Hornblower and the Hotspur

Chapter VII

Hornblower was seated in the cramped chart-room eating his dinner. This salt beef must have come from the new cask, for there was an entirely different tang about it, not unpleasant. Presumably it had been pickled at some other victualling yard, with a different quality of salt. He dipped the tip of his knife into the mustard pot; that mustard was borrowed—begged—from the wardroom, and he felt guilty about it. The wardroom stores must be running short by now—but on the other hand he himself had sailed with no mustard at all, thanks to the distractions of getting married while commissioning his ship.

“Come in!” he growled in response to a knock.

It was Cummings, one of the ‘young gentlemen’, First Class Volunteers, King’s Letter Boys, with whom the ship was plagued in place of experienced midshipmen, thanks again to the haste with which she had been commissioned.

“Mr. Poole sent me, sir. There’s a new ship joining the Inshore Squadron.”

“Very well. I’ll come.”

It was a lovely summer day. A few cumulus clouds supplied relief to the blue sky. Hotspur was hardly rocking at all as she lay hove-to, her mizzen topsail to the mast, for she was so far up in the approaches to Brest that the moderate easterly wind had little opportunity, since leaving the land, to raise a lop on the water. Hornblower swept his eye round as he emerged on the quarter-deck, landward at first, naturally. They lay right in the mouth of the Goulet, with a view straight up into the Outer Roads. On one side, was the Capuchins, on the other the Petit Minou, with Hotspur carefully stationed—as in the days of peace but for a more forceful reason—so that she was just out of cannon-shot of the batteries on those two points. Up the Goulet lay the reefs of the Little Girls, with their outlier, Pollux Reef, and beyond the Little Girls, in the outer roadstead, lay the French navy at anchor, forced to tolerate this constant invigilation because of the superior might of the Channel Fleet waiting outside, just over the horizon.

Hornblower naturally turned his gaze in that direction next. The main body was out of sight, so as to conceal its strength; even Hornblower did not know its present numbers correctly—some twelve ships of the line or so. But well in sight, only three miles out to sea, lay the Inshore Squadron, burly two-deckers lying placidly hove-to, ready at any minute to support Hotspur and the two frigates, Doris and Naiad, should the French decide to come out and drive off these insolent sentries. There had been three of these ships of the line; now, as Hornblower looked, a fourth was creeping in close-hauled to join them. Automatically Hornblower looked over again at the Petit Minou. As he expected, the semaphore arms of the telegraph on the cliffs at the point there were swinging jerkily, from vertical to horizontal and back again. The watchers there were signalling to the French fleet the news of the arrival of this fourth ship to join the inshore squadron; even the smallest activity was noted and reported, so that in clear weather the French admiral was informed within minutes. It was an intolerable nuisance—it helped to smooth the path of the coasters perennially trying to sneak into Brest through the passage of the Raz. Some action should be taken about that semaphore station.

Bush was rating Foreman, whom he was patiently—impatiently—training to be the signal officer of the Hotspur.

“Can’t you get that number yet?” he demanded.

Foreman was training his telescope; he had not acquired the trick of keeping the other eye open, yet idle. In any case it was not easy to read the flags, with the wind blowing almost directly from one ship to the other.

“Seventy-nine, sir,” said Foreman at length.

“You’ve read it right for once,” marvelled Bush. “Now let’s see what you do next.”

Foreman snapped his fingers as he recalled his duties, and hastened to the signal book on the binnacle. The telescope slipped with a crash to the deck from under his arm as he tried to turn the pages, but he picked it up and managed to find the reference. He turned back to Bush, but a jerk of Bush’s thumb diverted him to Hornblower.

“Tonnant, sir,” he said.

“Now, Mr. Foreman, you know better than that. Make your report in proper form and as fully as you can.”

“Tonnant, sir. Eighty-four guns. Captain Pellew.” Hornblower’s stony face and steady silence spurred Foreman into remembering the rest of what he should say. “Joining the Inshore Squadron.”

“Thank you, Mr. Foreman,” said Hornblower with the utmost formality, but Bush was already addressing Foreman again, his voice pitched as loudly as if Foreman were on the forecastle instead of three yards away.

“Mr. Foreman! The Tonnant’s signalling! Hurry up, now.”

Foreman scuttled back and raised his telescope.

“That’s our number!” he said.

“So I saw five minutes ago. Read the signal.”

Foreman peered through the telescope, referring to the book, and checked his reference before looking up at the raging Bush.

“‘Send boat’,” it says, sir.

“Of course it does. You ought to know all routine signals by heart, Mr. Foreman. You’ve had long enough. Sir, Tonnant signals us to send a boat.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bush. Acknowledge, and clear away the quarter boat.”

“Aye aye, sir. Acknowledge!” A second later Bush was blaring again. “Not that halliard, you careless—you careless young gentleman. Tonnant can’t see the signal through the mizzen tops’l. Send it up to the main tops’l yardarm.”

Bush looked over at Hornblower and spread his hands in resignation. Partly he was indicating that he was resigned to this duty of training ignorant young subordinates, but partly the dumb show conveyed some of the feelings aroused by having, in view of Hornblower’s known preferences, to call Foreman a ‘young gentleman’ instead of using some much more forcible expression. Then he turned away to supervise Cummings as he hoisted out the quarter boat. There was everything to be said in favour of these young men being harassed and bullied as they went about their duties, although Hornblower did not subscribe to the popular notion that young men were actually the better for harassment and bullying. They would learn their duties all the quicker; and one of these days Foreman might easily find himself having to read and transmit signals amid the smoke and confusion and slaughter of a fleet action, while Cummings might be launching and manning a boat in desperate haste for a cutting out expedition.

Hornblower remembered his unfinished dinner.

“Call me when the boat returns, if you please, Mr. Bush.”

This was the last of the blackcurrant jam; Hornblower, ruefully contemplating the sinking level in the final pot, admitted to himself that compulsorily he had actually acquired a taste for blackcurrant. The butter was all gone, the eggs used up, after forty days at sea. For the next seventy-one days, until the ship’s provisions were all consumed he was likely to be living on seaman’s fare, unrelieved salt beef and pork, dried peas, biscuits. Cheese twice a week and suet pudding on Sundays.

At any rate there was time for a nap before the boat returned. He could go to sleep peacefully—a precaution in case the exigencies of the service disturbed his night—thanks to the naval might of Britain, although five miles away there were twenty thousand enemies any one of whom would kill him on sight.

“Boat coming alongside, sir.”

“Very well,” answered Hornblower sleepily.

The boat was deeply laden, right down to her gunwales. The hands must have had a long stiff pull back to the Hotspur; it was the purest bad luck on them that they could run under sail to the Tonnant when lightly laden and then have to row all the way back deeply laden in the teeth of the gentle wind. From the boat as she approached there came a strange roaring noise, a kind of bellow.

“What the devil’s that?” asked Bush of himself as he stood beside Hornblower on the gangway.

The boat was heaped high with sacks.

“There’s fresh food, anyway,” said Hornblower.

“Reeve a whip at the main yardarm!” bellowed Bush—odd how his bellow was echoed from the boat.

Foreman came up the side to report.

“Cabbages, potatoes, cheese, sir. And a bullock.”

“Fresh meat, by God!” said Bush.

With half a dozen hands tailing on to the whip at the yardarm the sacks came rapidly up to the deck; as the boat was cleared there lay revealed in the bottom a formless mass of rope netting; still bellowing. Slings were passed beneath it and soon it lay on deck; a miserable undersized bullock, lowing faintly. A terrified eye rolled at them through the netting that swathed it. Bush turned to Hornblower as Foreman completed his report.

“Tonnant brought twenty-four cattle out for the fleet from Plymouth, sir. This one’s our share. If we butcher it tomorrow, sir, and let it hang for a day, you can have steak on Sunday, sir.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

“We can swab the blood off the deck while it’s still fresh, sir. No need to worry about that. An’ there’ll be tripe, sir! Ox tongue!”

“Yes,” said Hornblower.

He could still see that terrified eye. He could wish that Bush was not so enthusiastic, because he felt quite the reverse. As his vivid imagination pictured the butchering he felt no desire at all for meat provided by such a process. He had to change the subject.

“Mr. Foreman! Were there no messages from the fleet?”

Foreman started guiltily and plunged his hand into his side pocket to produce a bulky packet. He blanched as he saw the fury on Hornblower’s face.

“Don’t you ever do that again, Mr. Foreman! Despatches before everything! You need a lesson and this is the time for it.”

“Shall I pass the word for Mr. Wise, sir?” asked Bush.

The boatswain’s rattan could make vigorous play over Foreman’s recumbent form bent over the breech of a gun. Hornblower saw the sick fright in Foreman’s face. The boy was as terrified as the bullock; he must have the horror of corporal punishment that occasionally was evident in the navy. It was a horror that Hornblower himself shared. He looked into the pleading desperate eyes for five long seconds to let the lesson sink in.

“No,” he said, at length. “Mr. Foreman would only remember that for a day. I’ll see he gets reminded every day for a week. No spirits for Mr. Foreman for seven days; And anyone in the midshipman’s berth who tries to help him out will lose his ration for fourteen days. See to that, if you please, Mr. Bush.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower snatched the packet from Foreman’s lifeless hand, and turned away with contempt in the gesture. No child of fifteen would be any the worse for being deprived of ardent spirits.

In the cabin he had to use his penknife to open the tarred canvas packet. The first thing to tumble out was a grape-shot; the navy had developed through the centuries a routine in these matters—the tarred canvas preserved the contents from salt water if it had to be transported by boat in stormy weather, and the grape-shot would sink it if there were danger of its falling into the hands of the enemy. There were three official letters and a mass of private ones; Hornblower opened the official ones in haste. The first was signed ‘Wm Cornwallis, Vice Ad.’ It was in the usual form, beginning with the statement of the new situation. Captain Sir Edward Pellew, K.B., in the Tonnant, had, as senior officer, received the command of the Inshore Squadron. ‘You are therefore requested and required’ to obey the orders of the said Captain Sir Edward Pellew, and to pay him the strictest attention, as issued with the authority of the Commander in Chief. The next was signed ‘Ed Pellew, Capt.’, and was drily official in three lines, confirming the fact that Pellew now considered Hornblower and Hotspur as under his command. The third abandoned the formal ‘Sir’ which began the others.

Now that was a really flattering letter, warming and comforting. Warming, indeed; as Hornblower sat with the letter in his hand he could feel the blood running faster through his veins. For that matter he could almost feel a stirring within his skull as the ideas began to form, as he thought about the signal station on Petit Minou, as the germs of plans began to sprout. They were taking shape; they were growing fast in the hothouse temperature of his mind. Quite unconsciously he began to rise from his chair; only by pacing briskly up and down the quarter-deck could he bring those plans to fruition and create an outlet for the pressure building up inside him. But he remembered the other letters in the packet; he must not fall into the same fault as Foreman. There were letters for him—one, two, six letters all in the same handwriting. It dawned upon him that they must be from Maria—odd that he did not recognize his own wife’s handwriting. He was about to open them when he checked himself again. Not one of the other letters was addressed to him, but people in the ship were probably anxiously waiting for them.

“Pass the word for Mr. Bush,” he bellowed; Bush, when he arrived, was handed the other letters without a word, nor did he stay for one, seeing that his captain was so deeply engaged in reading that he did not even look up.

Hornblower read, several times, that he was Maria’s Dearest Husband. The first two letters told him how much she missed her Angel, how happy she had been during their two days of marriage, and how anxious she was that her Hero was not running into danger, and how necessary it was to change his socks if they should get wet. The third letter was dated from Plymouth. Maria had ascertained that the Channel Fleet was based there, and she had decided to move so as to be on the spot should the necessities of the Service send Hotspur back into port; also, as she admitted sentimentally, she would be nearer her Beloved. She had made the journey in the coasting troy, committing herself (with many thoughts of her Precious) to the Briny Deep for the first time, and as she gazed at the distant land she had reached a better understanding of the feelings of her Valiant Sailor Husband. Now she was comfortably established in lodgings kept by a most respectable woman, widow of a boatswain.

The fourth letter began precipitately with the most delightful, the most momentous news for her Darling. Maria hardly knew how to express this to her most Loved, her most Adored Idol. Their marriage, already so Blissful, was now to be further Blessed, or at least she fancied so. Hornblower opened the fifth letter in haste, passing over the hurried postscript which said that Maria had just learned the news of her Intrepid Warrior adding to his Laurels by engaging with the Loire, and that she hoped he had not exposed himself more than was necessary to his Glory. He found the news confirmed. Maria was more sure than ever that she was destined to be so vastly fortunate in the future as to be the Mother of the Child of her Ideal. And the sixth letter repeated the confirmation. There might be a Christmas Baby, or a New Year’s Child; Hornblower noted wryly that much more space in these later letters was devoted to the Blessed Increase than to her Longed-for but Distant Jewel. In any case Maria was consumed with hope that the Little Cherub, if a Boy, would be the Image of his Famous Father, or, if a Girl, that she should display his Sweetness of Disposition.

So that was the news. Hornblower sat with the six letters littered before him, his mind in just as much disorder. Perhaps to postpone realization he dwelt at first on the thought of the two letters he had written—addressed to Southsea they would be a long time before they caught up with Maria—and their comparatively formal and perhaps chilling content. He would have to remedy that. He would have to write a letter full of affection and full of delight at the news, whether he were delighted or not—and at that point he could reach no decision. Plunged as he was into professional problems the episode of his marriage was suffused in his memory with unreal quality. The affair was so brief, and even at the time it had been so overlain by the business of getting to sea, that it had seemed strange to him that it should involve the lasting effects of marriage; and this news was an indication of more lasting and permanent effects still. He was going to be a father. For the life of him he could not tell if he were pleased or not. Certainly he was sorry for the child if he—or she—were destined to inherit his accursed unhappy temperament. The more the child should prove to be like him,—whether in looks or in morals, the sorrier he would be. Yet was that quite true? Was there not something flattering, something gratifying, in the thought that his own characteristics might be perpetuated? It was hard to be honest with himself.

He could remember, with his mind now diverted from his present life, more clearly the details of his honeymoon. He could conjure up more exactly his memories of Maria’s doting affection, of the wholehearted way in which she gave herself to believe, that she could not give so much love without its being as hotly reciprocated. He must never let her guess at the quality of his feelings for her, because that would be a cruelty that he could not contemplate. He reached for pen and paper, returning to the commonplace world with his routine annoyance at having a left wing pen. Pens from the left wing of the goose were cheaper than right wing ones, because when held in position for writing they pointed towards the writer’s eye and not conveniently out over his elbow as right wing ones did. But at least he had cut a good point and the ink had not yet grown muddy. Grimly he applied himself to his task. Partly it was a literary exercise, an Essay on Unbounded Affection, and yet—and yet—he found himself smiling as he wrote; he felt tenderness within him, welling out perhaps along his arm and down his pen. He was even on the verge of admitting to himself that he was not entirely the cold-hearted and unscrupulous individual he believed himself to be.

Towards the close of the letter, as he searched for synonyms for ‘wife’ and ‘child’, his glance strayed back to the letters from Pellew, and he actually caught his breath, his thoughts reverting to his duty, to his plans for slaughter, to the harsh realities of the world he was living in. Hotspur was riding easily over the placid sea, but the very fact that she was lying hove-to meant that there was a fair wind out of Brest and that at any moment a shout from the topmast-head would announce that the French Navy was on its way out to contest in thunder and smoke the mastery of the sea. And he had plans; even as he re-read the latest lines of his letter to Maria his vision was blurred by the insistence on his attention of his visualization of the chart of the entrance to Brest. He had to take tight hold of himself to compel himself to finish the letter to Maria in the same strain as he had begun it. He made himself finish it, he made himself re-read it, he made himself fold it; a shout to the sentry brought in Grimes with a lighted dip with which to seal it, and when he had completed the tiresome process it was with eager relief that he laid the letter aside and reached for a fresh sheet of paper.

This was an end of mellifluous phrasing, of blundering attempts to deal with a totally unfamiliar situation; no longer was he addressing (as if in a dream) the Dear Companion of our Lives Together in Happy Years to Come. Now he was applying himself to a task that he felt competent and eager to do, and for phrasing he had only to draw upon the harsh and unrelieved wording of a myriad official letters before this one. He wrote rapidly and with little pause for consideration, because fantastically his plans had reached complete maturity during his preoccupation with Maria. The sheet was covered, turned and half covered again, and the plan was sketched out in full detail. He wrote the conclusion:

He wrote the address:

When the second letter was sealed he held the two of them in his hand; new life in the one, and death and misery in the other. That was a fanciful thought—of far more importance was the question as to whether Pellew would approve of his suggestions.