“Thank you, Mr. Bush. Acknowledge, and clear away the quarter boat.”
“Aye aye, sir. Acknowledge!” A second later Bush was blaring again. “Not that halliard, you careless—you careless young gentleman. Tonnant can’t see the signal through the mizzen tops’l. Send it up to the main tops’l yardarm.”
Bush looked over at Hornblower and spread his hands in resignation. Partly he was indicating that he was resigned to this duty of training ignorant young subordinates, but partly the dumb show conveyed some of the feelings aroused by having, in view of Hornblower’s known preferences, to call Foreman a ‘young gentleman’ instead of using some much more forcible expression. Then he turned away to supervise Cummings as he hoisted out the quarter boat. There was everything to be said in favour of these young men being harassed and bullied as they went about their duties, although Hornblower did not subscribe to the popular notion that young men were actually the better for harassment and bullying. They would learn their duties all the quicker; and one of these days Foreman might easily find himself having to read and transmit signals amid the smoke and confusion and slaughter of a fleet action, while Cummings might be launching and manning a boat in desperate haste for a cutting out expedition.
Hornblower remembered his unfinished dinner.
“Call me when the boat returns, if you please, Mr. Bush.”
This was the last of the blackcurrant jam; Hornblower, ruefully contemplating the sinking level in the final pot, admitted to himself that compulsorily he had actually acquired a taste for blackcurrant. The butter was all gone, the eggs used up, after forty days at sea. For the next seventy-one days, until the ship’s provisions were all consumed he was likely to be living on seaman’s fare, unrelieved salt beef and pork, dried peas, biscuits. Cheese twice a week and suet pudding on Sundays.
At any rate there was time for a nap before the boat returned. He could go to sleep peacefully—a precaution in case the exigencies of the service disturbed his night—thanks to the naval might of Britain, although five miles away there were twenty thousand enemies any one of whom would kill him on sight.
“Boat coming alongside, sir.”
“Very well,” answered Hornblower sleepily.
The boat was deeply laden, right down to her gunwales. The hands must have had a long stiff pull back to the Hotspur; it was the purest bad luck on them that they could run under sail to the Tonnant when lightly laden and then have to row all the way back deeply laden in the teeth of the gentle wind. From the boat as she approached there came a strange roaring noise, a kind of bellow.
“What the devil’s that?” asked Bush of himself as he stood beside Hornblower on the gangway.
The boat was heaped high with sacks.
“There’s fresh food, anyway,” said Hornblower.
“Reeve a whip at the main yardarm!” bellowed Bush—odd how his bellow was echoed from the boat.
Foreman came up the side to report.
“Cabbages, potatoes, cheese, sir. And a bullock.”
“Fresh meat, by God!” said Bush.
With half a dozen hands tailing on to the whip at the yardarm the sacks came rapidly up to the deck; as the boat was cleared there lay revealed in the bottom a formless mass of rope netting; still bellowing. Slings were passed beneath it and soon it lay on deck; a miserable undersized bullock, lowing faintly. A terrified eye rolled at them through the netting that swathed it. Bush turned to Hornblower as Foreman completed his report.
“Tonnant brought twenty-four cattle out for the fleet from Plymouth, sir. This one’s our share. If we butcher it tomorrow, sir, and let it hang for a day, you can have steak on Sunday, sir.”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
“We can swab the blood off the deck while it’s still fresh, sir. No need to worry about that. An’ there’ll be tripe, sir! Ox tongue!”
“Yes,” said Hornblower.
He could still see that terrified eye. He could wish that Bush was not so enthusiastic, because he felt quite the reverse. As his vivid imagination pictured the butchering he felt no desire at all for meat provided by such a process. He had to change the subject.
“Mr. Foreman! Were there no messages from the fleet?”
Foreman started guiltily and plunged his hand into his side pocket to produce a bulky packet. He blanched as he saw the fury on Hornblower’s face.
“Don’t you ever do that again, Mr. Foreman! Despatches before everything! You need a lesson and this is the time for it.”
“Shall I pass the word for Mr. Wise, sir?” asked Bush.
The boatswain’s rattan could make vigorous play over Foreman’s recumbent form bent over the breech of a gun. Hornblower saw the sick fright in Foreman’s face. The boy was as terrified as the bullock; he must have the horror of corporal punishment that occasionally was evident in the navy. It was a horror that Hornblower himself shared. He looked into the pleading desperate eyes for five long seconds to let the lesson sink in.
“No,” he said, at length. “Mr. Foreman would only remember that for a day. I’ll see he gets reminded every day for a week. No spirits for Mr. Foreman for seven days; And anyone in the midshipman’s berth who tries to help him out will lose his ration for fourteen days. See to that, if you please, Mr. Bush.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Hornblower snatched the packet from Foreman’s lifeless hand, and turned away with contempt in the gesture. No child of fifteen would be any the worse for being deprived of ardent spirits.
In the cabin he had to use his penknife to open the tarred canvas packet. The first thing to tumble out was a grape-shot; the navy had developed through the centuries a routine in these matters—the tarred canvas preserved the contents from salt water if it had to be transported by boat in stormy weather, and the grape-shot would sink it if there were danger of its falling into the hands of the enemy. There were three official letters and a mass of private ones; Hornblower opened the official ones in haste. The first was signed ‘Wm Cornwallis, Vice Ad.’ It was in the usual form, beginning with the statement of the new situation. Captain Sir Edward Pellew, K.B., in the Tonnant, had, as senior officer, received the command of the Inshore Squadron. ‘You are therefore requested and required’ to obey the orders of the said Captain Sir Edward Pellew, and to pay him the strictest attention, as issued with the authority of the Commander in Chief. The next was signed ‘Ed Pellew, Capt.’, and was drily official in three lines, confirming the fact that Pellew now considered Hornblower and Hotspur as under his command. The third abandoned the formal ‘Sir’ which began the others.
My dear Hornblower,
It is with the greatest of pleasure that I hear that you are serving under me, and what I have been told of your actions already in the present war confirms the opinion I formed when you were my best midshipman in the old Indefatigable. Please consider yourself at liberty to make any suggestions that may occur to you for the confounding of the French and the confusion of Bonaparte.
Your sincere friend,
Edward Pellew.
Now that was a really flattering letter, warming and comforting. Warming, indeed; as Hornblower sat with the letter in his hand he could feel the blood running faster through his veins. For that matter he could almost feel a stirring within his skull as the ideas began to form, as he thought about the signal station on Petit Minou, as the germs of plans began to sprout. They were taking shape; they were growing fast in the hothouse temperature of his mind. Quite unconsciously he began to rise from his chair; only by pacing briskly up and down the quarter-deck could he bring those plans to fruition and create an outlet for the pressure building up inside him. But he remembered the other letters in the packet; he must not fall into the same fault as Foreman. There were letters for him—one, two, six letters all in the same handwriting. It dawned upon him that they must be from Maria—odd that he did not recognize his own wife’s handwriting. He was about to open them when he checked himself again. Not one of the other letters was addressed to him, but people in the shi
p were probably anxiously waiting for them.
“Pass the word for Mr. Bush,” he bellowed; Bush, when he arrived, was handed the other letters without a word, nor did he stay for one, seeing that his captain was so deeply engaged in reading that he did not even look up.
Hornblower read, several times, that he was Maria’s Dearest Husband. The first two letters told him how much she missed her Angel, how happy she had been during their two days of marriage, and how anxious she was that her Hero was not running into danger, and how necessary it was to change his socks if they should get wet. The third letter was dated from Plymouth. Maria had ascertained that the Channel Fleet was based there, and she had decided to move so as to be on the spot should the necessities of the Service send Hotspur back into port; also, as she admitted sentimentally, she would be nearer her Beloved. She had made the journey in the coasting troy, committing herself (with many thoughts of her Precious) to the Briny Deep for the first time, and as she gazed at the distant land she had reached a better understanding of the feelings of her Valiant Sailor Husband. Now she was comfortably established in lodgings kept by a most respectable woman, widow of a boatswain.
The fourth letter began precipitately with the most delightful, the most momentous news for her Darling. Maria hardly knew how to express this to her most Loved, her most Adored Idol. Their marriage, already so Blissful, was now to be further Blessed, or at least she fancied so. Hornblower opened the fifth letter in haste, passing over the hurried postscript which said that Maria had just learned the news of her Intrepid Warrior adding to his Laurels by engaging with the Loire, and that she hoped he had not exposed himself more than was necessary to his Glory. He found the news confirmed. Maria was more sure than ever that she was destined to be so vastly fortunate in the future as to be the Mother of the Child of her Ideal. And the sixth letter repeated the confirmation. There might be a Christmas Baby, or a New Year’s Child; Hornblower noted wryly that much more space in these later letters was devoted to the Blessed Increase than to her Longed-for but Distant Jewel. In any case Maria was consumed with hope that the Little Cherub, if a Boy, would be the Image of his Famous Father, or, if a Girl, that she should display his Sweetness of Disposition.
So that was the news. Hornblower sat with the six letters littered before him, his mind in just as much disorder. Perhaps to postpone realization he dwelt at first on the thought of the two letters he had written—addressed to Southsea they would be a long time before they caught up with Maria—and their comparatively formal and perhaps chilling content. He would have to remedy that. He would have to write a letter full of affection and full of delight at the news, whether he were delighted or not—and at that point he could reach no decision. Plunged as he was into professional problems the episode of his marriage was suffused in his memory with unreal quality. The affair was so brief, and even at the time it had been so overlain by the business of getting to sea, that it had seemed strange to him that it should involve the lasting effects of marriage; and this news was an indication of more lasting and permanent effects still. He was going to be a father. For the life of him he could not tell if he were pleased or not. Certainly he was sorry for the child if he—or she—were destined to inherit his accursed unhappy temperament. The more the child should prove to be like him,—whether in looks or in morals, the sorrier he would be. Yet was that quite true? Was there not something flattering, something gratifying, in the thought that his own characteristics might be perpetuated? It was hard to be honest with himself.
He could remember, with his mind now diverted from his present life, more clearly the details of his honeymoon. He could conjure up more exactly his memories of Maria’s doting affection, of the wholehearted way in which she gave herself to believe, that she could not give so much love without its being as hotly reciprocated. He must never let her guess at the quality of his feelings for her, because that would be a cruelty that he could not contemplate. He reached for pen and paper, returning to the commonplace world with his routine annoyance at having a left wing pen. Pens from the left wing of the goose were cheaper than right wing ones, because when held in position for writing they pointed towards the writer’s eye and not conveniently out over his elbow as right wing ones did. But at least he had cut a good point and the ink had not yet grown muddy. Grimly he applied himself to his task. Partly it was a literary exercise, an Essay on Unbounded Affection, and yet—and yet—he found himself smiling as he wrote; he felt tenderness within him, welling out perhaps along his arm and down his pen. He was even on the verge of admitting to himself that he was not entirely the cold-hearted and unscrupulous individual he believed himself to be.
Towards the close of the letter, as he searched for synonyms for ‘wife’ and ‘child’, his glance strayed back to the letters from Pellew, and he actually caught his breath, his thoughts reverting to his duty, to his plans for slaughter, to the harsh realities of the world he was living in. Hotspur was riding easily over the placid sea, but the very fact that she was lying hove-to meant that there was a fair wind out of Brest and that at any moment a shout from the topmast-head would announce that the French Navy was on its way out to contest in thunder and smoke the mastery of the sea. And he had plans; even as he re-read the latest lines of his letter to Maria his vision was blurred by the insistence on his attention of his visualization of the chart of the entrance to Brest. He had to take tight hold of himself to compel himself to finish the letter to Maria in the same strain as he had begun it. He made himself finish it, he made himself re-read it, he made himself fold it; a shout to the sentry brought in Grimes with a lighted dip with which to seal it, and when he had completed the tiresome process it was with eager relief that he laid the letter aside and reached for a fresh sheet of paper.
H.M. Sloop Hotspur, at sea, the Petit Minou bearing north one league.
May 14th, 1803
Sir—
This was an end of mellifluous phrasing, of blundering attempts to deal with a totally unfamiliar situation; no longer was he addressing (as if in a dream) the Dear Companion of our Lives Together in Happy Years to Come. Now he was applying himself to a task that he felt competent and eager to do, and for phrasing he had only to draw upon the harsh and unrelieved wording of a myriad official letters before this one. He wrote rapidly and with little pause for consideration, because fantastically his plans had reached complete maturity during his preoccupation with Maria. The sheet was covered, turned and half covered again, and the plan was sketched out in full detail. He wrote the conclusion:
Respectfully submitted by
Your ob’d’t servant
Horatio Hornblower.
He wrote the address:
Captain Sir E. Pellew, K. B.
H.M.S. Tonnant.
When the second letter was sealed he held the two of them in his hand; new life in the one, and death and misery in the other. That was a fanciful thought—of far more importance was the question as to whether Pellew would approve of his suggestions.
Chapter VIII
Hornblower lay stretched out on his cot waiting for the time to pass. He would have preferred to be asleep, but during the afternoon sleep had refused to come to him. It was better to go on lying here in any case, for he would need all his strength during the night to come, and if he followed his inclinations and went on deck he would not only tire himself but he would reveal his anxieties and tensions to his subordinates. So he lay as relaxed as he could manage, flat on his back with his hands behind his head; the sounds that he heard on deck told him of the progress of the ship’s routine. Just over his head the telltale compass which he had had fitted to the deckbeams was literally carrying out its functions and telling the tale of Hotspur’s small alterations of heading as she lay hove-to, and these could be correlated with the play of the beams of sunshine that came in through the stern windows. Those were now curtained, and the sunbeams came in around the curtains as they swayed gently with the ship’s motion. Most captains curtained—and furnished—t
heir cabins with gay chintz, or even, if wealthy, with damask, but these curtains were of canvas. They were of the finest, No. 8, sailcloth to be found in the ship and had only hung there for the last two days. Hornblower thought about this pleasantly, for they had been a present to him from the wardroom; Bush and Prowse, and the surgeon, Wallis, and the purser, Huffnell, had made the presentation after a mysterious request from Bush that they should be allowed to enter his cabin for a moment in his absence. Hornblower had returned to the cabin to find the deputation there and the cabin transformed. There were curtains and cushions—stuffed with oakum—and a coverlet, all gay with red and blue roses and green leaves painted on with ship’s paint by some unknown artist in the ship’s company. Hornblower had looked round in astonishment that made it impossible to conceal his pleasure. There was no time to glower or look stern, as nine captains out of ten would have done at such an unwarrantable liberty on the part of the wardroom. He could do no more than thank them in halting phrases; and the greatest pleasure only came after later consideration, when he faced the situation realistically. They had not done this as a joke, or in a silly attempt to win his favour. He had to believe the unbelievable, and accept the fact that they had done it because they liked him. That showed their poor judgement; gratification warred with guilt in his mind, yet the fact that they had dared to do such a thing was a strange but undeniable confirmation that the Hotspur was welding herself into a fighting entity.
Grimes knocked at the door and entered. “They’re calling the watch, sir,” he said.
“Thank you. I’ll come.” The squeals of the pipes and the bellowings of the petty officers echoing through the ship made Grimes’ words a little superfluous, but Hornblower had to act the part of a newly awakened man. He retied his neckcloth and pulled on his coat, slipped on his shoes and walked out on deck. Bush was there with paper and pencil in his hand.
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