Hornblower and the Hotspur h-3

by Cecil Scott Forester

  He drew his cutlass, snarling in the darkness with the intensity of his emotion. Twice he stabbed into the wall of cartridge, and his ears were rewarded by the whispering sound of a cascade of powder-grains pouring out through the gashes he had made. He must have a firm anchorage for the fuse; and he stooped and sank the blade of the cutlass into another cartridge. He unravelled a length of quick match and wound a bight firmly round the hilt, and he buried the end in the pile of powder-grains on the floor; an unnecessarily careful measure, perhaps, when a single spark would set off the explosion. Unreeling the quick match behind him, carefully, very carefully, lest he jerk the cutlass loose, he made his way out past the curtain again, and up the steps, up into the growing light, round the corner. The light through the broken door was dazzling, and he blinked as he came out crouching through it, still unreeling the quick match.

  “Cut this!” he snapped, and Black whipped out his knife and sawed through the quick match at the point indicated by Hornblower’s hand.

  Quick match burned faster than the eye could follow; the fifty feet or so that extended down to the magazine would burn in less than a second.

  “Cut me a yard off that!” said Hornblower pointing to the slow match.

  Slow match was carefully tested. It burned in still air at exactly thirty inches in one hour, one inch in two minutes. Hornblower had no intention whatever of allowing an hour or more for the combustion of this yard, however. He could hear the muskets banging; he could hear drums echoing in the hills. He must keep calm.

  “Cut off another foot and light it!”

  While Black was executing this order Hornblower was tying quick match to slow match, making sure they were closely joined. Yet he still had to think of the general situation in addition to these vital details.

  “Hewitt!” he snapped, looking up from his work. “Listen carefully. Run to the lieutenant’s party of marines over the ridge there. Tell him we’re going to fall back now, and he is to cover our retreat at the last slope above the boats. Understand?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Then run.”

  Just as well that it was not Grimes who had to be entrusted with the mission. The fuses were knotted together now, and Hornblower looked round him.

  “Bring that dead man over here!”

  Black asked no questions, but dragged the corpse to the foot of the door. Hornblower had looked first for a stone, but a corpse would be better in every way. It was not yet stiff, and the arm lay limply across the quick match just above the knot, after Hornblower had passed all excess slack back through the shattered door. The dead man served to conceal the existence of the fuse. If the French arrived too early he would gain valuable seconds for the plan; the moment the fire reached the quick match it would flash under the dead man’s arm and shoot on down to the powder. If to investigate the magazine they dragged the corpse out of the way, the weight of a fuse inside the door would whisk the knot inside and so gain seconds too—perhaps the burning end would tumble down the steps, perhaps right into the magazine.

  “Captain Jones! Warn everybody to be ready to retreat. At once, please. Give me that burning fuse, Black.”

  “Let me do that, sir.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  Hornblower took the smouldering slow match and blew on it to quicken its life. Then he looked down at the length of slow match knotted to the quick match. He took special note of a point an inch and a half from the knot; there was a black spot there which served to mark the place. An inch and a half. Three minutes.

  “Get up on the parapet, Black. Now. Yell for them to run. Yell!”

  As Black began to bellow Hornblower pressed the smouldering end down upon the black spot. After two seconds he withdrew it; the slow match was alight and burning in two directions—in one, harmlessly towards the inoperative excess, and in the other towards the knot, the quick match an inch and a half away. Hornblower made sure it was burning, and then he scrambled to his feet and leaped up on the parapet.

  The marines were trooping past him, with Cotard and his seamen bringing up the rear. A minute and a half—a minute, now, and the French were following them up, just out of musket range.

  “Better hurry, Cotard. Come on!”

  They broke into a jogtrot.

  “Steady, there!” yelled Jones. He was concerned about panic among these men if they ran from the enemy instead of retreating steadily, but there was a time for everything. The marines began to run, with Jones yelling ineffectually and waving his sword.

  “Come on, Jones,” said Hornblower as he passed him, but Jones was filled with fighting madness, and went on shouting defiance at the French, standing alone with his face to the enemy.

  Then it happened. The earth moved back and forth under their feet so that they tripped and staggered, while a smashing, overwhelming explosion burst on their ears, and the sky went dark. Hornblower looked back. A column of smoke was still shooting upwards, higher and higher, and dark fragments were visible in it. Then the column spread out, mushrooming at the top. Something fell with a crash ten yards away, throwing up chips of stone which rattled round Hornblower’s feet. Something came whistling through the air, something huge, curving down as it twirled. Selectively, inevitably, it fell, half a ton of rock, blown from where it roofed the magazine right on to Jones in his red coat, sliding along as if bestially determined to wipe out completely the pitiful thing it dragged beneath it. Hornblower and Cotard gazed at it in mesmerized horror as it came to rest six feet from their left hands.

  It was the most difficult moment of all for Hornblower to keep his senses, or to regain them. He had to shake himself out of a daze.

  “Come on.”

  He still had to think clearly. They were at the final slope above the boats. The lieutenant’s party of marines, sent out as a flank guard, had fallen back to this point and were drawn up here firing at a threatening crowd of Frenchmen. The French wore white facings on their blue uniforms—infantry men, not the artillery men who had opposed them round the battery. And beyond them was a long column of infantry, hurrying along, with a score of drums beating an exhilarating rhythm—the pas de charge.

  “You men get down into the boats,” said Hornblower, addressing the rallying group of seamen and marines from the battery, and then he turned to the lieutenant.

  “Captain Jones is dead. Make ready to run for it the moment those others reach the jetty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Behind Hornblower’s back, turned as it was to the enemy, they heard a sharp sudden noise, like the impact of a carpenter’s axe against wood. Hornblower swung round again. Cotard was staggering, his sword and the books and papers he had carried all this time fallen to the ground at his feet. Then Hornblower noticed his left arm, which was swaying in the air as if hanging by a thread. Then came the blood. A musket bullet had crashed into Cotard’s upper armbone, shattering it. One of the axemen who had not left caught him as he was about to fall.

  “Ah—ah—ah!” gasped Cotard, with the jarring of his shattered arm. He stared at Hornblower with bewildered eyes.

  “Sorry you’ve been hit,” said Hornblower, and to the axeman, “Get him down to the boat.”

  Cotard was gesticulating towards the ground with his right hand, and Hornblower spoke to the other axeman.

  “Pick those papers up and go down to the boat too.”

  But Cotard was not satisfied.

  “My sword! My sword!”

  “I’ll look after your sword,” said Hornblower. These absurd notions of honour were so deeply ingrained that even in these conditions Cotard could not bear the thought of leaving his sword on the field of battle. Hornblower realized he had no cutlass as he picked up Cotard’s sword. The axeman had gathered up the books and papers.

  “Help Mr. Cotard down,” said Hornblower, and added, as another thought struck him. “Put a scarf round his arm above the wound and strain it tight. Understand?”

  Cotard, supported by the other axeman was already to
ttering down the path. Movement meant agony. That heartrending “ah—ah—ah!” came back to Hornblower’s ears at every step Cotard took.

  “Here they come!” said the marine lieutenant.

  The skirmishing Frenchmen, emboldened by the near approach of their main body, were charging forward. A hurried glance told Hornblower that the others were all down on the jetty; the lobster-boat was actually pushing off, full of men.

  “Tell your men to run for it,” he said, and the moment after they started he followed them.

  It was a wild dash, slipping and sliding, down the path to the jetty, with the French yelling in pursuit. But here was the covering party, as Hornblower had ordered so carefully the day before; Hotspur’s own thirteen marines, under their own sergeant. They had built a breastwork across the jetty, again as Hornblower had ordered when he had visualized this hurried retreat. It was lower than waist-high, hurriedly put together with rocks and fish-barrels full of stones. The hurrying mob poured over it. Hornblower, last of all, gathered himself together and leaping over it, arms and legs flying, to stumble on the far side and regain his footing by a miracle.

  “Hotspur’s marines! Line the barricade. Get into the boats, you others!”

  Twelve marines knelt at the barricade; twelve muskets levelled themselves over it. At the sight of them the pursuing French hesitated, tried to halt.

  “Aim low!” shouted the marine lieutenant hoarsely.

  “Go back and get the men into the boats, Mr. What’s-your-name,” snapped Hornblower. “Have the launch ready to cast off, while you shove off in the yawl and get away.”

  The French were coming forward again; Hornblower looked back and saw the lieutenant drop off the jetty on the heels of the last marine.

  “Now sergeant. Let ‘em have it.”

  “Fire!” said the sergeant.

  That was a good volley, but there was not a moment to admire it.

  “Come on!” yelled Hornblower. “Over to the launch!”

  With the weight of Hotspur’s marines leaping into it the launch was drifting away by the time he was at the edge; there was a yard of black water for Hornblower to leap over, but his feet reached the gunnel and he pitched forward among the men clustered there; he luckily remembered to drop Cotard’s sword so that he fell harmlessly into the bottom of the boat without wounding anyone. Oars and boat-books thrust against the jetty and the launch surged away while Hornblower scrambled into the stern sheets. He almost stepped on Cotard’s face; Cotard was lying apparently unconscious on the bottom boards.

  Now the oars were grinding in the rowlocks. They were twenty yards away, thirty yards away, before the first Frenchmen came yelling along the jetty, to stand dancing with rage and excitement on the very edge of the masonry. For an invaluable second or two they even forgot the muskets in their hands. In the launch the huddled men raised their voices in a yell of derision that excited Hornblower’s cold rage.

  “Silence! Silence, all of you!”

  The stillness that fell on the launch was more unpleasant than the noise. One or two muskets banged off on the jetty, and Hornblower, looking over his shoulder, saw a French soldier drop on one knee and take deliberate aim, saw him choose a target, saw the musket barrel fore-shorten until the muzzle was pointed directly at him. He was wildly contemplating throwing himself down into the bottom of the boat when the musket went off. He felt a violent jar through his body, and realized with relief that the bullet had burried itself in the solid oak transom of the launch against which he was sitting. He recovered his wits; looking forward he saw Hewitt trying to force his way aft to his side and he spoke to him as calmly as his excitement permitted.

  “Hewitt! Get for’ard to the gun. It’s loaded with grape. Fire when it bears.” Then he spoke to the oarsmen and to Cargill at the tiller. “Hard-a-port. Starboard-side oars, back water.”

  “Port side, back water.”

  The launch ceased to turn; she was pointed straight at the jetty, and Hewitt, having shoved the other men aside, was cold-bloodedly looking along the sights of the four-pounder carronade mounted in the bows, fiddling with the elevating coign. Then he leaned over to one side and pulled the lanyard. The whole boat jerked sternwards abruptly with the recoil, as though when underway she had struck a rock, and the smoke came back round them in a sullen pall.

  “Give way, starboard side! Pull! Hard-a-starboard!” The boat turned ponderously. “Give way, port side!”

  Nine quarter pound grapeshot-balls had swept through the group on the jetty; there were struggling figures, quiescent figures, lying there. Bonaparte had a quarter of a million soldiers under arms, but he had now lost some of them. It could not be called a drop out of the bucketful, but perhaps a molecule. Now they were out of musket shot, and Hornblower turned to Cargill in the stern sheets beside him.

  “You managed your part of the business well enough, Mr. Cargill.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Cargill had been appointed by Hornblower to land with the marines and to take charge of the boats and prepare them for the evacuation.

  “But it might have been better if you’d sent the launch away first and kept the yawl back until the last. Then the launch could have lain off and covered the others with her gun.”

  “I thought of that, sir. But I couldn’t be sure until the last moment how many men would be coming down in the last group. I had to keep the launch for that.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Hornblower, grudgingly, and then, his sense of justice prevailing, “In fact I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Cargill again, and, after a pause, “I wish you had let me come with you, sir.”

  Some people had queer tastes, thought Hornblower bitterly to himself, having regard to Cotard lying unconscious with a shattered arm at their feet, but he had to smooth down ruffled feelings in these touchy young men thirsting for honour and for the promotion that honour might bring.

  “Use your wits, man,” he said, bracing himself once more to think logically. “Someone had to be in charge on the jetty, and you were the best man for the job.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Cargill all over again, but still wistfully, and therefore still idiotically.

  A sudden thought struck Hornblower, and he turned and stared back over his shoulder. He actually had to look twice, although he knew what he was looking for. The silhouette of the hills had changed. Then he saw a wisp of black smoke still rising from the summit. The semaphore was gone. The towering thing that had spied on their movements and had reported every disposition of the Inshore Squadron was no more. Trained British seamen and riggers and carpenters could not replace it—if they had such a job to do—in less than a week’s work. Probably the French would take two weeks at least; his own estimate would be three.

  And there was Hotspur waiting for them, main-topsail aback, as he had seen her half an hour ago; half an hour that seemed like a week. The lobster-boat and the yawl were already going round to her port side, and Cargill steered for her starboard side; in these calm waters and with such a gentle wind there was no need for the boats to be offered a lee.

  “Oars!” said Cargill, and the launch ran alongside, and there was Bush looking down on them from close overhead. Hornblower seized the entering-ropes and swung himself up. It was his right as captain to go first, and it was also his duty. He cut Bush’s congratulations short.

  “Get the wounded out as quick as you can, Mr. Bush. Send a stretcher down for Mr. Cotard.”

  “Is he wounded, sir?”

  “Yes.” Hornblower had no desire to enter into unnecessary explanations. “You’ll have to lash him to it and then sway the stretcher up with a whip from the yardarm. His arm’s in splinters.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Bush by now had realized that Hornblower was in no conversational mood.

  “The surgeon’s ready?”

  “He’s started work, sir.”

  A wave of Bush’s hand indicated a couple of wounded men who had come on b
oard from the yawl and were being supported below.

  “Very well.”

  Hornblower headed for his cabin; no need to explain that he had his report to write; no need to make excuses. But as always after action he yearned for the solitude of his cabin even more than he yearned to sink down and forget his weariness. But at the second step he pulled up short. This was not a neat clean end to the venture. No peace for him at the moment, and he swore to himself under this final strain, using filthy black blasphemies such as he rarely employed.

  He would have to deal with Grimes, and instantly. He must make up his mind about what he should do. Punish him? Punish a man for being a coward? That would be like punishing a man for having red hair. Hornblower stood first on one foot and then on the other, unable to pace, yet striving to goad his weary mind to further action. Punish Grimes for showing cowardice? That was more to the point. Not that it would do Grimes any good, but it would deter other men from showing cowardice. There were officers who would punish, not in the interests of discipline, but because they thought punishment should be inflicted in payment for crime, as sinners had to go to Hell. Hornblower would not credit himself with the divine authority some officers thought natural.

  But he would have to act. He thought of the court martial. He would be the sole witness, but the court would know he was speaking the truth. His word would decide Grimes’ fate, and then—the hangman’s noose, or at the very least five hundred lashes, with Grimes screaming in pain until he should fall unconscious, to be nursed round for another day of torture, and another after that, until he was a gibbering idiot with neither mind nor strength left.

  Hornblower hated the thought. But he remembered that the crew must have already guessed. Grimes must have already started his punishment, and yet the discipline of the Hotspur must be preserved. Hornblower would have to do his duty; he must pay one of the penalties for being a naval officer, just as he suffered sea-sickness—just as he risked his life. He would have Grimes put under arrest at once, and while Grimes was spending twenty-four hours in irons he could make up his mind to the final decision. He strode aft to his cabin, with all relief gone from the thought of relaxation.