Captain Hornblower R. N.

by C. S. Forester

  ‘By the deep nine,’ chanted the leadsman.

  So much for the Dago chart which indicated ten fathoms.

  ‘And a half eight.’

  The channel was shoaling fast. They would have to anchor soon in this case.

  ‘And a half eight’

  Plenty of water still for the present. Hornblower called down to the helmsman, and the Lydia swung to starboard round the slight bend.

  ‘And a half eight.’

  Well enough still. The Lydia steadied on her new course.

  ‘By the mark seven.’

  Hornblower’s eyes searched the channel in an attempt to determine the line of deepest water.

  ‘By the mark seven.’

  An order from Hornblower edged the Lydia towards the further side. Bush quietly sent the men to the braces to trim the yards on the new course.

  ‘And a half eight.’

  That was better.

  ‘By the deep nine.’

  Better still. The Lydia was well up the bay now, and Hornblower could see that the tide was still making. They crept on over the glassy water, with the leadsman chanting monotonously, and the steep conical mountain in the middle of the bay drawing nearer.

  ‘Quarter less eight,’ called the leadsman.

  ‘Are the anchors clear?’ asked Hornblower.

  ‘All clear, sir.’

  ‘By the mark seven.’

  No useful object could be served in going in farther.

  ‘Let go the anchor.’

  The cable roared through the hawsehole while the watch sprang to furl the topsails, and the Lydia swung round to wind and tide while Hornblower descended to the quarterdeck.

  Bush blinked at him as at a miracle worker. Seven weeks after sighting the Horn, Hornblower had brought the Lydia straight in to her destination; he had arrived in the afternoon with the sea breeze and a flowing tide to bring him in, and if there were danger for them here nightfall would soon bring them the ebb tide and the land breeze to take them out again. How much was fluke and how much was calculation Bush could not guess, but as his opinion of Hornblower’s professional merit was far higher than Hornblower himself cherished he was inclined to give him more credit than was really his due.

  ‘Keep the watch at quarters, Mr Bush,’ said Hornblower. ‘Dismiss the watch below.’

  With the ship a mile from any possible danger and cleared for action there was no need to keep every man at his station. The ship broke into a cheerful buzz as the watch below lined the rails to stare out at this land of green jungle and grey rock, but Hornblower was puzzled for a moment, wondering what to do next. The excitement of bringing the ship into an unknown harbour had prohibited his usual careful planning of his next step. His mind was made up for him by a hail from the lookout.

  ‘Deck there! Boat putting out from shore. Two points abaft the starboard beam.’

  A double speck of white was creeping out towards them; Hornblower’s glass resolved it into an open boat under two tiny lateen sails, and as she drew nearer he could see that she was manned by half a dozen swarthy men wearing wide straw hats. She hove-to fifty yards away, and someone stood up in the stern sheets and shouted across the water with hands cupped round his mouth. It was Spanish that he spoke.

  ‘Is that an English ship?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Come on board,’ replied Hornblower. Two years as a prisoner of Spain had given him the opportunity of learning the language – he had long before decided that it was merely on account of this accomplishment that he had been selected for this special service.

  The boat ran alongside and the man who had hailed scrambled lightly up the ladder to the deck. He stopped at the side and looked round him with a certain curiosity at the spotless decks and the rigid order which prevailed on every hand. He wore a sleeveless black waistcoat aflame with gold embroidery; beneath it a dirty white shirt, and on his legs dirty white trousers terminating raggedly just below the knees. His feet were bare, and in a red sash round his waist he carried two pistols and a short heavy sword. He spoke Spanish as his native tongue, but he did not look like a Spaniard; the black hair which hung over his ears was long, lustreless, and lank; there was a tinge of red in his brown complexion and a tinge of yellow in the whites of his eyes. A long thin moustache drooped from his upper lip. His eyes at once picked out the captain, gorgeous in his best coat and cocked hat, and he advanced towards him. It was in anticipation of just such a meeting that Hornblower had donned his best, and he was pleased with his foresight now.

  ‘You are the captain, sir?’ asked the visitor.

  ‘Yes. Captain Horatio Hornblower of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Lydia, at your service. And whom have I the pleasure of welcoming?’

  ‘Manuel Hernandez, lieutenant general of el Supremo.’

  ‘El Supremo?’ asked Hornblower, puzzled. The name was a little difficult to render into English. Perhaps ‘The Almighty’ might be the nearest translation.

  ‘Yes, of el Supremo. You were expected here four months, six months back.’

  Hornblower thought quickly. He dared not disclose the reason of his coming to any unauthorised person, but the fact that this man knew he was expected seemed to indicate that he was a member of Alvarado’s conspiracy.

  ‘It is not to el Supremo that I am ordered to address myself,’ he temporised. Hernandez made a gesture of impatience.

  ‘Our lord el Supremo was known to men until lately as His Excellency Don Julian Maria de Jesus de Alvarado y Moctezuma,’ he said.

  ‘Ah!’ said Hornblower. ‘It is Don Julian that I want to see.’

  Hernandez was clearly annoyed by this casual mention of Don Julian.

  ‘El Supremo,’ he said, laying grave accent on the name, ‘has sent me to bring you into his presence.’

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘He is in his house.’

  ‘And which is his house?’

  ‘Surely it is enough, Captain, that you should know that el Supremo requires your attendance.’

  ‘Do you think so? I would have you know, señor, that a captain of one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships is not accustomed to being at anyone’s beck and call. You can go, if you like, and tell Don Julian so.’

  Hornblower’s attitude indicated that the interview was at an end. Hernandez went through an internal struggle, but the prospect of returning to face el Supremo without bringing the captain with him was not alluring.

  ‘The house is there,’ he said sullenly, at last, pointing across the bay. ‘On the side of the mountain. We must go through the town which is hidden behind the point to get there.’

  ‘Then I shall come. Pardon me for a moment, General.’

  Hornblower turned to Bush, who was standing by with the half puzzled, half admiring expression on his face so frequently to be seen when a man is listening to a fellow countryman talking fluently in an unknown language.

  ‘Mr Bush,’ he said, ‘I am going ashore, and I hope I shall return soon. If I do not, if I am not back nor have written to you by midnight, you must take steps to ensure the safety of the ship. Here is the key of my desk. You have my orders that at midnight you are to read the government’s secret orders to me, and to act on them as you think proper.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Bush. There was anxiety in his face, and Hornblower realised with a thrill of pleasure that Bush was actually worried about his captain’s well being. ‘Do you think – is it safe for you on shore alone, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hornblower, with honest indifference. ‘I must go, that is all.’

  ‘We’ll bring you off, sir, safe and sound, if there is any hanky-panky.’

  ‘You’ll see after the safety of the ship first,’ snapped Hornblower, visualising a mental picture of Bush with a valuable landing party blundering about in the fever-haunted jungles of Central America. Then he turned to Hernandez. ‘I am at your service, señor.’

  IV

  The boat ran softly aground on a beach of golden sand round the p
oint, and her swarthy crew sprang out and hauled the boat up so that Hornblower and Hernandez could step ashore dry shod. Hornblower looked keenly about him. The town came down to the edge of the sand; it was a collection of a few hundred houses of palmetto leaves, only a few of them roofed with tiles. Hernandez led the way up towards it.

  ‘Agua, agua,’ croaked a voice as they approached. ‘Water, for the love of God, water.’

  A man was bound upright to a six foot stake beside the path; his hands were free and his arms thrashed about frantically. His eyes were protruding from his head and it seemed as if his tongue were too big for his mouth, like an idiot’s. A circle of vultures crouched and fluttered round him.

  ‘Who is that?’ asked Hornblower, shocked.

  ‘A man whom el Supremo has ordered to die for want of water,’ said Hernandez. ‘He is one of the unenlightened.’

  ‘He is being tortured to death?’

  ‘This is his second day. He will die when the noontide sun shines on him tomorrow,’ said Hernandez casually. ‘They always do.’

  ‘But what is his crime?’

  ‘He is one of the unenlightened, as I said, Captain.’

  Hornblower resisted the temptation to ask what constituted enlightenment; from the fact that Alvarado had adopted the name of el Supremo he could fairly well guess. And he was weak enough to allow Hernandez to guide him past the unhappy wretch without a protest – he surmised that no expostulation on his part would override the orders given by el Supremo, and an unavailing protest would only be bad for his prestige. He would postpone action until he was face to face with the leader.

  Little miry lanes, filthy and stinking, wound between the palmetto huts. Vultures perched on the roof ridges and squabbled with the mongrel dogs in the lanes. The Indian population were going about their usual avocations without regard for the man dying of thirst within fifty yards of them. They were all brown with a tinge of red, like Hernandez himself; the children ran naked, the women were dressed either in black or in dirty white; the few men to be seen wore only short white trousers to the knees and were naked from the waist up. Half the houses appeared to be shops – open on one side; where were displayed for sale a few handfuls of fruits, or three or four eggs. At one place a black robed woman was bargaining to make a purchase.

  Tethered in the little square in the centre of the town some diminutive horses warred with the flies. Hernandez’ escort made haste to untether two of them and stood at their heads for them to mount. It was a difficult moment for Hornblower; he was not a good horseman, as he knew, and he was wearing his best silk stockings, and he felt he would not cut a dignified figure on horseback with his cocked hat and his sword. There was no help for it, however. He was so clearly expected to mount and ride that he could not draw back. He got his foot into his stirrup and swung up into the saddle, and was relieved to find that the tiny horse was submissive and quiet. He trotted alongside Hernandez, bumping awkwardly. The sweat ran down his face, and every few seconds he had to reach up hurriedly and adjust his cocked hat. A path wound steeply up the hillside out of the town, only wide enough for one horseman at a time, so that Hernandez, with a courteous gesture, preceded him. The escort clattered along fifty yards behind them.

  The narrow path was stifling hot, hemmed by trees and bush on either hand. Insects buzzed round them, biting viciously. Half a mile up the path some lounging sentries came awkwardly to attention, and beyond this point there were other men to be seen – men like the first one Hornblower had encountered, bound to stakes and dying of thirst. There were dead men, too – mere stinking masses of corruption with a cloud of flies which buzzed more wildly as the horses brushed by them. The stench was horrible; gorged vultures, hideous with their naked necks, flopped along the path ahead of the horses, unable to fly, seeking escape into the forest.

  Hornblower was about to say ‘More of the unenlightened, General?’ when he realised the uselessness of comment. It was better to say nothing than to say anything ineffectual. He rode silently through the stink and the flies, and tried to estimate the mentality of a man who would allow rotting corpses to remain, so to speak, on his doorstep.

  The path rose over a shoulder of the mountain, and for a moment Hornblower had a glimpse of the bay below, blue and silver and gold under the evening sun, with the Lydia riding to her anchor in the midst of it. Then suddenly the forest at each side changed as if by magic into cultivated land. Orange groves, and trees laden with fruit, bordered the path, and through the trees Hornblower could gain a glimpse of fields bearing crops. The sun, sinking fast to the horizon, illuminated the golden fruit, and then, as they turned a corner, shone full on a vast white building, stretching low and wide on either hand, before them.

  ‘The house of el Supremo,’ said Hernandez.

  In the patio servants came and took their horses, while Hornblower stiffly dismounted and contemplated the ruin which riding had caused to his best silk stockings. The superior servants who conducted them into the house were dressed in clothes similar in their blend of rags and finery to those Hernandez wore – scarlet and gold above, bare feet and rags below. The most gorgeous of all, whose features seemed to indicate a strong dash of negro blood in his ancestry along with the Indian and the slight trace of European, came up with a worried look on his face.

  ‘El Supremo has been kept waiting,’ he said. ‘Please come this way as quickly as you can.’

  He almost ran before them down a corridor to a door studded with brass. On this he knocked loudly, waited a moment, knocked again, and then threw open the door, bending himself double as he did so. Hornblower, at Hernandez’ gesture, strode into the room, Hernandez behind him, and the major-domo closed the door. It was a long room, lime-washed to a glittering white, whose ceiling was supported by thick wooden beams, painted and carved. Towards the farther end, solitary in the bleak bareness of the room, stood a treble dais, and in a canopied chair on the dais sat the man Hornblower had been sent half round the world to see.

  He did not seem very impressive or dignified; a small swarthy man, restless and fidgety, with piercing black eyes and lank black hair beginning to turn grey. From his appearance one might have guessed at only a small admixture of Indian blood in his European ancestry, and he was dressed in European fashion, in a red coat laced with gold, a white stock, and white breeches and stockings; there were gold buckles on his shoes. Hernandez cringed before him.

  ‘You have been a long time,’ snapped Alvarado. ‘Eleven men have been flogged during your absence.’

  ‘Supremo,’ sighed Hernandez – his teeth were chattering with fright – ‘the captain came instantly on hearing your summons.’

  Alvarado turned his piercing eyes upon Hornblower, who bowed stiffly. His mind was playing with the suspicion that the eleven men who had been flogged had suffered, unaccountably, because of the length of time it took to ride a horse from the beach to the house.

  ‘Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Lydia, at your service, sir,’ he said.

  ‘You have brought me arms and powder?’

  ‘They are in the ship.’

  ‘That is well. You will make arrangements with General Hernandez here for landing them.’

  Hornblower thought of his frigate’s almost empty storerooms; and he had three hundred and eighty men to feed. Moreover, as with every ship’s captain, he was already feeling irritation at dependence on the shore. He would be restless and uncomfortable until the Lydia was fully charged again with food and water and wood and every other necessary, sufficient to take her back round the Horn at least as far as the West Indies or St Helena, if not home.

  ‘I can hand nothing over, sir, until my ship’s needs are satisfied,’ he said. He heard Hernandez drawing his breath sharply at this sacrilegious temporising in the face of orders from el Supremo. The latter’s eyebrows came together; for a moment it seemed likely that he would attempt to impose his imperious will upon the captain, but immediately afterwards his expression cl
eared as he realised the folly of quarrelling with his new ally.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Please make known to General Hernandez what you require, and he will supply you.’

  Hornblower had had dealing with officers of the Spanish services, and knew what they could accomplish in the way of fair promises not carried out, and procrastination and shiftiness and doubledealing. He guessed that Spanish American rebel officers would be proportionately less trustworthy. He decided to make known his wants now, so that there might be a fair chance of seeing a part at least of his demands satisfied in the near future.

  ‘My watercasks must be refilled tomorrow,’ he said.

  Hernandez nodded.

  ‘There is a spring close to where we landed. If you wish, I will have men to help you.’

  ‘Thank you, but that will not be necessary. My ship’s crew will attend to it. Besides water I need—’

  Hornblower’s mind began to total up all the multifarious wants of a frigate seven months at sea.

  ‘Yes, señor?’

  ‘I shall need two hundred bullocks. Two hundred and fifty if they are thin and small. Five hundred pigs. One hundred quintals of salt. Forty tons of ship’s bread, and if biscuit is unobtainable I shall need the equivalent amount of flour, with ovens and fuel provided to bake it. The juice of forty thousand lemons, oranges or limes – I can supply the casks to contain it. Ten tons of sugar. Five tons of tobacco. A ton of coffee. You grow potatoes on this coast, do you not? Then twenty tons of potatoes will suffice.’

  Hernandez’ face had grown longer and longer during this formidable recital.

  ‘But, captain—’ he ventured to protest, but Hornblower cut him short.

  ‘Then for our current needs, while we are in harbour,’ he went on ‘I shall need five bullocks a day, two dozen chickens, as many eggs as you can provide, and sufficient fresh vegetables for the daily consumption of my ship’s company.’