Hornblower and the Atropos

Chapter VIII

Fog in the Downs, cold, dense, and impenetrable over the surface of the sea. There was no breath of air to set it stirring; overside the surface of the sea, just visible when Hornblower looked down at it from the deck, was black and glassy. Only close against the side could be detected the faintest of ripples, showing how the tide was coursing beside the ship as she lay anchored in the Downs. Condensing on the rigging overhead the fog dripped in melancholy fashion on to the deck about him, an occasional drop landing with a dull impact on his cocked hat; the heavy frieze peajacket that he wore looked as if it were frosted with the moisture that hung upon it. Yet it was not freezing weather, although Hornblower felt chilled through and through inside his layers of clothing as he turned back from his gloomy contemplation of the sea.

“Now, Mr. Jones,” he said, “we’ll start again. We’ll have topmasts and yards struck—all top hamper down and stowed away. Order ‘out pipes’, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jones.

The hands had already spent half the morning at sail drill; Hornblower was taking advantage of the fogbound calm to exercise his ship’s company. With so many landsmen on board, with officers unfamiliar with their divisions, this fog actually could be used to advantage; the ship could be made more of a working, fighting unit during this interval of grace before proceeding down Channel. Hornblower put his cold hand inside his coat and brought out his watch; as if the gesture had called forth the sound five bells rang out sharply from beside the binnacle, and from the thick fog surrounding them came the sound of other bells—there were many ships anchored in the Downs all about them, so many that it was some minutes before the last sound died away; the sandglasses on board the ships were by no means in agreement.

While the bells were still sounding Hornblower took note of the position of the minute hand of his watch and nodded to Jones. Instantly came a roar of orders; the men, already called to attention after their brief standeasy came pouring aft with their petty officers urging them on. Watch in hand, Hornblower stood back by the taffrail. From where he stood only the lower part of the main rigging was visible; the foremast was completely hidden in fog. The hands went hurrying up the ratlines, Hornblower watching keenly to see what proportion of them were vague about their stations and duties. He could have wished that he could see all that was going on—but then if there had been no fog there would have been no sail drill, and Atropos would have been making the best of her way down Channel. Here was the Prince, hurried along by Horrocks with a hand at his shoulder.

“Come on,” said Horrocks, leaping at the ratlines.

The Prince sprang up beside him. Hornblower could see the bewildered expression on the boy’s face. He had small enough idea of what he was doing. He would learn, no doubt—he was learning much even from the fact that the bloodroyal, the King’s nephew, could be shoved about by the plebeian hand of a midshipman.

Hornblower got out of the way as the mizzen topsail came swaying down. A yelping master’s mate came running up with a small pack of waisters at his heels; they fell upon the ponderous roll and dragged it to the side. The mizzen mast hands were working faster than the mainmast, apparently—the main topsail was not lowered yet. Jones, his head drawn back so that his Adam’s apple protruded apparently by inches, was bellowing the next orders to the masthead. A shout from above answered him. Down the ratlines came a flood of men again.

“Let go! Haul! Lower away!”

The mizzen topsail yard turned in a solemn arc and made its slow descent down the mast. There was an exasperating delay while the mainstay tackle was applied—organization at this point was exceedingly poor—but at last the yard was down and lying along the booms beside its fellows. The complicated and difficult business of striking the topmasts followed.

“An hour and a quarter, Mr. Jones. More nearly an hour and twenty minutes. Far too long. Half an hour—half an hour with five minutes’ grace; that’s the longest you should ever take.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jones. There was nothing else he could say.

As Hornblower was eyeing him before giving his next orders a faint dull thud came to his ears, sounding flatly through the fog. A musket shot? A pistol shot? That was certainly what it sounded like, but with the fog changing the quality of all the sounds he could not be sure. Even if it were a shot, fired in one of the numerous invisible ships round about, there might be endless innocent explanations of it; and it might not be a shot. A hatch cover dropped on a deck—a grating being pushed into place—it could be anything.

The hands were grouped about the deck, looming vaguely in the fog, awaiting further orders. Hornblower guessed that they were sweating despite the cold. This was the way to get that London beer out of them, but he did not want to drive them too hard.

“Five minutes standeasy,” said Hornblower. “And, Mr. Jones, you had better station a good petty officer at that mainstay tackle.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower turned away to give Jones an opportunity to arrange his reorganization. He set himself to walk the deck to bring some life back into his cold body; his watch was still in his hand through sheer forgetfulness to replace it in his pocket. He ended his walk at the ship’s side, glancing over into the black water. Now what was that floating down beside the ship? Something long and black; when Hornblower first caught sight of it it had bumped one end against the ship’s side under the main chains, and as he watched it swung solemnly round, drawn by the tide, and came down towards him. It was an oar. Curiosity overcame him. In a crowded anchorage like this there was nothing very surprising about a floating oar, but still—

“Here, quartermaster,” said Hornblower. “Get down into the mizzen chains with a line to catch that oar.”

It was only an oar; Hornblower looked it over as the quartermaster held it for his inspection. The leather button was fairly well worn—it was by no means a new oar. On the other hand, judging by the fact that the leather was not entirely soaked through, it had not long been in the water, minutes rather than days, obviously. There was the number “27” burned into the loom, and it was that which caused Hornblower to look more sharply. The “7” bore a crossbar. No Englishman ever wrote a “7” with a crossbar. But everyone on the Continent did; there were Danes and Swedes and Norwegians, Russians and Prussians, at sea, either neutrals in the war or allies of England. Yet a Frenchman or a Dutchman, one of England’s enemies, would also write a “7” in that way.

And there had certainly been something that sounded like a shot. A floating oar and a musket shot made a combination that would be hard to explain. Now if they had been connected in causation—! Hornblower still had his watch in his hand. That shot—if it was a shot—had made itself heard just before he gave the order for standeasy, seven or eight minutes ago. The tide was running at a good two knots. If the shot had caused the oar to be dropped into the water it must have been fired a quarter of a mile or so—two cables’ length—upstream. The quartermaster still holding the oar was looking at him curiously, and Jones was waiting, with the men poised for action, for his next orders. Hornblower was tempted to pay no more attention to the incident.

But he was a King’s officer, and it was his duty to make inquiry into the unexplainable at sea. He hesitated in inward debate; the fog was horribly thick. If he sent a boat to investigate it would probably lose itself; Hornblower had had much experience of making his way by boat in a fogridden anchorage. Then he could go himself. Hornblower felt a qualm at the thought of blundering about trying to find his way in the fog—he could make a fool of himself so easily in the eyes of his crew. Yet on the other hand that was not likely to be as exasperating as fuming on board waiting for a dilatory boat to return.

“Mr. Jones,” he said, “call away my gig.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jones, the astonishment in his voice hardly concealed at all.

Hornblower walked to the binnacle and took a careful reading of how the ship’s head lay. It was the most careful reading he could possibly take, not because his comfort or his safety but because his personal dignity depended on getting that reading right. North by East half East. As the ship lay riding to her anchor bows to the tide he could be sure that the oar had come down from that direction.

“I want a good boat compass in the gig, Mr. Jones, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower hesitated before the last final order, which would commit him to a public admission that he thought there was a chance of something serious awaiting him in the fog. But not to give the order would be to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. If that had really been a musket shot that he had heard there was a possibility of action; there was a likelihood that at least a show of force would be necessary.

“Pistols and cutlasses for the gig’s crew, Mr. Jones, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jones, as if nothing could astonish him again.

Hornblower turned back as he was about to step down into the boat.

“I shall start timing you from this moment, Mr. Jones. Try to get those tops’l yards across in half an hour from now—I’ll be back before then.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The ship broke into a roar of activity as Hornblower took his place in the sternsheets of the gig.

“I’ll take the tiller,” he said to the coxswain. “Give way.”

He steered the gig along the Atropos from stern to bow. He took one last look up at her bows, at her bowsprit and bobstay, and then the fog swallowed them up. The gig was instantly in a world of its own, constricted about by the walls of mist. The sounds of activity on board the ship died rapidly away.

“Pull steady!” growled Hornblower to the man at the oars. That little boat compass would be swinging about chasing its tail in ten seconds if he allowed the gig to keep anything except an exactly straight course. North by East half East.

“Seventeen,” said Hornblower to himself. “Eighteen. Nineteen.”

He was counting the strokes of the oars; it was a rough way of estimating the progress made. At seven feet to the stroke less than two hundred strokes meant a quarter of a mile. But there was the speed of the tide to be allowed for. It would be nearer five hundred strokes—all very vague, but every possible precaution must be taken on a foolish expedition like Otis.

“Seventyfour, seventyfive,” said Hornblower, his eyes glued to the compass.

Even with the brisk tide running the surface of the sea was a glassy flat calm; the oarblades, lifting from the water at the completion of each stroke, left whirlpools circling on the surface.

“Two hundred,” said Hornblower, suppressing a momentary fear that he had miscounted and that it was really three hundred.

The oars groaned on monotonously in the rowlocks.

“Keep your eyes ahead,” said Hornblower to the coxswain. “Tell me the moment you see anything. Two sixtyfour.”

It seemed only yesterday that he had sat in the sternsheets of the jolly boat of the Indefatigable, rowing up the estuary of the Gironde to cut out the Papillon. But that was more than ten years ago. Three hundred. Three hundred and fifty.

“Sir,” said the coxswain, tersely.

Hornblower looked forward. Ahead, a trifle on the port bow, there was the slightest thickening in the fog, the slightest looming of something solid there.

“Easy all!” said Hornblower, and the boat continued to glide over the surface; he put the tiller over slightly so as to approach whatever it was more directly. But the boat’s way died away before they were near enough to distinguish any details, and at Hornblower’s command the men began to row again. Distantly came a low hail out of the fog, apparently called forth by the renewal of the sound of the oars.

“Boat ahoy!”

At least the hail was in English. By now there was visible the vague outlines of a large brig; from the heaviness of her spars and fast lines she looked like one of the West India packets.

“What brig’s that?” hailed Hornblower in reply.

“Amelia Jane of London, thirtyseven days out from Barbados.”

That was a direct confirmation of Hornblower’s first impression. But that voice? It did not sound quite English, somehow. There were foreign captains in the British merchant service, plenty of them, but hardly likely to be in command of a West India packet.

“Easy,” said Hornblower to the rowers, the gig glided silently on over the water. He could see no sign of anything wrong.

“Keep your distance,” said the voice from the brig.

There was nothing suspicious about the words. Any ship at anchor hardly more than twenty miles from the coast of France was fully entitled to be wary of strangers approaching in a fog. But that word sounded more like “deestance” all the same. Hornblower put his helm over to pass under the brig’s stern. Several heads were now apparent at the brig’s side; they moved round the stern in time with the gig. There was the brig’s name, sure enough. Amelia Jane, London. Then Hornblower caught sight of something else; it was a large boat lying under the brig’s port quarter from the main chains. There might be a hundred possible explanations of that, but it was a suspicious circumstance.

“Brig ahoy!” he hailed, “I’m coming aboard.”

“Keep off!” said the voice in reply.

Some of the heads at the brig’s side developed shoulders, and three or four muskets were pointed at the gig.

“I am a King’s officer,” said Hornblower.

He stood up in the sternsheets and unbuttoned his peajacket so that his uniform was visible. The central figure at the brig’s side, the man who had been speaking, looked for a long moment and then spread his hands in a gesture of despair.

“Yes,” he said.

Hornblower went up the brig’s side as briskly as his chilled limbs would permit. As he stood on the deck he felt a trifle selfconscious of being unarmed, for facing him were more than a dozen men, hostility in their bearing, and some of them with muskets in their hands. But the gig’s crew had followed him on the deck and closed up behind him, handling their cutlasses and pistols.

“Cap’n, sir!” It was the voice from overside of one of the two men left down in the gig. “Please, sir, there’s a dead man in the boat here.”

Hornblower turned away to look over. A dead man certainly lay there, doubled up in the bottom of the boat. That accounted for the floating oar, then. And for the shot, of course. The man had been killed by a bullet from the brig at the moment the boat was laid alongside; the brig had been taken by boarding. Hornblower looked back towards the group on the deck.

“Frenchmen?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The fellow was a man of sense. He had not attempted a hopeless resistance when his coup had been discovered. Although he had fifteen men at his back and there were only eight altogether in the gig he had realized that the presence of a King’s ship in the immediate vicinity made his final capture a certainty.

“Where’s the crew?” asked Hornblower.

The Frenchman pointed forward, and at a gesture from Hornblower one of his men ran to release the brig’s crew from their confinement in the forecastle, half a dozen coloured hands and a couple of officers.

“Much obliged to you, mister,” said the captain, coming forward.

“I’m Captain Hornblower of His Majesty’s ship Atropos,” said Hornblower.

“I beg your pardon, Captain.” He was an elderly man, his white hair and blue eyes in marked contrast with his mahogany tan. “You’ve saved my ship.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower, “you had better disarm those men.”

“Gladly, sir. See to it, Jack.”

The other officer, presumably the mate, walked aft to take muskets and swords from the unresisting Frenchmen.

“They came out of the fog and laid me alongside before I was aware, almost, sir,” went on the captain. “A King’s ship took my four best hands when we was off the Start, or I’d have made a better account of them. I only got one crack at them as it was.”

“It was that crack that brought me here,” said Hornblower shortly. “Where did they come from?”

“Now that’s just what I was asking myself,” said the captain. “Not from France in that boat, they couldn’t have come.”

They turned their gaze inquiringly upon the dejected group of Frenchmen. It was a question of considerable importance. The Frenchmen must have come from a ship, and that ship must be anchored somewhere amid the crowded vessels in the Downs. And at that rate she must be disguised as a British vessel or a neutral, coming in with the others before the wind dropped and the fog closed down. There had been plenty of similar incidents during the war. It was an easy way to snap up a prize. But it meant that somewhere close at hand there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a disguised French privateer, probably crammed with men—she might have made more than one prize. In the bustle and confusion that would ensue when a breeze should get up, with everyone anxious to up anchor and away, she could count on being able to make her escape along with her prizes.

“When the fog closed down,” said the captain, “the nearest vessel to us was a Ramsgate trawler. She anchored at the same time as we did. I doubt if it could be her.”

It was a matter of so much importance that Hornblower could not keep still. He turned and paced the deck for a space, his mind working rapidly. Yet his mind was not completely made up when he turned back and gave his first order in execution of the vague plan. He did not know if he would have the resolution to go through with it.

“Leadbitter,” he said to the coxswain.

“Sir!”

“Tie those men’s hands behind them.”

“Sir?”

“You heard what I said.”

To bind prisoners was almost a violation of the laws of war. When Leadbitter approached to carry out his orders the Frenchmen showed evident resentment. A buzz of voices arose.

“You can’t do this, sir,” said their spokesman. “We have—”

“Shut your mouth,” snapped Hornblower.

Even having to give that order put him in a bad temper, and his bad temper was made worse by his doubts about himself. Now that the Frenchmen were disarmed they could offer no resistance in face of the drawn pistols of the British sailors. With loud protests they had to submit, as Leadbitter went from man to man tying their wrists behind their backs. Hornblower was hating himself for the part he had to play, even while his calculating mind told him that he had a fair chance of success. He had to pose as a bloodthirsty man, delighting in the taking of human life, without mercy in his soul, gratified by the sight of the death struggles of a fellowhuman. Such men did exist, he knew. There were gloomy tyrants in the King’s service. In the past ten years of war at sea there had been some outrages, a few, on both sides. These Frenchmen did not know him for what he really was, nor did the West India crew. Nor for that matter his own men. Their acquaintance had been so short that they had no reason to believe him not to have homicidal tendencies, so that their behaviour would not weaken the impression he wished to convey. He turned to one of his men.

“Run aloft,” he said. “Reeve a whip through the block at the main yardarm.”

That portended a hanging. The man looked at him with a momentary unbelief, but the scowl on Hornblower’s face sent him scurrying up the ratlines. Then Hornblower strode to where the wretched Frenchmen were standing bound; their glance shifted from the man at the yardarm to Hornblower’s grim face, and their anxious chattering died away.

“You are pirates,” said Hornblower, speaking slowly and distinctly. “I am going to hang you.”

In case the Englishspeaking Frenchman’s vocabulary did not include the word “hang” he pointed significantly to the man at the yardarm. They could all understand that. They remained silent for a second or two, and then several of them began to speak at once in torrential French which Hornblower could not well follow, and then the leader, having pulled himself together, began his protest in English.

“We are not pirates,” he said.

“I think you are,” said Hornblower.

“We are privateersmen,” said the Frenchman.

“Pirates,” said Hornblower.

The talk among the Frenchmen rose to a fresh height; Hornblower’s French was good enough for him to make out that the leader was translating his curt words to his companions, and they were urging him to explain more fully their position.

“I assure you, sir,” said the wretched man, striving to be eloquent in a strange language, “we are privateersmen and not pirates.”

Hornblower regarded him with a stony countenance, and without answering turned away to give further orders.

“Leadbitter,” he said, “I’ll have a hangman’s noose on the end of that line.”

Then he turned back to the Frenchmen.

“Who do you say you are then?” he asked. He tried to utter the words as indifferently as he could.

“We are from the privateer Vengeance of Dunkirk, sir. I am Jacques Lebon, prizemaster.”

Privateers usually went to sea with several extra officers, who could be put into prizes to navigate them back to a French port without impairing the fighting efficiency of the privateer, which could continue her cruise. These officers were usually selected for their ability to speak English and for the knowledge of English seagoing ways, and they bore the title of “prizemaster.” Hornblower turned back to observe the noose now dangling significantly from the yardarm, and then addressed the prizemaster.

“You have no papers,” he said.

He forced his lips into a sneer as he spoke; to the wretched men studying every line in his face his expression appeared quite unnatural, as indeed it was. And Hornblower was gambling a little when he said what he did. If the prizemaster had been able to produce any papers the whole line of attack would have to be altered; but it was not much of a gamble. Hornblower was certain when he spoke that if Lebon had had papers in his pocket he would have already mentioned them, asking someone to dive into his pocket for them. That would be the first reaction of any Frenchman whose identity had been put in question.

“No,” said Lebon, crestfallen. It was hardly likely that he would have, when engaged on an ordinary operation of war.

“Then you hang,” said Hornblower. “All of you. One by one.”

The laugh he forced himself to produce sounded positively inhuman, horrible. Anyone hearing it would be justified in thinking that he was inspired by the anticipated pleasure of watching the death struggles of a dozen men. The whitehaired captain of the Amelia Jane could not bear the prospect, and came forward to enter into the discussion.

“Sir,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“I am going to attend to my own business, sir,” said Hornblower, striving to throw into his voice all the harshness he had ever heard employed by all the insolent officers he had met during his service. “May I ask you to be kind enough to do the same?”

“But you can’t be meaning to hang the poor devils,” went on the captain.

“But that is what I do mean.”

“But not in my ship, sir—not now—not without trial.”

“In your ship, sir, which you allowed to be captured. And now. Pirates taken redhanded can be hanged instantly, as you know, sir. And that is what I shall do.”

It was a stroke of good fortune that the captain should have entered into the discussion. His appearance of sick dismay and the tone of his protests were convincingly genuine—they would never have been so if he had been admitted previously to a planned scheme. Hornblower’s attitude towards him was brutal, but it was for the good of the cause.

“Sir,” persisted the captain, “I’m sure they’re only privateersmen—”

“Please refrain from interfering with a King’s officer in the execution of his duty. You two men, there, come here.”

The two of the crew of the gig that he indicated approached obediently. Probably they had seen hangings before, along with every kind of brutality in a brutal service. But the imminent certainty of taking personal part in a hanging obviously impressed them. There was some reluctance visible in their expressions, but the hard discipline of the service would make certain they would obey the orders of this one man, unarmed and outnumbered.

Hornblower looked along the line of faces. Momentarily he felt a horrid sickness in his stomach as it occurred to him to wonder how he would be feeling if he really was selecting a victim.

“I’ll have that one first,” he said, pointing.

The bullthroated swarthy man whom he indicated paled and shuddered; backing away he tried to shelter himself among his fellows. They were all speaking at once, jerking their arms frantically against the bonds that secured their wrists behind them.

“Sir!” said Lebon. “Please—I beg of you—I implore—”

Hornblower condescended to spare him a glance, and Lebon went on in a wild struggle against the difficulties of language and the handicap of not being free to gesticulate.

“We are privateersmen. We fight for the Empire, for France.” Now he was on his knees, his face lifted. As he could not use his hands he was actually nuzzling with his mouth against the skirts of Hornblower’s peajacket. “We surrendered. We did not fight. We caused no death.”

“Take this man away from me,” said Hornblower, withdrawing out of reach.

But Lebon on his knee followed him over the deck, nuzzling and pleading.

“Captain,” said the English captain, interceding once again. “Can’t you at least wait and land ‘em for trial? If they’re pirates it’ll be proved quick enough.”

“I want to see ‘em dangling,” said Hornblower, searching feverishly in his mind for the most impressive thing he could say.

The two English seamen, taking advantage of the volume of protest, had paused in the execution of their orders. Hornblower looked up at the noose, dangling dimly but horribly in the fog.

“I don’t believe for one single moment,” went on Hornblower, “that these men are what they say they are. Just a band of thieves, pirates. Leadbitter, put four men on that line. I’ll give the word when they are to walk away with it.”

“Sir,” said Lebon, “I assure you, word of honour, we are from the privateer Vengeance.”

“Bah!” replied Hornblower. “Where is she?”

“Over there,” said Lebon. He could not point with his hands; he pointed with his chin, over the port bow of the anchored Amelia Jane. It was not a very definite indication, but it was a considerable help, even that much.

“Did you see any vessel over there before the fog closed down, captain?” demanded Hornblower, turning to the English captain.

“Only the Ramsgate trawler,” he said, reluctantly.

“That is our ship!” said Lebon. “That is the Vengeance! She was a Dunkirk trawler—we—we made her look like that.”

So that was it. A Dunkirk trawler. Her fishholds could be crammed full of men. A slight alteration of gear, an “R” painted on her mainsail, a suitable name painted on her stern and then she could wander about the narrow seas without question, snapping up prizes almost at will.

“Where did you say she lay?” demanded Hornblower.

“There—oh!”

Lebon checked himself as he realized how much information he was giving away.

“I can hazard a good guess as to how she bears from us,” interposed the English captain, “I saw—oh!”

He broke off exactly as Lebon had done, but from surprise. He was staring at Hornblower. It was like the denouement scene in some silly farce. The lost heir was at last revealed. The idea of now accepting the admiration of his unwitting fellow players, of modestly admitting that he was not the monster of ferocity he had pretended to be, irritated Hornblower beyond all bearing. All his instincts and good taste rose against the trite and the obvious. Now that he had acquired the information he had sought he could please himself as long as he acted instantly on that information. The scowl he wished to retain rested the more easily on his features with this revulsion of feeling.

“I’d be sorry to miss a hanging,” he said, half to himself, and he allowed his eye to wander again from the dangling noose to the shrinking group of Frenchmen who were still ignorant of what had just happened. “If that thick neck were stretched a little—”

He broke off and took a brief turn up and down the deck, eyed by every man who stood on it.

“Very well,” he said, halting. “It’s against my better judgment, but I’ll wait before I hang these men. What was the approximate bearing of that trawler when she anchored, captain?”

“It was at slack water,” began the captain, making his calculations. “We were just beginning to swing. I should say—”

The captain was obviously a man of sober judgment and keen observation. Hornblower listened to what he had to say.

“Very well,” said Hornblower when he had finished. “Leadbitter, I’ll leave you on board with two men. Keep an eye on these prisoners and see they don’t retake the brig. I’m returning to the ship now. Wait here for further orders.”

He went down into his gig; the captain accompanying him to the ship’s side was clearly and gratifyingly puzzled. It was almost beyond his belief that Hornblower could be the demoniac monster that he had appeared to be, and if he were it was strange good fortune that his ferocity should have obtained, by pure chance, the information that the prisoners had just given him. Yet on the other hand it was almost beyond his belief that if Hornblower had employed a clever ruse to gain the information he should refuse to enjoy the plaudits of his audience and not to bask in their surprise and admiration. Either notion was puzzling. That was well. Let him be puzzled. Let them all be puzzled—although it seemed as if the sobered hands pulling at the oars of the gig were not at all puzzled. Unheeding of all that had been at stake they were clearly convinced that their captain had shown himself in his true colours, and was a man who would sooner see a man’s death agonies than eat his dinner. Let ‘em think so. It would do no harm. Hornblower could spare them no thought in any case, with all his attention glued upon the compass card. It would be ludicrous—it would be horribly comic—if after all this he were to miss Atropos on his way back to her, if he were to blunder about in the fog for hours looking for his own ship. The reciprocal of North by East half East was South by West half West, and he kept the gig rigidly on that course. With what still remained of the ebb tide behind them it would only be a few seconds before they ought to sight Atropos. It was a very great comfort when they did.

Mr. Jones received Hornblower at the ship’s side. A glance had told him that the gig’s crew was two men and a coxswain short. It was hard to think of any explanation of that, and Mr. Jones was bursting with curiosity. He could not help but wonder what his captain had been doing, out there in the fog. His curiosity even overcame his apprehension at the sight of the scowl which Hornblower still wore—now that he was back in his ship Hornblower was beginning to feel much more strongly the qualms that should have influenced him regarding what Their Lordships might think of his absence from his ship. He ignored Jones’s questions.

“You got those tops’l yards across, I see, Mr. Jones.”

“Yes, sir. I sent the hands to dinner when you didn’t come back, sir. I thought—”

“They’ll have five minutes to finish their dinners. No longer. Mr. Jones, if you were in command of two boats sent to capture a hostile vessel at anchor in this fog, how would you set about it? What orders would you give?”

“Well, sir, I’d—I’d—”

Mr. Jones was not a man of quickness of thought or rapid adaptability to a new situation. He hummed and he hawed. But there were very few officers in the Navy who had not been on at least one cuttingout and boarding operation. He knew well enough what he should do, and it slowly became apparent.

“Very well, Mr. Jones. You will now hoist out the long boat and the launch. You will man them and see that the boats’ crews are fully armed. You will proceed North by East half East—fix that in your mind, Mr. Jones, North by East half East—from this ship for a quarter of a mile. There you find a West India brig the Amelia Jane. She has just been recaptured from a French prize crew, and my coxswain is on board with two men. From her you will take a new departure. There’s a French privateer, the Vengeance. She’s a Dunkirk trawler disguised as a Ramsgate trawler. She is probably heavily manned—at least fifty of a crew left—and she is anchored approximately three cables’ lengths approximately northwest of the Amelia Jane. You will capture her, by surprise if possible. Mr. Still will be in command of the second boat. I will listen while you give him his instructions. That will save repetition. Mr. Still!”

The despatch that Hornblower wrote that evening and entrusted to the Amelia Jane for delivery to the Admiralty was couched in the usual Navy phraseology.

Before sealing it Hornblower read through this report with a lopsided smile on his face. He wondered if anyone would ever read between the lines of that bald narrative, how much anyone would guess, how much anyone would deduce. The fog, the cold, the wet; the revolting scene on the deck of the Amelia Jane; the interplay of emotion; could anyone ever guess at all the truth? And there was no doubt that his gig’s crew was already spreading round the ship horrible reports about his lust for blood. There was some kind of sardonic satisfaction to be derived from that, too. A knock at the door. Could he never be undisturbed?

“Come in,” he called.

It was Jones. His glance took in the quill in Hornblower’s fingers, and the inkwell and papers on the table before him.

“Your pardon, sir,” he said. “I hope I don’t come too late.”

“What is it?” asked Hornblower; he had little sympathy for Jones and his undetermined manners.

“If you are going to send a report to the Admiralty, sir—and I suppose you are, sir—”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“I don’t know if you’re going to mention my name, sir—I don’t want to ask if you are, sir—I don’t want to presume—”

If Jones was soliciting a special mention of himself in the Admiralty letter he would get none at all.

“What is it you’re saying to me, Mr. Jones?”

“It’s only that my name’s a common one, sir. John Jones, sir. There are twelve John Jones’s in the lieutenants’ list, sir. I didn’t know if you knew, sir, but I am John Jones the Ninth. That’s how I’m known at the Admiralty, sir. If you didn’t say that, perhaps—”

“Very well, Mr. Jones. I understand. You can rely on me to see that justice is done.”

“Thank you, sir.”

With Jones out of the way Hornblower sighed a little, looked at his report, and drew a fresh sheet towards him. There was no chance of inserting “the Ninth” legibly after the mention of Jones’s name. The only thing to do was to take a fresh sheet and write it all over again. An odd occupation for a bloodthirsty tyrant.