A Ship of the Line h-8

by Cecil Scott Forester

  He dashed off his signature to the document, and shouted for Polwheal to bring a candle to melt the sealing wax while he peppered sand over the wet ink. Thanks to the heat his hands stuck clammily to the limp paper. When he came to address the report—‘Rear Admiral Sir P. G. Leighton, K.B.’—the ink spread and ran on the smeared surface as though on blotting paper. But at any rate the thing was done; he went on deck, where already the sunshine was oppressive. The brassiness of the sky, noticeable yesterday, was far more marked today, and Hornblower had noticed that the barometer in his cabin indicated a steady fall which had begun three days ago. There was a storm coming, without a doubt, and moreover a storm which had so long been foretold would be all the more violent when it did come. He turned to Gerard with orders to keep a sharp eye on the weather and to be ready to shorten sail at the first hint of trouble.

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Gerard.

  Over there rolled the two other ships of the squadron, the Pluto with her three tiers of ports, and the red ensign at the mizzen masthead indicating the presence on board of a rear-admiral of the red, and the Caligula astern of her.

  “Pass the word to Mr. Marsh to salute the Admiral’s flag,” said Hornblower.

  While the salute was being returned a hoist of flags ran up the Pluto’s rigging.

  “Sutherland’s pendant,” read off Vincent, “Take station astern.”

  “Acknowledge.”

  The hoist was succeeded by another.

  “Sutherland’s pendant,” said Vincent again. “Flag to captain. Come on board and report.”

  “Acknowledge. Mr. Gerard, clear away my barge. Where’s Colonel Villena?”

  “Not seen him yet this morning, sir.”

  “Here, Mr. Savage, Mr. Longley. Run down and get Colonel Villena out of bed. I want him ready as soon as my barge is cleared away.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  It took two and a half minutes before the captain’s barge was in the water with Hornblower seated in the stern, and at the very last second Villena made his appearance at the ship’s side. He looked as disagreeable as might be expected, at having been routed out of bed by two brusque midshipmen who could speak no word of his language and dressed with their clumsy and hurried aid. His busby was awry and his coat incorrectly hooked, and his sabre and pelisse still hung over his arm. He was hauled down into the boat by the impatient boat’s crew, who did not want to imperil their ship’s reputation for smartness by waiting for him after the admiral had signalled for them.

  Villena lurched miserably to his thwart beside Hornblower. He was unshaven and bedraggled, and his eyes were as gummy as Hornblower’s had been on his awakening. He sat down, muttering and grumbling, still half asleep, trying in dazed fashion to complete his dressing, while the men bent to their oars and sent the barge skimming over the water. It was only as they neared the flagship that Villena was able to open his eyes fully and begin to talk, and for the short remaining period Hornblower felt no need for elaborate politeness. He was full of hope that the admiral would invite Villena to be his guest for the sake of any information he could give regarding conditions ashore.

  Captain Elliott was at the ship’s side to greet him as they came on board.

  “Glad to see you, Hornblower,” he said, and then in response to Hornblower’s introduction he mumbled incoherently to Villena eyeing the latter’s gaudy uniform and unshaven chin in blank astonishment. He was obviously relieved when the formality was over and he could address himself to Hornblower again. “The admiral’s in his cabin. This way, gentlemen please.”

  The flag lieutenant in the admiral’s cabin along with the admiral was young Sylvester, whom Hornblower had heard of as a capable young officer even though he was—as might have been expected—a sprig of the nobility. Leighton himself was ponderous and slow of speech this morning; in the stifling heat the sweat was visible in little rivers running down the sides of his heavy chin. He and Sylvester made a brave attempt to welcome Villena. They both of them spoke French fairly well and Italian badly, and by amalgamating what they knew of those two languages with what remained of their schoolboy Latin they were able to make themselves understood, but it was heavy going. Obviously with relief Leighton turned to Hornblower.

  “I want to hear your report, Hornblower,” he said.

  “I have it here in writing, sir.”

  “Thank you. But let us hear a little about your doings verbally. Captain Bolton tells me he spoke a prize you had taken. Where did you go?”

  Hornblower began his account—he was glad that events had moved so fast that he was able to omit all reference to the circumstances in which he had parted company from the East India convoy. He told of his capture of the Amelie and of the little fleet of small vessels at Llanza. The admiral’s heavy face showed a gleam of extra animation when he heard that he was a thousand pounds the richer as a result of Hornblower’s activity, and he nodded sympathetically when Hornblower explained the necessity of burning the last prize he had taken—the coaster near Cette. Cautiously Hornblower put forward the suggestion that the squadron might be most profitably employed in watching between Port Vendres and Rosas, on which stretch, thanks to the destruction of the battery at Llanza, there was now no refuge for French shipping. A hint of a groove appeared between the admiral’s eyebrows at that, and Hornblower swerved away from the subject. Clearly Leighton was not the sort of admiral to welcome suggestions from his inferiors.

  Hornblower hurriedly began to deal with the next day’s action to the south-westward.

  “One moment, Captain,” said Leighton. “You mean you went southward the night before last?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You must have passed close to this rendezvous during the darkness?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You made no attempt to ascertain whether the flagship had arrived?”

  “I gave orders for a specially good lookout to be kept, sir.”

  The groove between Leighton’s eyebrows was very noticeable now. Admirals were always plagued by the tendency of their captains, when on blockade service, to make excuses to get away and act independently—if only because it increased their share of prize-money—and obviously Leighton was not merely determined to deal drastically with any such tendency but also he guessed that Hornblower had been careful to arrange his cruise so as to pass the rendezvous at night.

  “I am extremely annoyed, Captain Hornblower, that you should have acted in such a fashion. I have already admonished Captain Bolton for allowing you to go, and now that I find you were within ten miles of here two nights ago I find it difficult to express my displeasure. I reached the rendezvous that very morning, as it happened, and as a result of your behaviour two of His Majesty’s ships of the line have been kept idle here for nearly forty-eight hours until you should see fit to rejoin. Please understand, Captain Hornblower, that I am very annoyed indeed, and I shall have to report my annoyance to the admiral commanding in the Mediterranean, for him to take any action he thinks necessary.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Hornblower. He tried to look as contrite as he could, but his judgment told him that it was not a court martial matter—he was covered by Bolton’s orders—and it was doubtful if Leighton would really carry out his threat of reporting to higher authority.

  “Please continue,” said Leighton.

  Hornblower began to describe the action against the Italian divisions. He could see by Leighton’s expression that he attached little importance to the moral effect achieved, and that his imagination was not powerful enough to allow him to gauge the effect on the Italians of an ignominious retreat before an invulnerable enemy. At Hornblower’s suggestion that they had lost five hundred men at least Leighton moved restlessly and exchanged glances with Sylvester—he clearly did not believe him. Hornblower decided discreetly not to put forward his estimate that the Italians had lost at least another five hundred men through straggling and desertion.

  “Very interesting,” said Leighton, a trifle ins
incerely.

  A knock at the cabin door and the entrance of Elliott eased the situation.

  “The weather’s looking very nasty, sir,” he said. “I was thinking that if Captain Hornblower wishes to rejoin his ship—”

  “Yes, of course,” said Leighton, rising.

  From the deck they could see black clouds to leeward, rising rapidly against the wind.

  “You’ll only just have time,” said Elliott, looking at the sky as Hornblower prepared to go down into his barge.

  “Yes indeed,” said Hornblower. His main anxiety was to get away from the Pluto before anyone noticed that he was leaving Villena behind—the latter, with no understanding of the English conversation, was hanging back on the quarterdeck, and Hornblower was able to scramble down into the boat without anyone thinking of him.

  “Give way,” said Hornblower, before he was fairly seated, and the barge shot away from the Pluto’s side.

  With an admiral and his staff on board the accommodation, three-decker though she was, must already be strained. The presence of a Spanish colonel would mean that some unfortunate lieutenant would be rendered extremely uncomfortable. But Hornblower could harden his heart to the troubles of the unknown lieutenant.

  Chapter XVI

  The thunder was already rolling on the horizon when Hornblower set foot on the Sutherland’s deck again, although the heat showed no signs of diminishing at present and the wind had dropped away almost to nothing. The black clouds had stretched over the sky nearly overhead, and what blue was left was of a hard metallic tint.

  “It’ll be coming soon, sir,” said Bush. He looked complacently upwards; the Sutherland’s sail had already been reduced by his orders to topsails only, and now the crew were busy taking a reef in them. “But where it’ll come from, God only knows.”

  He mopped his sweating forehead; the heat was frightful, and the ship, with no wind to steady her, was heaving painfully on the uneasy sea. The blocks were chattering loudly as she rolled.

  “Oh, come on, blast you,” grumbled Bush.

  A breath of air, hot as though from a brick kiln, stole upon them, and the Sutherland steadied for a moment. Then came another, hotter and stronger.

  “There it comes!” said Bush pointing.

  The black sky was suddenly split by dazzling lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a tremendous crash of thunder, and the squall came racing down upon them; they could see its hard, metallic line on the surface of the grey sea. Almost taken aback, the Sutherland shuddered and plunged. Hornblower bellowed orders to the helmsman, and she paid off before it, steadying again. The shrieking wind brought hail with it—hailstones as big as cherries, which bit and blinded and stung, rattling with an infernal din on the decks, and whipping the sea into a yeasty foam whose hiss was audible even through the other noises. Bush held the big collar of his tarpaulin coat up round his face, and tried to shield his eyes with the brim of his sou’wester, but Hornblower found the keen wind so delicious that he was unconscious of the pain the hailstones caused him. Polwheal, who came running up on deck with his tarpaulin and sou’wester, had positively to jog his elbow to attract his attention and get him to put them on.

  The Pluto, hove to, came drifting down two cables’ lengths clear of the Sutherland’s starboard bow; the big three-decker was even more unhandy and made more leeway than the Sutherland herself. Hornblower watched her and wondered how Villena was feeling now, battened down below with the timbers groaning round him. He was commending himself to the saints, presumably. The Caligula was still up to windward under reefer topsails, her man o’ war pendant blown out stiff and as straight as a pole. She was the most weatherly of the three ships, for her British designers had had in mind as principal object the building of a ship to contend with storms—not, as in the case of the Pluto, of cramming the utmost artillery into a given length and beam, nor, as the Dutch designers had been compelled to do in the case of the Sutherland, to give the minimum of draught compatible with a minimum of sea-worthiness. Almost without warning the wind whipped round four whole points, and the Sutherland lurched and plunged, her storm canvas slatting like a discharge of guns, before she paid off again. The hail had given place to torrential rain now, driven along almost horizontally by the howling wind, and the sudden change in the wind called up a short, lumpy sea over which the Sutherland bucked and plunged in ungainly fashion. He looked over to the Pluto–she had been caught nearly aback, but Elliott was handling her well and she had paid off in time. Hornblower felt that he would rather command the flat-bottomed old Sutherland than a clumsy three-decker ninety-eight guns and thirty-two pounders and first-rate’s pay notwithstanding.

  The wind shrieked at him again, nearly tearing his tarpaulin from his back. The Sutherland trying to lie over on her side in a gale like this was like a cow trying to waltz. Bush was yelling something at him. Hornblower caught the words “relieving tackles” and nodded, and Bush vanished below. Four men at the wheel, aided by the powerful leverage of the barrel of the wheel, might possibly manage to control it despite the Sutherland’s frantic behaviour, but the strain thrown on the tiller ropes would be enormous, and as precautionary measure it would be better to place six or eight men at relieving tackles in the gunroom, to share the strain both on the men at the wheel and on the tipper ropes. A petty officer would have to be posted at the grating nearest the wheel to shout down instructions to the men at the relieving tackles—all highly skilled work, the thought of which made Hornblower bless his own resolution in stripping the East India convoy of seamen.

  To windward the horizon was concealed in a pearly mistiness of rare beauty, but to leeward it was clearer, and reaching up to the sky in that direction there was a bar of blue—the mountains of Spain. In that direction there was Rosas Bay, poor shelter with the present south-easterly gale blowing, and closed to British ships in any case because of the French guns mounted there; Rosas was a fortress whose siege and capture by the French had provided Cochrane with opportunities for distinguishing himself a year ago. The northern extremity of Rosas Bay was Cape Creux—the Sutherland had captured the Amelie while the latter was endeavouring to weather this point. Beyond Cape Creux the coast trended away again northwesterly, giving them ample sea room in which to ride out the gale, for these summer storms in the Mediterranean never lasted long, violent though they were.

  “Flagship’s signalling, sir,” yelled the midshipman of the watch. “No. 35, make all sail conformable with the weather.”

  The Pluto was showing storm-staysails as well as her close reefed topsails; apparently the admiral had decided that Cape Creux was dangerously near, and wished to claw out a little farther to windward in case of emergencies. It was a sensible precaution; Hornblower gave the necessary orders to set the Sutherland on the same course, although it was all that the men at the wheel and relieving tackles could do to keep her from coming up into the wind. The guns’ crews were busy double-breeching the guns lest the heavings of the ship should cause any to break loose, and there was already a party of men at work on the two chain pumps. The working of the ship was not causing her to take in much water as yet, but Hornblower believed in keeping the well as clear as possible in case the time should come when pumping would be urgently necessary. The Caligula was far to windward already—Bolton was making the fullest use of the weatherly qualities of his ship and was keeping, very properly, as far as possible out of harm’s way. But the Sutherland and the Pluto were safe enough, always excepting accidents. The loss of a spar, a gun breaking loose, a sudden leak developing, and the situation might be dramatically changed, but at present they were safe enough.

  Overhead the thunder was rolling so unceasingly that Hornblower noticed it no longer. The play of the lightning among the black clouds was dazzling and beautiful. At this rate the storm could not last much longer; equilibrium was restoring itself fast. But there would be some flurries yet, and the wind had already kicked up a heavy sea, here in this shallow corner of the Mediterranean; there was
plenty of water washing over the maindeck as the Sutherland rolled. The air, even the deluges of rain and spray, were exhilarating after the stifling heat of the past few days, and the wind screaming in the rigging made a music which even Hornblower’s tone-deaf ear could appreciate. He was surprised that so much time had passed when Polwheal came to tell him his dinner was ready—what dinner there was, with the galley fire extinguished.

  When he came on deck again the wind had sensibly diminished, and over to the windward there were patches of clear sky to be seen, of a steely green-blue, and the rain had ceased, although the sea was wilder than ever.

  “It’s blown itself out quick enough, sir,” said Bush.

  “Yes,” answered Hornblower, but with mental reservation. That steely sky was not the blue of returning calm, and he never yet had known one of these Mediterranean storms die away without at least one expiring effort. And he was still very conscious of Cape Creux on the horizon to leeward. He looked keenly round him, at the Pluto to leeward, veiled in spray, and the Caligula far to windward and her canvas only rarely visible across the tossing grey water.

  Then it happened—a sudden howling squall, which laid the Sutherland over and then veered round with astonishing quickness. Hornblower clung to the mizzen weather rigging, bellowing orders. It was wild while it lasted; for a moment it felt as if the Sutherland would never rise again, and then as if she might be driven under stern-foremost as the wind took her aback. It howled and shrieked round them with a violence which it had not yet displayed. Only after a long struggle was the ship brought to the wind again and hove to; the shift in the wind had made the sea lumpier and more erratic than ever, so that she was bucking and plunging in a senseless fashion which made it hard even for those who had spent a lifetime at sea to keep their footing. But not a spar had carried away, and not a rope had parted—clear proof of the efficient work of Plymouth Dockyard and of the seamanship of Bush and Harrison.