Captain Hornblower R. N.

by C. S. Forester

  ‘I think,’ he said at length, ‘that it might be unwise to trust so entirely to the co-operation of the Spanish army.’

  ‘There are seven thousand men ready to march,’ said Leighton. ‘From Olot to Rosas is no more than thirty miles.’

  ‘But Gerona lies between.’

  ‘Colonel Villena assures me that there are bye roads round the town passable to an army without cannon. He himself, as you know, has made the journey four times.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hornblower. Sending a single horseman was a different proposition entirely from marching seven thousand men by mountain paths. ‘But can we be certain of seven thousand men? And can we be sure that they will come?’

  ‘Four thousand men would suffice for the siege,’ said Leighton. ‘And I have General Rovira’s definite promise to march.’

  ‘Still they might not come,’ said Hornblower. He realised it was hopeless to try and argue with a man who had not had personal experience of Spanish promises, and who had not imagination enough to visualise the difficulties of arranging combined action between forces separated by thirty miles of mountainous country. The tell-tale groove had appeared between Leighton’s eyebrows.

  ‘What alternative do you suggest then, Captain Hornblower?’ he asked, impatience evident at having thus to reopen the whole question.

  ‘I should suggest that the squadron confines itself to actions within its own strength, without having to depend on Spanish help. The coast battery at Llanza has been re-established. Why not try that? Six hundred men ought to be able to storm it.’

  ‘My instructions,’ said Leighton ponderously, ‘are to the effect that I must act in the closest co-operation with the Spanish forces. Rosas has a garrison of no more than two thousand men, and Rovira has seven thousand only thirty miles away. The main body of the French Seventh, Corps is to the southward of Barcelona – we have a week at least in which to effect something against Rosas. From the squadron we can supply heavy guns, men to work them, and more men to head a storming column when we have effected a breach. It appears to me to be an eminently suitable opportunity for combined action, and I quite fail to understand your objections, Captain Hornblower. But perhaps they are not so cogent, now?’

  ‘I did no more than to state them at your request, sir.’

  ‘I did not ask for objections, but for comments, or helpful suggestions. I looked for more loyalty from you, Captain Hornblower.’

  That made the whole argument pointless. If Leighton only wanted servile agreement there was no sense in continuing. He had clearly made up his mind, and on the face of it he had a very strong case. Hornblower knew that his objections were more instinctive than reasoned, and a captain could not very well put forward a plea of greater experience to an admiral.

  ‘I can assure you of my loyalty, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Captain Bolton? Captain Elliott? No comments? Then we can start work at once. Mr Sylvester will let you have your orders in writing. I trust that we are on the eve of the most resounding success the east coast of Spain has seen since this Spanish war began.’

  The fall of Rosas would indeed be a resounding success if it could be achieved. As a town with practicable communication with the sea it could hardly be retaken by the French now that there was a strong English squadron on the spot to sustain it. It would be a constant threat to the French communications, a base where Spanish armies from anywhere in the Peninsula could be thrown on shore, of such importance that the Seventh Corps would be bound to cease their attempts at the conquest of Catalonia and concentrate all their strength on the task of retaking it or observing it. But it was Spanish information that there was no French field army within reach. It was a Spanish promise to bring Rovira down from Olot to effect a siege, and a Spanish promise to have transport animals ready to drag the siege train from the landing point.

  But with Leighton set upon it, there was nothing for it but to go through with the affair wholeheartedly. If everything went right, they would win a great success, and although Hornblower had never yet heard of a combined operation of war in which everything went right, he could still hope for one, and draft his arrangements for the landing of the siege train from the fleet in accordance with that hope.

  Two nights later the squadron came gliding in the early darkness, with the hills and cliffs of the Cape Creux peninsula looming faintly in the distance, to drop anchor together off the sand cove beside Selva de Mar which had been agreed upon as the best place for landing. Four miles to the westward was the battery at Llanza; five miles to the east was the battery on the end of Cape Creux, and six miles due southward, across the root of the long peninsula of which Cape Creux forms the tip, lay the town of Rosas.

  ‘Good luck, sir,’ said Bush, looming up in the darkness of the quarterdeck as Hornblower made ready to go down into his barge.

  ‘Thank you, Bush,’ answered Hornblower. The punctilious ‘Mr’ could be dropped occasionally in unofficial speeches of this sort. But the fact that he found his hand sought and gripped by Bush’s large horny one was an indication that Bush took the most serious view of the impending operation.

  The barge took him quickly over the placid water which reflected the numberless stars overhead; soon the noise of the gentle waves breaking on the sandy beach was louder than the subdued rumbling of the landing force in process of embarkation. A sharp challenge came from the beach to the approaching boat; it was pleasant to hear that it was worded in Spanish, which made it appear much less likely that it was a French force posted there to oppose a landing, and probable that it was the party of guerilleros who had been promised. Hornblower stepped ashore, and a group of cloaked figures, just visible in the starlight, came down the beach towards them.

  ‘The English captain?’ asked one of them in Spanish.

  ‘Captain Horatio Hornblower, at your service.’

  ‘I am Colonel Juan Claros, of the third tercio of Catalan migueletes. I bid you welcome in the name of Colonel Rovira.’

  ‘Thank you. How many men have you here?’

  ‘My tercio. That is to say a thousand men.’

  ‘How many animals?’

  ‘Fifty horses and a hundred mules.’

  Villena had promised that all northern Catalonia would be swept for draught animals for the siege train. There were four miles of hill paths and a mile of flat plain to be covered between here and Rosas – it would take fifty horses to drag one of the two and a half ton twenty-four pounders over rough country. Had there been fewer animals than this Hornblower would have refused to move, but the Spaniards had provided the barest minimum necessary.

  ‘Take the barge back,’ said Hornblower to Longley. ‘The landing can proceed.’

  Then he turned again to Claros.

  ‘Where is Colonel Rovira?’

  ‘He is over beyond Castellon, closing in on Rosas.’

  ‘What is his force?’

  ‘He has every Spaniard able to carry arms in northern Catalonia, Captain, except for my tercio. Seven thousand men at least.’

  ‘H’m.’

  That was exactly according to plan. The army was to be under the walls at dawn, and to be joined as quickly as possible by the siege train, so that the battering could start without delay immediately upon the alarm being given. There was only the barest minimum of time available to reduce Rosas before the main French army could come up from Barcelona. Hornblower felt that he must make every effort to carry out his part of the programme, since the Spaniards were adhering so closely to theirs.

  ‘Have you any patrol watching Rosas?’ asked Hornblower.

  ‘A squadron of regular cavalry. They will give the alarm if any sortie comes from the fortress.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  He would not be able to get the guns far from the beach before dawn, and by that time Rovira would have hemmed Rosas in, while any hitch would be reported by the cavalry. It was a good piece of organisation. Hornblower felt he had misjudged the Spaniards, or perhaps these Catalan irregulars were
better soldiers than the ordinary Spanish army – which was not unlikely.

  The steady splash of oars heralded the approach of the boats of the squadron; the leading ones were up to the beach and the men in them came tumbling out, stirring up a faint phosphorescence in the water. The white crossbelts of the marines showed up in startling contrast with their red coats, which appeared black in the faint light.

  ‘Major Laird!’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Take a party to the top of the cliff. Post your pickets where you think best, but remember your orders. Allow nobody out of earshot.’

  Hornblower wanted to have a solid disciplined force out as a screen in front of him, not trusting Spanish precautions against surprise, but in darkness, and with three languages – Spanish, Catalan, and English – in use, he did not want to risk any muddle or misunderstanding. It was the sort of minor technical difficulty which could not be appreciated by an admiral without experience. The long boats with the guns were grounding far out in the shallows. Men were already hauling into position the rough landing pontoon of spars lashed into rafts, the outer sections buoyed up by casks, which Hornblower had had prepared. Cavendish, the first lieutenant of the Pluto, was doing this part of the work thoroughly well and without troubling Hornblower for orders.

  ‘Where are the horses and mules, Colonel?’

  ‘Up above.’

  ‘I shall want them down here shortly.’

  It was only a matter of minutes for most of the material to be brought ashore, even though a thousand rounds of shot for the twenty-four pounders – a hundred rounds per gun, one day’s consumption – weighed over ten tons. Three hundred seamen and three hundred marines, working under naval discipline, could land ten tons of shot, and the necessary powder barrels, and the beef and bread for one day’s rations, in no time worth mentioning. It was the guns which presented the greatest difficulty. The first of the ten twenty-four pounders was only now being coaxed on to the pontoon, for it was a desperate business to run it up the brief ramp from the platform built on the thwarts, where it had been precariously perched during its passage from the ship, over the boat’s gunwale. The pontoon sank under its ponderous weight until its surface was awash. Two hundred men, thigh deep in water, toiled on the dragropes which were attached to the gun, and floundering and splashing, their feet seeking foothold in the soft sand below and finding none, they gradually hauled the thing towards the beach.

  Like all guns Hornblower had ever seen, it behaved with a pig-headed obstinacy that might have been instigated by infernal powers with a perverted sense of humour. Although it had been fitted, by Hornblower’s orders, with specially large trucks to make it more easy to surmount inequalities of surface, it caught and stuck, over and over again, in its passage over the spars. Handspikes and crowbars were handled diligently in the dark by Cavendish and his men to coax it over the inequalities. And then it would slew round, with Cavendish bellowing to the men to avast, for fear lest the maddening thing should run clean off the platform in the water alongside; only when it had been pushed and heaved straight again could the men tail on to the dragropes once more. There were ten of these guns; Hornblower reflected, and four miles of paths, uphill and down, over which they had to be dragged.

  He had had the base of the pier prolonged over the sand by further rafts of timber laid out there, right up to where the sand gave place to the rock bottom of the steep combe which seamed the cliff here and led to the summit. The horses and mules, each with a man at its head whose rags were obvious in the darkness, were waiting here in a great herd, but of course the Spaniards, although they knew they had come to drag guns, had provided no sort of harness for the operation.

  ‘Here, you men,’ said Hornblower, turning to a waiting group of sailors. ‘There’s plenty of line over there. Harness up these horses to the gun. You can find some spare canvas if you look for it.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  It was quite fantastic to see what seamen could turn their hands to. They fell to work with a will, knotting and tying. The English words they used may have sounded strange to the Spanish horses’ ears as they wheeled the animals into position, but they seemed to be effective enough. Even the horse-holders, gabbling Catalan, pushed and shoved until they were more help than hindrance. Whinnying and clattering in the darkness – barely relieved by the light of a dozen lanterns – the puzzled brutes were got into line. Rope collars padded with canvas were slipped over their heads, rope traces were passed back to the eyebolts in the gun carriage.

  ‘Avast!’ roared one of the sailors just as the strain was beginning to come on. ‘This beggar’s got his starboard leg over the line.’

  By the time the second gun had reached the water’s edge they were ready to start hauling up the first. Whips cracked and sailors shouted. The horses plunged as they sought foothold in the sand, but the gun began to move, with a vast creaking and cracking of timber under the trucks. The movement was spasmodic and jerky, and when they began to breast the steep slope of the combe it died away altogether. Twenty Spanish horses, underfed and undersized, could not haul that gun up the slope.

  ‘Mr Moore,’ said Hornblower, irritably. ‘See that that gun is hauled up.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  A hundred men on dragropes as well as twenty horses managed it, aided by a party behind with crowbars to help over the worst inequalities and to sprag the wheels with rocks at moments when neither men nor horses could pull for another second. Hornblower felt he had really accomplished a great deal when he stood on the summit, with dawn creeping out of the sea, and looked at the line of ten guns, and the mountain of stores, which had been all dragged up in the course of the night.

  The gradual coming of the light enabled him to look about him. Down below was the golden beach, dotted with details of the landing party, and beyond that the blue sea, with the ships of the squadron rolling to their anchors. On his own level the summit of the peninsula stretched in a rocky, uneven expanse before him. Over to his right the rock broke completely through in a vast table-topped hill, but southward, in the direction of Rosas which he would have to follow, a narrow goat path wound through the low scrub of arbutus bushes. Claros beside him was revealed as a lean man, sunburnt to the colour of tobacco, with a long black moustache above an excellent set of white teeth, which he displayed in a smile.

  ‘I have a horse for you, Captain.’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel. That is very kind of you.’

  There were a few brown figures creeping dispiritedly about the rocks; in the dips between the low crests there were brown masses which were just beginning to disintegrate in the sunlight from huddles of sleeping men into sleepy groups, who, still clutching their blankets about them, moved aimlessly here and there. Hornblower regarded his allies with a disfavour which was not diminished by the fact that it was exactly what he had anticipated, and which was intensified by his sleepless night.

  ‘Would you be so kind,’ he said, ‘as to send a message to Colonel Rovira, telling him that we are about to march on Rosas, and that I hope to reach there with at least some of the guns at noon?’

  ‘Certainly, Captain.’

  ‘And I must ask you for the help of your men in the transport of my guns and stores.’

  Claros looked more dubious at that, and more dubious still when he was told that of his men four hundred would be needed to help with the guns while another four hundred would have to carry a twenty-four pound cannon ball each all the way to Rosas. Hornblower overrode his objections a little crossly.

  ‘And after that, Colonel,’ he said, ‘they will have to return here for more. I was promised a sufficiency of pack animals; if you do not supply me with four-legged ones, I must use those with two. Now, if you please, I want to get the column started.’

  Ten horses or mules to every gun, with a hundred men at the drag-ropes. A hundred men ahead to labour on the task of improving the path, rolling rocks out of the way and filling up holes. Four hundred men carrying cannon
balls, some of them leading the packmules with gunpowder kegs slung over their backs. Claros looked still more askance when it became apparent that every man of his tercio would be at work, while Hornblower proposed to leave two hundred of his marines free of any labouring duty.

  ‘That is how I wish it arranged, Colonel. If you do not like it, you can try to find a Spanish battering train.’

  Hornblower was determined upon keeping a substantial portion of his disciplined force closed up and ready for an emergency, and his determination was obvious enough to silence Claros’ protests.

  There was already an outcry behind them where the mules were being loaded up. Hornblower strode over with Claros at his heels, to find a Spanish officer threatening Gray with a drawn sword, his ragged guerilleros behind him handling their muskets.

  ‘What’s all this? What is happening here?’ demanded Hornblower, first in English and then in Spanish. Everybody turned to him all speaking at once, like schoolboys in a playground dispute. The officer’s explosive Catalan was almost incomprehensible to him, and he turned to listen to Gray.

  ‘It’s like this, sir,’ said the master’s mate, displaying a lighted cigar in his hand. ‘This Dago lieutenant here, sir, he was a-smoking this while we was loading up the mules. I says to him, very respectful, sir, “No smoking in the magazine, sir,” but he didn’t take no notice, not understanding, maybe. So I says to him, I says, “No smokingo, magazino, señor,” an’ he just blew out a puff of smoke and turned his back on me. So I took away his cigar, an’ he drew his sword, sir.’ – Claros had at the same time heard his officer’s explanation, and Claros and Hornblower faced each other.

  ‘Your sailor has insulted my officer,’ said Claros.

  ‘Your officer has been very foolish,’ said Hornblower.

  It seemed like an impasse.

  ‘Look, sir,’ said Gray, suddenly. He pointed to one of the barrels swinging against the ribs of the patient mule who bore it. It was slightly stove, and a thin black trickle of powder had run from it. There was powder on the mule’s flank, powder on the ground. The danger of fire was obvious, must be obvious even to a Catalan. Claros could not suppress a half smile as he looked.