Lord Hornblower

Chapter VII

“Mr. Freeman’s respects, sir,” said Brown, “an’ he said to tell you that day’s just breaking, fairly clear, sir. Wind’s backed to sou’-by-west, sir, during the night, blowin’ moderate. We’re hove-to, us an’ the prize, an’ it’s the last of the flood-tide now, sir.”

“Very good,” said Hornblower, rolling out of his cot. He was still heavy with sleep, and the tiny cabin seemed stuffy, as well as chilly, although the stern window was open.

“I’ll have my bath,” said Hornblower, reaching a sudden decision. “Go and get the wash-deck pump rigged.”

He felt unclean; although this was November in the Channel he could not live through another day without a bath. His ear caught some surprised and jocular comments from the hands rigging the pump as he came up through the hatchway, but he paid them no attention. He threw off his dressing-gown, and a puzzled and nervous seaman, in the half-light, turned the jet of the canvas hose upon him while another worked the pump. The bitterly cold sea-water stung as it hit his naked skin, and he leaped and danced and turned about grotesquely, gasping. The seamen did not realise it when he wanted the jet stopped, and when he tried to escape from it they followed him up across the deck.

“Avast, there!” he yelled in desperation, half frozen and half drowned, and the merciless stream stopped.

Brown threw the big towel round him, and he scrubbed his tingling skin, while he jumped and shivered with the stimulus of the cold.

“I’d be frozen for a week if I tried that, sir,” said Freeman, who had been an interested spectator.

“Yes,” said Hornblower, discouraging conversation.

His skin glowed delightfully as he put on his clothes in his cabin with the window shut, and his shivering ceased. He drank thirstily of the steaming coffee which Brown brought him, revelling in the pleasant and unexpected feeling of well-being that filled him. He ran lightheartedly on deck again, The morning was already brighter; the captured Indiaman could now be made out, hove-to half a gunshot to leeward.

“Orders, Sir Horatio?” said Freeman, touching his hat.

Hornblower swept his glance round, playing for time. He had been culpably negligent of business; he had given no thought to his duty since he woke—since he went below to sleep, for that matter. He should order the prize back to England at once, but he could not do that without taking the opportunity of sending a written report back with her, and at this moment he simply hated the thought of labouring over a report.

“The prisoners, sir,” prompted Freeman.

Oh God, he had forgotten the prisoners. They would have to be interrogated and note made of what they had to say. Hornblower felt bone-lazy as well as full of wellbeing—an odd combination.

“They might have plenty to say, sir,” went on Freeman, remorselessly. “The pilot talks some English, and we had him in the wardroom last night. He says Boney’s been licked again. At a place called Leipzig, or some name like that. He says the Russians’ll be over the Rhine in a week. Boney’s back in Paris already. Maybe it’s the end of the war.”

Hornblower and Freeman exchanged glances; it was a full year since the world had begun to look for the end of the war, and many hopes had blossomed and wilted during that year. But the Russians on the Rhine! Even though the English army’s entrance upon the soil of France in the south had not shaken down the Empire, this new invasion might bring that about. Yet there had been plenty of forecasts—Hornblower had made some—to the effect that the first defeat of Bonaparte in the open field would bring to an end at the same time both his reputation for invincibility and his reign. These forecasts about the invasion of the Empire might be as inaccurate.

“Sail-ho!” yelled the lookout, and in the same breath, “She’s the Flame, sir.”

There she was, as before; the parting mist revealed her for only a moment before closing round her again, and then a fresh breath of wind shredded the mist and left her in plain sight. Hornblower reached the decision he had so far been unable to make.

“Clear the ship for action, Mr. Freeman, if you please. We’re going to fetch her out.”

Of course, it was the only thing to do. During the night, within an hour of the cutting-out of the French Indiaman, the word would be sent flying round warning all French ports in the neighbourhood that the British brig with the white cross on her foretopsail was playing a double game, and only masquerading as a mutinous vessel. The news must have reached this side of the estuary by midnight—the courier could cross on the ferry at Quilleboeuf or elsewhere. Everyone would be on the watch for the brig to attempt another coup, and this bank of the river would be the obvious place. Any delay would give the mutineers a chance to reopen communication with the shore and to clear up the situation; if the authorities on shore were once to discover that there were two brigs, sister-ships, in the Bay of the Seine the mutineers might be saved that trouble. Not an hour ought to be lost.

It was all very clear and logical, yet Hornblower found himself gulping nervously as he stood on the quarter-deck. It could only mean a hammer-and-tongs battle—he would be in the thick of it in an hour. This deck which he trod would be swept by the grapeshot of the Flame’s carronades; within the hour he might be dead; within the hour he might be shrieking under the surgeon’s knife. Last night he had faced disaster, but this morning he was facing death. That warm glow which his bath had induced in him had vanished completely, so that he found himself on the point of shivering in the chill of the morning. He scowled at himself in frantic self-contempt, and forced himself to pace brightly and jerkily up and down the tiny quarter-deck. His memories were unmanning him, he told himself. The memory of Richard trotting beside him in the sunset, holding his finger in an unbreakable clutch; the memory of Barbara; the memory even of Smallbridge or of Bond Street—he did not want to be separated from these things, to ‘leave the warm precincts of the cheerful day’. He wanted to live, and soon he might die.

Flame had set more sail—boom-mainsail and jibs; close-hauled she could fetch Honfleur without ever coming within range of the Porta Coeli’s guns. Hornblower’s fears withdrew into the background as his restless mind, despite itself, interested itself in the tactical aspects of the problem before it.

“See that the hands have some breakfast, if you please, Mr. Freeman,” he said. “And it would be best if the guns were not run out yet.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

It might be a long, hard battle, and the men should have their breakfast first. And running out the guns would tell the people in Flame that the Porta Coeli expected a fight, and that would warn them that maybe their escape into French protection might not be easy. The more perfect the surprise, the greater the chance of an easy victory. Hornblower glowered at the Flame through his glass. He felt a dull, sullen rage against the mutineers who had caused all this trouble, whose mad action was imperilling his life. The sympathy he had felt towards them when he was seated in the safety of the Admiralty was replaced now by a fierce resentment. The villains deserved hanging—the thought changed his mood so that he could smile as he met Freeman’s eyes when the latter reported the brig cleared for action.

“Very good, Mr. Freeman.”

His eyes were dancing with excitement; he looked over at Flame again just as a fresh hail came from the masthead.

“Deck, there! There’s a whole lot of small craft putting out from the beach, sir. Headin’ for Flame it looks like, sir.”

The mutineers’ brig was going through the same performance as yesterday, heading towards the French coast just out of gunshot of the Porta Coeli, ready to take refuge sooner than fight; the mutineers must think the small craft a welcoming deputation, coming to escort them in. And there was thick weather liable to close in on them again at any moment. Flame was spilling the wind from her mainsail, her every action denoting increasing hesitation. Probably on her quarter-deck there was a heated argument going on, one party insisting on keeping out of range of the Porta Coeli while another hesitated before such an irrevocable action as going over to the French. Maybe there was another party clamouring to turn and fight—that was quite likely; and maybe even there was a party of the most timid or the least culpable who wished to surrender and trust to the mercy of a court martial. Certainly counsel would be divided. She was hauling on her sheet again now, on a straight course for Honfleur and the approaching gunboats; two miles of clear water separated her from the Porta Coeli.

“Those gunboats are closing in on her, sir,” said Freeman, glass to eye. “And that chasse-marée lugger’s full of men. Christ! There’s a gun.”

Someone in the Flame had fired a warning shot, perhaps to tell the French vessels to keep their distance until the debate on her deck had reached a conclusion. Then she wore round, as if suddenly realising the hostile intent of the French, and as she wore the small craft closed in on her, like hounds upon a deer. Half a dozen shots were fired, too ragged to be called a broadside. The gunboats were heading straight at her, their sweeps out, six a side, giving them additional speed and handiness. Smoke spouted from their bows, and over the water came the deep-toned heavy boom of the twenty-four-pounders they mounted—a sound quite different from the higher-pitched, sharper bang of the Flame’s carronades. The lugger ran alongside her, and through his glass Hornblower could see the boarders pouring onto the Flame’s deck.

“I’ll have the guns run out, Mr. Freeman, if you please,” he said.

The situation was developing with bewildering rapidity—he had foreseen nothing like this. There was desperate fighting ahead, but at least it would be against Frenchmen and not against Englishmen. He could see puffs of smoke on the Flame’s deck—some, at least, of the crew were offering resistance.

He walked forward a few yards, and addressed himself to the gunners.

“Listen to me, you men. Those gunboats must be sunk when we get in among ‘em. One broadside for each will do that business for ‘em if you make your shots tell. Aim true, at the base of their masts. Don’t fire until you’re sure you’ll hit.”

“Aye aye, sir,” came a few voices in reply.

Hornblower found Brown beside him.

“Your pistols, sir. I loaded ‘em afresh, an’ primed ‘em with new caps.”

“Thank you,” said Hornblower. He stuck the weapons into his belt, one on each side, where either hand could grasp them as necessary. It was like a boy playing at pirates, but his life might depend on those pistols in five minutes’ time. He half drew his sword to see that it was free in its sheath, and he was already hastening back to take his stand by the wheel as he thrust it in again.

“Luff a little,” he said. “Steady!”

Flame had flown up into the wind and lay all aback—apparently there was no one at the helm at the moment. The lugger was still alongside her, and the four gunboats, having taken in their sails, were resting on their oars, interposing between the Porta Coeli and the pair of ships. Hornblower could see the guns’ crews bending over the twenty-four-pounders in their bows.

“Hands to the sheets, Mr. Freeman, please. I’m going between them—there. Stand to your guns, men! Now, hard down!”

The wheel went over, and the Porta Coeli came about on the other tack, handily as anyone could desire. Hornblower heard the thunder of a shot close under her bows, and then the deck erupted in a flying shower of splinters from a jagged hole close to the mainmast bitts—a twenty-four-pound shot, fired upwards at close elevation, had pierced the brig’s frail timbers, and, continuing its flight, had burst through the deck.

“Ready about! Hard over!” yelled Hornblower, and the Porta Coeli tacked again into the narrow gap between two gunboats. Her carronades went off in rapid succession on both sides. Looking to starboard, Hornblower had one gunboat under his eye. He saw her there, half a dozen men standing by the tiller aft, two men at each sweep amidships tugging wildly to swing her round, a dozen men at the gun forward. A man with a red handkerchief round his head stood by the mast, resting his hand against it—Hornblower could even see his open mouth as his jaw dropped and he saw death upon him. Then the shots came smashing in. The man with the red handkerchief disappeared—maybe he was dashed overboard, but most likely he was smashed into pulp. The frail frame of the gunboat—nothing more than a big rowing-boat strengthened forward for a gun—disintegrated ; her side caved in under the shots as though under the blows of some vast hammer. The sea poured in even as Hornblower looked; the shots, fired with extreme depression, must have gone on through the gunboat’s bottom after piercing her side. The dead weight of the gun in her bows took charge as her stability vanished, and her bows surged under while her stern was still above water. Then the gun slid out, relieving her of its weight, and the wreck righted itself for an instant before capsizing. A few men swam among the wreckage. Hornblower looked over to port; the other gunboat had been as hard hit, lying at that moment just at the surface with the remains of her crew swimming by her. Whoever had been in command of those gunboats had been a reckless fool to expose the frail vessels to the fire of a real vessel of war—even one as tiny as the Porta Coeli–aslong as the latter was under proper command. Gunboats were only of use to batter into submission ships helplessly aground or dismasted.

The chasse-marée and the Flame, still alongside each other, were close ahead.

“Mr. Freeman, load with canister, if you please. We’ll run alongside the Frenchman. One broadside, and we’ll board her in the smoke.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Freeman turned to bellow orders to his crew.

“Mr. Freeman, I shall want every available hand in the boarding-party. You’ll stay here—”

“Sir!”

“You’ll stay here. Pick six good seamen to stay with you to work the brig out again if we don’t come back. Is that clear, Mr. Freeman?”

“Yes, Sir Horatio.”

There was still time for Freeman to make the arrangements as the Porta Coeli surged up towards the Frenchman. There was still time for Hornblower to realise with surprise that what he had said about not coming back was sincere, and no mere bombast to stimulate the men. He was most oddly determined to conquer or die, he, the man who was afraid of shadows. The men were yelling madly as the Porta Coeli drew up to the Frenchman, whose name—the Bonne Celestine of Honfleur—was now visible on her stern. Blue uniforms and white breeches could be seen aboard her; soldiers—it was true, then, that Bonaparte’s need for trained artillerymen had forced him to conscript his seamen, replacing them with raw conscript soldiers. A pity the action was not taking place out at sea, for then they would most of them be sea-sick.

“Lay us alongside,” said Hornblower to the helmsman. There was confusion on the decks of the Bonne Celestine; Hornblower could see men running to the guns on her disengaged port side.

“Quiet, you men!” bellowed Hornblower. “Quiet!”

Silence fell on the brig; Hornblower had hardly to raise his voice to make himself heard on the tiny deck.

“See that every shot tells, you gunners,” said Hornblower. “Boarders, are you ready to come with me?”

Another yell answered him. Thirty men were crouching by the bulwarks with pikes and cutlasses; the firing of the broadside and the dropping of the mainsail would set free thirty more, a small enough force unless the broadside should do great execution and the untrained landsmen in the Bonne Celestine should flinch. Hornblower stole a glance at the helmsman, a grey-bearded seaman, who was coolly gauging the distance between the two vessels while at the same time watching the mainsail as it shivered as the Porta Coeli came to the wind. A good seaman, that—Hornblower made a mental note to remember him for commendation. The helmsman whirled the wheel over.

“Down mains’l,” roared Freeman.

The Bonne Celestine’s guns bellowed deafeningly, and Hornblower felt powder grains strike his face as the smoke eddied round him. He drew his sword as the Porta Coeli’s carronades crashed out, and the two vessels came together with a squealing of timber. He sprang upon the bulwark in the smoke, sword in hand; at the same moment a figure beside him cleared the bulwark in a single motion and dropped upon the Bonne Celestine’s deck—Brown, waving a cutlass. Hornblower leaped after him, but Brown stayed in front of him, striking to left and right at the shadowy figures looming in the smoke. Here there was a pile of dead and wounded men, caught in the blast of canister from one of the Porta Coeli’s carronades. Hornblower stumbled over a limb, and recovered himself in time to see a bayonet on the end of a musket lunging at him. A violent twisting of his body evaded the thrust. There was a pistol in his left hand, and he fired with the muzzle almost against the Frenchman’s breast. Now the wind had blown the cannon-smoke clear. Forward some of the boarders were fighting with a group of the enemy cornered in the bow—the clash of the blades came clearly to Hornblower’s ears—but aft there was not a Frenchman to be seen. Gibbons, master’s mate, was at the halliards running down the tricolour from the masthead. At the starboard side lay the Flame, and over her bulwarks were visible French infantry shakoes; Hornblower saw a man’s head and shoulders appear, saw a musket being pointed. It shifted its aim from Gibbons to Hornblower, and in that instant Hornblower fired the other barrel of his pistol, and the Frenchman fell down below the bulwarks, just as a fresh wave of boarders came pouring on board from the Porta Coeli.

“Come on!” yelled Hornblower—it was desperately important to make sure of the Flame before a defence could be organised.

The brigs stood higher out of the water than did the chasse-marée; this time they had to climb upward. He got his left elbow over the bulwark, and tried to swing himself up, but his sword hampered him.

“Help me, damn you!” he snarled over his shoulder, and a seaman put his shoulder under Hornblower’s stern and heaved him up with such surprising goodwill that he shot over the bulwarks and fell on his face in the scuppers on the other side, his sword slithering over the deck. He started to crawl forward towards it, but a sixth sense warned him of danger, and he flung himself down and forward inside the sweep of a cutlass, and cannoned against the shins of the man who wielded it. Then a wave of men burst over him, and he was kicked and trodden on and then crushed beneath a writhing body with which he grappled with desperate strength. He could hear Brown’s voice roaring over him, pistols banging, sword-blades clashing before sudden silence fell round him. The man with whom he was struggling went suddenly limp and inert, and then was dragged off him. He rose to his feet.

“Are you wounded, sir?” asked Brown.

“No,” he answered. Three or four dead men lay on the deck; aft a group of French soldiers with a French seaman or two among them stood by the wheel, disarmed, while two British sailors, pistol in hand, stood guard over them. A French officer, blood dripping from his right sleeve, and with tears on his cheeks—he was no more than a boy—was sitting on the deck, and Hornblower was about to address him when his attention was suddenly distracted.

“Sir! Sir!”

It was an English seaman he did not recognise, in a striped shirt of white and red, his pigtail shaking from side to side as he gesticulated with the violence of his emotion.

“Sir! I was fightin’ against the Frogs. Your men saw me. Me an’ these other lads here.”

He motioned behind him to an anxious little group of seamen who had heretofore hung back, but now came forward, some of them bursting into speech, all of them nodding their heads in agreement.

“Mutineers?” asked Hornblower. In the heat of battle he had forgotten about the mutiny.

“I’m no mutineer, sir. I did what I had to or they’d ‘a killed me. Ain’t that so, mates?”

“Stand back, there!” blared Brown; there was blood on the blade of his cutlass.

A vivid prophetic picture suddenly leaped into Hornblower’s mind’s eye—the court martial, the semicircle of judges in glittering full dress, the tormented prisoners, tongue-tied, watching, only half understanding, the proceedings which would determine their lives or deaths, and he himself giving his evidence, trying conscientiously to remember every word spoken on both sides; one word remembered might make the difference between the lash and the rope.

“Arrest those men!” he snapped. “Put them under confinement.”

“Sir! Sir!”

“None o’ that!” growled Brown.

Remorseless hands dragged the protesting men away.

“Where are the other mutineers?” demanded Hornblower.

“Down below, sir, I fancies,” said Brown. “Some o’ the Frenchies is down there, too.”

Odd how a beaten crew so often scuttled below. Hornblower honestly believed that he would rather face the fighting madness of the victors on deck than surrender ignominiously in the dark confines of the ‘tween-decks.

A loud hail from the Porta Coeli came to his ears.

“Sir Horatio!” hailed Freeman’s voice. “We’ll be all aground if we don’t get way on the ships soon. I request permission to cast off and make sail.”

“Wait!” replied Hornblower.

He looked round him; the three ships locked together, prisoners under guard here, there, and everywhere. Below decks, both in the Bonne Celestine and in the Flame, there were enemies still unsecured, probably many more in total than he had men under his orders. A shattering crash below him, followed by screams and cries; the Flame shook under a violent blow. Hornblower remembered the sound of a cannon-shot striking on his inattentive ears a second before; he looked round. The two surviving gunboats were resting on their oars a couple of cables’ lengths away, their bows pointing at the group of ships. Hornblower could guess they were in shoal water, almost immune from attack. A jet of smoke from one of the gunboats, and another frightful crash below, and more screams. Those twenty-four-pounder balls were probably smashing through the whole frail length of the brig, whose timbers could resist their impact hardly better than paper. Hornblower plunged into the urgency of the business before him like a man into a raging torrent which he had to swim.

“Get those hatches battened down, Brown!” he ordered. “Put a sentry over each. Mr. Gibbons!”

“Sir?”

“Secure your hatches. Get ready to make sail.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“What topmen are there here? Man the halliards. Who can take the wheel? What, none of you? Mr. Gibbons! Have you a quartermaster to spare? Send one here immediately. Mr. Freeman! You can cast off and make sail. Rendezvous at the other prize.”

Another shot from those accursed gunboats crashed into the Flame’s stern below him. Thank God the wind was off shore and he could get clear of them. The Porta Coeli had set her boom-mainsail again and had got clear of the Bonne Celestine; Gibbons was supervising the setting of the latter’s lug-mainsail while half a dozen hands boomed her off from the Flame.

“Hoist away!” ordered Hornblower as the vessels separated. “Hard a-starboard, Quartermaster.”

A sound overside attracted his attention. Men—mutineers or Frenchmen—were scrambling out through the shot-holes and hurling themselves into the sea, swimming towards the gunboats. Hornblower saw the white hair of Nathaniel Sweet trailing on the surface of the water as he struck out, twenty feet away from him. Of all the mutineers he was the one who most certainly must not be allowed to escape. For the sake of England, for the sake of the service, he must die. The seaman acting as sentry at the after hatchway did not look as if he were a capable marksman.

“Give me your musket,” said Hornblower, snatching it.

He looked at priming and flint as he hurried back to the taffrail. He trained the weapon on the white head, and pulled the trigger. The smoke blew back into his face, obscuring his view only for a moment. The long white hair was visible for a second at the surface when he looked again, and then it sank, slowly, out of sight. Sweet was dead. Maybe there was an old widow who would bewail him, but it was better that Sweet was dead. Hornblower turned back to the business of navigating the Flame back to the rendezvous.