Hornblower in the West Indies h-12

by Cecil Scott Forester

  He cast himself loose and dashed for the mainmast. The tremendous wind might well have carried him clean aft and overboard, but the upheaving of the stern checked his progress sufficiently for him to swing into the lee of the group at the mainmast and to clutch one of the lines there and hang on. The men there, hanging apathetic in their lashings, spared him hardly a glance and made no move to help him. Barbara, her wet hair streaming out sideways, had a smile and a hand for him, and he forced his way into the group beside her and bound himself next to her. He took her hand in his again, and was reassured by the return of the pressure he gave it. Then there was nothing to do except to remain alive.

  Part of the process of remaining alive was not to think about being thirsty, as the day wore on and the yellow daylight was replaced by black night. It was hard not to do so, once he had realised how thirsty he was, and now he had a new torment when he thought that Barbara was suffering in that way, too. There was nothing he could do about that at all, nothing, except to stand in his bonds and endure along with her. With the coming of night, however, the wind lost its brick-kiln heat and blew almost chilly, so that Hornblower found himself shivering a little. He turned in his bonds and put his arms round Barbara, holding her to him to conserve her bodily warmth. It was during the night that he was troubled by the behaviour of the man next to him, who persisted in leaning against him, more and more heavily, so that repeatedly Hornblower had to take his arms from around Barbara and thrust him fiercely away. At the third or fourth of those thrusts he felt the man fall limply away from him and guessed he was dead. That made a little more room about the mast, and he could put Barbara squarely against it, where she could lean back with her shoulders supported. Hornblower could guess that she would find that a help, judging by the agonising cramp in his legs, and the utter weariness of every part of his body. There was a temptation, a terrible temptation, to give up, to let everything go, to let himself fall to the deck and die like the man beside him. But he would not; that was for the sake of the wife in his arms more than for himself; because of his love rather than because of his pride.

  With the change in the temperature of the wind came a gradual moderation in its violence; Hornblower, during those black hours, would not allow himself to hope at first, but he became more and more convinced of it as the night wore on. At last there was no denying the fact. The wind was dying away—the hurricane was moving away from them, most likely. Some time during the night it was only a strong gale, and later on Hornblower, lifting his head, made himself admit that it was nothing more than a fresh breeze which would call for only a single reef—a topgallant breeze, in fact. The motion of the Pretty Jane continued to be violent, as was only to be expected; the sea would take much longer to die away than would the wind. She was still pitching and plunging wildly, heaving up and racing down, but she was not being swept by the waves to nearly such a great extent, even allowing for her improved behaviour, bows to sea. It was not great cataracts of water that came surging by them, dragging them against their bonds to lacerate their skin. The water ceased to be waist high; later on it only surged past their knees and the spray had ceased to drive past them.

  With that Hornblower was able to notice something else. It was raining, raining in torrents. If he turned his face to the sky a few precious drops fell into his parched, open mouth.

  “Rain!” he said into Barbara’s ear.

  He released himself from her arms—he did it actually roughly, so anxious was he not to waste a single second of this rainstorm. He took off his shirt—it tore into rags as he dragged it from the lines that encompassed him—and held it out in the invisible rain that lashed down on them in the darkness. H must not waste a second. The shirt was wet with sea water; he wrung it out, working over it feverishly, alternately with spreading it in the rain. He squeezed a fragment into his mouth; it was still salt. He tried again. He had never wished for anything so much as now, for the rainstorm to continue in this violence and for the sea spray not to be driving too thickly. The water he wrung from the fragment of shirt could be considered fresh now. He felt for Barbara’s face with the sopping wet object, pressing it against her.

  “Drink!” he croaked into her ear.

  When she put up her hands to it he guessed from her movements that she understood, that she was sucking the precious liquid from the fabric. He wanted her to hurry, to drink all she could, while the rain persisted; his hands were shaking with desire. In the darkness she would not know that he was waiting so anxiously. She yielded the shirt back to him at last, and he spread it to the rain again, hardly able to endure the delay. Then he could press it to his mouth, head back, and gulp and swallow, half mad with pleasure. The difference it made to squeeze that water into his mouth was beyond measure.

  He felt strength and hope returning—the strength came with the hope. Perhaps that shirt held five or six wineglassfuls of water; it was sufficient to make this vast difference. He spread the shirt again above his head, to soak it again in the torrential rain, and gave it to Barbara, and when she returned it to him in the darkness he repeated the process for himself. And when he had squeezed it almost dry he realised that while he was doing so the rain had ceased, and he felt a moment’s regret. He should have saved that wet shirt as a reserve, but he ceased to chide himself. Most of the water in it would have drained out, and there was still enough spray in the air to have made the remainder undrinkable in a few minutes.

  But now he could think better; he could soberly decide that the wind was moderating fast—the rainstorm itself was an indication that the hurricane had gone on its way, leaving in its wake the prodigious rains that were not unusual then. And there, over the starboard bow, was the faintest hint of pink in the sky, not the threatening yellow of the hurricane, but the dawn of a different day. He felt for the knots that held him bound, and by slow degrees he fumbled them undone. As the last one released him he staggered back with the heave of the ship, and sank back with a thump and a splash into a sitting position on the wet deck. That was a fantastic pleasure, to sit down, hip deep in the water still washing over the deck. Just to sit, and very slowly flex and straighten his knees, to feel life returning into his dead thighs; that was heaven, and it would be a seventh heaven to put his head down and allow sleep to overcome him.

  That was something he must not do, all the same. Sleeplessness and physical fatigue were things that must be stoically ignored, as long as there was a chance that they would survive, and daylight increasing round them. He heaved himself up to his feet and walked back to the mast on legs that would hardly obey him. He released Barbara, and she at least could sit down, deck awash or not. He eased her until her back was to the mast and then passed a line around her again. She could sleep in that fashion; she was already so weary that she did not notice—or she gave no sign of it if she did—the doubled-up corpse that lay within a yard of her. He cut the corpse loose and dragged it with the heave of the ship out of the way, before attending to the other three there. They were already fumbling with the knots of their lashings, and as Hornblower began to cut the lines first one and then another opened their mouths and croaked at him.

  “Water!” they said. “Water!”

  They were as helpless and as dependent as nestlings. It was apparent to Hornblower that not one of them had had the sense, during that roaring rainstorm in the dark, to soak his shirt; they could hardly have failed to have held up open mouths to the rain, but what they would catch then would be a trifle. He looked round the horizon. One or two distant squalls were visible there, but there was no predicting when or if they would pass over the Pretty Jane.

  “You’ll have to wait for that, my lads,” he said.

  He made his way aft to the other group around the wheel and binnacle. There was a corpse here still hanging in its lashing—Knyvett. Hornblower took note of the fact, with the terse requiem that perhaps with death overpowering him then might be some excuse for his not attempting to cut away the foremast. Another corpse lay on the deck, am
ong the feet of the six survivors here. Nine men had survived of the crew of sixteen, and apparently four had disappeared entirely, washed overboard during the night, or perhaps during the night before. Hornblower recognised the second mate and the steward; the group, even the second mate, were croaking for water just like the others, and to them Hornblower made the same grim reply.

  “Get those dead men overboard,” he added.

  He took stock of the situation. Looking over the side he could see that Pretty Jane had about three feet of freeboard remaining, as close as he could judge while she was pitching extravagantly in the still-turbulent sea. He was conscious now, as he walked about right aft, of dull thumpings under his feet corresponding to the heave and the roll. That meant floating objects battering on the underside of the deck as they were flung up against it by the water inside surging about. The wind was steady from the north-east—the trade wind had reasserted itself after the temporary interruption of the hurricane; the sky was still gloomy and overcast, but Hornblower could feel in his bones that the barometer must be rising rapidly. Somewhere down to leeward, fifty miles away, a hundred miles, two hundred perhaps, was the chain of the Antilles—he could not guess how far, or in what direction, Pretty Jane had drifted during the storm. There was still a chance for them, or there would be if he could solve the water problem.

  He turned to the tottering crew.

  “Get the hatches up,” he ordered. “You, Mr. Mate, where are the water casks stowed?”

  “Amidships,” said the mate, running a dry tongue over his dry lips at the thought of water. “Aft of the main hatchway.”

  “Let’s see,” said Hornblower.

  Water casks constructed to keep fresh water in would also perhaps keep sea water out. But no cask was ever quite tight; every cask leaked to some extent, and only a small amount of water percolating in would make the contents unfit to drink. And casks that had been churned about for two nights and a day by the surging sea water below decks would probably he stove in, every one of them.

  “It’s only a faint hope,” said Hornblower, anxious to minimise the almost certain disappointment ahead of them; he looked round again to see what chance there was of a rain-squall coming.

  When they looked down the open hatchway they could appreciate the difficulties. The hatchway was jammed with a couple of bales of coir; as they watched them they could see them move uneasily with the motion of the ship. The water that had invaded the ship had floated up the cargo—Pretty Jane was actually supported by the upward pressure of the cargo on the underside of the deck. It was a miracle that she had not broken her back. And there was not a chance of going down there. It would be certain death to venture amid those surging bales. There was a general groan of disappointment from the group round the hatchway.

  But another possibility was present in Hornblower’s mind, and he turned upon the steward.

  “There were green coconuts for the use of the cabin,” he said. “Were there any left?”

  “Yes, sir. Four or five dozen.” The man could hardly speak, with thirst, or weakness, or excitement.

  “In the lazarette?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In a sack?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come along,” said Hornblower.

  Coconuts floated as lightly as coir, and were more watertight than any cask.

  They pried up the after-hatch cover, and looked down at the heaving water below. There was no cargo there; the bulkhead had stood the strain. The distance down to the surface corresponded to the three-foot freeboard remaining to Pretty Jane. There were things to be seen there—almost at once a wooden piggin came floating into sight, and the surface was nearly covered with fragments. Then something else floated into view—a coconut. Apparently the sack had not been fastened—Hornblower had hoped he might find a whole sackful floating there. He leaned far down and scooped it up. As he rose to his feet again with the thing in his hand there was a simultaneous wordless croak from the whole group; a dozen hands stretched out for it, and Hornblower realised that he must maintain order.

  “Stand back!” he said, and when the men still advanced on him he pulled out his sheath knife.

  “Stand back! I’ll kill the first man to lay a hand on me!” he said. He knew himself to be snarling like a wild beast, his teeth bared with the intensity of his feeling, and he knew that he would stand no chance in fight, one against nine.

  “Come now, lads,” he said. “We’ll have to make these last. We’ll ration ‘em out. Fair divs all round. See how many more you can find.”

  The force of his personality asserted itself; so did what remained of the common sense of the crew, and they drew back. Soon three men were kneeling round the hatchway, with the others leaning precariously over them to look over their shoulders.

  “There’s one!” croaked a voice.

  An arm went down and a coconut was scooped up.

  “Give it here,” said Hornblower, and he was obeyed without question; another was already visible, and another after that. They began to pile up at Hornblower’s feet, a dozen, fifteen, twenty, twenty-three of the precious things, before they ceased to appear further.

  “With luck we’ll find some more later,” said Hornblower. He looked round the group, and over at Barbara huddled at the foot of the mainmast. “Eleven of us. Half a one each for today. Another half each tomorrow. And I’ll go without for today.”

  No one questioned his decision—partly, perhaps, because they were all too anxious to wet their lips. The first coconut was chopped open at the end, with desperate care lest a drop be spilt, and the first man took a drink. There was no chance at all of his drinking more than his half, with everyone grouped round him, and the man destined for the other half snatching it from his lips at every sip to see how far down the surface had sunk. The men forced to wait were wild with eagerness, but they had to wait all the same. Hornblower could not trust them to make a division without fighting or waste unless he was supervising. After the last man had drunk he took the remaining half over to Barbara.

  “Drink this, dear,” he said, as at the touch of his hand she blinked awake from her heavy doze.”

  She drank eagerly before she took the nut from her lips.

  “You’ve had some, dear?” she asked.

  “Yes, dear, I’ve had mine,” said Hornblower steadily.

  When he returned to the group they were scraping the thin jelly out from inside the nuts.

  “Don’t damage these shells, lads,” he said. “We’ll need ‘em when we get a rain-squall. And we’ll put those nuts under Her Ladyship’s guard. We can trust her.”

  They obeyed him again.

  “We got two more up while you was away, sir,” volunteered one of the men.

  Hornblower peered down the hatchway at the litter-covered water. Another idea came up into his mind, and he turned to the steward again.

  “Her Ladyship sent a chest of food on board,” he said. “Food in tin boxes. It was put aft here somewhere. Do you know where?”

  “It was right aft, sir. Under the tiller ropes.”

  “M’m,” said Hornblower.

  As he thought about it a sudden motion of the ship tossed the water below up in a fountain through the hatchway. But it ought to be possible to reach that chest, break it open, and bring up its contents. A strong man, able to stay submerged for long periods, could do it, if he did not mind being flung about by the send of the water below.

  “We’d have something better to eat than coconut jelly if we got those boxes up,” he said.

  “I’ll have a go, sir,” said a young seaman, and Hornblower was inexpressibly relieved. He did not want to go down there himself.

  “Good lad,” he said. “Put a line round yourself before you go down. Then we can haul you out if we have to.”

  They were setting about their preparations when Hornblower checked them.

  “Wait. Look for’rard!” he said.

  There was a rain-squall a mile away. Th
ey could see it, a vast pillar of water to windward streaming down from the sky, well defined; the cloud was lower whence it fell, and the surface of the sea which received it was a different grey from the rest. It was moving down towards them—no, not quite. The centre was heading for a point some distance on their beam, as everyone could see after a moment’s study. There was an explosion of blasphemy from the grouped hands as they watched.

  “We’ll get the tail of it, by God!” said the mate.

  “Make the most of it when it comes,” said Hornblower.

  For three long minutes they watched it approach. A cable’s length away it seemed to stand still, even though they could feel the freshening breeze around them. Hornblower had run to Barbara’s side.

  “Rain,” he said.

  Barbara turned her face to the mast, and bent down and fumbled under her skirt. A moment’s struggle brought down a petticoat, and she stepped out of it and did her best to wring the salt damp out of it as they waited. Then came a few drops, and then the full deluge. Precious rain; ten shirts and a petticoat were extended to it, wrung out, re-extended, wrung out again, until the wringings tasted fresh. Everyone could drink, madly, with the rain roaring about them. After two minutes of it Hornblower was shouting to the crew to fill the empty coconut shells, and a few men had sense and public spirit enough to wring their shirts into them before returning to the ecstasy of drinking again—no one wanted to waste a single second of this precious rain. But it passed as quickly as it came; they could see the squall going away over the quarter, as far out of their reach as if it were raining in the Sahara Desert. But the young hands of the crew were laughing and joking now; there was an end to their care and their apathy. There was not one man on board except Hornblower who spared a thought for the possibility, the probability, that this might be the only rain-squall to touch the ship for the next week. There was urgent need for action, even though every joint and muscle in his body ached even though his mind was clouded with weariness. He made himself think; he made himself rally his strength. He cut short the silly laughter, and turned on the man who had volunteered to venture down into the steerage.