The Young Hornblower Omnibus

  “Is that a council of war?” said Smith to Bush, looking across at the pair.

  “Not likely,” said Bush.

  A first lieutenant would not deliberately ask the advice or even the opinion of one so junior. Yet—yet—it might be possible, starting with idle conversation about different matters.

  “Don’t tell me they’re discussing Catholic Emancipation,” said Lomax.

  It was just possible, Bush realized guiltily, that they were discussing something else—that question as to how the captain had come to fall down the hatchway. Bush found himself automatically looking round the deck for Wellard when that thought occurred to him. Wellard was skylarking in the main rigging with the midshipmen and master’s mates as if he had not a care in the world. But it could not be that question which Buckland and Hornblower were discussing. Their attitudes seemed to indicate that theories and not facts were the subject of the debate.

  “Anyway, they’ve settled it,” said Smith.

  Hornblower was touching his hat to Buckland, and Buckland was turning to go below again. Several curious pairs of eyes looked across at Hornblower now that he was left solitary, and as he became conscious of their regard he strolled over to them.

  “Affairs of state?” asked Lomax, asking the question which everyone wanted asked.

  Hornblower met his gaze with a level glance.

  “No,” he said, and smiled.

  “It certainly looked like matters of importance,” said Smith.

  “That depends on the definition,” answered Hornblower.

  He was still smiling, and his smile gave no clue at all regarding his thoughts. It would be rude to press him further; it was possible that he and Buckland had been discussing some private business. Nobody looking at him could guess.

  “Come off those hammocks, there!” bellowed Hornblower; the skylarking midshipmen were not breaking one of the rules of the ship, but it was a convenient moment to divert the conversation.

  Three bells rang out; the first dogwatch was threequarters completed.

  “Mr. Roberts, sir!” suddenly called the sentry at the smokers’ slow match by the hatchway. “Passing the word for Mr. Roberts!”

  Roberts turned from the group.

  “Who’s passing the word for me?” he asked, although with the captain ill there could only be one man in the ship who could pass the word for the second lieutenant.

  “Mr. Buckland, sir. Mr. Buckland passing the word for Mr. Roberts.”

  “Very well,” said Roberts, hurrying down the companion.

  The others exchanged glances. This might be the moment of decision. Yet on the other hand it might be only a routine matter. Hornblower took advantage of the distraction to turn away from the group and continue his walk on the weather side of the ship; he walked with his chin nearly down on his breast, his drooping head balanced by the hands behind his back. Bush thought he looked weary.

  Now there came a fresh cry from below, repeated by the sentry at the hatchway.

  “Mr. Clive! Passing the word for Mr. Clive. Mr. Buckland passing the word for Mr. Clive!”

  “Oh-ho!” said Lomax in significant tones, as the surgeon hurried down.

  “Something happens,” said Carberry, the master.

  Time went on without either the second lieutenant or the surgeon reappearing. Smith, under his arm the telescope that was the badge of his temporary office, touched his hat to Hornblower and prepared to relieve him as officer of the watch as the second dogwatch was called. In the east the sky was turning dark, and the sun was setting over the starboard quarter in a magnificent display of red and gold; from the ship towards the sun the surface of the sea was gilded and glittering, but close overside it was the richest purple. A flying fish broke the surface and went skimming along, leaving a transient, momentary furrow behind it like a groove in enamel.

  “Look at that!” exclaimed Hornblower to Bush.

  “A flying fish,” said Bush, indifferently.

  “Yes! There’s another!”

  Hornblower leaned over to get a better view.

  “You’ll see plenty of them before this voyage is over,” said Bush.

  “But I’ve never seen one before.”

  The play of expression on Hornblower’s face was curious. One moment he was full of eager interest; the next he assumed an appearance of stolid indifference as a man might pull on a glove. His service at sea so far, varied though it might be, had been confined to European waters; years of dangerous activity on the French and Spanish coasts in a frigate, two years in the Renown in the Channel fleet, and he had been eagerly looking forward to the novelties he would encounter in tropical waters. But he was talking to a man to whom these things were no novelty, and who evinced no excitement at the sight of the first flying fish of the voyage. Hornblower was not going to be outdone in stolidity and self-control; if the wonders of the deep failed to move Bush they were not going to evoke any childish excitement in Hornblower, at least any apparent excitement if Hornblower could suppress it. He was a veteran, and he was not going to appear like a raw hand.

  Bush looked up to see Roberts and Clive ascending the companionway in the gathering night, and turned eagerly towards them. Officers came from every part of the quarterdeck to hear what they had to say.

  “Well, sir?” asked Lomax.

  “He’s done it,” said Roberts.

  “He’s read the secret orders, sir?” asked Smith.

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “Oh!”

  There was a pause before someone asked the inevitable silly question.

  “What did they say?”

  “They are secret orders,” said Roberts, and now there was a touch of pomposity in his voice—it might be to compensate for his lack of knowledge, or it might be because Roberts was now growing more aware of the dignity of his position as second in command. “If Mr. Buckland had taken me into his confidence I still could not tell you.”

  “True enough,” said Carberry.

  “What did the captain do?” asked Lomax.

  “Poor devil,” said Clive. With all attention turned to him Clive grew expansive. “We might be fiends from the pit! You should have seen him cower away when we came in. Those morbid terrors grow more acute.”

  Clive awaited a request for further information, and even though none was forthcoming he went on with his story.

  “We had to find the key to his desk. You would have thought we were going to cut his throat, judging by the way he wept and tried to hide. All the sorrows of the world—all the terrors of hell torment that wretched man.”

  “But you found the key?” persisted Lomax.

  “We found it. And we opened his desk.”

  “And then?”

  “Mr. Buckland found the orders. The usual linen envelope with the Admiralty seal. The envelope had been already opened.”

  “Naturally,” said Lomax. “Well?”

  “And now, I suppose,” said Clive, conscious of the anti-climax, “I suppose he’s reading them.”

  “And we are none the wiser.”

  There was a disappointed pause.

  “Bless my soul!” said Carberry. “We’ve been at war since ’93. Nearly ten years of it. D’ye still expect to know what lies in store for you? The West Indies today—Halifax tomorrow. We obey orders. Helm-a-lee—let go and naul. A bellyful of grape or champagne in a captured flagship. Who cares? We draw our four shillings a day, rain or shine.”

  “Mr. Carberry!” came the word from below. “Mr. Buckland passing the word for Mr. Carberry.”

  “Bless my soul!” said Carberry again.

  “Now you can earn your four shillings a day,” said Lomax.

  The remark was addressed to his disappearing back, for Carberry was already hastening below.

  “A change of course,” said Smith. “I’ll wager a week’s pay on it.”

  “No takers,” said Roberts.

  It was the most likely new development of all, for Carberry, the master, w
as the officer charged with the navigation of the ship.

  Already it was almost full night, dark enough to make the features of the speakers indistinct, although over to the westward there was still a red path on the horizon, and a faint red trail over the black water towards the ship. The binnacle lights had been lit and the brighter stars were already visible in the dark sky, with the mastheads seeming to brush past them, with the motion of the ship, infinitely far over their heads. The ship’s bell rang out, but the group showed no tendency to disperse. And then interest quickened. Here were Buckland and Carberry returning, ascending the companionway; the group drew on one side to clear them a passage.

  “Officer of the watch!” said Buckland.

  “Sir!” said Smith, coming forward in the darkness.

  “We’re altering course two points. Steer southwest.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Course southwest. Mr. Abbott, pipe the hands to the braces.”

  The Renown came round on her new course, with her sails trimmed to the wind which was now no more than a point on her port quarter. Carberry walked over to the binnacle and looked into it to make sure the helmsman was exactly obeying his orders.

  “Another pull on the weather forebrace, there!” yelled Smith. “Belay!”

  The bustle of the change of course died away.

  “Course sou’west, sir,” reported Smith.

  “Very good, Mr. Smith,” said Buckland, by the rail.

  “Pardon, sir,” said Roberts, greatly daring, addressing him as he loomed in the darkness. “Can you tell us our mission, sir?”

  “Not our mission. That is still secret, Mr. Roberts.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “But I’ll tell you where we’re bound. Mr. Carberry knows already.”

  “Where, sir?”

  “Santo Domingo. Scotchman’s Bay.”

  There was a pause while this information was being digested.

  “Santa Domingo,” said someone, meditatively.

  “Hispaniola,” said Carberry, explanatorily.

  “Hayti,” said Hornblower.

  “Santo Domingo—Hayti—Hispaniola,” said Carberry. “Three names for the same island.”

  “Hayti!” exclaimed Roberts, some chord in his memory suddenly touched. “That’s where the blacks are in rebellion.”

  “Yes,” agreed Buckland.

  Anyone could guess that Buckland was trying to say that word in as noncommittal a tone as possible; it might be because there was a difficult diplomatic situation with regard to the blacks, and it might be because fear of the captain was still a living force in the ship.

  VII

  Lieutenant Buckland, in acting command of H.M.S. Renown, of seventy-four guns, was on the quarterdeck of his ship peering through his telescope at the low mountains of Santo Domingo. The ship was rolling in a fashion unnatural and disturbing, for the long Atlantic swell, driven by the northeast trades, was passing under her keel while she lay hove-to to the final puffs of the land breeze which had blown since midnight and was now dying away as the fierce sun heated the island again. The Renown was actually wallowing, rolling her lower deck gunports under, first on one side and then on the other, for what little breeze there was was along the swell and did nothing to stiffen her as she lay with her mizzen topsail backed. She would lie right over on one side, until the gun tackles creaked with the strain of holding the guns in position, until it was hard to keep a foothold on the steep-sloping deck; she would lie there for a few harrowing seconds, and then slowly right herself, making no pause at all at the moment when she was upright and her deck horizontal, and continue, with a clattering of blocks and a rattle of gear in a sickening swoop until she was as far over in the opposite direction, gun tackles creaking and unwary men slipping and sliding, and lie there unresponsive until the swell had rolled under her and she repeated her behaviour.

  “For God’s sake,” said Hornblower, hanging on to a belaying pin in the mizzen fife rail to save himself from sliding down the deck into the scuppers, “can’t he make up his mind?”

  There was something in Hornblower’s stare that made Bush look at him more closely.

  “Seasick?” he asked, with curiosity.

  “Who wouldn’t be?” replied Hornblower. “How she rolls!”

  Bush’s cast-iron stomach had never given him the least qualm, but he was aware that less fortunate men suffered from seasickness even after weeks at sea, especially when subjected to a different kind of motion. This funereal rolling was nothing like the free action of the Renown under sail.

  “Buckland has to see how the land lies,” he said in an effort to cheer Hornblower up.

  “How much more does he want to see?” grumbled Hornblower. “There’s the Spanish colours flying on the fort up there. Everyone on shore knows now that a ship of the line is prowling about, and the Dons won’t have to be very clever to guess that we’re not here on a yachting trip. Now they’ve all the time they need to be ready to receive us.”

  “But what else could he do?”

  “He could have come in in the dark with the sea breeze. Landing parties ready. Put them ashore at dawn. Storm the place before they knew there was any danger. Oh, God!”

  The final exclamation had nothing to do with what went before. It was wrenched out of Hornblower by the commotion of his stomach. Despite his deep tan there was a sickly green colour in his cheeks.

  “Hard luck,” said Bush.

  Buckland still stood trying to keep his telescope trained on the coast despite the rolling of the ship. This was Scotchman’s Bay—the Bahia de Escocesa, as the Spanish charts had it. To the westward lay a shelving beach; the big rollers here broke far out and ran in creamy white up to the water’s edge with diminishing force, but to the eastward the shore line rose in a line of tree-covered hills standing bluffly with their feet in blue water; the rollers burst against them in sheets of spray that climbed far up the cliffs before falling back in a smother of white. For thirty miles those hills ran beside the sea, almost due east and west; they constituted the Samaná peninsula, terminating in Samaná Point. According to the charts the peninsula was no more than ten miles wide; behind them, round Samaná Point, lay Samaná Bay, opening into the Mona Passage and a most convenient anchorage for privateers and small ships of war which could lie there, under the protection of the fort on the Samaná peninsula, ready to slip out and harass the West Indian convoys making use of the Mona Passage. The Renown had been given orders to clear out this raiders’ lair before going down to leeward to Jamaica—everyone in the ship could guess that—but now that Buckland confronted the problem he was not at all sure how to solve it. His indecision was apparent to all the curious lookers-on who clustered on the Renown’s deck.

  The main topsail suddenly flapped like thunder, and the ship began to turn slowly head to sea; the land breeze was expiring, and the trade winds, blowing eternally across the Atlantic, were resuming their dominion. Buckland shut his telescope with relief. At least that was an excuse for postponing action.

  “Mr. Roberts!”

  “Sir!”

  “Lay her on the port tack. Full and by!”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The after guard came running to the mizzen braces, and the ship slowly paid off. Gradually the topsails caught the wind, and she began to lie over, gathering way as she did so. She met the next roller with her port bow, thrusting boldly into it in a burst of spray. The tautened weather-rigging began to sing a more cheerful note, blending with the music of her passage through the water. She was a live thing again, instead of rolling like a corpse in the trough. The roaring trade wind pressed her over, and she went surging along, rising and swooping as if with pleasure, leaving a creamy wake behind her on the blue water while the sea roared under the bows.

  “Better?” asked Bush of Hornblower.

  “Better in one way,” was the reply. Hornblower looked over at the distant hills of Santo Domingo. “I could wish we were going into action and not running away to think ab
out it.”

  “What a fire-eater!” said Bush.

  “A fire-eater? Me? Nothing like that—quite the opposite. I wish—oh, I wish for too much, I suppose.”

  There was no explaining some people, thought Bush, philosophically. He was content to bask in the sunshine now that its heat was tempered by the ship’s passage through the wind. If action and danger lay in the future he could await it in stolid tranquillity; and he certainly could congratulate himself that he did not have to carry Buckland’s responsibity of carrying a ship of the line and seven hundred and twenty men into action. The prospect of action at least took one’s mind off the horrid fact that confined below lay an insane captain.

  At dinner in the wardroom he looked over at Hornblower, fidgety and nervous. Buckland had announced his intention of taking the bull by the horns the next morning, of rounding Samaná Point and forcing his way straight up the bay. It would not take many broadsides from the Renown to destroy any shipping that lay there at anchor. Bush thoroughly approved of the scheme. Wipe out the privateers, burn them, sink them, and then it would be time to decide what, if anything, should be done next. At the meeting in the wardroom, when Buckland asked if any officer had any questions, Smith had asked sensibly about the tides, and Carberry had given him the information; Roberts had asked a question or two about the situation on the south shore of the bay; but Hornblower at the foot of the table had kept his mouth shut, although looking with eager attention at each speaker in turn.

  During the dogwatches Hornblower had paced the deck by himself, head bent in meditation; Bush noticed the fingers of the hands behind his back twisting and twining nervously, and he experienced a momentary doubt. Was it possible that this energetic young officer was lacking in physical courage? That phrase was not Bush’s own—he had heard it used maliciously somewhere or other years ago. It was better to use it now than to tell himself outright that he suspected Hornblower might be a coward. Bush was not a man of large tolerance; if a man were a coward he wanted no more to do with him.

  Half-way through next morning the pipes shrilled along the decks; the drums of the marines beat a rousing roll.