Flying Colours

Chapter Fifteen

At midnight, and not before, a tiny breeze came whispering over the misty surface of the water, at first merely swinging over the big mainsail and setting the rigging chattering, but then breathing more strongly until the sails could catch it and hold it, filling out in the darkness until Hornblower could give the word for the exhausted men at the sweeps to abandon their labour and the cutter could glide on with almost imperceptible motion, so slowly that there was hardly a bubble at her bows, yet even at that faster than the sweeps had moved her. Out of the east came that breath of wind, steady even though feeble; Hornblower could feel hardly any pull as he handled the mainsheet, and yet the cutter’s big area of canvas was able to carry her graceful hull forward over the invisible surface as though in a dream.

It was like a dream indeed—weariness and lack of sleep combined to make it so for Hornblower, who moved about his tasks in a misty unreality which matched the misty darkness of the sea. The galley slaves and prisoners could lie and sleep—there was no fear of trouble from them at present, when they had spent ten hours out of the last twenty pulling at the sweeps with hands which by nightfall were running with blood, but there was no sleep for him nor for Bush and Brown. His voice sounded strange and distant in his own ears, like that of a stranger speaking from another room, as he issued his orders; the very hands with which he held the ropes seemed not to belong to him. It was as if there was a cleavage between the brain with which he was trying to think and the body which condescended to obey him.

Somewhere to the northwest lay the fleet which maintained its unsleeping watch over Brest; he had laid the cutter on a northwesterly course with the wind comfortably on her quarter, and if he could not find the Channel fleet he would round Ushant and sail the cutter to England. He knew all this—it made it more like a dream than ever that he could not believe it although he knew it. The memory of Marie de Graçay’s upper boudoir, or of his battle for life in the flood-water of the Loire, was far more real to him than this solid little ship whose deck he trod and whose mainsheet he was handling. Setting a course for Bush to steer was like playing a make-believe game with a child. He told himself desperately that this was not a new phenomenon, that often enough before he had noticed that although he could dispense with one night’s sleep without missing it greatly, on the second in succession his imagination began to play tricks with him, but it did not help to clear his mind.

He came back to Bush at the tiller, when the faint binnacle light made the lieutenant’s face just visible in the darkness; Hornblower was even prepared to enter into conversation in exchange for a grasp at reality.

“Tired, Mr. Bush?” he asked.

“No, sir. Of course not. But how is it with you, sir?”

Bush had served with his captain through too many fights to have an exaggerated idea of his strength.

“Well enough, thank you.”

“If this breeze holds, sir,” said Bush, realizing that this was one of the rare occasions when he was expected to make small talk with his captain, “we’ll be up to the fleet in the morning.”

“I hope so,” said Hornblower.

“By God, sir,” said Bush, “what will they say of this in England?”

Bush’s expression was rapt. He was dreaming of fame, of promotion, for his captain as much as for himself.

“In England?” said Hornblower vaguely.

He had been too busy to dream any dreams himself, to think about what the British public, sentimental as always, would think of an escaping British captain retaking almost single-handed a captured ship of war and returning in her in triumph. And he had seized the Witch of Endor in the first place merely because the opportunity had presented itself, and because it was the most damaging blow he could deal the enemy; since the seizure he had been at first too busy, and latterly too tired, to appreciate the dramatic quality of his action. His distrust of himself, and his perennial pessimism regarding his career, would not allow him to think of himself as dramatically successful. The unimaginative Bush could appreciate the potentialities better than he could.

“Yes, sir,” said Bush, eagerly—even with tiller and compass and wind claiming so much of his attention he could be loquacious at this point—“It’ll look fine in the Gazette, this recapture of the Witch. Even the Morning Chronicle, sir—”

The Morning Chronicle was a thorn in the side of the government, ever ready to decry a victory or make capital of a defeat. Hornblower remembered how during the bitter early days of his captivity at Rosas he had worried about what the Morning Chronicle would say regarding his surrender of the Sutherland.

He felt sick now, suddenly. His mind was active enough now. Most of its vagueness must have been due, he told himself, because he had been refusing in cowardly fashion to contemplate the future. Until this night everything had been uncertain—he might have been recaptured at any moment, but now, as sure as anything could be at sea, he would see England again. He would have to stand his trial for the loss of the Sutherland, and face a court martial, after eighteen years of service. The court might find him guilty of not having done his utmost in the presence of the enemy, and for that there was only one penalty, death—that Article of War did not end, as others did, with the mitigating words ‘or such less penalty—’. Byng had been shot fifty years before under that Article of War.

Absolved on that account, the wisdom of his actions in command of the Sutherland might still be called into question. He might be found guilty of errors of judgement in hazarding his ship in a battle against quadruple odds, and be punished by anything from dismissal from the service, which would make him an outcast and a beggar, down to a simple reprimand which would merely wreck his career. A court martial was always a hazardous ordeal from which few emerged unscathed—Cochrane, Sydney Smith, half a dozen brilliant captains had suffered damage at the hands of a court martial, and the friendless Captain Hornblower might be the next.

And a court martial was only one of the ordeals that awaited him. The child must be three months old now; until this moment he had never been able to think clearly about the child—boy or girl, healthy or feeble. He was torn with anxiety for Maria—and yet, gulping at the pill of reality, he forced himself to admit that he did not want to go back to Maria. He did not want to. It had been in mad jealousy of the moment, when he heard of Lady Barbara’s marriage to Admiral Leighton, that the child had been conceived. Maria in England, Marie in France—his conscience was in a turmoil about both of them, and underlying the turmoil was an unregenerate hunger for Lady Barbara which had remained quiescent during his preoccupation but which he knew would grow into an unrelenting ache, an internal cancer, the moment his other troubles ceased, if ever they did.

Bush was still babbling away happily beside him at the tiller. Hornblower heard the words, and attached no meaning to them.

“Ha-h’m,” he said. “Quite so.”

He could find no satisfaction in the simple pleasures Bush had been in ecstasy about—the breath of the sea, the feeling of a ship’s deck underfoot—not now, not with all these bitter thoughts thronging his mind. The harshness of his tone checked Bush in the full career of his artless and unwonted chatter, and the lieutenant pulled himself up abruptly. Hornblower thought it was absurd that Bush should still cherish any affection for him after the cutting cruelty with which he sometimes used him. Bush was like a dog, thought Hornblower bitterly—too cynical for the moment to credit Bush with any perspicacity at all—like a dog, coming fawning to the hand that beat him. Hornblower despised himself as he walked forward again to the mainsheet, to a long, long, period of a solitary black hell of his own.

There was just the faintest beginning of daylight, the barest pearly softening of the sombreness of night, a greyness instead of a blackness in the haze, when Brown came aft to Hornblower.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I fancy I see the loom of something out there just now. On the port bow, sir—there, d’you see it, sir?”

Hornblower strained his eyes through the darkness. Perhaps there was a more solid nucleus to the black mist out there, a tiny something. It came and went as his eyes grew tired.

“What d’you make of it, Brown?”

“I thought it was a ship, sir, when I first saw it, but in this haze, sir—”

There was a faint chance she might be a French ship of war—it was about as likely as to find the king unguarded when leading from a suit of four to an ace. Much the most likely chance was that she was an English ship of war, and the next most likely that she was a merchantman. The safest course was to creep down upon her from the windward, because the cutter, lying nearer the wind than any square-rigged ship could do, could escape if necessary the way she came, trusting to the mist and darkness and surprise to avoid being disabled before she got out of range.

“Mr. Bush, I fancy there’s a sail to leeward. Put the cutter before the wind and run down to her, if you please. Be ready to go about if I give the word. Jib-sheet, Brown.”

Hornblower’s head was clear again now, in the face of a possible emergency. He regretted the quickening of his pulse—uncertainty always had that effect. The cutter steadied upon her new course, creeping before the wind over the misty water, mainsail boom far out to port. Hornblower experienced a moment’s doubt in case Bush was sailing her by the lee, but he would not allow himself to call a warning—he knew he could trust a sailor of Bush’s ability not to risk a gibe in an emergency of this sort. He strained his eyes through the darkness; the mist was patchy, coming and going as he looked, but that was a ship without any doubt. She was under topsails alone—that made it almost certain that she was an English ship of war, one of the fleet which maintained unceasing watch over Brest. Another patch of mist obscured her again, and by the time they had run through it she was appreciably nearer, and dawn was at hand—her sails were faint grey in the growing light. Now they were close upon her.

Suddenly the stillness was rent by a hail, high-pitched, penetrating, its purity of quality almost unspoilt by the speaking trumpet—the voice which uttered it was trained in clarity in Atlantic gales.

“Cutter ahoy! What cutter’s that?”

At the sound of the English speech Hornblower relaxed. There was no need now to go about, to claw to windward, to seek shelter in the mist. But on the other hand all the unpleasantness of the future which he had been visualizing were certain now. He swallowed hard, words failing him for the moment.

“What cutter’s that?” repeated the hail, impatiently.

Unpleasant the future might be; he would fly his colours to the last, and if his career were ending, he would end it with a joke.

“His Britannic Majesty’s armed cutter Witch of Endor, Captain Horatio Hornblower. What ship’s that?”

“Triumph, Captain Sir Thomas Hardy—what did you say that cutter was?”

Hornblower grinned to himself. The officer of the watch in the strange sail had begun his reply automatically; it was only after he had stated the names of his ship and captain that it had suddenly dawned upon him that the cutter’s statement was quite incredible. The Witch of Endor had been a prize to the French for nearly a year, and Captain Horatio Hornblower had been dead six months.

Hornblower repeated what he had said before; both Bush and Brown were chuckling audibly at a joke which appealed to them forcibly indeed.

“Come under my lee, and no tricks, or I’ll sink you,” hailed the voice.

From the cutter they could hear the guns being run out in the Triumph; Hornblower could picture the bustle on board, hands being turned up, the captain being called—Sir Thomas Hardy must be Nelson’s late flag captain at Trafalgar, two years Hornblower’s senior in the captains’ list. Hornblower had known him as a lieutenant, although since then their paths had hardly crossed. Bush eased the cutter under the stern of the two-decker, and brought her to the wind under her lee. Dawn was coming up fast now, and they could see the details of the ship, as she lay hove to, rolling in the swell, and a long shuddering sigh burst from Hornblower’s breast. The sturdy beauty of the ship, the two yellow streaks along her sides, checkered with black gunports, the pendant at the main, the hands on the deck, the red coats of the marines, the boatswain’s voice roaring at dilatory seamen—all the familiar sights and sounds of the Navy in which he had grown up moved him inexpressibly at this moment, the end of his long captivity and flight.

The Triumph had launched a boat, which came dancing rapidly over to them, and a young midshipman swung himself dexterously on board, dirk at his hip, arrogant suspicion on his face, four seamen at his back with pistols and cutlasses.

“What’s all this?” demanded the midshipman. His glance swept the cutter’s deck, observing the sleepy prisoners rubbing their eyes, the wooden-legged civilian at the tiller, the bare-headed man in a King’s coat awaiting him.

“You call me ‘sir’,” barked Hornblower, as he had done to midshipmen ever since he became a lieutenant.

The midshipman eyed the gold laced coat—undoubtedly it was trimmed in the fashion of the coat of a captain of more than three years’ seniority, and the man who wore it carried himself as though he expected deference.

“Yes, sir,” said the midshipman, a little abashed.

“That is Lieutenant Bush at the tiller. You will remain here with these men under his orders, while I go to interview your captain.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said the midshipman, stiffening to attention.

The boat bore Hornblower to the Triumph’s side; the coxswain made the four-finger gesture which indicated the arrival of a captain, but marines and side-boys were not in attendance as Hornblower went up the side—the Navy could not risk wasting her cherished compliments on possible impostors. But Hardy was there on deck, his huge bulk towering over everyone round him; Hornblower saw the expression of his beefy face alter as he saw him.

“Good God, it’s Hornblower all right,” said Hardy, striding forward, with his hand outstretched. “Welcome back, sir. How do you come here, sir? How did you retake the Witch? How—”

What Hardy wanted to say was “How have you risen from the grave?” but such a question seemed to savour of impoliteness. Hornblower shook hands, and trod gratefully the quarterdeck of a ship of the line once more. His heart was too full for speech, or his brain was too numb with fatigue, and he could make no reply to Hardy’s questioning.

“Come below to my cabin,” said Hardy, kindly—phlegmatic though he was, he still could just appreciate the other’s difficulty.

There was more ease in the cabin, sitting on the cushioned locker under the portrait of Nelson that hung on the bulkhead, and with the timbers groaning faintly all round, and the blue sea visible through the great stern window. Hornblower told a little of what happened to him—not much, and not in detail; only half a dozen brief sentences, for Hardy was not a man with much use for words. He listened with attention, pulling at his whiskers, and nodding at each point.

“There was a whole Gazette,” he remarked, “about the attack in Rosas Bay. They brought Leighton’s body back for burial in St. Paul’s.”

The cabin swam round Hornblower; Hardy’s homely face and magnificent whiskers vanished in a mist.

“He was killed, then?” Hornblower asked.

“He died of his wounds at Gibraltar.”

So Barbara was a widow—had been one for six months now.

“Have you heard anything of my wife?” asked Hornblower. The question was a natural one to Hardy, little use though he himself had for women; and he could see no connexion between it and the preceding conversation.

“I remember reading that she was awarded a Civil List pension by the government when the news of—of your death arrived.”

“No other news? There was a child coming.”

“None that I know of. I have been four months in this ship.”

Hornblower’s head sunk on his breast. The news of Leighton’s death added to the confusion of his mind. He did not know whether to be pleased or sorry about it. Barbara would be as unattainable to him as ever, and perhaps there would be all the jealous misery to endure of her re-marriage.

“Now,” said Hardy. “Breakfast?”

“There’s Bush and my coxswain in the cutter,” said Hornblower. “I must see that all is well with them first.”