Captain Hornblower R. N.

by C. S. Forester

  ‘Stop that!’ screamed Hornblower – the necessity of having to give such an order sent his voice up to the same pitch as that of the miserable wretch in his agony – ‘Cut that bloody wreckage away! Mr Clay, keep them at work!’

  A cable’s length away, over the grey topped waves the Natividad was slowly wearing round to return and deal a fresh blow at her helpless opponent. It was lucky that the Natividad was an unhandy ship, like all those stumpy fourth rates – it gave Hornblower more time between the broadsides to try and get the Lydia into a condition so that she could face her enemy again.

  ‘Foretop, there! Mr Galbraith! get the headsails in.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  The absence of the fore-topmast-staysail and storm jib would balance to some extent the loss of the mizzen topsail and driver. He might, by juggling with the helm, get the Lydia to lie to the wind a trifle then, and hit back at his big opponent. But there was no hope of doing so while all this wreckage was trailing astern like a vast sea anchor. Until that was cut away she could only lie helpless, dead before the wind, suffering her enemy’s blows in silence. A glance showed him that the Natividad had worn round now, and was heading to cross their stern again.

  ‘Hurry up!’ he screamed to the axe men. ‘You, there, Holroyd, Tooms, get down into the mizzen chains.’

  He suddenly realised how high-pitched and hysterical his voice had become. At all costs he must preserve before Clay and the men his reputation for imperturbability. He forced himself convulsively, to look casually at the Natividad as she came plunging down on them again, wicked with menace; he made himself grin, and shrug his shoulders, and speak in his normal voice.

  ‘Don’t mind about her, my lads. One thing at a time. Cut this wreckage away first, and we’ll give the Dagoes their bellyful after.’

  The men hacked with renewed force at the tough tangles of cordage. Something gave way, and a new extravagant plunge on the part of the Lydia as a huge wave lifted her stern caused the wreckage to run out a little farther before catching again, this time on the mizzen stay, which, sweeping the deck, tumbled three men off their feet. Hornblower seized one of the fallen axes, and fell desperately on the rope as it sawed back and forth with the roll of the ship. From the tail of his eye he saw the Natividad looming up, but he could spare no attention for her. For the moment she represented merely a tiresome interruption to his work, not a menace to his life.

  Then once more he was engulfed in the smoke and din of the Natividad’s broadside. He felt the wind of shot round him, and heard the scream of splinters. The cries of the man under the carronade ceased abruptly, and beneath his feet he could feel the crash as the shot struck home in the Lydia’s vitals. But he was mesmerised by the necessity of completing his task. The mizzen stay parted under his axe; he saw another rope draw up taut, and cut that as well – the pattern of the seams of the deck planking at that point caught his notice – felt another severed and flick past him, and then knew that the Lydia was free from the wreckage. Almost at his feet lay young Clay, sprawled upon the deck, but Clay had no head. He noted that as an interesting phenomenon, like the pattern of the deck seams.

  A sudden breaking wave drenched him with spray; he swept the water from his eyes and looked about him. Most of the men who had been on the quarterdeck with him were dead, marines, seamen, officers. Simmonds had what was left of the marines lined up against the taffrail, ready to reply with musketry to the Natividad’s twenty-four pounders. Bush was in the main top, and Hornblower suddenly realised that to him was due the cutting of the mizzen top mast stay which had finally freed the ship. At the wheel stood the two quartermasters, rigid, unmoving, gazing straight ahead; they were not the same as the men who had stood there when the action began, but the iron discipline of the Navy and its unbending routine had kept the wheel manned through the vicissitudes of the battle.

  Out on the starboard quarter the Natividad was wearing round again. Hornblower realised with a little thrill that this time he need not submit meekly to the punishment she was determined to adminster. It called for an effort to make himself work out the problem of how to work the ship round, but he forced his mind to concentrate on it, comparing the proportional leverages of the fore and main topsails, and visualising in his mind the relative positions of the centre of the ship and the mainmast – luckily this latter was stepped a little aft.

  ‘Man the braces, there!’ he called. ‘Mr Bush, we’ll try and bring her to the wind.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  He looked back at the Natividad, plunging and heaving towards them.

  ‘Hard-a-starboard!’ he snapped at the quartermaster. ‘Stand to your guns, men.’

  The crew of the Natividad, looking along their guns, suddenly saw the Lydia’s battered stern slowly turn from them. For a fleeting half minute, while the English frigate held her way, the quartermasters straining at her wheel were able to bring the wind abeam of her as the Natividad swept by.

  ‘Fire!’ yelled Gerard – his voice, too, was cracking with excitement.

  The Lydia heaved again with the recoil of the guns, and the smoke billowed over her deck, and through the smoke came the iron hail of the Natividad’s broadside.

  ‘Give it her again, lads!’ screamed Gerard. ‘There goes her foremast! Well done, lads.’

  The guns’ crews cheered madly, even though their two hundred voices sounded feeble against the gale. In that sudden flurry of action the enemy had been hard hit. Through the smoke Hornblower saw the Natividad’s fore-mast shrouds suddenly slacken, tauten again, slacken once more, and then her whole foremast bowed forward; her main topmast whipped and then followed it, and the whole vanished over the side. The Natividad turned instantly up into the wind, while at the same time the Lydia’s head fell off as she turned downwind despite the efforts of the men at the wheel. The gale screamed past Hornblower’s ears as the strip of grey sea which divided the ships widened more and more. One last gun went off on the main deck, and then the two ships lay pitching upon the turbulent sea, each unable to harm the other.

  Hornblower wiped the spray slowly from his eyes again. This battle was like some long drawn nightmare, where one situation of fantastic unreality merged into the next. He felt as if he were in a nightmare, too – he could think clearly, but only by compelling himself to do so, as though it was unnatural to him.

  The gap between the ships had widened to a full half mile, and was widening further. Through his glass he could see the Natividad’s forecastle black with men struggling with the wreck of the foremast. The ship which was first ready for action again would win. He snapped the glass shut and turned to face all the problems which he knew were awaiting his immediate solution.

  XV

  The captain of the Lydia stood on his quarterdeck while his ship, hove to under the main staysail and three-reefed main topsail, pitched and wallowed in the fantastic sea. It was raining now, with such violence that nothing could be seen a hundred yards away, and there were deluges of spray sweeping the deck, too, so that he and his clothes were as wet as if he had been swimming in the sea, but he was not aware of it. Everyone was appealing to him for orders – first lieutenant, gunner, boatswain, carpenter, surgeon, purser. The ship had to be made fit to fight again, even though there was every doubt as to whether she would even live through the storm which shrieked round her. It was the acting-surgeon who was appealing to him at the moment.

  ‘But what am I to do, sir?’ he said pathetically, white faced, wringing his hands. This was Laurie, the purser’s steward, who had been appointed acting-surgeon when Hankey the surgeon died. He had fifty wounded down in the grim dark cockpit, maddened with pain, some with limbs torn off, and all of them begging for the assistance which he had no idea of how to give.

  ‘What are you to do, sir?’ mimicked Hornblower scornfully, beside himself with exasperation at this incompetence. ‘After two months in which to study your duties you have to ask what to do!’

  Laurie only blenched a little more
at this, and Hornblower had to make himself be a little helpful and put some heart in this lily-livered incompetent.

  ‘See here, Laurie,’ he said, in more kindly fashion. ‘Nobody expects miracles of you. Do what you can. Those who are going to die you must make easy. You have my orders to reckon every man who has lost a limb as one of those. Give them laudanum – twenty-five drops a man, or more if that won’t ease them. Pretend to bandage ’em. Tell ’em they’re certain to get better and draw a pension for the next fifty years. As for the others, surely your mother wit can guide you. Bandage ’em until the bleeding stops. You have rags enough to bandage the whole ship’s crew. Put splints on the broken bones. Don’t move any man more than is necessary. Keep every man quiet. A tot of rum to every wounded man, and promise ’em another at eight bells if they lie still. I never knew a Jack yet who wouldn’t go through hell fire for a tot of rum. Get below, man, and see to it.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Laurie could only think of his own responsibility and duty; he scuttled away below without a thought for the hell-turned-loose on the main deck. Here one of the twelve-pounders had come adrift, its breechings shot away by the Natividad’s last broadside. With every roll of the ship it was rumbling back and forth across the deck, a ton and a half of insensate weight, threatening at any moment to burst through the ship’s side. Galbraith, with twenty men trailing ropes, and fifty men carrying mats and hammocks, was trailing it cautiously from point to point in the hope of tying it or smothering it into helplessness. As Hornblower watched them, a fresh heave of the ship canted it round and sent it thundering in a mad charge straight at them. They parted wildly before it, and it charged through them, its trucks squealing like a forest of pigs, and brought up with a shattering crash against the mainmast.

  ‘Now’s your chance, lads! Jump to it!’ yelled Hornblower.

  Galbraith, running forward, risked limb and life to pass a rope’s end through an eye tackle. Yet he had no sooner done it than a new movement of the ship swung the gun round and threatened to waste his effort.

  ‘Hammocks, there!’ shouted Hornblower. ‘Pile them quick! Mr Galbraith, take a turn with that line round the mainmast. Whipple, put your rope through the breeching ring. Quick, man! Now take a turn!’

  Hornblower had accomplished what Galbraith had failed to do – had correlated the efforts of the men in the nick of time so that now the gun was bound and helpless. There only remained the ticklish job of manoeuvring it back to its gun port and securing it with fresh breechings. Howell the carpenter was at his elbow now, waiting until he could spare a moment’s attention from this business with the gun.

  ‘Four feet an’ more in the well, sir,’ said Howell, knuckling his forehead. ‘Nearer five, an’ making fast as well as I could tell. Can I have some more men for the pumps, sir?’

  ‘Not until that gun’s in place,’ said Hornblower, grimly. ‘What damage have you found?’

  ‘Seven shot holes, sir, below water line. There’s no pluggin’ of ’em not with this sea runnin’, sir.’

  ‘I know that,’ snapped Hornblower. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘All of ’em for’rard, somehow, sir. One clean through the third frame timber, starboard side. Two more—’

  ‘I’ll have a sail forthered under the bottom as soon as there are enough men to spare. Your men at the pumps will have to continue pumping. Report to the first lieutenant’s party with your mates now.’

  The first lieutenant and the boatswain were busily engaged upon the duty of erecting a jury mizzen mast. Already the boatswain had come ruefully to the captain with the information that half the spare spars secured between the gangways had been damaged by shot, but there was a main topsail yard left which would serve. But to sway up its fifty-five foot length into a vertical position was going to be a tricky business – hard enough in a smooth sea, dangerous and prolonged out here with the Pacific running mad. In harbour an old ship – a sheer hulk – would be brought alongside, and would employ the two immense spars which constituted her sheers as a crane in which to lift the new mast vertically into the ship. Here there was nothing of the sort available, and the problem of raising the spar might seem insoluble, but Bush and Harrison between them were tackling it with all the resource and energy the navy could display.

  Happily there was that stump of the old mizzen mast left – its nine feet of length relieved them of the tiresome complication of steeping the new mast, which they proposed instead merely to fish to the stump. The after part of the ship was alive with working parties each intent on its own contribution to the work in hand. With tackles and rollers the spar had been eased aft until its butt was solidly against the stump of the mizzen mast. Harrison was now supervising the task of noosing shrouds to the new masthead; after that he would have to prepare the masthead to receive the cap and the trussel trees which the carpenter and his mates would now have to make.

  In the mizzen chains on either side Harrison’s mates were supervising the efforts of two other parties engaged upon attaching the other ends of the shrouds to the channels, where with dead eyes and lanyards the shrouds could be kept taut as the mast rose. Bush was attending to the preparation of the jears and tackle at the mainmast which would help to accomplish a great part of the lift; the sailmaker and his mates were rousing out and adapting sails to fit the new mast, gaff, and yards. Another party of men under the gunner was engaged on the difficult task of remounting the dismounted quarterdeck carronade, while Gerard was aloft with the topmen attending to the repair of the damage done to the standing and running rigging of the remaining masts. All this was in the rain, with the wind shrieking round them; and yet the rain and the wind seemed warm to the touch, so oppressively hot was it. The half-naked seamen, slaving at their task, were running wet with sweat as well as with rainwater and spray. The ship was a nightmare of insane yet ordered activity.

  A sudden flurry of rain heralded the arrival of a clear spell. Braced upon the heaving deck Hornblower set his glass to his eye; the Natividad was visible again, hull down now, across the tossing grey-flecked sea. She was hove-to as well, looking queerly lopsided in her partially dismasted condition. Hornblower’s glass could discover no sign of any immediate replacement of the missing spars; he thought it extremely probable that there was nothing left in the ship to serve as jury masts. In that case as soon as the Lydia could carry enough sail aft to enable her to beat to windward he would have the Natividad at his mercy – as long as the sea was not running high enough to make gunnery impossible.

  He glowered round the horizon; at present there was no sign of the storm abating, and it was long past noon. With the coming of night he might lose the Natividad altogether, and nightfall would give his enemy a further respite in which to achieve repairs.

  ‘How much longer, Mr Harrison?’ he rasped.

  ‘Not long now, sir. Nearly ready, sir.’

  ‘You’ve had long enough and to spare for a simple piece of work like that. Keep the men moving, there.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Hornblower knew that the men were cursing him under their breath; he did not know they admired him as well, as men will admire a hard master despite themselves.

  Now it was the cook come to report to him – the cook and his mates had been the only men in the ship who could be spared for the grisly work allotted to them.

  ‘All ready, sir,’ he said.

  Without a word Hornblower strode forward down the starboard side gangway, taking his prayer book from his pocket. The fourteen dead were there, shrouded in their hammocks, two to a grating, a roundshot sewn into the foot of each hammock. Hornblower blew a long blast upon his silver whistle, and activity ceased on board while he read, compromising between haste and solemnity, the office for the burial of the dead at sea.

  ‘We therefore commit their bodies to the deep—’

  The cook and his mates tilted each grating in turn, and the bodies fell with sullen splashes overside while Hornblower read the concluding words of
the service. As soon as the last words were said he blew his whistle again and all the bustle and activity recommenced. He grudged those few minutes taken from the work bitterly, but he knew that any unceremonious pitching overboard of the dead would be resented by his men, who set all the store by forms and ceremonies to be expected of the uneducated.

  And now there was something else to plague him. Picking her way across the maindeck below him came Lady Barbara, the little negress clinging to her skirts.

  ‘My orders were for you to stay below, ma’am,’ he shouted to her. ‘This deck is no place for you.’

  Lady Barbara looked round the seething deck and then tilted her chin to answer him.

  ‘I can see that without having it pointed out to me,’ she said, and then, softening her manner: ‘I have no intention of obstructing, Captain. I was going to shut myself in my cabin.’