Hornblower and the Hotspur

Chapter XX

Hornblower came back on board Hotspur in a positively cheerful state of mind. There was the imminent prospect of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in prize money. That ought to satisfy Mrs Mason, and Hornblower found it possible not to dwell too long on the picture of Maria as chatelaine of a country estate. He could avoid that subject by thinking about the immediate future, a visit to Cadiz, a diplomatic contact, and then the adventure of intercepting a Spanish treasure fleet in the broad Atlantic. And if that were not sufficiently ample food for pleasant day dreams, he could recall his conversation with Cornwallis. A Commander-in-Chief in home waters had small power of promotion, but surely his recommendations might have weight. Perhaps—?

Bush, with his hand to his hat, welcoming him aboard again, was not smiling. He was wearing a worried, anxious look.

“What is it, Mr. Bush?” asked Hornblower.

“Something you won’t like, sir.”

Were his dreams to prove baseless? Had Hotspur sprung some incurable leak?

“What is it?” Hornblower bit back at the “damn you” that he nearly said.

“Your servant’s under arrest for mutiny, sir,” Hornblower could only stare as Bush went on. “He struck his superior officer.”

Hornblower could not show his astonishment or his distress. He kept his face set like stone.

“Signal from the Commodore, sir!” This was Foreman breaking in. “Our number. ‘Send boat’.”

“Acknowledge. Mr. Orrock! Take the boat over at once.”

Moore in the Indefatigable had already hoisted the broad pendant that marked him as officer commanding a squadron. The frigates were still hove-to, clustered together. There were enough captains there to constitute a general court martial, with power to hang Doughty that very afternoon.

“Now, Mr. Bush, come and tell me what you know about this.”

The starboard side of the quarter-deck was instantly vacated as Hornblower and Bush walked towards it. Private conversation was as possible there as anywhere in the little ship.

“As far as I can tell, sir,” said Bush, “it was like this—”

Taking stores on board at sea was a job for all hands, and even when they were on board there was still work for all hands, distributing the stores through the ship. Doughty, in the working-party in the waist, had demurred on being given an order by a bos’n’s mate, Mayne by name. Mayne had swung his ‘starter’, his length of knotted line that petty officers used on every necessary occasion—too frequently, in Hornblower’s judgement. And then Doughty had struck him. There were twenty witnesses, and if that were not enough, Mayne’s lip was cut against his teeth and blood poured down.

“Mayne’s always been something of a bully, sir,” said Bush. “But this—”

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

He knew the Twenty-Second Article of War by heart. The first half dealt with striking a superior officer; the second half with quarrelling and disobedience. And the first half ended with the words ‘shall suffer death’; there were no mitigating words like ‘or such less punishment’. Blood had been drawn and witnesses had seen it. Even so, some petty officers in the give and take of heavy labour on board ship might have dealt with the situation unofficially, but not Mayne.

“Where’s Doughty now?” he asked.

“In irons, sir.” That was the only possible answer.

“Orders from the Commodore, sir!” Orrock was hastening along the deck towards them, waving a sealed letter which Hornblower accepted.

Doughty could wait; orders could not. Hornblower thought of returning to his cabin to read them at leisure, but a captain had no leisure. As he broke the seal Bush and Orrock withdrew to give him what little privacy was possible when every idle eye in the ship was turned on him. The opening sentence was plain enough and definite enough.

The second paragraph required him to execute at Cadiz the orders he had received from the Commander-in-Chief. The third and last paragraph named a rendezvous, a latitude and longitude as well as a distance and bearing from Cape St. Vincent, and required him to proceed there ‘with the utmost expedition’ as soon as he carried out his orders for Cadiz.

He re-read, unnecessarily, the opening paragraph. There was the word ‘immediately’.

“Mr. Bush! Set all plain sail. Mr. Prowse! A course to weather Finisterre as quickly as possible, if you please. Mr. Foreman, signal to the Commodore. ‘Hotspur to Indefatigable. Request permission to proceed’.”

Only time for one pacing of the quarter-deck, up and down, and then “‘Commodore to Hotspur. Affirmative’.”

“Thank you, Mr. Foreman. Up helm, Mr. Bush. Course sou’west by south.”

“Sou’west by south. Aye aye sir.”

Hotspur came round, and as every sail began to fill she gathered way rapidly.

“Course sou’west by south, sir,” said Prowse, breathlessly returning.

“Thank you, Mr. Prowse.”

The wind was just abaft the beam, and Hotspur foamed along as sweating hands at the braces trimmed the yards to an angle that exactly satisfied Bush’s careful eye.

“Set the royals, Mr. Bush. And we’ll have the stuns’l booms rigged out, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hotspur lay over to the wind, not in any spineless fashion, but in the way in which a good sword-blade bends under pressure. A squadron of ships of the line lay just down to leeward, and Hotspur tore past them, rendering passing honours as she did so. Hornblower could imagine the feelings of envy in the breasts of the hands over there at the sight of this dashing little sloop racing off towards adventure But in that case they did not allow for a year and half spent among the rocks and shoals of the Iroise.

“Set the stuns’ls, sir?” asked Bush.

“Yes, if you please, Mr. Bush. Mr. Young, what d’you get from the log?”

“Nine, sir. A little more, perhaps—nine an’ a quarter.”

Nine knots, and the studding sails not yet set. This was exhilarating, marvellous, after months of confinement.

“The old lady hasn’t forgotten how to run, sir,” said Bush, grinning all over his face with the same emotions; and Bush did not know yet that they were going to seek eight million dollars. Nor—and at that moment all Hornblower’s pleasure suddenly evaporated.

He fell from the heights to the depths like a man falling from the main royal yard. He had forgotten until then all about Doughty. That word ‘immediately’ in Moore’s orders had prolonged Doughty’s life. With all those captains available, and the Commander-in-Chief at hand to confirm the sentence, Doughty could have been court-martialled and condemned within the hour. He could be dead by now; certainly he would have died tomorrow morning. The captains in the Channel Fleet would be unmerciful to a mutineer.

Now he had to handle the matter himself. There was no desperate emergency; there was no question of a conspiracy to be quelled. He did not have to use his emergency powers to hang Doughty. But he could foresee a dreary future of Doughty in irons and all the ship’s company aware they had a man in their midst destined for the rope. That would unsettle everyone. And Hornblower would be more unsettled than anyone else—except perhaps Doughty. Hornblower sickened at the thought of hanging Doughty. He knew at once that he had grown fond of him. He felt an actual respect for Doughty’s devotion and attention to duty; along with his tireless attention Doughty had developed skills in making his captain comfortable comparable with those of a tarry-fingered salt making long splices.

Hornblower battled with his misery. For the thousandth time in his life he decided that the King’s service was like a vampire, as hateful as it was seductive. He could not think what to do. But first he had to know more about the business.

“Mr. Bush, would you be kind enough to order the master-at-arms to bring Doughty to me in my cabin?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The clank of iron; that was what heralded Doughty’s’ arrival at the cabin door, with gyves upon his wrists.

“Very well, master-at-arms. You can wait outside.”

Doughty’s hard blue eyes looked straight into his.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry to put you out like this.”

“What the hell did you do it for?”

There had always been a current of feeling—as Hornblower had guessed—between Mayne and Doughty. Mayne had ordered Doughty to do some specially dirty work, at this moment when Doughty wished to preserve his hands clean to serve his captain’s dinner. Doughty’s protest had been the instant occasion for Mayne to wind his starter.

“I—I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen.”

Among gentlemen a blow could only be wiped out in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word. Hornblower was captain of his ship, with powers almost unlimited. He could tell Mayne to shut his mouth; he could order Doughty’s irons to be struck off, and the whole incident forgotten. Forgotten? Allow the crew to think that petty officers could be struck back with impunity? Allow the crew to think that their captain had favourites?

“Damn it all!” raved Hornblower, pounding on the chartroom table.

“I could train someone to take my place, sir,” said Doughty, “before—before…”

Even Doughty could not say those words.

“No! No! No!” It was utterly impossible to have Doughty circulating about the ship with every morbid eye upon him.

“You might try Bailey, sir, the gun-room steward. He’s the best of a bad lot.”

“Yes.”

It made matters no easier to find Doughty still so co-operative. And then there was a glimmer of light, the faintest hint of a possibility of a solution less unsatisfactory than the others. They were three hundred leagues and more from Cadiz, but they had a fair wind.

“You’ll have to await your trial. Master-at-arms! Take this man away. You needn’t keep him in irons, and I’ll give orders about his exercise.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

It was horrible to see Doughty retaining the unmoved countenance so carefully cultivated as a servant, and yet to know that it concealed a dreadful anxiety. Hornblower had to forget about it, somehow. He had to come on deck with Hotspur flying along with every inch of canvas spread racing over the sea like a thoroughbred horse at last given his head after long restraint. The dark shadow might not be forgotten, but at least it could be lightened under this blue sky with the flying white clouds, and by the rainbows of spray thrown up by the bows, as they tore across the Bay of Biscay on a mission all the more exciting to the ship’s company in that they could not guess what it might be.

There was the distraction—the counter irritation—of submitting to the clumsy ministrations of Bailey, brought up from the gun-room mess. There was the satisfaction of making a neat landfall off Cape Ortegal, and flying along the Biscay coast just within sight of the harbour of Ferrol, where Hornblower had spent weary months in captivity—he tried vainly to make out the Dientes del Diablo where he had earned his freedom—and then rounding the far corner of Europe and setting a fresh course, with the wind miraculously still serving, as they plunged along, close-hauled now, to weather Cape Roca.

There was a night when the wind backed round and blew foul but gently, with Hornblower out of bed a dozen times, fuming with impatience when Hotspur had to go on the port tack and head directly out from the land, but then came the wonderful dawn with the wind coming from the south west in gentle puffs, and then from the westward in a strong breeze that just allowed studding sails to be spread as Hotspur reached southward to make a noon position with Cape Roca just out of sight to leeward.

That meant another broken night for Hornblower to make the vital chance of course off Cape St. Vincent so as to head, with the wind comfortably over Hotspur’s port quarter and every stitch of canvas still spread, direct for Cadiz. In the afternoon, with Hotspur still flying along at a speed often reaching eleven knots, the look-out reported a blur of land, low-lying, fine on the port bow, as the coast-wise shipping—hastily raising neutral Portuguese and Spanish colours at sight of this British ship of war—grew thicker. Ten minutes later another hail from the masthead told that the landfall was perfect, and ten minutes after that Hornblower’s telescope, trained fine on the starboard bow, could pick up the gleaming white of the city of Cadiz.

Hornblower should have been pleased at his achievement, but as ever there was no time for self-congratulation. There were the preparations to be made to ask permission of the Spanish authorities to enter the port; there was the excitement of the prospect of getting into touch with the British representative; and—now or never—there was the decision to be reached regarding his plan for Doughty. The thought of Doughty had nagged at him during these glorious days of spread canvas, coming to distract him from his day-dreams of wealth and promotion, to divert him from his plans regarding his behaviour in Cadiz. It was like the bye-plots in Shakespeare’s plays, rising continually from the depths to assume momentarily equal importance with the development of the main plot.

Yet, as Hornblower had already admitted to himself, it was now or never. He had to decide and to act at this very minute; earlier would have been premature, and later would be too late. He had risked death often enough in the King’s service; perhaps the service owed him a life in return—a threadbare justification, and he forced himself to admit to mere self-indulgence as he finally made up his mind. He shut up his telescope with the same fierce decision that he had closed with the enemy in the Goulet.

“Pass the word for my steward,” he said. No one could guess that the man who spoke such empty words was contemplating a grave dereliction from duty.

Bailey, all knees and elbows, with the figure of a youth despite his years, put his hand to his forehead in salute to his captain, within sight, and (more important) within earshot of a dozen individuals on the quarter-deck.

“I expect His Majesty’s Consul to sup with me tonight,” said Hornblower. “I want something special to offer him.”

“Well, sir—” said Bailey, which was exactly what, and all, Hornblower had expected him to say.

“Speak up, now,” rasped Hornblower.

“I don’t exactly know, sir,” said Bailey. He had suffered already from Hornblower’s irascibility—unplanned, during these last days, but lucky now.

“Damn it, man. Let’s have some ideas.”

“There’s a cut of cold beef, sir—”

“Cold beef? For His Majesty’s Consul? Nonsense.”

Hornblower took a turn up the deck in deep thought, and then wheeled back again.

“Mr. Bush! I’ll have to have Doughty released from confinement this evening. This ninny’s no use to me. See that he reports to me in my cabin the moment I have time to spare.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Very well, Bailey. Get below. Now, Mr. Bush, kindly clear away number one carronade starboard side for the salutes. And isn’t that the guarda costa lugger lying-to for us there?”

The sun declining towards the west bathed the white buildings of Cadiz to a romantic pink as Hotspur headed in, and as health officers and naval officers and military officers came on board to see that Cadiz was guarded against infection and violations of her neutrality. Hornblower put his Spanish to use—rusty now, as he had not spoken Spanish since the last war, and more awkward still because of his recent use of French—but despite its rustiness very helpful during the formalities, while Hotspur under topsails glided in towards the entrance to the bay, so well remembered despite the years that had passed since his last visit in the Indefatigable.

The evening breeze carried the sound of the salutes round the bay, as Hotspur’s carronade spoke out and Santa Catalina replied, and while the Spanish pilot guided Hotspur between the Pigs and the Sows—Hornblower had a suspicion that the Pigs were Sea Pigs, Porpoises, in Spanish—and the hands stood by to take in sail and drop anchor. There were ships of war lying at anchor already in the bay, and not the Spanish navy, whose masts and yards Hornblower could just make out in the inner harbours.

“Estados Unidos,” said the Spanish naval officer, with a gesture towards the nearer frigate. Hornblower saw the Stars and Stripes, and the broad pendant at the main-topmast-head.

“Mr. Bush! Stand by to render passing honours.”

“Constitution. Commodore Preble,” added a Spanish officer.

The Americans were fighting a war of their own, at Tripoli far up the Mediterranean; and presumably this Preble—Hornblower could not be sure of the exact name as he heard it—was the latest of a series of American commanders-in-chief. Drums beat and men lined the side and hats were lifted in salute as Hotspur wept by.

“French frigate Felicite,” went on the Spanish officer, indicating the other ship of war.

Twenty-two ports on a side—one of the big French frigates, but there was no need to pay her further attention. As enemies in a neutral harbour they would ignore each other, cut each other dead, as gentlemen would do if by unlucky chance they met in the interval between the challenge and the duel. Lucky that he did not have to give her further thought, too, seeing that the sight of the Constitution was causing modification in his other plans—the bye plot was intruding on the main plot again.

“You can anchor here, Captain,” said the Spanish officer.

“Helm-a-lee! Mr. Bush!”

Hotspur rounded-to, her topsails were taken in with commendable rapidity, and the anchor cable roared out through the hawse. It was as well that the operation went through faultlessly, seeing that it was carried out under the eyes of the navies of three other nations. A flat report echoed round the bay.

“Sunset gun! Take in the colours, Mr. Bush.”

The Spanish officers were standing formally in line, hats in hand, as they bowed their farewells. Hornblower put on his politest manner and took off his hat with his politest bow as he thanked them and escorted them to the side.

“Here comes your consul already,” said the naval officer just before he went down.

In the gathering darkness a rowing skiff was heading out to them from the town, and Hornblower almost cut his final farewell short as he tried to recall what honours should be paid to a consul coming on board after sunset. The western sky was blood red, and the breeze dropped, and here in a bay it seemed breathless and stifling after the airy delights of the Atlantic. And now he had to deal with secrets of state and with Doughty.

Recapitulating his worries to himself revived another one. There would now be a break in his letters to Maria; it might be months before she heard from him again, and she would fear the worst. But there was no time to waste in thinking. He had to act instantly.