And the course I set has taken us into the midst of them, thought Hornblower bitterly. The coincidence was maddening, heartbreaking. But he forbore to waste breath over it. He even suppressed the frantic gibe that rose to his lips at the memory of Sir Hew’s toast about the Spaniards coming out from Cadiz.
“They’re setting more sail,” was what he said. “Dagos snug down at night, just like some fat Indiaman. They only set their t’gallants at daybreak.”
All round them through the fog could be heard the whine of sheaves in blocks, the stamp-and-go of the men at the halliards, the sound of ropes thrown on decks, the chatter of a myriad voices.
“They make enough noise about it, blast ’em,” said Hunter.
The tension under which he laboured was apparent as he stood straining to peer through the mist.
“Please God they’re on a different course to us,” said Winyatt, more sensibly. “Then we’ll soon be through ’em.”
“Not likely,” said Hornblower.
Le Reve was running almost directly before what little wind there was; if the Spaniards were beating against it or had it on their beam they would be crossing her course at a considerable angle, so that the volume of sound from the nearest ship would have diminished or increased considerably in this time, and there was no indication of that whatever. It was far more likely that Le Reve had overhauled the Spanish fleet under its nightly short canvas and had sailed forward into the middle of it. It was a problem what to do next in that case, to shorten sail, or to heave to, and let the Spaniards get ahead of them again, or to clap on sail to pass through. But the passage of the minutes brought clear proof that fleet and sloop were on practically the same course, as otherwise they could hardly fail to pass some ship close. As long as the mist held they were safest as they were.
But that was hardly to be expected with the coming of day.
“Can’t we alter course, sir?” asked Winyatt.
“Wait,” said Hornblower.
In the faint growing light he had seen shreds of denser mist blowing past them—a clear indication that they could not hope for continuous fog. At that moment they ran out of a fog bank into a clear patch of water.
“There she is, by God!” said Hunter.
Both officers and seamen began to move about in sudden panic.
“Stand still, damn you!” rasped Hornblower, his nervous tension releasing itself in the fierce monosyllables.
Less than a cable’s length away a three-decked ship of the line was standing along parallel to them on their starboard side. Ahead and on the port side could be seen the outlines, still shadowy, of other battleships. Nothing could save them if they drew attention to themselves; all that could be done was to keep going as if they had as much right there as the ships of the line. It was possible that in the happy-go-lucky Spanish navy the officer of the watch over there did not know that no sloop like Le Reve was attached to the fleet—or even possibly by a miracle there might be one. Le Reve was French built and French rigged, after all. Side by side Le Reve and the battleship sailed over the lumpy sea. They were within point-blank range of fifty big guns, when one well-aimed shot would sink them. Hunter was uttering filthy curses under his breath, but discipline had asserted itself; a telescope over there on the Spaniard’s deck would not discover any suspicious bustle on board the sloop. Another shred of fog drifted past them, and then they were deep in a fresh fog bank.
“Thank God!” said Hunter, indifferent to the contrast between this present piety and his preceding blasphemy.
“Hands wear ship,” said Hornblower. “Lay her on the port tack.”
There was no need to tell the hands to do it quietly; they were as well aware of their danger as anyone. Le Reve silently rounded-to, the sheets were hauled in and coiled down without a sound; and the sloop, as close to the wind as she would lie, heeled to the small wind, meeting the lumpy waves with her port bow.
“We’ll be crossing their course now,” said Hornblower.
“Please God it’ll be under their sterns and not their bows,” said Winyatt.
There was the duchess still in her cloak and hood, standing right aft as much out of the way as possible.
“Don’t you think Your Grace had better go below?” asked Hornblower, making use by a great effort of the formal form of address.
“Oh no, please,” said the duchess. “I couldn’t bear it.” Hornblower shrugged his shoulders, and promptly forgot the duchess’s presence again as a new anxiety struck him. He dived below and came up again with the two big sealed envelopes of despatches. He took a belaying pin from the rail and began very carefully to tie the envelopes to the pin with a bit of line.
“Please,” said the duchess, “please, Mr. Hornblower, tell me what you are doing?”
“I want to make sure these will sink when I throw them overboard if we’re captured,” said Hornblower grimly.
“Then they’ll be lost for good?”
“Better that than that the Spaniards should read ’em,” said Hornblower with all the patience he could muster.
“I could look after them for you,” said the duchess. “Indeed I could.”
Hornblower looked keenly at her.
“No,” he said, “they might search your baggage. Probably they would.”
“Baggage!” said the duchess. “As if I’d put them in my baggage! I’ll put them next my skin—they won’t search me in any case. They’ll never find ’em, not if I put ’em up my petticoats.”
There was a brutal realism about those words that staggered Hornblower a little, but which also brought him to admit to himself that there was something in what the duchess was saying.
“If they capture us,” said the duchess, “—I pray they won’t, but if they do—they’ll never keep me prisoner. You know that. They’ll send me to Lisbon or put me aboard a King’s ship as soon as they can. Then the despatches will be delivered eventually. Late, but better late than never.”
“That’s so,” mused Hornblower.
“I’ll guard them like my life,” said the duchess. “I swear I’ll never part from them. I’ll tell no one I have them, not until I hand them to a King’s officer.”
She met Hornblower’s eyes with transparent honesty in her expression.
“Fog’s thinning, sir,” said Winyatt.
“Quick!” said the duchess.
There was no time for further debate. Hornblower slipped the envelopes from their binding of rope and handed them over to her, and replaced the belaying pin in the rail.
“These damned French fashions,” said the duchess. “I was right when I said I’d put these letters up my petticoats. There’s no room in my bosom.”
Certainly the upper part of her gown was not at all capacious; the waist was close up under the armpits and the rest of the dress hung down from there quite straight in utter defiance of anatomy.
“Give me a yard of that rope, quick!” said the duchess.
Winyatt cut her a length of the line with his knife and handed it to her. Already she was hauling at her petticoats; the appalled Hornblower saw a gleam of white thigh above her stocking tops before he tore his glance away. The fog was certainly thinning.
“You can look at me now,” said the duchess; but her petticoats only just fell in time as Hornblower looked round again. “They’re inside my shift, next my skin as I promised. With these Directory fashions no one wears stays any more. So I tied the rope round my waist outside my shift. One envelope is flat against my chest and the other against my back. Would you suspect anything?”
She turned round for Hornblower’s inspection.
“No, nothing shows,” he said. “I must thank Your Grace.”
“There is a certain thickening,” said the duchess, “but it does not matter what the Spaniards suspect as long as they do not suspect the truth.”
Momentary cessation of the need for action brought some embarrassment to Hornblower. To discuss with a woman her shift and stays—or the absence of them—was a s
trange thing to do.
A watery sun, still nearly level, was breaking through the mist and shining in his eyes. The mainsail cast a watery shadow on the deck. With every second the sun was growing brighter.
“Here it comes,” said Hunter.
The horizon ahead expanded rapidly, from a few yards to a hundred, from a hundred yards to half a mile. The sea was covered with ships. No less than six were in plain sight, four ships of the line and two big frigates, with the red-and-gold of Spain at their mastheads, and, what marked them even more obviously as Spaniards, huge wooden crosses hanging at their peaks.
“Wear ship again, Mr. Hunter,” said Hornblower. “Back into the fog”
That was the one chance of safety. Those ships running down towards them were bound to ask questions, and they could not hope to avoid them all. Le Reve spun around on her heel, but the fog-bank from which she had emerged was already attenuated, sucked up by the thirsty sun. They could see a drifting stretch of it ahead, but it was lazily rolling away from them at the same time as it was dwindling. The heavy sound of a cannon shot reached their ears, and close on their starboard quarter a ball threw up a fountain of water before plunging into the side of a wave just ahead. Hornblower looked round just in time to see the last of the puff of smoke from the bows of the frigate astern pursuing them.
“Starboard two points,” he said to the helmsman, trying to gauge at one and the same moment the frigate’s course, the direction of the wind, the bearing of the other ships, and that of the thin last nucleus of that wisp of fog.
“Starboard two points,” said the helmsman.
“Fore and main sheets!” said Hunter.
Another shot, far astern this time but laid true for line; Hornblower suddenly remembered the duchess.
“You must go below, Your Grace,” he said curtly.
“Oh, no, no, no!” burst out the duchess with angry vehemence. “Please let me stay here. I can’t go below to where that seasick maid of mine lies hoping to die. Not in that stinking box of a cabin.”
There would be no safety in that cabin, Hornblower reflected—Le Reve’s scantlings were too fragile to keep out any shot at all. Down below the water line in the hold the women might be safe, but they would have to lie flat on top of beef barrels.
“Sail ahead!” screamed the lookout.
The mist there was parting and the outline of a ship of the line was emerging from it, less than a mile away and on almost the same course as Le Reve’s. Thud—thud from the frigate astern. Those gunshots by now would have warned the whole Spanish fleet that something unusual was happening. The battleship ahead would know that the little sloop was being pursued. A ball tore through the air close by, with its usual terrifying noise. The ship ahead was awaiting their coming; Hornblower saw her topsails slowly turning.
“Hands to the sheets!” said Hornblower. “Mr. Hunter, jibe her over.”
Le Reve came round again, heading for the lessening gap on the port side. The frigate astern turned to intercept. More jets of smoke from her bows. With an appalling noise a shot passed within a few feet of Hornblower, so that the wind of it made him stagger. There was a hole in the mainsail.
“Your Grace,” said Hornblower, “those aren’t warning shots—”
It was the ship of the line which fired then, having succeeded in clearing away and manning some of her upper-deck guns. It was as if the end of the world had come. One shot hit Le Reve’s hull, and they felt the deck heave under their feet as a result as if the little ship were disintegrating. But the mast was hit at the same moment, stays and shrouds parting, splinters raining all round. Mast, sails, boom, gaff and all went from above them over the side to windward. The wreckage dragged in the sea and turned the helpless wreck round with the last of her way. The little group aft stood momentarily dazed.
“Anybody hurt?” asked Hornblower, recovering himself.
“On’y a scratch, sir,” said one voice.
It seemed a miracle that no one was killed.
“Carpenter’s mate, sound the well,” said Hornblower and then, recollecting himself, “No, damn it. Belay that order. If the Dons can save the ship, let ’em try.”
Already the ship of the line whose salvo had done the damage was filling her topsails again and bearing away from them, while the frigate which had pursued them was running down on them fast. A wailing figure came scrambling out of the after hatchway. It was the duchess’s maid, so mad with terror that her seasickness was forgotten. The duchess put a protective arm round her and tried to comfort her.
“Your Grace had better look to your baggage,” said Hornblower. “No doubt you’ll be leaving us shortly for other quarters with the Dons. I hope you will be more comfortable.”
He was trying desperately hard to speak in a matter-of-fact way, as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening, as if he were not soon to be a prisoner of the Spaniards; but the duchess saw the working of the usually firm mouth, and marked how the hands were tight clenched.
“How can I tell you how sorry I am about this?” asked the duchess, her voice soft with pity.
“That makes it the harder for me to bear,” said Hornblower, and he even forced a smile.
The Spanish frigate was just rounding-to, a cable’s length to windward.
“Please, sir,” said Hunter.
“Well?”
“We can fight, sir. You give the word. Cold shot to drop in the boats when they try to board. We could beat ’em off once, perhaps.”
Hornblower’s tortured misery nearly made him snap out “Don’t be a fool”, but he checked himself. He contented himself with pointing to the frigate. Twenty guns were glaring at them at far less than point-blank range. The very boat the frigate was hoisting out would be manned by at least twice as many men as Le Reve carried—she was no bigger than many a pleasure yacht. It was not odds of ten to one, or a hundred to one, but odds of ten thousand to one.
“I understand, sir,” said Hunter.
Now the Spanish frigate’s boat was in the water, about to shove off.
“A private word with you, please, Mr. Hornblower,” said the duchess suddenly.
Hunter and Winyatt heard what she said, and withdrew out of earshot.
“Yes, Your Grace?” said Hornblower.
The duchess stood there, still with her arm round her weeping maid, looking straight at him.
“I’m no more of a duchess than you are,” she said.
“Good God!” said Hornblower. “Who—who are you, then?”
“Kitty Cobham.”
The name meant a little to Hornblower, but only a little.
“You’re too young for that name to have any memories for you, Mr. Hornblower, I see. It’s five years since last I trod the boards.”
That was it. Kitty Cobham the actress.
“I can’t tell it all now,” said the duchess—the Spanish boat was dancing over the waves towards them. “But when the French marched into Florence that was only the last of my misfortunes. I was penniless when I escaped from them. Who would lift a finger for a onetime actress—one who had been betrayed and deserted? What was I to do? But a duchess—that was another story. Old Dalrymple at Gibraltar could not do enough for the Duchess of Wharfedale.”
“Why did you choose that title?” asked Hornblower in spite of himself.
“I knew of her,” said the duchess with a shrug of the shoulders. “I knew her to be what I played her as. That was why I chose her—I always played character parts better than straight comedy. And not nearly so tedious in a long role.”
“But my despatches!” said Hornblower in a sudden panic of realization. “Give them back, quick.”
“If you wish me to,” said the duchess. “But I can still be the duchess when the Spaniards come. They will still set me free as speedily as they can. I’ll guard those despatches better than my life—I swear it, I swear it! In less than a month I’ll deliver them, if you trust me.”
Hornblower looked at the pleading eyes. She might b
e a spy, ingeniously trying to preserve the despatches from being thrown overboard before the Spaniards took possession. But no spy could have hoped that Le Reve would run into the midst of the Spanish fleet.
“I made use of the bottle, I know,” said the duchess. “I drank. Yes, I did. But I stayed sober in Gibraltar, didn’t I? And I won’t touch a drop, not a drop, until I’m in England. I’ll swear that, too. Please, sir—please. I beg of you. Let me do what I can for my country.”
It was a strange decision for a man of nineteen to have to make—one who had never exchanged a word with an actress in his life before. A harsh voice overside told him that the Spanish boat was about to hook on.
“Keep them, then,” said Hornblower. “Deliver them when you can.”
He had not taken his eyes from her face. He was looking for a gleam of triumph in her expression. Had he seen anything of the sort he would have torn the despatches from her body at that moment. But all he saw was the natural look of pleasure, and it was then that he made up his mind to trust her—not before.
“Oh, thank you, sir,” said the duchess.
The Spanish boat had hooked on now, and a Spanish lieutenant was awkwardly trying to climb aboard. He arrived on the deck on his hands and knees, and Hornblower stepped over to receive him as he got to his feet. Captor and captive exchanged bows. Hornblower could not understand what the Spaniard said, but obviously they were formal sentences that he was using. The Spaniard caught sight of the two women aft and halted in surprise; Hornblower hastily made the presentation in what he hoped was Spanish.
“Señor el tenente Espanol,” he said. “Señora la Duquesa de Wharfedale.”
The title clearly had its effect; the lieutenant bowed profoundly, and his bow was received with the most lofty aloofness by the duchess. Hornblower could be sure the despatches were safe. That was some alleviation of the misery of standing here on the deck of his water-logged little ship, a prisoner of the Spaniards. As he waited he heard, from far to leeward, roll upon roll of thunder coming up against the wind. No thunder could endure that long. What he could hear must be the broadsides of ships in action—of fleets in action. Somewhere over there by Cape St. Vincent the British fleet must have caught the Spaniards at last. Fiercer and fiercer sounded the roll of the artillery. There was excitement among the Spaniards who had scrambled onto the deck of Le Reve, while Hornblower stood bareheaded waiting to be taken into captivity.