‘Canister on top of the round-shot, sir,’ said the gun captain turning to him with a grin. ‘That’ll learn ’em.’
A hundred and fifty musket bullets in a round of canister would sweep the Loire’s quarter-deck like a broom. The marines posted on the deck were all biting fresh cartridges and plying their ramrods – they must have been firing too, without Hornblower perceiving it. Bush was back beside him.
‘Every shot told!’ he spluttered. ‘Every single shot, sir!’
It was amazing and interesting to see Bush so excited, but there was still no time for trifles. Hornblower looked back at the Loire, she was still in irons – that broadside must have thrown her crew into complete disorder again. And over there was Ushant, grim and black.
‘Port two points,’ he said to the men at the wheel. A sensible man would conserve all the sea room available.
‘Shall we come to the wind and finish her off, sir?’ asked Bush.
‘No.’
That was the sensible decision, reached in spite of his fighting madness. Despite the advantage gained by firing an unanswered broadside Hotspur was far too weak to enter voluntarily into a duel with Loire. If Loire had lost a mast, if she had been disabled, he would have tried it. The ships were already a mile apart; in the time necessary to beat back to his enemy she would recover and be ready to receive him. There she was; now she had swung, she had come under control again. It simply would not do.
The crew were chattering like monkeys, and like monkeys they were dancing about the deck in their excitement. Hornblower took the speaking-trumpet to magnify his order.
‘Silence!’
At his bellow the ship instantly fell silent, with every eye turned towards him. He was impervious to that, strangely. He paced across the quarter-deck and back again, judging the distance of Ushant, now receding over the starboard quarter, and of the Loire, now before the wind. He waited, almost reached his decision, and then waited again, before he gave his orders.
‘Helm a-weather! Mr Prowse, back the maintops’l, if you please.’
They were in the very mouth of the English Channel now, with Loire to windward and with an infinite avenue of escape available to leeward. If Loire came down upon him he would lure her up-channel. In a stern chase and with night coming on he would be in little enough danger, and the Loire would be cutting herself off from safety with every prospect of encountering powerful units of the British Navy. So he waited, hove-to, on the faint chance that the Frenchman might not resist temptation. Then he saw her yards swing, saw her come about, on to the starboard tack. She was heading for home, heading to keep Brest under her lee. She was acting conservatively and sensibly. But to the world, to everyone in Hotspur – and to everyone in the Loire, for that matter – Hotspur was challenging her to action and she was running for safety with her tail between her legs. At the sight of her in flight the Hotspur’s crew raised an undisciplined cheer; Hornblower took the speaking-trumpet again.
‘Silence!’
The rasp in his voice came from fatigue and strain, for reaction was closing in upon him in the moment of victory. He had to stop and think, he had to prod his mind into activity before he could give his next orders. He hung the speaking-trumpet on its becket and turned to Bush; the two unplanned gestures took on a highly dramatic quality in the eyes of the ship’s company, who were standing watching him and expecting some further speech.
‘Mr Bush! You can dismiss the watch below, if you would be so kind.’ Those last words were the result of a considerable effort.
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Secure the guns, and dismiss the men from quarters.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘Mr Prowse!’ Hornblower gauged by a glance at Ushant the precious distance they had lost to leeward. ‘Put the ship on the port tack close-hauled, if you please.’
‘Close-hauled on the port tack. Aye aye, sir.’
Strictly speaking, that was the last order he need give at this moment. He could abandon himself to his fatigue now, this very second. But a few words of explanation were at least desirable, if not quite necessary.
‘We shall have to beat back. Call me when the watch is changed.’ As he said those words he could form a mental picture of what they implied. He would be able to fall across his cot, take the weight off his weary legs, let the tensions drain out of him, abandon himself to his fatigue, close his aching eyes, revel in the thought that no further decisions would be demanded of him for an hour or two. Then he recalled himself in momentary surprise. Despite those visions he was still on the quarter-deck with all eyes on him. He knew what he had to say; he knew what was necessary – he had to make an exit, like some wretched actor leaving the stage as the curtain fell. On these simple seamen it would have an effect that would compensate them for their fatigue, that would be remembered and quoted months later, and would – this was the only reason for saying it – help to reconcile them to the endless discomforts of the blockade of Brest. He set his tired legs in motion towards his cabin, and paused at the spot where the greatest number of people could hear his words to repeat them later.
‘We are going back to watch Brest again.’ The melodramatic pause. ‘Loire or no Loire.’
VII
Hornblower was seated in the cramped chart-room eating his dinner. This salt beef must have come from the new cask, for there was an entirely different tang about it, not unpleasant. Presumably it had been pickled at some other victualling yard, with a different quality of salt. He dipped the tip of his knife into the mustard pot; that mustard was borrowed – begged – from the wardroom, and he felt guilty about it. The wardroom stores must be running short by now – but on the other hand he himself had sailed with no mustard at all, thanks to the distractions of getting married while commissioning his ship.
‘Come in!’ he growled in response to a knock.
It was Cummings, one of the ‘young gentlemen,’ First Class Volunteers, King’s Letter Boys, with whom the ship was plagued in place of experienced midshipmen, thanks again to the haste with which she had been commissioned.
‘Mr Poole sent me, sir. There’s a new ship joining the Inshore Squadron.’
‘Very well. I’ll come.’
It was a lovely summer day. A few cumulus clouds supplied relief to the blue sky. Hotspur was hardly rocking at all as she lay hove-to, her mizzen topsail to the mast, for she was so far up in the approaches to Brest that the moderate easterly wind had little opportunity, since leaving the land, to raise a lop on the water. Hornblower swept his eye round as he emerged on the quarterdeck, landward at first, naturally. They lay right in the mouth of the Goulet, with a view straight up into the Outer Roads. On one side, was the Capuchins, on the other the Petit Minou, with Hotspur carefully stationed – as in the days of peace but for a more forceful reason – so that she was just out of cannon-shot of the batteries on those two points. Up the Goulet lay the reefs of the Little Girls, with their outlier, Pollux Reef, and beyond the Little Girls, in the outer roadstead, lay the French navy at anchor, forced to tolerate this constant invigilation because of the superior might of the Channel Fleet waiting outside, just over the horizon.
Hornblower naturally turned his gaze in that direction next. The main body was out of sight, so as to conceal its strength; even Hornblower did not know its present numbers correctly – some twelve ships of the line or so. But well in sight, only three miles out to sea, lay the Inshore Squadron, burly two-deckers lying placidly hove-to, ready at any minute to support Hotspur and the two frigates, Doris and Naiad, should the French decide to come out and drive off these insolent sentries. There had been three of these ships of the line; now, as Hornblower looked, a fourth was creeping in close-hauled to join them. Automatically Hornblower looked over again at the Petit Minou. As he expected, the semaphore arms of the telegraph on the cliffs at the point there were swinging jerkily, from vertical to horizontal and back again. The watchers there were signalling to the French fleet the news of the arrival of th
is fourth ship to join the inshore squadron; even the smallest activity was noted and reported, so that in clear weather the French admiral was informed within minutes. It was an intolerable nuisance – it helped to smooth the path of the coasters perennially trying to sneak into Brest through the passage of the Raz. Some action should be taken about that semaphore station.
Bush was rating Foreman, whom he was patiently – impatiently – training to be the signal officer of the Hotspur.
‘Can’t you get that number yet?’ he demanded.
Foreman was training his telescope; he had not acquired the trick of keeping the other eye open, yet idle. In any case it was not easy to read the flags, with the wind blowing almost directly from one ship to the other.
‘Seventy-nine, sir,’ said Foreman at length.
‘You’ve read it right for once,’ marvelled Bush. ‘Now let’s see what you do next.’
Foreman snapped his fingers as he recalled his duties, and hastened to the signal book on the binnacle. The telescope slipped with a crash to the deck from under his arm as he tried to turn the pages, but he picked it up and managed to find the reference. He turned back to Bush, but a jerk of Bush’s thumb diverted him to Hornblower.
‘Tonnant, sir,’ he said.
‘Now, Mr Foreman, you know better than that. Make your report in proper form and as fully as you can.’
‘Tonnant, sir. Eighty-four guns. Captain Pellew.’ Hornblower’s stony face and steady silence spurred Foreman into remembering the rest of what he should say. ‘Joining the Inshore Squadron.’
‘Thank you, Mr Foreman,’ said Hornblower with the utmost formality, but Bush was already addressing Foreman again, his voice pitched as loudly as if Foreman were on the forecastle instead of three yards away.
‘Mr Foreman! The Tonnant’s signalling! Hurry up, now.’
Foreman scuttled back and raised his telescope.
‘That’s our number!’ he said.
‘So I saw five minutes ago. Read the signal.’
Foreman peered through the telescope, referring to the book, and checked his reference before looking up at the raging Bush.
‘ “Send boat,” it says, sir.’
‘Of course it does. You ought to know all routine signals by heart, Mr Foreman. You’ve had long enough. Sir, Tonnant signals us to send a boat.’
‘Thank you, Mr Bush. Acknowledge, and clear away the quarter boat.’
‘Aye aye, sir. Acknowledge!’ A second later Bush was blaring again. ‘Not that halliard, you careless – you careless young gentleman. Tonnant can’t see the signal through the mizzen tops’l. Send it up to the main-tops’l yardarm.’
Bush looked over at Hornblower and spread his hands in resignation. Partly he was indicating that he was resigned to this duty of training ignorant young subordinates, but partly the dumb show conveyed some of the feelings aroused by having, in view of Hornblower’s known preferences, to call Foreman a ‘young gentleman’ instead of using some much more forcible expression. Then he turned away to supervise Cummings as he hoisted out the quarter boat. There was everything to be said in favour of these young men being harassed and bullied as they went about their duties, although Hornblower did not subscribe to the popular notion that young men were actually the better for harassment and bullying. They would learn their duties all the quicker; and one of these days Foreman might easily find himself having to read and transmit signals amid the smoke and confusion and slaughter of a fleet action, while Cummings might be launching and manning a boat in desperate haste for a cutting out expedition.
Hornblower remembered his unfinished dinner.
‘Call me when the boat returns, if you please, Mr Bush.’
This was the last of the blackcurrant jam; Hornblower, ruefully contemplating the sinking level in the final pot, admitted to himself that compulsorily he had actually acquired a taste for blackcurrant. The butter was all gone, the eggs used up, after forty days at sea. For the next seventy-one days, until the ship’s provisions were all consumed he was likely to be living on seamen’s fare, unrelieved salt beef and pork, dried peas, biscuit. Cheese twice a week and suet pudding on Sundays.
At any rate there was time for a nap before the boat returned. He could go to sleep peacefully – a precaution in case the exigencies of the service disturbed his night – thanks to the naval might of Britain, although five miles away there were twenty thousand enemies any one of whom would kill him on sight.
‘Boat coming alongside, sir.’
‘Very well,’ answered Hornblower sleepily.
The boat was deeply laden, right down to her gunwales. The hands must have had a long stiff pull back to the Hotspur; it was the purest bad luck on them that they could run under sail to the Tonnant when lightly laden and then have to row all the way back deeply laden in the teeth of the gentle wind. From the boat as she approached there came a strange roaring noise, a kind of bellow.
‘What the devil’s that?’ asked Bush of himself as he stood beside Hornblower on the gangway.
The boat was heaped high with sacks.
‘There’s fresh food, anyway,’ said Hornblower.
‘Reeve a whip at the main-yardarm!’ bellowed Bush – odd how his bellow was echoed from the boat.
Foreman came up the side to report.
‘Cabbages, potatoes, cheese, sir. And a bullock.’
‘Fresh meat, by God!’ said Bush.
With half a dozen hands tailing on to the whip at the yardarm the sacks came rapidly up to the deck; as the boat was cleared there lay revealed in the bottom a formless mass of rope netting; still bellowing. Slings were passed beneath it and soon it lay on deck; a miserable undersized bullock, lowing faintly. A terrified eye rolled at them through the netting that swathed it. Bush turned to Hornblower as Foreman completed his report.
‘Tonnant brought twenty-four cattle out for the fleet from Plymouth, sir. This one’s our share. If we butcher it tomorrow, sir, and let it hang for a day, you can have steak on Sunday, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said Hornblower.
‘We can swab the blood off the deck while it’s still fresh, sir. No need to worry about that. An’ there’ll be tripe, sir! Ox tongue!’
He could still see that terrified eye. He could wish that Bush was not so enthusiastic, because he felt quite the reverse. As his vivid imagination pictured the butchering he felt no desire at all for meat provided by such a process. He had to change the subject.
‘Mr Foreman! Were there no messages from the fleet?’
Foreman started guiltily and plunged his hand into his side pocket to produce a bulky packet. He blanched as he saw the fury on Hornblower’s face.
‘Don’t you ever do that again, Mr Foreman! Despatches before everything! You need a lesson and this is the time for it.’
‘Shall I pass the word for Mr Wise, sir?’ asked Bush.
The boatswain’s rattan could make vigorous play over Foreman’s recumbent form bent over the breech of a gun. Hornblower saw the sick fright in Foreman’s face. The boy was as terrified as the bullock; he must have the horror of corporal punishment that occasionally was evident in the navy. It was a horror that Hornblower himself shared. He looked into the pleading desperate eyes for five long seconds to let the lesson sink in.
‘No,’ he said, at length. ‘Mr Foreman would only remember that for a day. I’ll see he gets reminded every day for a week. No spirits for Mr Foreman for seven days. And anyone in the midshipman’s berth who tries to help him out will lose his ration for fourteen days. See to that, if you please, Mr Bush.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Hornblower snatched the packet from Foreman’s lifeless hand, and turned away with contempt in the gesture. No child of fifteen would be any the worse for being deprived of ardent spirits.
In the cabin he had to use his penknife to open the tarred canvas packet. The first thing to tumble out was a grape-shot; the navy had developed through the centuries a routine in these matters – the tarred canvas preserve
d he contents from salt water if it had to be transported by boat in stormy weather, and the grape-shot would sink it if there were danger of its falling into the hands of the enemy. There were three official letters and a mass of private ones; Hornblower opened the official ones in haste. The first was signed ‘Wm Cornwallis, Vice Ad.’ It was in the usual form, beginning with the statement of the new situation. Captain Sir Edward Pellew, K.B., in the Tonnant, had, as senior officer, received the command of the Inshore Squadron. ‘You are therefore requested and required’ to obey the orders of the said Captain Sir Edward Pellew, and to pay him the strictest attention, as issued with the authority of the Commander in Chief. The next was signed ‘Ed. Pellew, Capt,’ and was drily official in three lines, confirming the fact that Pellew now considered Hornblower and Hotspur as under his command. The third abandoned the formal ‘Sir’ which began the others.
‘My dear Hornblower,
It is with the greatest of pleasure that I hear that you are serving under me, and what I have been told of your actions already in the present war confirms the opinion I formed when you were my best midshipman in the old Indefatigable. Please consider yourself at liberty to make any suggestions that may occur to you for the confounding of the French and the confusion of Bonaparte.
Your sincere friend,
Edward Pellew.’
Now that was a really flattering letter, warming and comforting. Warming, indeed; as Hornblower sat with the letter in his hand he could feel the blood running faster through his veins. For that matter he could almost feel a stirring within his skull as the ideas began to form, as he thought about the signal station on Petit Minou, as the germs of plans began to sprout. They were taking shape; they were growing fast in the hot-house atmosphere of his mind. Quite unconsciously he began to rise from his chair; only by pacing briskly up and down the quarter-deck could he bring those plans to fruition and create an outlet for the pressure building up inside him. But he remembered the other letters in the packet; he must not fall into the same fault as Foreman. There were letters for him – one, two, six letters all in the same handwriting. It dawned upon him that they must be from Maria – odd that he did not recognise his own wife’s handwriting. He was about to open them when he checked himself again. Not one of the other letters was addressed to him, but people in the ship were probably anxiously waiting for them.