Hornblower and the Hotspur h-3

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “Fire!”

  The guns went off so nearly together that he felt Hotspur’s light fabric heed a little with the force of the recoil, and there again was the shape of a ship lit up by the glare of the broadside. He could not hope to force her on the shoals; there were too much sea-room for that. He took the speaking-trumpet.

  “Elevate your guns! Aim for her spars!”

  He could cripple her. The first gun of the new broadside went off immediately after he said the words—some fool had not paid attention. But the other guns fired after the interval necessary to withdraw the coigns, flash after flash, bang after bang. Again and again and again. Suddenly a flash revealed a change in the shape of the illuminated mizzen topsail, and at the same moment that mizzen topsail moved slowly back abaft the beam. The Frenchman had thrown all aback in a desperate attempt to escape this tormentor, risking being raked in the hope of passing under Hotspur’s stern to get before the wind. He would wear the Hotspur round and bring her under the fire of the port broadside and chase her on to the Trepieds; the speaking-trumpet was at his lips when the darkness ahead erupted into a volcano of fire.

  Chaos. Out of the black snow-filled night had come a broadside, raking the Hotspur from bow to stern. Along with the sound and the flash came the rending crash of splintered woodwork, the loud ringing noise as a cannon-ball hit the breech of a gun, the shriek of the flying splinters, and following on that came the screaming of a wounded man, cutting through the sudden new stillness.

  One of the armed frigates of the escort—the leader of the line, most likely—had seen the firing and had been close enough to intervene. She had crossed Hotspur’s bows to fire in a raking broadside.

  “Hard-a-starboard!”

  He could not tack, even if he were prepared to take the chance of missing stays with the rigging as much cut up as it must be, for he was not clear of the transport yet. He must wear, even though it meant being raked once more.

  “Wear the ship!”

  Hotspur was turning even as her last guns fired into the transport. Then came the second broadside from ahead, flaring out of the darkness, a fraction of a second between each successive shot, crashing into Hotspur’s battered bows, while Hornblower stood, trying not to wince, thinking what he must do next. Was that the last shot? Now there was a new and rending crash forward, a succession of snapping noises, another thundering crash, and cries and shrieks from forward. That must be the foremast fallen. That must be the fore-topsail yard crashing on the deck.

  “Helm doesn’t answer, sir,” called the quartermaster at the wheel.

  With the foremast down Hotspur would tend to fly up in the wind, even if the wreckage were not dragging alongside to act as a sea-anchor. He could feel the wind shifting on his cheek. Now Hotspur was helpless. Now she could be battered to destruction by an enemy twice her size, with four times her weight of metal, with scantlings twice as thick to keep out Hotspur’s feeble shot. He would have to fight despairingly to the death. Unless… The enemy would be putting his helm a-starboard to rake Hotspur from astern, or he would be doing so as soon as he could make out in the darkness what had happened. Time would pass very fast and the wind was still blowing, thank God, and there was the transport close on his starboard side still. He spoke loudly into the speaking-trumpet.

  “Silence! Silence!”

  The bustle and clatter forward, where the hands had been struggling with the fallen spars, died away. Even the groaning wounded fell silent; that was discipline, and not the discipline of the cat o’ nine tails. He could just hear the rumble of the French frigate’s gun trucks as they ran out the guns for the next broadside, and he could hear shouted orders. The French frigate was turning to deliver the coup de grace as soon as she made certain of her target. Hornblower pointed the speaking-trumpet straight upwards as if addressing the sky, and he tried to keep his voice steady and quiet. He did not want the French frigate to hear.

  “Mizzen topsail yard! Unmask those lights.”

  That was a bad moment; the lights might have gone out, the lad stationed on the yard might be dead. He had to speak again.

  “Show those lights!”

  Discipline kept the hand up there from hailing back, but there they were—one, two, three red lights along the mizzen topsail yard. Even against the wind he heard a wild order being shouted from the French frigate excitement, even panic in the voice. The French captain was ordering his guns not to fire. Perhaps he was thinking that some horrible mistake had already been made; perhaps in the bewildering darkness he was confusing Hotspur with her recent victim not so far off. At least he was holding fire; at least he was going off to leeward, and a hundred yards to leeward in that darkness was the equivalent of a mile in ordinary conditions.

  “Mask those lights again!”

  No need to give the Frenchman a mark for gunfire or an objective to which to beat back when he should clear up the situation. Now a voice spoke out of the darkness close to him.

  “Bush reporting, sir. I’ve left the guns for the moment, if you give me leave, sir. Fore-tops’ls all across the starboard battery. Can’t fire those guns in any case yet.”

  “Very well, Mr. Bush. What’s the damage?”

  “Foremast’s gone six feet above the deck, sir. Everything went over the starboard side. Most of the shrouds must have held—it’s all trailing alongside.”

  “Then we’ll get to work—in silence, Mr. Bush. I want every stitch of canvas got in first, and then we’ll deal with the wreckage.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Stripping the ship of her canvas would make her far less visible to the enemy’s eyes, and would reduce Hotspur’s leeway while she rode to her strange sea anchor. Next moment it was the carpenter, up from below.

  “We’re making water very fast, sir. Two feet in the hold. My men are plugging one shot hole aft by the magazine but there must be another one for’ard in the cable tier. We’ll need hands at the pumps, sir, an’ I’d like half a dozen more in the cable tier.”

  “Very well.”

  So much to be done in a nightmare atmosphere of unreality, and then came an explanation of some of the unreality. Six inches of snow lay on the decks, piled in deeper drifts against the vertical surfaces, silencing as well as impeding every movement. But most of the sense of unreality stemmed from simple exhaustion, nervous and physical, and the exhaustion had to be ignored while the work went on, trying to think clearly in the numbing darkness, with the knowledge that the Trepieds shoal lay close under their lee, on a falling tide. Getting up sail when the wreckage had been cleared away, and discovering by sheer seaman’s instinct how to handle Hotspur under sail without her foremast, with only the feel of the wind on his cheeks and the wavering compass in the binnacle to guide him, and the shoals waiting for him if he miscalculated.

  “I’d like you to set the sprit-sail, Mr. Bush, if you please.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  A dangerous job for the hands that had to spread the spritsail under the bowsprit in the dark, with all the accustomed stays swept away by the loss of the foremast, but it had to be done to supply the necessary leverage forward to keep Hotspur from turning into the wind. Setting the ponderous main-course, because the main-topmast could not be trusted to carry sail. Then creeping westward, with the pumps clanking lugubriously, and the blackness turning slowly to dark grey, and the dark grey turning slowly to light grey, with the coming of the dawn and the cessation of the snowfall. Then it was light enough to see the disorder of the decks and the trampled snow—snow stained pink here and there, in wide areas. Then at last came the sight of the Doris, and help at hand; it might almost be called safety, except that later they would have to beat back against contrary winds and with a jury foremast and in a leaky ship, to Plymouth and refitting.

  It was when they saw Doris hoisting out her boats, despatching additional manpower, that Bush could turn to Hornblower with a conventional remark. Bush was not aware of his own appearance, his powder-blackened face, his hollow
cheeks and his sprouting beard, but even without that knowledge the setting was bizarre enough to appeal to Bush’s crude sense of humour.

  “A Happy New Year to you, sir,” said Bush, with a death’s head grin.

  It was New Year’s Day. Then to the two men the same thought occurred simultaneously, and Bush’s grin was replaced by something more serious.

  “I hope your good lady…”

  He was taken unawares, and could not find the formal words.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bush.”

  It was on New Year’s Day that the child was expected. Maria might be in labour at this moment while they stood there talking.

  Chapter XVII

  “Will you be having dinner on board, sir?” asked Doughty. “No,” replied Hornblower. He hesitated before he launched into the next speech that had occurred to him, but he decided to continue. “Tonight Horatio Hornblower dines with Horatio Hornblower.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  No joke ever fell as flat as that one. Perhaps—certainly—it was too much to expect Doughty to catch the classical allusion, but he might at least have smiled, because it was obvious that his captain had condescended so far as to be facetious.

  “You’ll need your oilskins, sir. It’s raining heavily still,” said Doughty of the almost immovable countenance.

  “Thank you.”

  It seemed to have rained every single day since Hotspur had crawled into Plymouth Sound. Hornblower walked out from the dockyard with the rain rattling on his oilskins as if it were hail and not rain, and it continued all the time it took him to make his way to Driver’s Alley. The landlady’s little daughter opened the door to his knock, and as he walked up the stairs to his lodgings he heard the voice of the other Horatio Hornblower loudly proclaiming his sorrows. He opened the door and entered the small, hot stuffy room where Maria was standing with the baby over her shoulder, its long clothes hanging below her waist. Her face lit with pleasure when she saw him, and she could hardly wait for him to peel off his dripping oilskins before she came to his arms. Hornblower kissed her hot cheek and tried to look round the corner at little Horatio, but the baby only put his face into his mother’s shoulder and wailed.

  “He’s been fractious today, dear,” said Maria, apologetically.

  “Poor little fellow! And what about you, my dear!” Hornblower was careful to make Maria the centre of his thoughts whenever he was with her.

  “I’m well enough now, dear. I can go up and down the stairs like a bird.”

  “Excellent.”

  Maria patted the baby’s back.

  “I wish he would be good. I want him to smile for his father.”

  “Perhaps I could try?”

  “Oh, no!”

  Maria was quite shocked at the notion that a man should hold a crying baby, even his own, but it was a delightful kind of shock, all the same, and she yielded the baby to his proffered arms. Hornblower held his child—it was always a slight surprise to find how light that bundle of clothes was—and looked down at the rather amorphous features and the wet nose.

  “There!” said Hornblower. The act of transfer had quieted little Horatio for a moment at least.

  Maria stood bathed in happiness at the sight of her husband holding her son. And Hornblower’s emotions were strangely mixed; one emotion was astonishment at finding pleasure in holding his child, for he found it hard to believe that he was capable of such sentiment. Maria held the back of the fireside armchair so that he could sit down in it, and then, greatly daring, kissed his hair.

  “And how is the ship?” she asked, leaning over him.

  “She’s nearly ready for sea,” said Hornblower.

  Hotspur had been in and out of dock, her bottom cleaned, her seams recaulked, her shot holes patched. Her new foremast had been put in, and the riggers had set up the standing rigging. She only had to renew her stores.

  “Oh dear,” said Maria.

  “Wind’s steady in the west,” said Hornblower. Not that that would deter him from beating down Channel if he could once work Hotspur down the Sound—he could not think why he had held out this shred of hope to Maria.

  Little Horatio began to wail again.

  “Poor darling!” said Maria. “Let me take him.”

  “I can deal with him.”

  “No. It—it isn’t right.” It was all wrong, in Maria’s mind, that a father should be afflicted by his child’s tantrums. She thought of something else. “You wished to see this, dear. Mother brought it in this afternoon from Lockhart’s Library.”

  She brought a magazine from the side table, and gave it in exchange for the baby, whom she clasped once more to her breast.

  The magazine was the new number of the Naval Chronicle, and Maria with her free hand helped Hornblower to turn the pages.

  “There!” Maria pointed to the relevant passage, on almost the last page. “On January 1st last…” it began, it was the announcement of little Horatio’s birth.

  “The Lady of Captain Horatio Hornblower of the Royal Navy, of a son,” read Maria. “That’s me and little Horatio. I’m—I’m more grateful to you, dear, than I can ever tell you.”

  “Nonsense,” replied Hornblower. That was just what he thought it was, but he made himself look up with a smile that took out any sting from what he said.

  “They call you ‘Captain’,” went on Maria, with an interrogative in the remark.

  “Yes,” agreed Hornblower. “That’s because—”

  He embarked once more on the explanation of the profound difference between a Commander by rank (and a Captain only by courtesy) and a Post Captain. He had said it all before, more than once.

  “I don’t think it’s right,” Maria.

  “Very few things are right, my dear,” said Hornblower, a little absently. He was leafing through the other pages of the Naval Chronicle, working forward from the back page where he had started. Here was the Plymouth Report, and here was one of the things he was looking for.

  ‘Came in HM Sloop Hotspur under jury rig, from the Channel Fleet. She proceeded at once into dock. Captain Horatio Hornblower landed at once with dispatches.’ Then came the Law Intelligence, and the Naval Courts Martial, and the Monthly Register of Naval Events, and the Naval Debates in the Imperial Parliament, and then, between the Debates and the Poetry, came the Gazette Letters. And there it was. First, in italics, came the introduction.

  Copy of a letter from Vice Admiral Sir William Cornwallis to Sir Evan Nepean, Bart., dated on board of HMS Hibernia, the 2nd instant.

  Next came Cornwallis’s letter.

  Sir,

  I herewith transmit for their Lordships’ information, copies of letters I have received from Captains Chambers of HMS Naiad and Hornblower of HM Sloop Hotspur, acquainting me of the capture of the French national frigate Clorinde and of the defeat of an attempt by the French to escape from Brest with a large body of Troops. The conduct of both these officers appears to me to be highly commendable. I enclose also a copy of a letter I have received from Captain Smith of HMS Doris.

  I have the honour to be, with deepest respect,

  Your ob’d’t serv’t,

  Wm. Cornwallis.

  Chambers’ report came next. Naiad had caught Clorinde near Molene and had fought her to a standstill, capturing her in forty minutes. Apparently the other French frigate which had come out with the transports had escaped by the Raz du Sein and had still not been caught.

  Then at last came his own report. Hornblower felt the flush of excitement he had known before on reading his own words in print. He studied them afresh at this interval, and was grudgingly satisfied. They told, without elaboration, the bare facts of how three transports had been run ashore in the Goulet, and of how Hotspur while attacking a fourth had been in action with a French frigate and had lost her foremast. Not a word about saving Ireland from invasion; the merest half-sentence about the darkness and the snow and the navigational perils, but men who could understand would understand.

  Smith’
s letter from the Doris was brief, too. After meeting Hotspur he had pushed in towards Brest and had found a French frigate, armed en flute, aground on the Trepieds with shore boats taking off her troops. Under the fire of the French coastal batteries Doris had sent in her boats and had burned her.

  “There’s something more in the Chronicle that might interest you, dear,” said Hornblower. He proffered the magazine with his finger indicating his letter.

  “Another letter from you, dear!” said Maria. “How pleased you must be!”

  She read the letter quickly.

  “I haven’t had time to read this before,” she said, looking up. “Little Horatio was so fractious. And—and—I never understand all these letters, dear. I hope you are proud of what you did. I’m sure you are, of course.”

  Luckily little Horatio set up a wail at that moment to save Hornblower from a specific answer to that speech. Maria pacified the baby and went on.

  “The shopkeepers will know about this tomorrow and they’ll all speak to me about it.”

  The door opened to admit Mrs Mason, her pattens clattering on her feet, raindrops sparkling on her shawl. She and Hornblower exchanged ‘good evenings’ while she took off her outer clothing.

  “Let me take that child,” said Mrs Mason to her daughter.

  “Horry has another letter in the Chronicle,” countered Maria.

  “Indeed?”

  Mrs Mason sat down across the fire from Hornblower and studied the page with more care than Maria had done, but perhaps with no more understanding.

  “The Admiral says your conduct was ‘very Commendable’,” she said, looking up.

  “Yes.”

  “Why doesn’t he make you a real captain, ‘post’, as you call it?”

  “The decision doesn’t lie with him,” said Hornblower. “And I doubt if he would in any case.”

  “Can’t admirals make captains?”

  “Not in home waters.”