Admiral Hornblower

by C. S. Forester

  ‘Spendlove!’ he said.

  There was an agonising moment of waiting before the drooping figure said, ‘My Lord?’ The voice was thick and unnatural.

  ‘Spendlove! Are you wounded?’

  ‘I’m – well – My Lord.’

  Someone pushed Hornblower in the back.

  ‘Come. Swim,’ said a voice.

  ‘Spendlove!’

  Several hands turned Hornblower away and thrust him stumbling down to the water’s edge. It was hopeless to resist; Hornblower could only guess that Spendlove had been stunned by a blow and was only now recovering, his unconscious body having been carried so far by mule.

  ‘Swim,’ said the voice, and a hand pressed him forward to the water.

  ‘No!’ croaked Hornblower.

  The water seemed immeasurably wide and dark. Even while Hornblower struggled at the water’s edge he had a horrible realisation of the indignity he was undergoing, as a Commander-in-Chief, acting like a child in the hands of these people. Somebody led a mule slowly down into the water beside him.

  ‘Hold his tail,’ said the voice, and there was the knife in his back again.

  He took hold of the mule’s tail and despairingly let himself flop into the water, spreadeagled. For a moment the mule floundered and then struck out; the water, as it closed round Hornblower, seemed hardly colder than the warm air. It was no more than a moment, it seemed, before the mule was plunging up the other bank, and Hornblower found the bottom under his feet and waded out after him, the water streaming from his clothes, the rest of the gang and the animals splashing after him. The hand was back on his shoulder, turning him to one side and urging him along. He heard an odd creaking in front of him and a swaying object struck him on the chest. His hands felt smooth bamboo and some sort of creeper, liana, knotted to it – it was a makeshift rope ladder dangling in front of him.

  ‘Up!’ said the voice. ‘Up!’

  He could not – he would not – and there was the knife point at his back again. He stretched his arms up and grasped a rung, feeling desperately with his feet for another.

  ‘Up!’

  He began the climb, with the ladder writhing under his feet in the animal fashion rope ladders always display. It was horrible in the darkness, feeling with his feet for each elusive rung in turn, clutching desperately with his hands. His sodden shoes tended to slip on the smooth bamboo. Nor did his hands feel secure on the creeper. Someone else was climbing close after him, and the ladder twined about unpredictably. He knew himself to be swaying pendulum-fashion in the darkness. Up he went, one rung at a time, his hands gripping so convulsively that it was only by a conscious effort that he was able to make each one unclasp in turn and seek a fresh hold. Then the gyrations and swinging grew less. His upward-stretching hand touched earth, or rock. The next moment was not easy; he was unsure of his handhold and he hesitated. He knew himself to be a prodigious height up in the air. Just below him on the ladder he heard a sharp command issued by the man following him, and then a hand above him grasped his wrist and pulled. His feet found the next rung, and there he was, lying gasping on his belly on solid earth. The hand dragged at him again and he crawled on all fours forward to make room for the man behind him. He was almost sobbing; there was no trace left now of the haughty and self-satisfied human who had admired himself in the mirror not so many hours ago.

  Other people trod past him.

  ‘My Lord! My Lord!’

  That was Spendlove asking for him.

  ‘Spendlove!’ he answered, sitting up.

  ‘Are you all right, My Lord?’ asked Spendlove, stooping over him.

  Was it sense of humour or sense of the ridiculous, was it natural pride or force of habit, which made him take a grip on himself?

  ‘As right as I might expect to be, thank you, after these rather remarkable experiences,’ he said. ‘But you – what happened to you?’

  ‘They hit me on the head,’ replied Spendlove, simply.

  ‘Don’t stand there. Sit down,’ said Hornblower, and Spendlove collapsed beside him.

  ‘Do you know where we are, My Lord?’ he asked.

  ‘Somewhere at the top of a cliff, as far as I can estimate,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘But where, My Lord?’

  ‘Somewhere in His Majesty’s loyal colony of Jamaica. More than that I can’t say.’

  ‘It will be dawn soon, I suppose,’ said Spendlove, weakly.

  ‘Soon enough.’

  Nobody about them was paying them any attention. There was a great deal of chatter going on, in marked contrast with the silence – the almost disciplined silence – which had been preserved during their dash across country. The chatter mingled with the sound of a small waterfall, which he realised he had been hearing ever since his climb. The conversations were in a thick English which Hornblower could hardly understand, but he could be sure that their captors were expressing exultation. He could hear women’s voices, too, while figures paced about, too excited to sit down despite the fatigues of the night.

  ‘I doubt if we’re at the top of the cliff, My Lord, if you’ll pardon me,’ said Spendlove.

  He pointed upwards. The sky was growing pale, and the stars were fading; vertically over their heads they could see the cliff above them, overhanging them. Looking up, Hornblower could see foliage silhouetted against the sky.

  ‘Strange,’ he said. ‘We must be on some sort of shelf.’

  On his right hand the sky was showing a hint of light, of the palest pink, even while on his left it was still dark.

  ‘Facing north-nor’west,’ said Spendlove.

  The light increased perceptibly; when Hornblower looked to the east again the pink had turned to orange, and there was a hint of green. They seemed immeasurably high up; almost at their feet, it seemed, as they sat, the shelf ended abruptly, and far down below them the shadowy world was taking form, concealed at the moment by a light mist. Hornblower was suddenly conscious of his wet clothes, and shivered.

  ‘That might be the sea,’ said Spendlove, pointing.

  The sea it was, blue and lovely in the far distance; a broad belt of land, some miles across, extended between the cliff on which they were perched and the edge of the sea; the mist still obscured it. Hornblower rose to his feet, took a step forward, leaning over a low, crude parapet of piled rock; he shrank back before nerving himself to look again. Under his feet there was nothing. They were indeed on a shelf in the face of the cliff. About the height of a frigate’s main-yard, sixty feet or so; vertically below them he could see the small stream he had crossed holding the mule’s tail; the rope ladder still hung down from where he stood to the water’s edge; when, with an effort of will, he forced himself to lean out and look over he could see the mules standing dispiritedly below him in the narrow area between the river and the foot of the cliff; the overhang must be considerable. They were on a shelf in a cliff, undercut through the ages by the river below when in spate. Nothing could reach them from above, and nothing from below if the ladder were to be drawn up. The shelf was perhaps ten yards wide at its widest, and perhaps a hundred yards long. At one end the waterfall he had heard tumbled down the cliff face in a groove it had cut for itself; it splashed against a cluster of gleaming rocks and then leaped out again. The sight of it told him how thirsty he was, and he walked along to it. It was a giddy thing to do, to stand there with the cliff face at one elbow and a vertical drop under the other, with the spray bursting round him, but he could fill his cupped hands with water and drink, and drink again, before splashing his face and head refreshingly. He drew back to find Spendlove waiting for him to finish. Matted in Spendlove’s thick hair and behind his left ear and down his neck was a black clot of blood. Spendlove knelt to drink and to wash, and rose again touching his scalp cautiously.

  ‘They spared me nothing,’ he said.

  His uniform was spattered with blood, too. At his waist dangled an empty scabbard; his sword was missing, and as they turned back from the waterfall they co
uld see it – it was in the hand of one of their captors, who was standing waiting for them. He was short and square and heavily built, not entirely Negro, possibly as much as half white. He wore a dirty white shirt and loose, ragged blue trousers, with dilapidated buckled shoes on his splay feet.

  ‘Now, Lord,’ he said.

  He spoke with the Island intonation, with a thickening of the vowels and a slurring of the consonants.

  ‘What do you want?’ demanded Hornblower, putting all the rasp into his voice that he could manage.

  ‘Write us a letter,’ said the man with the sword.

  ‘A letter? To whom?’

  ‘To the Governor.’

  ‘Asking him to come and hang you?’ asked Hornblower.

  The man shook his big head.

  ‘No. I want a paper, a paper with a seal on it. A pardon. For us all. With a seal on it.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Ned Johnson.’ The name meant nothing to Hornblower, nor, as a glance showed, did it mean anything to the omniscient Spendlove.

  ‘I sailed with Harkness,’ said Johnson.

  ‘Ah!’

  That meant something to both the British officers. Harkness was one of the last of the petty pirates. Hardly more than a week ago his sloop, Blossom, had been cut off by the Clorinda off Savannalamar, and her escape to leeward intercepted. Under long-range fire from the frigate she had despairingly run herself aground at the mouth of the Sweet River, and her crew had escaped into the marshes and mangrove swamps of that section of coast, all except her captain, whose body had been found on her deck almost cut in two by a round shot from Clorinda. This was her crew, left leaderless – unless Johnson could be called then-leader – and to hunt them down the Governor had called out two battalions of troops as soon as Clorinda beat back to Kingston with the news. It was to cut off their escape by sea that the Governor, at Hornblower’s suggestion, had posted guards at every fishing beach in the whole big island – otherwise the cycle they had already probably followed would be renewed, with the theft of a fishing boat, the capture of a larger craft, and so on until they were a pest again.

  ‘There’s no pardon for pirates,’ said Hornblower.

  ‘Yes,’ said Johnson. ‘Write us a letter, and the Governor will give us one.’

  He turned aside and from the foot of the cliff at the back of the shelf he picked up something. It was a leather-bound book – the second volume of Waverley, Hornblower saw when it was put in his hands – and Johnson produced a stub of pencil and gave him that as well.

  ‘Write to the Governor,’ he said; he opened the book at the beginning and indicated the fly-leaf as the place to write on.

  ‘What do you think I should write?’ asked Hornblower.

  ‘Ask him for a pardon for us. With his seal on it.’

  Apparently Johnson must have heard somewhere, in talk with fellow pirates, of ‘a pardon under the Great Seal’, and the memory had lingered.

  ‘The Governor would never do that.’

  ‘Then I send him your ears. Then I send him your nose,’ said Johnson.

  That was a horrible thing to hear. Hornblower glanced at Spendlove, who had turned white at the words.

  ‘You, the Admiral,’ continued Johnson. ‘You, the Lord. The Governor will do that.’

  ‘I doubt if he would,’ said Hornblower.

  He conjured up in his mind the picture of fussy old General Sir Augustus Hooper, and tried to imagine the reaction produced by Johnson’s demand. His Excellency would come near to bursting a blood vessel at the thought of granting pardons to two dozen pirates. The home government, when it heard the news, would be intensely annoyed, and without doubt most of the annoyance would be directed at the man whose idiocy in allowing himself to be kidnapped had put everyone in this absurd position. That suggested a question.

  ‘How did you come to be in the garden?’ he asked.

  ‘We was waiting for you to go home, but you came out first.’

  If they had been intending—

  ‘Stand back!’ yelled Johnson.

  He leaped backwards with astonishing agility for his bulk, bracing himself, knees bent, body tense, on guard with the sword. Hornblower looked round in astonishment, in time to see Spendlove relax; he had been poising himself for a spring. With that sword in his hand and its point against Johnson’s throat, the position would have been reversed. Some of the others came running up at the cry; one of them had a staff in his hand – a headless pike stave apparently – and thrust it cruelly into Spendlove’s face. Spendlove staggered back, and the staff was whirled up to strike him down. Hornblower leaped in front of him.

  ‘No!’ he yelled, and they all stood looking at each other, the drama of the situation ebbing away. Then one of the men came sidling towards Hornblower, cutlass in hand.

  ‘Cut off his ear?’ he asked over his shoulder to Johnson.

  ‘No. Not yet. Sit down, you two.’ When they hesitated Johnson’s voice rose to a roar. ‘Sit down!’

  Under the menace of the cutlass there was nothing to do but sit down, and they were helpless.

  ‘You write that letter?’ asked Johnson.

  ‘Wait a little,’ said Hornblower wearily; he could think of nothing else to say in that situation. He was playing for time, hopelessly, like a child at bedtime confronted by stern guardians.

  ‘Let’s have some breakfast,’ said Spendlove.

  At the far end of the shelf a small fire had been lighted, its smoke clinging in the still dawn in a thin thread to the sloping overhang of the cliff. An iron pot hung from a chain attached to a tripod over the fire, and two women were crouching over it attending to it. Packed against the back wall of the shelf were chests and kegs and barrels. Muskets were ranged in a rack. It occurred to Hornblower that he was in the situation common in popular romances; he was in the pirates’ lair. Perhaps those chests contained untold treasures of pearls and gold. Pirates, like any other seafarers, needed a land base, and these pirates had established one here instead of on some lonely cay. His brig Clement had cleaned out one of those last year.

  ‘You write that letter, Lord,’ said Johnson. He poked at Hornblower’s breast with the sword, and the point pierced the thin shirt-front to prick him over the breastbone.

  ‘What is it you want?’ asked Hornblower.

  ‘A pardon. With a seal.’

  Hornblower studied the swarthy features in front of him. The jig was up for piracy in the Caribbean, he knew. American ships-of-war in the north, French ships-of-war working from the Lesser Antilles, and his own busy squadron based on Jamaica had made the business both unprofitable and dangerous. And this particular band of pirates, the remains of the Harkness gang, were in a more precarious position than any, with the loss of their ship, and with their escape to sea cut off by his precautions. It had been a bold plan, and well executed, to save their necks by kidnapping him. Presumably the plan had been made and executed by this rather stupid-seeming fellow, almost bewildered in appearance, before him. Appearances might be deceitful, or else the desperate need of the situation had stimulated that dull mind into unusual activity.

  ‘You hear me?’ said Johnson, offering another prick with the sword, and breaking in upon Hornblower’s train of thought.

  ‘Say you will, My Lord,’ muttered Spendlove close to Hornblower’s ear. ‘Gain time.’

  Johnson turned on him, sword pointed at his face.

  ‘Shut that mouth,’ he said. Another idea occurred to him, and he glanced round at Hornblower. ‘You write. Or I prick his eye.’

  ‘I’ll write,’ said Hornblower.

  Now he sat with the volume of Waverley open at the fly-leaf, and the stub of pencil in his hand, while Johnson withdrew for a couple of paces, presumably to allow free play for inspiration. What was he to write? ‘Dear Sir Augustus’? ‘Your Excellency’? That was better. ‘I am held to ransom here along with Spendlove by the survivors of the Harkness gang. Perhaps the bearer of this will explain the conditions. They demand a f
ree pardon in exchange for—’ Hornblower held the pencil poised over the paper debating the next words. ‘Our lives’? He shook his head to himself and wrote ‘our freedom’. He wanted no melodrama. ‘Your Excellency will, of course, be a better judge of the situation than I am. Your ob’d’t servant.’ Hornblower hesitated again, and then he dashed off the ‘Hornblower’ of his signature.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, holding out the volume to Johnson, who took it and look at it curiously, and turned back to the group of a dozen or so of his followers who had been squatting on the ground behind him silently watching the proceedings.

  They peered at the writing over Johnson’s shoulder; others came to look as well, and they fell into a chattering debate.

  ‘Not one of them can read, My Lord,’ commented Spendlove.

  ‘So it appears.’

  The pirates were looking from the writing over to their prisoners and back again; the argument grew more intense. Johnson seemed to be expostulating, or exhorting, and some of the men he addressed drew back shaking their heads.

  ‘It’s a question of who shall carry that note to Kingston,’ said Hornblower. ‘Who shall beard the lion.’

  ‘That fellow has no command over his men,’ commented Spendlove. ‘Harkness would have shot a couple of them by now.’

  Johnson returned to them, pointing a dark, stubby finger at the writing.

  ‘What you say here?’ he asked.

  Hornblower read the note aloud; it did not matter whether he spoke the truth or not, seeing they had no way of knowing. Johnson stared at him, studying his face; Johnson’s own face betrayed more of the bewilderment Hornblower had noticed before. The pirate was facing a situation too complex for him; he was trying to carry out a plan which he had not thought out in all its details beforehand. No one of the pirates was willing to venture into the grip of justice bearing a message of unknown content. Nor, for that matter, would the pirates trust one of their number to go off on such a mission; he might well desert, throwing away the precious message, to try and make his escape on his own. The poor, ragged, shiftless devils and their slatternly women were in a quandary, with no master mind to find a way out for them. Hornblower could have laughed at their predicament, and almost did, until he thought of what this unstable mob could do in a fit of passion to the prisoners in their power. The debate went on furiously, with a solution apparently no nearer.