Hornblower had thought of helping himself to chicken, but somehow – and he grinned at himself internally – this last speech diverted him from doing so. The beefsteak pie was in great demand and had almost disappeared, and as a junior officer he knew better than to anticipate his seniors’ second helpings. The ragout of pork, rich in onions, was at the far end of the table.
‘I’ll make a start on this, sir,’ he said, indicating an untouched dish before him.
‘Hornblower has a judgement that puts us all to shame,’ said Pellew. ‘That’s a kickshaw in which my chef takes particular pride. To go with it you’ll need these purée potatoes, Hornblower.’
It was a dish of brawn, from which Hornblower cut himself moderately generous slices, and it had dark flakes in it. There was no doubt that it was utterly delicious; Hornblower diving down into his general knowledge, came up with the conclusion that the black flakes must be truffle, of which he had heard but which he had never tasted. The purée potatoes, which he would have called mashed, were like no mashed potatoes he had ever sampled either on shipboard or in a sixpenny ordinary in England. They were seasoned subtly and yet to perfection – if angels ever ate mashed potatoes they would call on Pellew’s chef to prepare them. With spring greens and carrots – for both of which he hungered inexpressibly – they made a plateful, along with the brawn, of sheer delight. He found himself eating like a wolf and pulled himself up short, but the glance that he stole round the table reassured him, for the others were eating like wolves too, to the detriment of conversation, with only a few murmured words to mingle with the clash of cutlery.
‘Wine with you, sir.’ ‘Your health, Admiral.’ ‘Would you give the onions a fair wind, Grindall?’ and so on.
‘Won’t you try the galantine, Lord Henry?’ asked Pellew. ‘Steward, a fresh plate for Lord Henry.’
That was how Hornblower learned the real name of the brawn he was eating. The ragout of pork drifted his way and he helped himself generously; the steward behind him changed his plate in the nick of time. He savoured the exquisite boiled onions that wallowed in the beatific sauce. Then like magic the table was cleared and fresh dishes made their appearance, a pudding rich with raisins and currants, jellies of two colours; much labour must have gone into boiling down the bullock’s feet and into subsequent straining to make that brilliant gelatine.
‘No flour for that duff,’ said Pellew apologetically. ‘The galley staff has done its best with biscuit crumbs.’
That best was as near perfection as mind could conceive; there was a sweet sauce with it, hinting of ginger, that made the most of the richness of the fruit. Hornblower found himself thinking that if ever he became a post captain, wealthy with prize money, he would have to devote endless thought to the organisation of his cabin stores. And Maria would not be of much help, he thought ruefully. He was still drifting along with thoughts of Maria when the table was swept clear again.
‘Caerphilly, sir?’ murmured a steward in his ear. ‘Wensleydale? Red Cheshire?’
These were cheeses that were being offered him. He helped himself at random – one name meant no more to him than another – and went on to make an epoch-making discovery, that Wensleydale cheese and vintage port were a pair of heavenly twins, Castor and Pollux riding triumphantly as the climax of a glorious procession. Full of food and with two glasses of wine inside him – all he allowed himself – he felt vastly pleased with the discovery, rivalling those of Columbus and Cook. Almost simultaneously he made another discovery which amused him. The chased silver fingerbowls which were put on the table were very elegant; the last time he had seen anything like them was as a midshipman at a dinner at Government House in Gibraltar. In each floated a fragment of lemon peel, but the water in which the peel floated – as Hornblower discovered by a furtive taste as he dabbed his lips – was plain sea water. There was something comforting in that fact.
Cornwallis’s blue eyes were fixed on him.
‘Mr Vice, the King,’ said Cornwallis.
Hornblower came back from pink hazes of beatitude. He had to take a grip of himself, as when he had tacked Hotspur with the Loire in pursuit; he had to await the right moment for the attention of the company. Then he rose to his feet and lifted his glass, carrying out the ages old ritual of the junior officer present.
‘Gentlemen, the King,’ he said.
‘The King!’ echoed everyone present, and some added phrases like ‘God Bless him’ and ‘Long may he reign’ before they sat down again.
‘His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence,’ said Lord Henry in conversational tone, ‘told me that during his time at sea he had knocked his head – he’s a tall man, as you know – so often on so many deck beams while drinking his father’s health that he seriously was considering requesting His Majesty’s permission, as a special privilege, for the Royal Navy to drink the royal health while sitting down.’
At the other corner of the table Andrews, captain of the Flora, was going on with an interrupted conversation.
‘Fifteen pounds a man,’ he was saying. ‘That’s what my Jacks were paid on account of prize money, and we were in Cawsand Bay ready to sail. The women had left the ship, not a bumboat within call, and so my men – the ordinary seamen, mind you – still have fifteen pounds apiece in their pockets.’
‘All the better when they get a chance to spend it,’ said Marsfield.
Hornblower was making a rapid calculation. The Flora would have a crew of some three hundred men, who divided a quarter of the prize money between them. The captain had one quarter to himself, so that Andrews would have been paid – on account, not necessarily in full – some four thousand five hundred pounds as a result of some lucky cruise, probably without risk, probably without a life being lost, money for seizing French merchant ships intercepted at sea. Hornblower thought ruefully about Maria’s latest letter, and about the uses to which he could put four thousand five hundred pounds.
‘There’ll be lively times in Plymouth when the Channel Fleet comes in,’ said Andrews.
‘That is something which I wish to explain to you gentlemen,’ said Cornwallis, breaking in on the conversation. There was something flat and expressionless about his voice, and there was a kind of mask-like expression on his good-tempered face, so that all eyes turned on him.
‘The Channel Fleet will not be coming in to Plymouth,’ said Cornwallis. ‘This is the time to make that plain.’
A silence ensued, during which Cornwallis was clearly waiting for a cue. The saturnine Collins supplied it.
‘What about water, sir? Provisions?’
‘They are going to be sent out to us.’
‘Water, sir?’
‘Yes. I have had four water-hoys constructed. They will bring us water. Victualling ships will bring us our food. Each new ship which joins us will bring us fresh food, vegetables and live cattle, all they can carry on deck. That will help against scurvy. I’m sending no ship back to replenish.’
‘So we’ll have to wait for the winter gales before we see Plymouth again, sir?’
‘Not even then,’ said Cornwallis. ‘No ship, no captain, is to enter Plymouth without my express orders. Do I have to explain why, to experienced officers like you?’
The reasons were as obvious to Hornblower as to the others. The Channel Fleet might well have to run for shelter when southwesterly gales blew, and with a gale at southwest the French fleet could not escape from Brest. But Plymouth Sound was difficult; a wind from the eastward would delay the British fleet’s exit, prolong it over several days, perhaps, during which time the wind would be fair for the French fleet to escape. There were plenty of other reasons, too. There was disease; every captain knew that ships grew healthier the longer they were at sea. There was desertion. There was the fact that discipline could be badly shaken by debauches on shore.
‘But in a gale, sir?’ asked someone. ‘We could get blown right up-Channel.’
‘No,’ answered Cornwallis decisively. ‘If we’re blown off th
is station our rendezvous is Tor Bay. There we anchor.’
Confused murmurings showed how this information was being digested. Tor Bay was an exposed uncomfortable anchorage, barely sheltered from the west, but it had the obvious advantage that at the first shift of wind the fleet could put to sea, could be off Ushant again before the unwieldy French fleet could file out down the Goulet.
‘So none of us will set foot on English soil again until the end of the war, sir?’ said Collins.
Cornwallis’s face was transfigured by a smile. ‘We need never say that. All of you, any one of you, can go ashore …’ the smile broadened as he paused, ‘the moment I set foot ashore myself.’
That caused a laugh, perhaps a grudging laugh, but with an admiring echo. Hornblower, watching the scene keenly, suddenly came to a fresh realisation. Collins’s questions and remarks had been very apt, very much to the point. Hornblower suspected that he had been listening to a prepared piece of dialogue, and his suspicions were strengthened by the recollection that Collins was First Captain under Cornwallis, somebody whom the French would call a Chief of Staff. Hornblower looked about him again. He could not help feeling admiration for Cornwallis, whose guileless behaviour concealed such unsuspected depths of subtlety. And it was a matter for self-congratulation that he had guessed the secret, he, the junior officer present, surrounded by all these captains of vast seniority, of distinguished records and of noble descent. He felt positively smug, a most unusual and gratifying feeling.
Smugness and vintage port combined to dull his awareness of all the implications at first, and then suddenly everything changed. The new thought sent him sliding down an Avernus of depression. It brought about an actual physical sensation in the pit of his stomach, like the one he felt when Hotspur, close hauled, topped a wave and went slithering and rolling down the farther side. Maria! He had written so cheerfully saying he would be seeing her soon. There were only fifty days’ provisions and water left in Hotspur; fresh food would eke out the provisions, but little enough could be done (he had thought) regarding water. He had been confident that Hotspur would be making periodic calls at Plymouth for food and water and firewood. Now Maria would never have the comfort of his presence during her pregnancy. Nor would he himself (and the violence of this reaction surprised him) have the pleasure of seeing her during her pregnancy. And one more thing; he would have to write to her and tell her that he would not be keeping his promises, that there was no chance of their meeting. He would be causing her terrible pain, not only because her idol would be revealed to her as a man who could not, or perhaps even would not, keep his word.
He was recalled suddenly from these thoughts, from these mental pictures of Maria, by hearing his name spoken during the conversation round the table. Nearly every one present was looking at him, and he had to ferret hurriedly through his unconscious memory to recapture what had been said. Someone – it must have been Cornwallis himself – had said that the information he had gathered from the French coast had been satisfactory and illuminating. But for the life of him Hornblower could not recall what had next been said, and now here he was, with every eye on him, gazing round the table with a bewilderment that he tried to conceal behind an impassive countenance.
‘We are all interested in your sources of information, Hornblower,’ prompted Cornwallis, apparently repeating something already said.
Hornblower shook his head in decisive negation; that was his instant reaction, before he could analyse the situation, and before he could wrap up a blunt refusal in pretty words.
‘No,’ he said, to back up the shaking of his head.
There were all these people present; nothing would remain a secret if known to so large a group. The pilchard fishermen and lobster-pot men with whom he had been having furtive dealings and on whom he had been lavishing British gold – French gold, to be exact – would meet with short shrift if their activities became known to the French authorities. Not only would they die, but they would never be able to supply him with any further news. He was passionately anxious for his secrets to remain secrets, yet he was surrounded by all these senior officers any one of whom might have an influence on his career. Luckily he was already committed by the curt negative that had been surprised out of him – nothing could commit him more deeply than that, and that was thanks to Maria. He must not think about Maria, yet he must find some way of softening his abrupt refusal.
‘It’s more important than a formula for fattening chickens, sir,’ he said, and then, with a bright further inspiration he shifted the responsibility. ‘I would not like to disclose my operations without a direct order.’
His sensibilities, keyed to the highest pitch, detected sympathy in Cornwallis’s reaction.
‘I’m sure there’s no need, Hornblower,’ said Cornwallis, turning back to the others. Now, before he turned, was it true that the eyelid of his left eye, nearest to Hornblower, flickered a trifle? Was it? Hornblower could not be sure.
As the conversation reverted to a discussion of future operations Hornblower’s sense, almost telepathic, became aware of something else in the past atmosphere which called up hot resentment in his mind. These fighting officers, these captains of ships of the line, were content to leave the dirty details of the gathering of intelligence to a junior, to someone hardly worthy of their lofty notice. They would not sully their aristocratic white hands; if the insignificant Commander of an insignificant sloop chose to do the work they would leave it to him in tolerant contempt.
Now the contempt was in no way one-sided. Fighting captains had their place in the scheme of things, but only an insignificant place, and anyone could be a fighting captain, even if he had to learn to swallow down the heart from his mouth and master the tensions that set his limbs a-tremble. Hornblower was experiencing symptoms not unlike these at this moment, when he was in no danger at all. Vintage port and a good dinner, thoughts of Maria and resentment against the captains, combined within him in a witches’ brew that threatened to boil over. Luckily the bubbling mixture happened to distil off a succession of ideas, first one and then another. They linked themselves in a logical chain. Hornblower, along with his agitation, could feel the flush of blood under his skin that foretold the development of a plan, in the same way that the witch in Macbeth could tell the approach of something wicked by the pricking in her thumbs. Soon the plan was mature, complete, and Hornblower was left calm and clear-headed after his spiritual convulsion; it was like the clearness of head that follows the crisis of an attack of fever – possibly that was exactly what it was.
The plan called for a dark night, and for half-flood an hour before dawn; nature would supply those sooner or later, following her immutable laws. It called for some good fortune, and it would call for resolution and promptitude of action, but those were accessory ingredients in every plan. It included possibilities of disaster, but was there ever a plan that did not? It also called for the services of a man who spoke perfect French, and Hornblower, measuring his abilities with a cold eye, knew that he was not that man. The penniless noble French refugee who in Hornblower’s boyhood had instructed him, with fair success, in French and Deportment (and, totally unsuccessfully, in Music and Dancing), had never managed to confer a good accent upon his tone-deaf pupil. His grammar and his construction were excellent, but no one would ever mistake him for a Frenchman.
Hornblower had reached every necessary decision by the time the party began to break up, and he made it his business to take his stand, casually, beside Collins at the moment the Admiral’s barge was called.
‘Is there anyone in the Channel Fleet who speaks perfect French, sir?’ he asked.
‘You speak French yourself,’ replied Collins.
‘Not well enough for what I have in mind, sir,’ said Hornblower, more struck by the extent of Collins’s knowledge than flattered. ‘I might find a use for a man who speaks French exactly like a Frenchman.’
‘There’s Côtard,’ said Collins, meditatively rubbing his chin. ‘Lieut
enant in the Marlborough. He’s a Guernsey-man. Speaks French like a native – always spoke it as a child, I believe. What do you want him to do?’
‘Admiral’s barge coming alongside, sir,’ reported a breathless messenger to Pellew.
‘Hardly time to tell you now, sir,’ said Hornblower. ‘I can submit a plan to Sir Edward. But it’ll be no use without someone speaking perfect French.’
The assembled company was now filing to the gangway; Collins, in accordance with naval etiquette, would have to go down the side into the barge ahead of Cornwallis.
‘I’ll detail Côtard from his ship on special service,’ said Andrews hastily. ‘I’ll send him over to you and you can look him over.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Cornwallis was now thanking his host and saying good-bye to the other captains; Collins unobtrusively yet with remarkable rapidity contrived to do the same, and disappeared over the side. Cornwallis followed, with all the time honoured ceremonial of guard of honour and band and sideboys, while his flag was hauled down from the fortopmast head. After his departure barge after barge came alongside, each gaudy with new paint, with every crew tricked out in neat clothing paid for out of their captains’ pockets, and captain after captain went down into them, in order of seniority, and shoved off to their respective ships.
Lastly came Hotspur’s drab little quarter-boat, its crew dressed in the clothes issued to them in the slop-ship the day they were sent on board.
‘Good-bye, sir,’ said Hornblower, holding out his hand to Pellew.
Pellew had shaken so many hands, and had said so many good-byes, that Hornblower was anxious to cut this farewell as short as possible.