hornblower’s lodgings at Southsea, and we are given to understand that the child, a fine boy, is healthy.

  Hornblower read it twice, and he began on it a third time. Maria was dead, Maria the tender, the loving.

  “You can find consolation in prayer, sir—” said the secretary, but Hornblower paid no attention to what the secretary said.

  He had lost Maria. She had died in childbed, and having regard to the circumstances in which the child had been engendered, he had as good as killed her. Maria was dead. There would be no one, no one at all, to welcome him now on his return to England. Maria would have stood by him during the court martial, and whatever the verdict, she would never have believed him to be at fault. Hornblower remembered the tears wetting her coarse red cheeks when she had last put her arms round him to say goodbye. He had been a little bored by the formality of an affectionate goodbye, then. He was free now—the realization came creeping over him like cold water in a warm bath. But it was not fair to Maria. He would not have bought his freedom at such a price. She had earned by her own devotion his attention, his kindness, and he would have given them to her uncomplainingly for the rest of his life. He was desperately sorry that she was dead.

  “His Lordship instructed me, sir,” said the secretary, “to inform you of his sympathy in your bereavement. He told me to say that he would not take it amiss if you decided not to join him and his guests at dinner but sought instead the consolation of religion in your cabin.”

  “Yes,” said Hornblower.

  “Any help which I can give, sir—”

  “None,” said Hornblower.

  He continued to sit on the edge of the cot, his head bowed, and the secretary shuffled his feet.

  “Get out of here,” said Hornblower, without looking up.

  He sat there for some time, but there was no order in his thoughts; his mind was muddled. There was a continuous undercurrent of sadness, a hurt feeling indistinguishable from physical pain, but fatigue and excitement and lack of sleep deprived him of any ability to think clearly. Finally, with a desperate effort he pulled himself together. He felt as if he was stifling in the stuffy cabin; he hated his stubbly beard and the feelings of dried sweat.

  “Pass the word for my servant,” he ordered the sentry at his door.

  It was good to shave off the filthy beard, to wash his body in cold water, to put on clean linen. He went up on deck, the clean sea air rushing into his lungs as he breathed. It was good, too, to have a deck to pace, up and down, up and down, between the slides of the quarterdeck carronades and the line of ringbolts in the deck, with all the familiar sounds of shipboard life as a kind of lullaby to his tired mind. Up and down he walked, up and down, as he had walked so many hours before, in the Indefatigable, and the Lydia, and the Sutherland. They left him alone; the officers of the watch collected on the other side of the ship and only stared at him unobtrusively, politely concealing their curiosity about this man who had just heard of the death of his wife, who had escaped from a French prison, who was waiting his trial for surrendering his ship—the first captain to strike his colours in a British ship of the line since Captain Ferris in the Hannibal at Algecira. Up and down he walked, the goodly fatigue closing in upon him again until his mind was stupefied with it, until he found that he could hardly drag one foot past the other. Then he went below to the certainty of sleep and oblivion. But even in his sleep tumultuous dreams came to harass him—dreams of Maria, against which he struggled, sweating, knowing that Maria’s body was now only a liquid mass of corruption; nightmares of death and imprisonment; and, ever-recurring, dreams of Barbara smiling to him on the farther side of the horrors that encompassed him.

  From one point of view the death of his wife was of benefit to Hornblower during those days of waiting. It provided him with a good excuse for being silent and unapproachable. Without being thought impolite he could find a strip of deck and walk by himself in the sunshine. Gambier could walk with the captain of the fleet or the flag captain, little groups of lieutenants and warrant officers could walk together, chatting lightly, but they all kept out of his way; and it was not taken amiss that he should sit silent at the Admiral’s dinner table and hold himself aloof at the Admiral’s prayer meetings.

  Had it not been so he would have been forced to mingle in the busy social life of the flagship, talking to officers who would studiously avoid all reference to the fact that shortly they would be sitting as judges on him at his court martial. He did not have to join in the eternal technical discussions which went on round him, stoically pretending that the responsibility of having surrendered a British ship of the line sat lightly on his shoulders. Despite all the kindness with which he was treated, he felt a pariah. Calendar could voice open admiration for him, Gambier could treat him with distinction, the young lieutenants could regard him with wide-eyed hero-worship, but they had never hauled down their colours. More than once during his long wait Hornblower found himself wishing that a cannonball had killed him on the quarterdeck of the Sutherland. There was no one in the world who cared for him now—the little son in England, in the arms of some unknown foster-mother, might grow up ashamed of the name he bore.

  Suspecting, morbidly, that the others would treat him like an outcast if they could, he anticipated them and made an outcast of himself, bitterly proud. He went through all that period of black reaction by himself, without companionship, during those last days of Gambier’s tenure of command, until Hood came out in the Britannia to take over the command, and, amid the thunder of salutes, the Victory sailed for Portsmouth. There were headwinds to delay her passage; she had to beat up the Channel for seven long days before at last she glided into Spithead and the cable roared out through the hawse-hole.

  Hornblower sat in his cabin—he felt no interest in the green hills of the Isle of Wight nor in the busy prospect of Portsmouth. The tap which came at his cabin door heralded, he supposed, the arrival of the orders regarding his court martial.

  “Come in!” he said, but it was Bush who entered, stumping along on his wooden leg, his face wreathed in smiles, his arms burdened with packages and parcels.

  At the sight of that homely face Hornbl
ower’s depression evaporated like mist. He found himself grinning as delightedly as Bush, he wrung his hand over and over again, sat him down in the only chair, offered to send for drinks for him, all trace of self-consciousness and reserve disappearing in the violence of his reaction.

  “Oh, I’m well enough, sir, thank you,” said Bush, in reply to Hornblower’s questions. “And this is the first chance I’ve had of thanking you for my promotion.”

  “Don’t thank me,” said Hornblower, a trace of bitterness creeping back into his voice. “You must thank his Lordship.”

  “I know who I owe it to, all the same,” said Bush, sturdily. “They’re going to post me as captain this week. They won’t give me a ship—not with this leg of mine—but there’s the dockyard job at Sheerness waiting for me. I should never be captain if it weren’t for you, sir.”

  “Rubbish,” said Hornblower. The pathetic gratitude in Bush’s voice and expression made him feel uncomfortable.

  “And how is it with you, sir?” asked Bush, regarding him with anxious blue eyes.

  Hornblower shrugged his shoulders.

  “Fit and well,” he said.

  “I was sorry to hear about Mrs Hornblower, sir,” said Bush.

  That was all he needed to say on that subject. They knew each other too well to have to enlarge on it.

  “I took the liberty, sir,” said Bush, hastily, “of bringing you out your letters—there was a good deal waiting for you.”

  “Yes?” said Hornblower.

  “This big package is a sword, I’m sure, sir,” said Bush. He was cunning enough to think of ways of capturing Hornblower’s interest.

  “Let’s open it, then,” said Hornblower, indulgently.

  A sword it was, sure enough, with a gold-mounted scabbard and a gold hilt, and when Hornblower drew it the blue steel blade bore an inscription in gold inlay. It was the sword ‘of one hundred guineas’ value’ which had been presented to him by the Patriotic Fund for his defeat of the Natividad in the Lydia, and which he had left in pawn with Duddingstone the ship’s chandler at Plymouth, as a pledge for payment for captain’s stores when he was commissioning the Sutherland.