Captain Hornblower R. N.

by C. S. Forester

  The blackness turned to grey. Now the outlines of the ship could be ascertained. The main topsail could be seen clearly. So could the fore topsail. Astern of them now the faintest hint of pink began to show in the greyness of the sky. Now the bulk of the grey waves overside could be seen as well as their white edges. Overhead by now the stars were invisible. The accustomed eye could pierce the greyness for a mile about the ship. And then astern, to the eastward, as the Lydia lifted on a wave, a grain of gold showed over the horizon, vanished, returned, and grew. Soon it became a great slice of the sun, sucking up greedily the faint mist which hung over the sea. Then the whole disk lifted clear, and the miracle of the dawn was accomplished.

  ‘Sail ho!’ came pealing down from the masthead; Hornblower had calculated aright.

  Dead ahead, and ten miles distant, she was wallowing along, her appearance oddly at contrast with the one she had presented yesterday morning. Something had been done to give her a jury rig. A stumpy topmast had been erected where her foremast had stood, raked far back in clumsy fashion; her main topmast had been replaced by a slight spar – a royal mast, presumably – and on this jury rig she carried a queer collection of jibs and foresails and spritsails all badly set – ‘Like old Mother Brown’s washing on the line,’ said Bush – to enable her to keep away from the wind with main course and mizzen topsail and driver set.

  At sight of the Lydia she put her helm over and came round until her masts were in line, heading away from the frigate.

  ‘Making a stern chase of it,’ said Gerard, his glass to his eye. ‘He had enough yesterday, I fancy.’

  Hornblower heard the remark. He could understand Crespo’s psychology better than that. If it were profitable to him to postpone action, and it undoubtably was, he was quite right to continue doing so, even at the eleventh hour. At sea nothing was certain. Something might prevent the Lydia’s coming into action; a squall of wind, the accidental carrying away of a spar, an opportune descent of mist – any one of the myriad things which might happen at sea. There was still a chance that the Natividad might get clear away, and Crespo was exploiting that chance to the last of his ability. That was logical though unheroic, exactly as one might expect of Crespo.

  It was Hornblower’s duty to see that the chance did not occur. He examined the Natividad closely, ran his eyes over the Lydia’s sails to see that every one was drawing, and bethought himself of his crew.

  ‘Send the hands to breakfast,’ he said – every captain of a king’s ship took his men into action with full bellies if possible.

  He remained, pacing up and down the quarterdeck, unable to keep himself still any longer. The Natividad might be running away, but he knew well that she would fight hard enough when he caught her up. Those smashing twenty-four pounders which she carried on her lower deck were heavy metal against which to oppose the frail timbers of a frigate. They had wrought enough damage yesterday – he could hear the melancholy clanking of the pumps keeping down the water which leaked through the holes they had made; that clinking sound had continued without a break since yesterday. With a jury mizzen mast, and leaking like a sieve despite the sail under her bottom, with sixty-four of her attenuated crew hors de combat, the Lydia was in no condition to fight a severe battle. Defeat for her and death for him might be awaiting them across the strip of blue sea.

  Polwheal suddenly appeared beside him on the quarterdeck, a tray in his hand.

  ‘Your breakfast, sir,’ he said, ‘seeing as how we’ll be in action when your usual time comes.’

  As he proffered the tray Hornblower suddenly realised how much he wanted that steaming cup of coffee. He took it eagerly and drank thirstily before he remembered that he must not display human weakness of appetite before his servant.

  ‘Thank you, Polwheal,’ he said, sipping discreetly.

  ‘An’ ’er la’ships’s compliments, sir, an’ please may she stay where she is in the orlop when the action is renooed.’

  ‘Ha – h’m,’ said Hornblower, staring at him, thrown out of his stride by this unexpected question. All through the night he had been trying to forget the problem of Lady Barbara, as a man tries to forget an aching tooth. The orlop meant that Lady Barbara would be next to the wounded, separated from them only by a canvas screen – no place for a woman. But for that matter neither was the cable tier. The obvious truth was that there was no place for a woman in a frigate about to fight a battle.

  ‘Put her wherever you like as long as she is not in reach of shot,’ he said, irritably.

  ‘Aye aye, sir. An’ ’er la’ship told me to say that she wished you the best of good fortune today, sir, an’ – an’ – she was confident that you would meet with the success you – you deserve, sir.’

  Polwheal stumbled over this long speech in a manner which revealed that he had not been quite as successful in learning it fluently as he wished.

  ‘Thank you, Polwheal,’ said Hornblower, gravely. He remembered Lady Barbara’s face as she looked up at him from the main deck yesterday. It was clean cut and eager – like a sword, was the absurd simile which came up in his mind.

  ‘Ha – h’m,’ said Hornblower angrily. He was aware that his expression had softened, and he feared lest Polwheal should have noticed it, at a moment when he knew about whom he was thinking. ‘Get below and see that her ladyship is comfortable.’

  The hands were pouring up from breakfast now; the pumps were clanking with a faster rhythm now that a fresh crew was at work upon them. The guns’ crews were gathered about their guns, and the few idlers were crowded on the forecastle eagerly watching the progress of the chase.

  ‘Do you think the wind’s going to hold, sir?’ asked Bush, coming on to the quarterdeck like a bird of ill omen. ‘Seems to me as if the sun’s swallowing it.’

  There was no doubting the fact that as the sun climbed higher in the sky the wind was diminishing in force. The sea was still short, steep, and rough, but the Lydia’s motion over it was no longer light and graceful. She was pitching and jerking inelegantly deprived of the steady pressure of a good sailing wind. The sky overhead was fast becoming of a hard metallic blue.

  ‘We’re overhauling ’em fast,’ said Hornblower, staring fixedly at the chase so as to ignore these portents of the elements.

  ‘Three hours and we’re up to ’em,’ said Bush. ‘If the wind only holds.’

  It was fast growing hot. The heat which the sun was pouring down on them was intensified by its contrast with the comparative coolness of the night before. The crew had begun to seek the strips of shade under the gangways, and were lying there wearily. The steady clanking of the pumps seemed to sound louder now that the wind was losing its force. Hornblower suddenly realised that he would feel intensely weary if he permitted himself to think about it. He stood stubborn on the quarterdeck with the sun beating on his back, every few moments raising his telescope to stare at the Natividad while Bush fussed about the trimming of the sails as the breeze began to waver.

  ‘Steer small, blast you,’ he growled at the quartermaster at the wheel as the ship’s head fell away in the trough of a wave.

  ‘I can’t, sir, begging your pardon,’ was the reply. ‘There aren’t enough wind.’

  It was true enough. The wind had died away so that the Lydia could not maintain the two knot speed which was sufficient to give her rudder power to act.

  ‘We’ll have to wet the sails. Mr Bush, see to it, if you please,’ said Hornblower.

  One division of one watch was roused up to this duty. A soaking wet sail will hold air which would escape if it were dry. Whips were rove through the blocks on the yards, and sea water hoisted up and poured over the canvas. So hot was the sun and so rapid the evaporation that the buckets had to be kept continually in action. To the clanging of the pumps was now added the shrilling of the sheaves in the blocks. The Lydia crept, still plunging madly, over the tossing sea and under the glaring sky.

  ‘She’s boxing the compass now,’ said Bush with a jerk of his thumb at the
distant Natividad. ‘She can’t compare with this beauty. She won’t find the new rig of hers any help, neither.’

  The Natividad was turning idly backwards and forwards on the waves, showing sometimes her broadside and sometimes her three masts in line, unable to steer any course in the light air prevailing. Bush looked complacently up at his new mizzen mast, a pyramid of canvas, and then across at the swaying Natividad, less than five miles away. The minutes crept by, their passage marked only by the monotonous noises of the ship. Hornblower stood in the scorching sunlight, fingering his telescope.

  ‘Here comes the wind again, by God!’ said Bush, suddenly. It was sufficient wind to make the ship heel a little, and to summon a faint harping from the rigging. ‘ ’Vast heaving with those buckets, there.’

  The Lydia crept steadily forward, heaving and plunging to the music of the water under her bows, while the Natividad grew perceptibly nearer.

  ‘It will reach him quickly enough. There! What did I say?’

  The Natividad’s sails filled as the breeze came down to her. She straightened upon her course.

  ‘’Twon’t help him as much as it helps us. God, if it only holds,’ commented Bush.

  The breeze wavered and then renewed itself. The Natividad was hull-up now across the water when a wave lifted her. Another hour – less than an hour – and she would be in range.

  ‘We’ll be trying long shots at her soon,’ said Bush.

  ‘Mr Bush,’ said Hornblower, spitefully, ‘I can judge of the situation without the assistance of your comments, profound though they be.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Bush, hurt. He flushed angrily for a moment until he noticed the anxiety in Hornblower’s tired eyes, and then stumped away to the opposite rail to forget his rage.

  As if by way of comment the big main-course flapped loudly, once, like a gun. The breeze was dying away as motivelessly as it had begun. And the Natividad still held it; she was holding her course steadily, drawing away once more, helped by the fluky wind. Here in the tropical Pacific one ship can have a fair wind while another two miles away lies becalmed, just as the heavy sea in which they were rolling indicated that last night’s gale was still blowing, over the horizon, at the farther side of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Hornblower stirred uneasily in the blazing sun. He feared lest he should see the Natividad sail clean away from him; the wind had died away so much that there was no point in wetting the sails, and the Lydia was rolling and sagging about aimlessly now to the send of the waves. Ten minutes passed before he was reassured by the sight of the Natividad’s similar behaviour.

  There was not a breath of wind now. The Lydia rolled wildly, to the accompaniment of a spasmodic creaking of woodwork, flapping of sails, and clattering of blocks. Only the clangour of the pumps sounded steadily through the hot air. The Natividad was four miles away now – a mile and a half beyond the farthest range of any of the Lydia’s guns.

  ‘Mr Bush,’ said Hornblower. ‘We will tow with the boats. Have the launch and the cutter hoisted out.’

  Bush looked doubtful for a moment. He feared that two could play at that game. But he realised – as Hornblower had realised before him – that the Lydia’s graceful hull would be more amenable to towing than the Natividad’s ungainly bulk, even without counting the possibility that yesterday’s action might have left her with no boat left that would swim. It was Hornblower’s duty to try every course that might bring his ship into action with the enemy.

  ‘Boats away!’ roared Harrison. ‘Cutter’s crew, launch’s crew.’

  The pipes of his mates endorsed the orders. The hands tailed on to the tackles, and each boat in turn was swayed up into the air, and lowered outboard, the boats’ crews fending off as the Lydia rolled in the swell.

  There began for the boats’ crews a period of the most exhausting and exasperating labour. They would tug and strain at the oars, moving the ponderous boats over the heaving waves, until the tow ropes tightened with a jerk as the strain came upon them. Then, tug as they would, they would seem to make no progress at all, the oar blades foaming impotently through the blue water, until the Lydia consented to crawl forward a little and the whole operation could be repeated. The heaving waves were a hindrance to them – sometimes every man on one side of a boat would catch a simultaneous crab so that the boat would spin round and become a nuisance to the other one – and the Lydia, so graceful and willing when under sail, was a perfect bitch when being towed.

  She yawed and she sagged, falling away in the trough on occasions so much that the launch and the cutter were dragged, with much splashing from the oars, stern first after her wavering bows, and then changing her mind and heaving forward so fast after the two ropes that the men, flinging their weight upon the oar looms in expectation of a profitless pull, were precipitated backwards with the ease of progression while in imminent danger of being run down.

  They sat naked on the thwarts while the sweat ran in streams down their faces and chests, unable – unlike their comrades at the pumps – to forget their fatigues in the numbness of monotonous work when every moment called for vigilance and attention, tugging painfully away, their agonies of thirst hardly relieved by the allowance of water doled out to them by the petty officers in the sternsheets, tugging away until even hands calloused by years of pulling and hauling cracked and blistered so that the oars were agony to touch.

  Hornblower knew well enough the hardship they were undergoing. He went forward and looked down at the toiling seamen, knowing perfectly well that his own body would not be able to endure that labour for more than half an hour at most. He gave orders for an hourly relief at the oars, and he did his best to cheer the men on. He felt an uneasy sympathy for them – three-quarters of them had never been sailors until this commission, and had no desire to be sailors either, but had been swept up by the all-embracing press seven months ago. Hornblower was always able (rather against his will) to do what most of his officers failed to do – he saw his crew not as topmen or hands, but as what they had been before the press caught them, stevedores, wherry men, porters.

  He had waggoners and potters – he had even two draper’s assistants and a printer among his crew; men snatched without notice from their families and their employment and forced into this sort of labour, on wretched food, in hideous working conditions, haunted always by the fear of the cat or of Harrison’s rattan, and with the chance of death by drowning or by hostile action to seal the bargain. So imaginative an individualist as Hornblower was bound to feel sympathy with them even when he felt he ought not, especially as he (in common with a few other liberals) found himself growing more and more liberal-minded with the progress of years. But to counter-balance this weakness of his there was his restless nervous anxiety to finish off well any task he had set himself to do. With the Natividad in sight he could not rest until he had engaged her, and when a captain of a ship cannot rest his crew certainly cannot – aching backs or bleeding hands notwithstanding.

  By careful measurement with his sextant of the subtended angles he was able to say with certainty at the end of an hour that the efforts of the boats’ crews had dragged the Lydia a little nearer to the Natividad, and Bush, who had taken the same measurements, was in agreement. The sun rose higher and the Lydia crept inch by inch towards the enemy.

  ‘Natividad’s hoisting out a boat, sir,’ hailed Knyvett from the foretop.

  ‘How many oars?’

  ‘Twelve, sir, I think. They’re taking the ship in tow.’

  ‘And they’re welcome,’ scoffed Bush. ‘Twelve oars won’t move that old tub of a Natividad very far.’

  Hornblower glared at him and Bush retired to his own side of the quarterdeck again; he had forgotten his captain was in this unconversational mood. Hornblower was fretting himself into a fever. He stood in the glaring sun while the heat was reflected up into his face from the deck under his feet. His shirt chaffed him where he sweated. He felt caged, like a captive beast, within the limitations of practical details. T
he endless clanking of the pumps, the rolling of the ship, the rattle of the rigging, the noise of the oars in the rowlocks, were driving him mad, as though he could scream (or weep) at the slightest additional provocation.

  At noon he changed the men at the oars and pumps, and sent the crew to dinner – he remembered bitterly that he had already made them breakfast in anticipation of immediate action. At two bells he began to wonder whether the Natividad might be within extreme long range, but the mere fact of wondering told him that it was not the case – he knew his own sanguine temperament too well, and he fought down the temptation to waste powder and shot. And then, as he looked for the thousandth time through his telescope, he suddenly saw a disk of white appear on the high stern of the Natividad. The disk spread and expanded into a thin cloud, and six seconds after its first appearance the dull thud of the shot reached his ears. The Natividad was evidently willing to try the range.

  ‘Natividad carries two long eighteens aft on the quarterdeck,’ said Gerard to Bush in Hornblower’s hearing. ‘Heavy metal for stern chasers.’

  Hornblower knew it already. He would have to run the gauntlet of those two guns for an hour, possibly, before he could bring the brass nine pounder on his forecastle into action. Another puff of smoke from the Natividad, and this time Hornblower saw a spout of water rise from the breast of a wave half a mile ahead. But at that long range and on that tossing sea it did not mean that the Lydia was still half a mile beyond the Natividad’s reach. Hornblower heard the next shot arrive, and saw a brief fountain of water rise no more than fifty yards from the Lydia’s starboard quarter.