Hornblower and the Crisis

by Forester, C. S.

  “We can keep 'em down all right,” said Baddlestone.

  It would hardly be possible for the men below to force their way to the deck through a hatchway or scuttle efficiently guarded, even if the covers were to be pounded to fragments as was clearly happening at the moment. But to maintain guards every moment, over the scuttle and the hatchway and the prisoners aft by the taffrail, and at the same time to provide crews to handle the brig and the Princess meant a good deal of strain.

  The light was playing strange tricks; the unmanned wheel seemed to be turning of its own volition. Hornblower stepped across to it. There was not the easy feel to it which might be expected of it with the ship hove to, and then it suddenly spun free.

  “They've cut the tiller ropes down belong,” he reported to Baddlestone.

  At that moment there was a sledgehammer blow on the deck under their feet, which made them leap in surprise.

  Hornblower felt his feet tingling as though from a violent impact.

  “What the devil — ?” he asked.

  Before he could answer there was another enormous blow against the underside of the deck, and, staring downwards, he could see a tiny glimmer of light some inches from his right foot; there was a small jagged hole there.

  “Come away!” he said to Baddlestone and retreated to the scuppers. “They're firing muskets down there!”

  A one ounce musket ball fired at a range of no more than an inch or two would strike the deck with the force of twenty sledgehammers, and it would pierce the one inch plank with residual velocity sufficient, doubtless, to shatter a leg or two or take a life.

  “They guessed there'd be someone standing near the wheel,” said Baddlestone.

  Splintering crashes forward told how the Frenchmen were destroying the hatchcover there, and now there began a similar noise from the scuttle aft; it sounded as if they had found an axe down below and were using it.

  “It's not going to be easy to sail her home,” said Baddlestone; the whites of his eyes indicated that he was turning an inquiring gaze on Hornblower.

  “If they won't surrender it's going to be damned difficult,” said Hornblower.

  Often when the deck of a ship was carried by a rush the survivors below were demoralized sufficiently to yield, but should they determine on resistance the situation became complicated, especially when, as in the present case, the numbers below were far greater than the numbers above and were apparently being led by someone of energy and courage. Hornblower had once or twice envisaged such a situation, but even his imagination had not gone as far as picturing musket balls being fired up through the deck.

  “If we get the brig underway,” he said, “there's the relieving tackles —”

  “And Hell to pay,” said Baddlestone.

  It was possible to steer a ship after a fashion by adroit handling of the sails if the rudder were useless, but down below there were the relieving tackles, and half a dozen sturdy men heaving on them could drag the rudder round, not merely nullifying the efforts of the men on deck but actually imperilling the ship by laying her unexpectedly aback.

  “We'll have to bolt for it,” said Hornblower; it was an irritating, an infuriating suggestion to have to make, and Baddlestone reacted with a string of oaths worthy of the dead Meadows.

  “No doubt you're right,” he said at the end of it. “Ten thousand pounds apiece! We'll burn her — set her on fire before we go.”

  “We can't do that!” Hornblower's reply was jerked from him even before he had time to think.

  Fire in a wooden ship was the deadliest of enemies; if they left the brig well alight on their departure no efforts on the part of the Frenchmen left behind would extinguish the flames. Fifty — sixty — seventy Frenchmen would burn to death if they did not leap overboard to drown. He could not do it — at least he would not do it in cold blood: the alternative was already forming in his mind.

  “We can leave her a wreck,” he said. “Cut the jeers, cut the halliards — cut the forestay, for that matter. Five minutes' work and it'll take 'em the best part of a day before they can get sail on her again.”

  Perhaps it was the appeal to the demon of destruction that made up Baddlestone's mind for him.

  “Come on!” he said. “Let's get 'em to work.”

  It called for only the smallest amount of organization; the men they commanded were many of them trained officers who could grasp the situation with the briefest explanation. There were plenty of men to mount guard at the scuttle and at the hatch (whose cover was rapidly disintegrating under the force of axe blows from beneath) while the party to wreak destruction was told off and sent on its mission. It was as the turmoil began that Hornblower remembered one of the important duties of a King's officer in a captured ship; his mind seemed to be working jerkily, with flashes of clarity like lightning through the sombre cloud that oppressed it.

  He dashed into the captain's cabin; as be expected, there stood the captain's desk, and as he should have expected, it was locked. He fetched a handspike from the nearest gun, and it was only a minute's work with the aid of its powerful leverage to wrench the desk open. There were the ship's papers, letter book and fair log and all. Here was something unusual, too, which he found when he began to gather them up. Something flat, rectangular, and heavy — a sheet of lead bound with tarred twine, at first sight. A further glance showed that it was actually a sandwich of lead, with papers enclosed. Undoubtedly those papers were unusually important dispatches, probably, or, if not, they would be additions and changes in the signal book. The leaden casing told its own story — it was to be thrown overboard if the ship were to be in danger of capture; a blow from Meadows' cutlass had put an end to that scheme.

  A tremendous crash outside on the deck told him that the work of dismantling the brig was proceeding already. He looked round him and dragged a blanket from the cot, dumped all the ship's papers into it, and twisted it into a bag which he slung over his shoulder as he hurried out. The crash had been caused by the fall of the mainyard, as a result of the cutting of the jeers. It lay across the deck in a tangle of rigging which did not obscure the fact that the fall had sprung it — half broken it — in the centre. Five minutes' work by a gang of men who knew exactly what to do had left the brig a wreck.

  Forward Baddlestone and others were on guard over the hatchway, whose cover was disintegrating into its constituent planks as the frantic Frenchmen below battered at it with axes and levers. There was already a jagged hole visible.

  “We've fired every shot we have down at 'em,” said Baddlestone. “When we go we'll have to run for it.”

  His words were underlined by a bang and a flash from down below, and a musket bullet sang through the air between them.

  “Wish we had —” began Baddlestone, and checked himself; the same idea had occurred to Hornblower in the same second.

  Just at darkness, the brig, closing up on the Princess, had fired a shot across her bows, and in response the Princess hove to in apparent surrender. The gun that fired that shot would almost certainly be ready for action still. Baddlestone rushed over to one battery, Hornblower to the other.

  “There's a charge here!” yelled Baddlestone “Here, Jenkins, Sansome! Bear a hand!”

  Hornblower searched along the shot garlands and found eventually what he sought.

  “It's canister that'll do the trick,” he said, bringing it over to the labouring group.

  Baddlestone and the others were working like madmen with handspikes to swing the gun round to point at the hatchway. It called for vast effort; the trucks of the carriage groaned and shrieked as they scraped sideways on the deck. Baddlestone took the powder charge in its serge bag from out of the carrying bucket which had stood by the gun ready for use. They rammed it home, and then against the charge they rammed in the canister — a cylindrical box of thin metal containing a hundred and fifty bullets. Gurney the gunner pierced the serge through the touch hole with the pricker, and primed with the fine powder from the horn. Then he
began to force in the quoin; the breech of the gun rose and the muzzle began to point with infinite menace down the hatchway. Baddlestone glowered round, turning his black face this way and that.

  “Get down in the boats, all of you,” he said.

  “I'd better stay with you,” said Hornblower.

  “Get down into your boat with your party,” countered Baddlestone.

  It was the sensible thing to do; this was a rearguard action, and the covering force should be reduced to the absolute minimum. Hornblower herded his party down into the Princess's boat, and most of Baddlestone's went down into the brig's. Hornblower stood for a moment on tiptoe, with the sea surging round, holding on to the forechains with one hand while the other still retained its grip on the blanket bundle of books. He could just see from here; there was the swaying deck, with the dead men tumbled over it and the incredible confusion of the dismantling. Yet two lanterns still burned in the shrouds, and the light from the cabin still waxed and waned with the swinging of the door. Gurney had apparently forced a second quoin under the breech of the gun, so that it pointed down at a steep angle into the hatchway. He and Baddlestone stood clear, and then he jerked at the lanyard. A bellowing roar, a blinding flash, a billow of smoke; yells and screams from down below, distinctly heard where Hornblower was standing. Then the Englishmen came running across the deck, Baddlestone and Gurney, the guards at the scuttle and the hatchway, the guards over the prisoners. Hornblower watched them scrambling down into the boat, Baddlestone last, turning to yell defiance before he disappeared down into his boat. Hornblower released his hold on the chains and sat down in the sternsheets.

  “Shove off!” he said.

  Over there that tiny pinpoint of dancing light showed where Princess still lay to. In five minutes they would be under way again, free from pursuit, with the wind fair for Plymouth.

  Hornblower and the Crisis

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hornblower wrote the final lines of his letter, rapidly checked it through, from 'My dear Wife' to 'Your loving husband, Horatio Hornblower', and folded the sheet and put it in his pocket before going up on deck. The last turn was being taken round the last bollard, and Princess was safely alongside the quay in the victualling yard in Plymouth.

  As always, there was something unreal, a sort of nightmare clarity in this first contact with England. The people, the sheds, the houses, seemed to stand out with unnatural sharpness; voices sounded different with the land to echo them; the wind was vastly changed from the wind he knew at sea. The passengers were already stepping ashore, and a crowd of curious onlookers had assembled; the arrival of a waterhoy from the Channel fleet was of interest enough became she might have news, but a waterhoy which had actually captured, and for a few minutes had held possession of, a French brig of war was something very new.

  There were farewells to say to Baddlestone; besides making arrangements to land his sea chest and ditty bag there was something else to discuss.

  “I have the French ship's papers here,” said Hornblower, indicating the bundle.

  “What of them?” countered Baddlestone.

  “It's your duty to hand them over to the authorities,” said Hornblower. “In fact I'm sure you're legally bound to do that. Certainly as a King's officer I must see that is done.”

  Baddlestone seemed to be in a reserved mood; he seemed as anxious as Hornblower not to betray himself.

  “Then why not do it?” he said at length, after a long hard look at Hornblower.

  “It's prize of war and you're the captain.”

  Baddlestone voiced his contempt for prize of war that consisted solely of worthless papers.

  “You'd better do it, Captain,” he said, after the oaths and obscenities. “They'll be worth something to you.”

  “They certainly may be,” agreed Hornblower.

  Baddlestone's reserve was replaced now by a look of inquiring puzzlement. He was studying Hornblower as if seeking to ascertain some hidden motive behind the obvious ones.

  “It was you who thought of taking them,” he said, “and you're ready to hand them over to me?”

  “Of course. You're the captain.”

  Baddlestone shook his head slowly as if he was giving up a problem; but what the problem was Hornblower never did discover.

  Next there was the strange sensation of feeling the unmoving earth under his feet as he stepped ashore; there was the silence that fell on the two groups of passengers — officers and ratings — as he approached them. He had to take a formal farewell of them — it was only thirty hours since he and they had fought their way along the French brig's deck, swinging their cutlasses. There was a brotherhood in arms — one might almost say a brotherhood of blood — between them, something that divided them off sharply into a caste utterly different from the ignorant civilians here.

  But the very first thing to deal with on shore was his letter. There was a skinny and bare footed urchin hanging on the fringe of the crowd.

  “You boy!” called Hornblower. “D'you want to earn a shilling?”

  “Iss, that do I.” The homely accent was accompanied by an embarrassed grin.

  “D'you know Driver's Alley?”

  “Iss, sir.”

  “Here's sixpence and a letter. Run all the way and take this letter to Mrs Hornblower. Can you remember that name? Let's hear you say it. Very well. She'll give you the other sixpence when you give her the letter. Now — run.”

  Now for the goodbyes.

  “I said goodbye to most of you gentlemen only a few days back, and now I have to do so again. And a good deal has happened since then.”

  “Yes, sir!” an emphatic agreement, voiced by Bush as the only commissioned officer present.

  “Now I'm saying goodbye once more. I said before that I hoped we'd meet again, and I say it now. And I say 'thank you', too. You know I mean both those.”

  “It's us that have to thank you, sir,” said Bush, through the inarticulate murmurs uttered by the others.

  “Goodbye, you men,” said Hornblower to the other group. “Good luck.”

  “Goodbye and good luck, sir.”

  He turned away; there was a dockyard labourer available to wheel away his gear on a barrow, on which he could also lay the blanket bundle which swung from his hand; it might be vastly precious but it would not be out of his sight, and he had his dignity as a captain to consider. That dignity Hornblower felt imperilled enough as it was by the difficulty he experienced in walking like a landsman; the cobbles over which he was making his way seemed as if they could not remain level. He knew he was rolling in his gait like any Jack Tar, and yet, try as he would, he could not check the tendency while the solid earth seemed to seesaw under his feet.

  The labourer — as might have been expected — had no knowledge of where the admiral commanding the port was to be found; he did not know even his name, and a passing clerk had to be stopped and questioned.

  “The port admiral?” The lard faced clerk who repeated Hornblower's words was haughty, and Hornblower was battered and dishevelled, his hair long and tousled, his clothes rumpled, all as might be expected after nearly two weeks of crowded life in a waterhoy. But there was an epaulette, albeit a shabby one, on his left shoulder, and when the clerk noticed it he added a faint “Sir”.

  “Yes, the port admiral.”

  “You'll find him in his office in the stone building over there.”

  “Thank you. Do you know his name?”

  “Foster. Rear Admiral Harry Foster.”

  “Thank you.”

  That must be Dreadnought Foster. He had been one of the board of captains who had examined Hornblower for Lieutenant all those years ago in Gibraltar, the night the Spaniards sent the fireships in.

  The marine sentry at the outer gate presented arms to the epaulette, but he was not so wooden as to allow to pass unnoticed the blanket bundle that Hornblower took from the labourer; his eyes swivelled round to stare at it even while his neck stayed rigid. Hornblower took off hi
s battered hat to return the salute and passed through. The flag lieutenant who interviewed him next noticed the bundle as well, but his expression softened when Hornblower explained he was carrying captured documents.

  “From the Guèpe, sir?” asked the lieutenant.

  “Yes,” answered Hornblower in surprise.

  “The Admiral will see you, sir.”

  It was only yesterday, when Hornblower had examined the log more carefully in the troy, that he had discovered the French brig's name. It was only an hour ago that the Princess had made contact with the land, and yet the story was already known in the Admiral's office; at least it would save a little time — Maria would be waiting at the dockyard gate.

  Dreadnought Foster was just as Hornblower remembered him, swarthy, with an expression of sardonic humour. Luckily he appeared to have no recollection of the nervous midshipman whose examination had been fortunately interrupted that evening in Gibraltar. Like his flag lieutenant he had heard something of the story of the capture of the brig already — one more example of the speed with which gossip can fly — and he grasped the details, as Hornblower supplied them, with professional ease.

  “And those are the documents?” he asked, when Hornblower reached that point in his sketchy narrative.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Foster reached out a large hand for them.

  “Not everyone would have remembered to bring them away, Captain,” he said, as he began to turn them over. “Log. Day book. Station bill. Quarter bill. Victualling returns.”

  He had noticed the lead covered dispatch first of all, naturally, but he had laid it aside to examine last.

  “Now what do we have here?” He studied the label. “What does 'S.E.' mean?”

  “Son Excellence — His Excellency, sir.”

  “His Excellency the Captain General of — what's this, Captain?”

  “Windward Isles, sir.”

  “I might have guessed that seeing it says 'Martinique',” admitted Foster. “But I never had a head for French. Now —”