Lieutenant Hornblower

Chapter XVII

That was how Hornblower came to leave the Renown. The coveted promotion was in his grasp, and he was busy enough commissioning the Retribution, making her ready for sea, and organising the scratch crew which was drafted into her. Bush saw something of him during this time, and could congratulate him soberly on the epaulette which, worn on the left shoulder, marked him as a commander, one of those gilded individuals for whom bosuns’ mates piped the side and who could look forward with confidence to eventual promotion to captain. Bush called him ‘sir’, and even when he said it for the first time the expression did not seem unnatural.

Bush had learned something during the past few weeks which his service during the years had not called to his attention. Those years had been passed at sea, among the perils of the sea, amid the everchanging conditions of wind and weather, deep water and shoal. In the ships of the line in which he had served there had only been minutes of battle for every week at sea, and he had gradually become fixed in the idea that seamanship was the one requisite for a naval officer. To be master of the countless details of managing a wooden sailing ship; not only to be able to handle her under sail, but to be conversant with all the petty but important trifles regarding cordage and cables, pumps and salt pork, dry rot and the Articles of War; that was what was necessary. But he knew now of other qualities equally necessary: a bold and yet thoughtful initiative, moral as well as physical courage, tactful handling both of superiors and of subordinates, ingenuity and quickness of thought. A fighting navy needed to fight, and needed fighting men to lead it.

Yet even though this realization reconciled him to Hornblower’s promotion, there was irony in the fact that he was plunged back immediately into petty detail of the most undignified sort. For now he had to wage war on the insect world and not on mankind; the Spanish prisoners in the six days they had been on board had infested the ship with all the parasites they had brought with them. Fleas, lice, and bedbugs swarmed everywhere, and in the congenial environment of a wooden ship in the tropics full of men they flourished exceedingly. Heads had to be cropped and bedding baked; and in a desperate attempt to wall in the bedbugs woodwork had to be repainted—a success of a day or two flattered only to deceive, for after each interval the pests showed up again. Even the cockroaches and the rats that had always been in the ship seemed to multiply and become omnipresent.

It was perhaps an unfortunate coincidence that the height of his exasperation with this state of affairs coincided with the payment of prize money for the captures at Samaná. A hundred pounds to spend, a couple of days’ leave granted by Captain Cogshill, and Hornblower at a loose end at the same time—those two days were a lurid period, during which Hornblower and Bush contrived to spend each of them a hundred pounds in the dubious delights of Kingston. Two wild days and two wild nights, and then Bush went back on board the Renown, shaken and limp, only too glad to get out to sea and recover. And when he returned from his first cruise under Cogshill’s command Hornblower came to say goodbye.

“I’m sailing with the land breeze tomorrow morning,” he said.

“Whither bound, sir?”

“England,” said Hornblower.

Bush could not restrain a whistle at the news. There were men in the squadron who had not seen England for ten years.

“I’ll be back again,” said Hornblower. “A convoy to the Downs. Despatches for the Commissioners. Pick up the replies and a convoy out again. The usual round.”

For a sloop of war it was indeed the usual round. The Retribution with her eighteen guns and disciplined crew could fight almost any privateer afloat; with her speed and handiness she could cover a convoy more effectively than the ship of the line or even the frigates that accompanied the larger convoys to give solid protection.

“You’ll get your commission confirmed, sir,” said Bush, with a glance at Hornblower’s epaulette.

“I hope so,” said Hornblower.

Confirmation of a commission bestowed by a commander-inchief on a foreign station was a mere formality.

“That is,” said Hornblower, “if they don’t make peace.”

“No chance of that, sir,” said Bush; and it was clear from Hornblower’s grin that he, too, thought there was no possibility of peace either, despite the hints in the twomonthsold newspapers that came out from England to the effect that negotiations were possible. With Bonaparte in supreme power in France, restless, ambitious, and unscrupulous, and with none of the points settled that were in dispute between the two countries, no fighting man could believe that the negotiations could result even in an armistice, and certainly not in a permanent peace.

“Good luck in any case, sir,” said Bush, and there was no mere formality about those words.

They shook hands and parted; it says much for Bush’s feelings towards Hornblower that in the grey dawn next morning he rolled out of his cot and went up on deck to watch the Retribution, ghostlike under her topsails, and with the lead going in the chains, steal out round the point, wafted along by the land breeze. Bush watched her go; life in the service meant many partings. Meanwhile there was war to be waged against bedbugs.

Eleven weeks later the squadron was in the Mona Passage, beating against the trade winds. Lambert had brought them out here with the usual double objective of every admiral, to exercise his ships and to see an important convoy through the most dangerous part of its voyage. The hills of Santo Domingo were out of sight at the moment over the westerly horizon, but Mona was in sight ahead, tabletopped and, from this point of view, an unrelieved oblong in outline; over the port bow lay Mona’s little sister Monita, exhibiting a strong family resemblance.

The lookout frigate ahead sent up a signal.

“You’re too slow, Mr. Truscott,” bellowed Bush at the signal midshipman, as was right and proper.

“Sail in sight, bearing northeast,” read the signal midshipman, glass to eye.

That might be anything, from the advanced guard of a French squadron broken out from Brest to awandering trader.

The signal came down and was almost instantly replaced.

“Friendly sail in sight bearing northeast,” read Truscott.

A squall came down and blotted out the horizon. The Renown had to pay off momentarily before its impact. The rain rattled on the deck as the ship lay over, and then the wind abruptly moderated, the sun came out again, and the squall was past. Bush busied himself with the task of regaining station, of laying the Renown her exact two cables’ length astern of her next ahead. She was last in the line of three, and the flagship was the first. Now the strange sail was well over the horizon. She was a sloop of war as the telescope showed at once; Bush thought for a moment that she might be the Retribution, returned after a very quick double passage, but it only took a second glance to make sure she was not. Truscott read her number and referred to the list.

“Clara, sloop of war: Captain Ford,” he announced.

The Clara had sailed for England with despatches three weeks before the Retribution, Bush knew.

“Clara to Flag,” went on Truscott. “Have despatches.”

She was nearing fast. Up the flagship’s halliards soared a string of black balls which broke into flags at the top.

“All ships,” read Truscott, with excitement evident in his voice, for this meant that the Renown would have orders to obey. “Heaveto.”

“Main tops’l braces!” yelled Bush. “Mr. Abbott! My respects to the captain and the squadron’s heavingto.”

The squadron came to the wind and lay heaving easily over the rollers. Bush watched the Clara’s boat dancing over the waves towards the flagship.

“Keep the hands at the braces, Mr. Bush,” said Captain Cogshill. “I expect we’ll fill again as soon as the despatches are delivered.”

But Cogshill was wrong. Bush watched through his glass the officer from the Clara go up the flagship’s side, but the minutes passed and the flagship still lay hoveto, the squadron still pitched on the waves. Now a new string of black balls went up the flagship’s halliards.

“All ships,” read Truscott. “Captains repair on board the flagship.”

“Gig’s crew away!” roared Bush.

It must be important, or at least unusual, news for the admiral to wish to communicate it to the captains immediately and in person. Bush walked the quarterdeck with Buckland while they waited. The French fleet might be out; the Northern Alliance might be growing restive again. The King’s illness might have returned. It might be anything; they could be only certain that it was not nothing. The minutes passed and lengthened into halfhours; it could hardly be bad news—if it were, Lambert would not be wasting precious time like this, with the whole squadron going off slowly to leeward. Then at last the wind brought to their ears, over the blue water, the highpitched sound of the pipes of the bosun’s mates in the flagship. Bush clapped his glass to his eye.

“First one’s coming off,” he said.

Gig after gig left the flagship’s side, and now they could see the Renown’s gig with her captain in the sternsheets. Buckland went to meet him as he came up the side. Cogshill touched his hat; he was looking a little dazed.

“It’s peace,” he said.

The wind brought them the sound of cheering from the flagship—the announcement must have been made to the ship’s company on board, and it was the sound of that cheering that gave any reality at all to the news the captain brought.

“Peace, sir?” asked Buckland.

“Yes, peace. Preliminaries are signed. The ambassadors meet in France next month to settle the terms, but it’s peace. All hostilities are at an end—they are to cease in every part of the world on arrival of this news.”

“Peace!” said Bush.

For nine years the world had been convulsed with war; ships had burned and men had bled from Manila to Panama, west about and east about. It was hard to believe that he was living now in a world where men did not fire cannons at each other on sight. Cogshill’s next remark had a bearing on this last thought.

“National ships of the French, Batavian, and Italian Republics will be saluted with the honours due to foreign ships of war,” he said.

Buckland whistled at that, as well he might. It meant that England had recognised the existence of the red republics against which she had fought for so long. Yesterday it had been almost treason to speak the word ‘republic’. Now a captain could use it casually in an official statement.

“And what happens to us, sir?” asked Buckland.

“That’s what we must wait to hear,” said Cogshill. “But the navy is to be reduced to peacetime establishment. That means that nine ships out of ten will be paid off.”

“Holy Moses!” said Bush.

Now the next ship ahead was cheering, the sound coming shrilly through the air.

“Call the hands,” said Cogshill. “They must be told.”

The ship’s company of the Renown rejoiced to hear the news. They cheered as wildly as did the crews of the other ships. For them it meant the approaching end of savage discipline and incredible hardship. Freedom, liberty, a return to their homes. Bush looked down at the sea of ecstatic faces and wondered what the news implied for him. Freedom and liberty, possibly; but they meant life on a lieutenant’s half pay. That was something he had never experienced; in his earliest youth he had entered the navy as a midshipman—the peacetime navy which he could hardly remember—and during the nine years of the war he had only known two short intervals of leave. He was not too sure that he cared for the novel prospects that the future held out to him.

He glanced up at the flagship and turned to bellow at the signal midshipman.

“Mr. Truscott! Don’t you see that signal? Attend to your duties, or it will be the worse for you, peace or no peace.”

The wretched Truscott put his glass to his eye.

“All ships,” he read. “Form line on the larboard tack.”

Bush glanced at the captain for permission to proceed.

“Hands to the braces, there!” yelled Bush. “Fill that main tops’l. Smarter than that, you lubbers! Full and by, quartermaster. Mr. Cope, haven’t you eyes in your head? Take another pull at that weatherbrace! God bless my soul! Easy there! Belay!”

“All ships,” read Truscott with his telescope, as the Renown gathered way and settled in the wake of her next ahead. “Tack in succession.”

“Stand by to go about!” yelled Bush.

He noted the progress of the next ahead, and then spared time to rate the watch for its dilatoriness in going to its stations for tacking ship.

“You slowfooted slobs! I’ll have some of you dancing at the gratings before long!”

The next ahead had tacked by now, and the Renown was advancing into the white water she had left behind.

“Ready about!” shouted Bush. “Headsail sheets! Helma-lee!”

The Renown came ponderously about and filled on the starboard tack.

“Course sou’west by west,” said Truscott, reading the next signal.

Southwest by west. The admiral must be heading back for Port Royal. He could guess that was the first step towards the reduction of the fleet to its peacetime establishment. The sun was warm and delightful, and the Renown, steadying before the wind, was roaring along over the blue Caribbean. She was keeping her station well; there was no need to shiver the mizzen topsail yet. This was a good life. He could not make himself believe that it was coming to an end. He tried to think of a winter’s day in England, with nothing to do. No ship to handle. Half pay—his sisters had half his pay as it was, which would mean there would be nothing for him, as well as nothing to do. A cold winter’s day. No, he simply could not imagine it, and he left off trying.