‘Soldiers and sailors too, sir,’ explained Hornblower, deprecatingly, as he led the way below.
Alexander was a very tall man, an inch or two taller than Hornblower, and he bent himself nearly double as he crouched under the low deck beams below decks and peered about with short-sighted eyes. Hornblower took him forward along the lower gun-deck, where the head clearance was no more than five feet six inches; he showed him the midshipmen’s berth, and the warrant officers’ mess, all the unlovely details of the life of a sailor. He called away a group of seamen, had them unstow and sling their hammocks, and get into them, so that Alexander could see more clearly what twenty-two inches per man really meant, and he gave a graphic description of a whole deck full of hammocks swinging together in a storm, with the men packed in a solid mass. The grins of the men who made the demonstration were proof enough to Alexander not merely of the truth of what Hornblower was saying, but also of the high spirits of the men, far different from the patient uneducated peasants whom he was accustomed to see in the ranks of his army.
They peered down through the hatchway to see the working party down there breaking out the water casks and preparing the tiers for refilling, and a whiff of the stench of the orlop came up to them – bilge-water and cheese and humanity intermingled.
‘You are an officer of long service, I believe, Commodore?’ said Alexander.
‘Nineteen years, sir,’ said Hornblower.
‘And how much of that time have you spent at sea?’
‘Sixteen years, sir. For nine months I was a prisoner in Spain, and for six months in France.’
‘I know of your escape from France. You went through much peril to return to this life.’
Alexander’s handsome forehead was wrinkled as he puzzled over the fact that a man could spend sixteen years of his life living in these conditions and still be sane and healthy.
‘How long have you held your present rank?’
‘As Commodore, sir, only two months. But I have nine years’ seniority as Captain.’
‘And before that?’
‘I was six years lieutenant, and four years midshipman.’
‘Four years? You lived four years in a place like the midshipmen’s berth you showed me?’
‘Not quite as comfortable as that, sir. I was in a frigate nearly all the time, under Sir Edward Pellew. A battleship is not quite as crowded as a frigate, sir.’
Hornblower, watching Alexander closely, could see that he was impressed, and he could guess at the line of thought Alexander was following. The Czar was not so much struck by the miserable conditions of life on board ship – if he knew anything about his people at all he must be aware that nearly all of them lived in conditions a good deal worse – as by the fact that those conditions could train an officer of ability.
‘I suppose it is necessary,’ sighed Alexander, revealing for a moment the humane and emotional side of his nature which rumour had long hinted that he possessed.
By the time they came on deck again the water-boat was already alongside. Some of the Nonsuch’s hands were down on her decks, mingling with the Russians to help with the work. Working parties were swinging away lustily at the pumps, and the long snake-like canvas hoses pulsated at each stroke. Forward they were swaying up bundles of firewood, the men chanting as they hauled.
‘Thanks to your generosity, sir,’ said Hornblower, ‘we will be able to keep the sea for four months if necessary without entering port.’
Luncheon was served in Hornblower’s cabin to a party of eight, Hornblower, Bush, the two senior lieutenants, and the four Russians. Bush was sweating with nervousness at the sight of the inhospitable table; at the last moment he had drawn Hornblower aside and pleaded unavailingly for Hornblower to change his mind and serve some of his remaining cabin delicacies as well as the plain ship’s fare. Bush could not get out of his mind the obsession that it was necessary to feed the Czar well; any junior officer entertaining an admiral would blast all his hopes of future promotion if he put the men’s ration beef on the table, and Bush could only think in terms of entertaining admirals.
The Czar looked with interest at the battered pewter tureen which Brown set before Hornblower.
‘Pea soup, sir,’ explained Hornblower. ‘One of the great delicacies of shipboard life.’
Carlin, of long habit, began to rap his biscuit on the table, stopped when he realised what he was doing, and then started rapping again, guiltily. He remembered the orders Hornblower had given, that everyone should behave as if no distinguished company were present; Hornblower had backed up those orders with the direct threat of punishment should they be forgotten, and Carlin knew that Hornblower did not threaten in that way without every intention of doing what he promised. Alexander looked at Carlin and then inquiringly at Bush beside him.
‘Mr Carlin is knocking out the weevils, sir,’ explained Bush, almost overcome with self-consciousness. ‘If you tap gently they come out of their own accord, this way, you see, sir.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Alexander, but he ate no bread; one of his aides-de-camp repeated the experiment, peered down at the fat white weevils with black heads that emerged, and exploded into what must have been a string of Russian oaths – almost the first words he had said since boarding the ship.
The visitors, after this inauspicious beginning, gingerly tasted the soup. But in the British Navy pea soup, as Hornblower had remarked, was the best dish served; the aide-de-camp who had sworn at the weevils exclaimed with surprised gratification when he had tasted it, speedily consumed his plateful, and accepted another. There were only three dishes served as the next course, boiled salt ribs of beef, boiled salt-beef tongue, and boiled salt pork, with pickled cabbage to accompany the meat. Alexander studied the three dishes, and wisely accepted the tongue; the Minister of Marine and the aides-de-camp, at Hornblower’s suggestion, took a mixed plateful, carved for them by Hornblower and Bush and Hurst. The once silent but now talkative aide-de-camp set himself to chew on the salt beef with a truly Russian appetite and found it a long hard struggle.
Brown was now serving rum.
‘The life-blood of the Navy, sir,’ said Hornblower, as Alexander studied his tumbler. ‘May I offer you gentlemen a toast which we can all drink with the heartiest goodwill? The Emperor of All the Russias! Vive l’Empereur!’
All rose except Alexander to drink the toast, and they were hardly seated before Alexander was on his feet in turn.
‘The King of Great Britain.’
The aide-de-camp’s French broke down again when he tried to explain how deep an impression Navy rum made on him at this, his first encounter with it. Eventually he gave the clearest proof of his appreciation by draining his tumbler and holding it out for Brown to refill. As the table was cleared Alexander was ready with another toast.
‘Commodore Sir Horatio Hornblower, and the British Royal Navy.’
As the glasses were drained Hornblower, looking round him, saw that he was expected to reply in form.
‘The Navy,’ he said. ‘The guardian of the liberties of the world. The unswerving friend, the unremitting enemy. When the tyrant of Europe looks about him, seeking by fair means or foul to extend his dominion, it is the Navy that he finds in his path. It is the Navy which is slowly strangling that tyrant. It is the Navy which has baulked him at every turn, which is draining the life-blood from his boasted Empire and which will bring him down in ruin at the end. The tyrant may boast of unbroken victory on land, but he can only deplore unbroken defeat at sea. It is because of the Navy that every victory only leaves him weaker than before, forced, liked Sisyphus, to roll his rock once more up towards an unattainable summit. And one day that rock will crush him. May it be sooner rather than later!’
Hornblower ended his speech amid a little fierce murmur from the others at the table. He was in an exalted mood again; this present occasion for making a speech had taken him a little by surprise, but he had hoped when he had first heard of the intended visit of the Czar
to have an opportunity sometime during the day of calling his attention once more to the aid which the British alliance could afford him. Alexander was young and impressionable. It was necessary to appeal to his emotions as well as to his intellect. Hornblower stole a glance at the Czar to see if he had attained his end; Alexander was sitting rapt in thought, his eyes looking down at the table. He raised them to meet Hornblower’s with a smile, and Hornblower felt a wave of exultation, of sublime confidence that his plan had succeeded. He had had plain fare served at luncheon of set purpose; he had shown Alexander exactly how the Navy lived and slept and worked. The Czar could not be ignorant of the British Navy’s glory, and Hornblower’s intuitive mind told him that proof of the hardship of naval life would be a subtle appeal to the Czar’s emotions; it would be hard to explain exactly how it would appeal, but Hornblower was sure of it. Alexander would be moved both to help men who won glory at such a cost and also would desire to have such tough fighters on his side.
Alexander was making a move to leave; the aide-de-camp hurriedly drained his fifth tumbler of rum, and it and its predecessors so worked upon him as to make him put his arm round Bush’s shoulders as they came up on the quarterdeck and pat him on the back with wholehearted affection, while the long row of medals and orders on his chest jingled and clinked like tinkers working on pots and kettles. Bush, keenly aware of the eyes of the ship’s company upon him, tried to writhe away from the embrace, but unavailingly. He was red in the face as he bawled the order for the manning of the yards, and sighed with evident relief as Alexander’s departure down the accommodation ladder made it necessary for the aide-de-camp to follow him.
XIV
An easterly wind was not to be wasted. Nonsuch and the flotilla were heading back down the Gulf of Finland with all sail set, and the Commodore was walking the quarterdeck, turning over in his mind all the problems which beset a commander-in-chief. The problem of drinking water at least was settled; it would be two months easily, four months if necessary, before he had to worry about that. The mere fact that he had refilled his water casks would be some sort of justification for his having had dealings with the Court of St Petersburg should Downing Street or Whitehall take exception to his recent activities – Hornblower ran through in his mind the wording of his report, which had laid as much stress on the advantage gained in this fashion as on the desirability of having made contact with the Russian Government. He had a good case to plead. But—
Hornblower turned and looked back at the squadron.
‘Make a signal to Lotus,’ he ordered. ‘“Why are you out of station?”’
The flags soared up the halliards, and Hornblower saw the sloop hurriedly correct her position.
‘Lotus acknowledges the signal, sir,’ reported the midshipman.
‘Then make, “Why do you not reply to my question?”’ said Hornblower, harshly.
It was some seconds before any reply was visible.
‘Lotus signals, “Inattention on the part of the officer of the watch”, sir.’
‘Acknowledge,’ said Hornblower.
He had stirred up trouble there; Vickery would be raging at this public censure, and the officer of the watch in question would be regretting his inattention at this very moment. There would be no harm done and probably some good. But Hornblower was perfectly aware that he had only launched the censure because he wanted an excuse to postpone thinking about the next unpleasant matter on which he had to decide. He wondered to himself how many of the other reprimands he had seen dealt out – which he himself had received as a junior officer, for that matter – had been administered by harassed admirals as a distraction from more unpleasant thoughts. He himself had to think about the case of Braun.
The low shore of Finland was just visible to the northward; down on the maindeck Carlin had a division of guns at exercise, the men going through the drill of loading and running out. With the wind almost dead astern and studding-sails set Nonsuch was making good speed through the water – if the sea were to get up any more she would have to shorten sail so as to allow the bomb-ketches to keep up. A boatswain’s mate forward was starting one of the hands with the foretopsail clewline, something altogether too thick to be used for that purpose. Hornblower was on the point, reluctantly, of interfering with the internal working of the ship when he saw a lieutenant intervene and save him the trouble. Some knowledge of his prejudices and desires had evidently filtered down through Bush to the junior officers. Hornblower watched the trio separate again about their business until there was absolutely no excuse for watching them any longer.
He simply had to think about Braun. The man had attempted to commit murder, and by the laws of England and the Articles of War he should die. But being the holder of a Navy Board warrant, it would call for a court of five post-captains to pass a death sentence on him, and there were not five post-captains within a hundred miles. Bush and Hornblower were the only ones, Vickery and Cole being merely commanders. By law, then, Braun should be kept under arrest until a competent court could be assembled to try him, unless – and here he had discretion – the good of the service, the safety of the ship, or the welfare of England demanded immediate action. In that case he could summon a court composed of whatever senior officers were available, try him, and hang him on the spot. The evidence would be overwhelming; his own and Mound’s would suffice to hang Braun ten times over.
The need for summary action was not so apparent, nevertheless. Braun, languishing in the sick bay with a right hand he would never use again, and half dead with loss of blood, was certainly not going to start a mutiny among the hands, or set fire to the ship, or seduce the officers from their duty. But there must be the wildest tales flying round the lower deck already. Hornblower could not imagine how the hands would try to account for Braun being brought back from the Czar’s palace badly wounded. There would be talk and gossip which sooner or later would reach the ears of Bonaparte’s agents, and Hornblower knew Bonaparte’s methods too well to doubt that he would make the utmost use of an opportunity to sow dissension between his enemies. Alexander would never forgive a country which had brought him within a hair’s breadth of assassination. When the authorities at home should come to know of the incident they would be furious, and it was he, Hornblower, who would be the object of their fury. Hornblower thought of the report locked in his desk, marked ‘Most Secret and Confidential’ in which he had put down the facts. He could imagine that report being put in as evidence against him at a court martial, and he could imagine what view his brother captains who would be his judges would take of it.
For a moment Hornblower toyed with the idea of concealing the incident altogether, making no report about it at all, but he put the notion aside as impractical. Someone would talk. On the other hand, there was the clause in his orders which bound him to make the freest use of Braun’s experience; that might cover him, and besides, the insertion of that clause implied that Braun had friends in authority who would be interested possibly in protecting him and certainly in protecting themselves, and who in consequence would not wish too public a scandal to be made. It was all very complex.
‘Mr Montgomery,’ said Hornblower, harshly, ‘what sort of course do your quartermasters keep? Have ’em steer smaller than that, or I shall want an explanation from you.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Montgomery.
At least he had done his part towards dragging Russia into war with Bonaparte – the last word he had received from Wychwood before leaving Kronstadt had been to the effect that Alexander had sent a defiant reply to Bonaparte’s latest demands. Should war result, Bonaparte’s main strength would have to be employed in the East for this summer, giving Wellington the opportunity to strike a blow in the South. But how much chance had Russia of withstanding the attack Bonaparte could launch against her? Every year for a dozen years had seen a great victory won by Bonaparte, one nation or another overthrown in a few weeks’ campaign. Next winter might well see Russia beaten and as subservient to Bonap
arte as Austria or Prussia were already; and Downing Street, faced by Russian hostility, would remember her previous dubious neutrality with regret, especially as Bonaparte would undoubtedly take advantage of a Russian defeat to overrun Sweden. So then the whole of Europe, from North Cape to the Dardanelles, would be leagued against England; she would be driven from her meagre foothold in Spain, and left to face the alternatives of continuing a struggle in which there was no prospect of any relief, or making a still more dangerous peace with a tyrant whose malignant ill will could never be appeased. In that case it would not be to any man’s credit that he had contributed to the catastrophe of Russia’s entry into the war.
Bush had come on deck, clearly sent for by Montgomery as officer of the watch. He was reading the deck log which Montgomery had inscribed on the slate, and he was studying the traverse board. Now he came stumping over to the starboard side of the quarterdeck to touch his hat to Hornblower.
‘Reval – Tallinn as those Swedish charts call it, sir – bears south-east twenty-five miles by my reckoning, sir. That point of land to port is the north cape of Naissaar island, however it’s pronounced.’
‘Thank you, Captain Bush.’
Hornblower even felt the temptation to vent his ill temper on Bush; he could imagine keenly enough how Bush would wilt and the hurt look that would come into his face at a sarcastic gibe at his mispronunciation of foreign names and his selfconsciousness regarding it. Bush was always an easy target, and a satisfactory one from the point of view of readily apparent results. Hornblower dallied with the temptation while Bush stood before him awaiting orders. It was even amusing to keep him waiting like this; Hornblower suspected that Bush was nervously wondering what devilment he had in mind. Then in a wave of reaction Hornblower felt contempt for himself. It was bad enough that Vickery’s unknown officer of the watch should at this moment be in trouble because his Commodore was worried about what to do with Braun; it was far worse that the faithful, capable Bush should be suffering mental unhappiness for the same reason.