The Young Hornblower Omnibus

  It was when they saw Doris hoisting out her boats, despatching additional manpower, that Bush could turn to Hornblower with a conventional remark. Bush was not aware of his own appearance, his powder-blackened face, his hollow cheeks and his sprouting beard, but even without that knowledge the setting was bizarre enough to appeal to Bush’s crude sense of humour.

  ‘A Happy New Year to you, sir,’ said Bush, with a death’s head grin.

  It was New Year’s Day. Then to the two men the same thought occurred simultaneously, and Bush’s grin was replaced by something more serious.

  ‘I hope your good lady …’

  He was taken unawares, and could not find the formal words.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bush.’

  It was on New Year’s Day that the child was expected. Maria might be in labour at this moment while they stood there talking.

  XVII

  ‘Will you be having dinner on board, sir?’ asked Doughty.

  ‘No,’ replied Hornblower. He hesitated before he launched into the next speech that had occurred to him, but he decided to continue. ‘Tonight Horatio Hornblower dines with Horatio Hornblower.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  No joke ever fell as flat as that one. Perhaps – certainly – it was too much to expect Doughty to catch the classical allusion, but he might at least have smiled, because it was obvious that his captain had condescended so far as to be facetious.

  ‘You’ll need your oilskins, sir. It’s raining heavily still,’ said Doughty of the almost immovable countenance.

  ‘Thank you.’

  It seemed to have rained every single day since Hotspur had crawled into Plymouth Sound. Hornblower walked out from the dockyard with the rain rattling on his oilskins as if it were hail and not rain, and it continued all the time it took him to make his way to Driver’s Alley. The landlady’s little daughter opened the door to his knock, and as he walked up the stairs to his lodgings he heard the voice of the other Horatio Hornblower loudly proclaiming his sorrows. He opened the door and entered the small, hot stuffy room where Maria was standing with the baby over her shoulder, its long clothes hanging below her waist. Her face lit with pleasure when she saw him, and she could hardly wait for him to peel off his dripping oilskins before she came to his arms. Hornblower kissed her hot cheek and tried to look round the corner at little Horatio, but the baby only put his face into his mother’s shoulder and wailed.

  ‘He’s been fractious today, dear,’ said Maria, apologetically.

  ‘Poor little fellow! And what about you, my dear?’ Hornblower was careful to make Maria the centre of his thoughts whenever he was with her.

  ‘I’m well enough now, dear. I can go up and down the stairs like a bird.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  Maria patted the baby’s back.

  ‘I wish he would be good. I want him to smile for his father.’

  ‘Perhaps I could try?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  Maria was quite shocked at the notion that a man should hold a crying baby, even his own, but it was a delightful kind of shock, all the same, and she yielded the baby to his proffered arms. Hornblower held his child – it was always a slight surprise to find how light that bundle of clothes was – and looked down at the rather amorphous features and the wet nose.

  ‘There!’ said Hornblower. The act of transfer had quieted little Horatio for a moment at least.

  Maria stood bathed in happiness at the sight of her husband holding her son. And Hornblower’s emotions were strangely mixed; one emotion was astonishment at finding pleasure in holding his child, for he found it hard to believe that he was capable of such sentiment. Maria held the back of the fireside armchair so that he could sit down in it, and then, greatly daring, kissed his hair.

  ‘And how is the ship?’ she asked, leaning over him.

  ‘She’s nearly ready for sea,’ said Hornblower.

  Hotspur had been in and out of dock, her bottom cleaned, her seams recaulked, her shot holes patched. Her new foremast had been put in, and the riggers had set up the standing rigging. She only had to renew her stores.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Maria.

  ‘Wind’s steady in the west,’ said Hornblower. Not that that would deter him from beating down Channel if he could once work Hotspur down the Sound – he could not think why he had held out this shred of hope to Maria.

  Little Horatio began to wail again.

  ‘Poor darling!’ said Maria. ‘Let me take him.’

  ‘I can deal with him.’

  ‘No. It – it isn’t right.’ It was all wrong, in Maria’s mind, that a father should be afflicted by his child’s tantrums. She thought of something else. ‘You wished to see this, dear. Mother brought it in this afternoon from Lockhart’s Library.’

  She brought a magazine from the side table, and gave it in exchange for the baby, whom she clasped once more to her breast.

  The magazine was the new number of the Naval Chronicle, and Maria with her free hand helped Hornblower to turn the pages.

  ‘There!’ Maria pointed to the relevant passage, on almost the last page. ‘On January 1st last …’ it began, it was the announcement of little Horatio’s birth.

  ‘The Lady of Captain Horatio Hornblower of the Royal Navy, of a son,’ read Maria. ‘That’s me and little Horatio. I’m – I’m more grateful to you, dear, than I can ever tell you.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ replied Hornblower. That was just what he thought it was, but he made himself look up with a smile that took out any sting from what he said.

  ‘They call you “Captain,” ’ went on Maria, with an interrogative in the remark.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Hornblower. ‘That’s because—’

  He embarked once more on the explanation of the profound difference between a Commander by rank (and a Captain only by courtesy) and a Post Captain. He had said it all before, more than once.

  ‘I don’t think it’s right,’ decided Maria.

  ‘Very few things are right, my dear,’ said Hornblower, a little absently. He was leafing through the other pages of the Naval Chronicle, working forward from the back page where he had started. Here was the Plymouth Report, and here was one of the things he was looking for.

  ‘Came in HM Sloop Hotspur under jury rig, from the Channel Fleet. She proceeded at once into dock. Captain Horatio Hornblower landed at once with despatches.’ Then came the Law Intelligence, and the Naval Courts Martial, and the Monthly Register of Naval Events, and the Naval Debates in the Imperial Parliament, and then, between the Debates and the Poetry, came the Gazette Letters. And here it was. First, in italics, came the introduction.

  ‘Copy of a letter from Vice-Admiral Sir William Cornwallis to Sir Evan Nepean, Bart., dated on board of HMS Hibernia, the 2nd instant.’

  Next came Cornwallis’s letter.

  ‘Sir,

  I herewith transmit for their Lordships’ information, copies of letters I have received from Captains Chambers of HMS Naiad and Hornblower of HM Sloop Hotspur, acquainting me of the capture of the French national frigate Clorinde and of the defeat of an attempt by the French to escape from Brest with a large body of Troops. The conduct of both these officers appears to me to be highly commendable. I enclose also a copy of a letter I have received from Captain Smith of HMS Doris.

  I have the honour to be, with deepest respect,

  Your ob’d’t serv’t,

  Wm. Cornwallis.’

  Chambers’ report came next. Naiad had caught Clorinde near Molene and had fought her to a standstill, capturing her in forty minutes. Apparently the other French frigate which had come out with the transports had escaped by the Raz du Sein and had still not been caught.

  Then at last came his own report. Hornblower felt the flush of excitement he had known before on reading his own words in print. He studied them afresh at this interval, and was grudgingly satisfied. They told, without elaboration, the bare facts of how three transports had been run ashore in the Goulet, and of how Hotspur while at
tacking a fourth had been in action with a French frigate and had lost her foremast. Not a word about saving Ireland from invasion; the merest half-sentence about the darkness and the snow and the navigational perils, but men who could understand would understand.

  Smith’s letter from the Doris was brief, too. After meeting Hotspur he had pushed in towards Brest and had found a French frigate, armed en flûte, aground on the Trepieds with shore boats taking off her troops. Under the fire of the French coastal batteries Doris had sent in her boats and had burned her.

  ‘There’s something more in the Chronicle that might interest you, dear,’ said Hornblower. He proffered the magazine with his finger indicating his letter.

  ‘Another letter from you, dear!’ said Maria. ‘How pleased you must be!’

  She read the letter quickly.

  ‘I haven’t had time to read this before,’ she said, looking up. ‘Little Horatio was so fractious. And – and – I never understand all these letters, dear. I hope you are proud of what you did. I’m sure you are, of course.’

  Luckily little Horatio set up a wail at that moment to save Hornblower from a specific answer to that speech. Maria pacified the baby and went on.

  ‘The shopkeepers will know about this tomorrow and they’ll all speak to me about it.’

  The door opened to admit Mrs Mason, her pattens clattering on her feet, raindrops sparkling on her shawl. She and Hornblower exchanged ‘good evenings’ while she took off her outer clothing.

  ‘Let me take that child,’ said Mrs Mason to her daughter.

  ‘Horry has another letter in the Chronicle,’ countered Maria.

  ‘Indeed?’

  Mrs Mason sat down across the fire from Hornblower and studied the page with more care than Maria had done, but perhaps with no more understanding.

  ‘The Admiral says your conduct was “very Commendable,” ’ she said, looking up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he make you a real captain, “post,” as you call it?’

  ‘The decision doesn’t lie with him,’ said Hornblower. ‘And I doubt if he would in any case.’

  ‘Can’t admirals make captains?’

  ‘Not in home waters.’

  The god-like power of promotion freely exercised on distant stations was denied to commanders-in-chief where speedy reference to the Admiralty was possible.

  ‘And what about prize money?’

  ‘There’s none for the Hotspur.’

  ‘But this – this Clorinde was captured?’

  ‘Yes, but we weren’t in sight.’

  ‘But you were fighting, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Mason. But only ships in sight share in prize money. Except for the flag officers.’

  ‘And aren’t you a flag officer?’

  ‘No. Flag officer means “Admiral,” Mrs Mason.’

  Mrs Mason sniffed.

  ‘It all seems very strange. So you do not profit at all by this letter?’

  ‘No, Mrs Mason.’ At least not in the way Mrs Mason meant.

  ‘It’s about time you made some prize money. I hear all the time about the ships that have made thousands. Eight pounds a month for Maria, and her with a child.’ Mrs Mason looked round at her daughter. ‘Threepence a pound for neck of mutton! The cost of things is more than I can understand.’

  ‘Yes, mother. Horry gives me all he can, I’m sure.’

  As captain of a ship below the sixth rate Hornblower’s pay was twelve pounds a month, and he still needed those new uniforms. Prices were rising with war-time demand, and the Admiralty, despite many promises, had not yet succeeded in obtaining an increase in pay for naval officers.

  ‘Some captains make plenty,’ said Mrs Mason.

  It was prize money, and the possibility of gaining it, that kept the Navy quiet under the otherwise intolerable conditions. The great mutinies at Spithead and the Nore were less than ten years old. But Hornblower felt he would be drawn into a defence of the prize money system shortly if Mrs Mason persisted in talking as she did. Luckily the entrance of the landlady to lay the table for supper changed the subject of conversation. With another person in the room neither Mrs Mason nor Maria would discuss such a low subject as money, and they talked about indifferent matters instead. They sat down to dinner when the landlady brought in a steaming tureen.

  ‘The pearl barley’s at the bottom, Horatio,’ said Mrs Mason, supervising him as he served the food.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Mason.’

  ‘And you’d better give Maria that other chop – that one’s meant for you.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Mason.’

  Hornblower had learned to keep a still tongue in his head under the goadings of tyranny when he was a lieutenant in the old Renown under Captain Sawyer’s command, but he had well-nigh forgotten those lessons by now, and was having painfully to relearn them. He had married of his own free will – he could have said ‘no’ at the altar, he remembered – and now he had to make the best of a bad business. Quarrelling with his mother-in-law would not help. It was a pity that Hotspur had come in for docking at the moment when Mrs Mason had arrived to see her daughter through her confinement, but he need hardly fear a repetition of the coincidence during the days – the endless days – to come.

  Stewed mutton and pearl barley and potatoes and cabbage. It might have been a very pleasant dinner, except that the atmosphere was unfavourable; in two senses. The room, with its sea-coal fire, was unbearably hot. Thanks to the rain no washing could be hung out of doors, and Hornblower doubted if in the vicinity of Driver’s Alley washing could be hung out of doors unwatched in any case. So that on a clothes-horse on the other side of room hung little Horatio’s clothing, and somehow nature arranged it that every stitch little Horatio wore had to be washed, as often as several times a day. Hanging on the horse were the long embroidered gowns, and the long flannel gowns with their scalloped borders, and the flannel shirts, and the binders, as well as the innumerable napkins that might have been expected to sacrifice themselves, like a rearguard, in the defence of the main body. Hornblower’s wet oilskins and Mrs Mason’s wet shawl added variant notes to the smells in the room, and Hornblower suspected that little Horatio, now in the cradle beside Maria’s chair, added yet another.

  Hornblower thought of the keen clean air of the Atlantic and felt his lungs would burst. He did his best with his dinner, but it was a poor best.

  ‘You’re not making a very good dinner, Horatio,’ said Mrs Mason, peering suspiciously at his plate.

  ‘I suppose I’m not very hungry.’

  ‘Too much of Doughty’s cooking, I expect,’ said Mrs Mason.

  Hornblower knew already, without a word spoken, that the women were jealous of Doughty and ill at ease in his presence. Doughty had served the rich and the great; Doughty knew of fancy ways of cooking; Doughty wanted money to bring the cabin stores of the Hotspur up to his own fastidious standards; Doughty (in the women’s minds, at least) was probably supercilious about Driver’s Alley and the family his captain had married into.

  ‘I can’t abide that Doughty,’ said Maria – the word was spoken now.

  ‘He’s harmless enough, my dear,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘Harmless!’ Mrs Mason said only that one word, but Demosthenes could not have put more vituperation into a whole Philippic; and yet, when the landlady came in to clear the table, Mrs Mason contrived to be at her loftiest.

  As the landlady left the room Hornblower’s instincts guided him into an action of which he was actually unconscious. He threw up the window and drew the icy evening air deep into his lungs.

  ‘You’ll give him his death!’ said Maria’s voice, and Hornblower swung round, surprised.

  Maria had snatched up little Horatio from his cradle and stood clasping him to her bosom, a lioness defending her cub from the manifest and well-known perils of the night air.

  ‘I beg your pardon, dear,’ said Hornblower. ‘I can’t imagine what I was thinking of.’

  He knew perfect
ly well that little babies should be kept in stuffy heated rooms, and he was full of genuine contrition regarding little Horatio. But as he turned back and pulled the window shut again his mind was dwelling on the Blackstones and the Little Girls, on bleak harsh days and dangerous nights, on a deck that he could call his own. He was ready to go to sea again.

  XVIII

  With the coming of spring a new liveliness developed in the blockade of Brest. In every French port during the winter there had been much building of flat-bottomed boats. The French army, two hundred thousand strong, was still poised on the Channel coast, waiting for its chance to invade, and it needed gun-boats by the thousand to ferry it over when that chance should come. But the invasion coast from Boulogne to Ostend could not supply one-tenth, one-hundredth of the vessels needed; these had to be built whenever there were facilities, and then had to be moved along the coast to the assembling area.

  To Hornblower’s mind Bonaparte – the Emperor Napoleon, as he was beginning to call himself – was displaying a certain confusion of ideas in adopting this course of action. Seamen and shipbuilding materials were scarce enough in France; it was absurd to waste them on invasion craft when invasion was impossible without a covering fleet, and when the French navy was too small to provide such a fleet. Lord St Vincent had raised an appreciative smile throughout the Royal Navy when he had said in the House of Lords regarding the French army, ‘I do not say they cannot come. I only say they cannot come by sea.’ The jest had called up a ludicrous picture in everyone’s mind of Bonaparte trying to transport an invading army by Montgolfier balloons, and the impossibility of such an attempt underlined the impossibility of the French building up a fleet strong enough to command the Channel even long enough for the gun-boats to row across.