Admiral Hornblower

by C. S. Forester

  So that it was very late before he went to bed, and he used no light for fear of disturbing Barbara. He crept about the room as silently as he could. In the darkness the glances that he directed at the other bed (naval establishments made small allowance for wives, and that allowance did not include double beds) under its mosquito net revealed nothing to him, and he was glad. If Barbara had been awake they could hardly have avoided discussing the Hudnutt case.

  Nor was there any time next morning, for the moment Hornblower was called he had to hurry into the dressing-room and array himself in his best uniform with his ribbon and star and hasten away to the ceremony of the change of command. As the officer to be relieved he was first upon the quarterdeck of the Clorinda, and stationed himself on the starboard side, his staff behind him. Captain Sir Thomas Fell had received him, and next busied himself with receiving the other captains as they came on board. The marine band – without Hudnutt – played selections on the poop; the pipes of the bosun’s mates twittered unceasingly to welcome the continuous arrivals; the sun blazed down as if this were just some ordinary day. Then came a pause, intense in its drama. Then the band burst into a march again, there were ruffles of drums and flourishes of bugles as Ransome came up the side with his staff behind him, to take up his station on the port side. Fell came forward to Hornblower with his hand at his hat brim.

  ‘Ship’s company fallen in, My Lord.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Thomas.’ Spendlove pressed a paper into Hornblower’s hand; Hornblower stepped forward. ‘Orders from the Lords Commissioners for the execution of the office of Lord High Admiral, to me, Horatio Lord Hornblower, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Rear-Admiral of the Red Squadron—’

  He really had trouble in preventing his voice from trembling, forcing himself to read in a harsh and matter-of-fact tone. He folded the paper and gave his last order.

  ‘Sir Thomas, please have the goodness to haul down my flag.’

  ‘Aye aye, My Lord.’

  The first of the thirteen saluting guns went off as the red ensign came slowly down from the mizzen peak. A long, long, descent; sixty seconds for thirteen guns, and when the flag completed its descent Hornblower was the poorer by forty-nine pounds three shillings and seven pence a month command pay. A moment later Ransome came forward, paper in hand, to read the orders of the Lords Commissioners to him, Henry Ransome, Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Rear-Admiral of the Blue Squadron.

  ‘Hoist my flag, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Up to the mizzen peak rose the Blue Ensign; until it broke at the peak the ship was silent, but then it unfolded itself in the breeze and the salute roared out and the band played. When the last gun fired Ransome was legally Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s ships and vessels in West Indian waters. More blaring from the band, and in the midst of it Hornblower stepped forward raising his hand in salute to the new Commander-in-Chief.

  ‘Permission to leave the ship, sir?’

  ‘Permission granted.’

  Ruffles of drums, bugle calls, pipes, and he went down the ship’s side. He might have been sentimental; he might have felt agony of regret, but there was instant distraction awaiting him.

  ‘My Lord,’ said Spendlove beside him in the stern-sheets.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘That prisoner – Hudnutt, the marine bandsman—’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s escaped, My Lord. He broke prison during the night.’

  That settled Hudnutt’s fate beyond all doubt. Nothing could save him. He was as good as dead; or soon perhaps he would be worse than dead. No deserter, no escaped prisoner, ever succeeded in evading recapture in Jamaica. It was an island, and not too large an island. And there was a standing reward of ten pounds sterling for information resulting in the apprehension of a deserter, and in Jamaica, far more than in England, ten pounds was a fortune. A journeyman’s wages for a year or more; more money than any slave could hope to see in a lifetime. No deserter stood a chance; his white face, to say nothing of his uniform, would call attention to him wherever he might be in the island, and the standing reward made it certain that he would be betrayed. Hudnutt was doomed to recapture. And he was doomed beyond that. There would be additional charges at his court martial. Prison breaking. Desertion. Damage to government property. Damage to his uniform. He would probably be hanged. The only other chance was that he would be flogged round the fleet to die for certain under the lash. Hudnutt was a dead man, and this was the end of his talent for music.

  It was a sombre enough thought to occupy his mind all the way to the pier, and it kept him silent as he climbed into the Governor’s carriage to be driven to Government House – he had no Commander-in-Chief’s carriage now. He was still silent as they drove away.

  But they had hardly gone a mile when they met a lively cavalcade clattering down on horseback towards them. First Hornblower saw Barbara – he would have picked her out in any crowd even if she had not been conspicuous on a white horse. His Excellency rode on one side of her and Lady Hooper on the other, chattering eagerly. Behind them came a mixed party, of aides-de-camp and civilians; at the rear rode the Assistant Provost-Marshal and two troopers of his guard.

  ‘Ha, Hornblower!’ called the Governor, reining up. ‘Your ceremonial seems to have finished earlier than I expected.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Hornblower. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’

  Then he smiled at Barbara – he could always smile at the sight of her despite any depression. In her hunting veil the smile she gave him in return was hardly apparent.

  ‘You can join us in our hunt. One of my aides-de-camp will give you his horse,’ said Hooper, and then, peering into the carriage, ‘No, perhaps not, in those silk stockings. You can follow us in the carriage, like a lady with certain expectations. Like the Queen of France, by Gad! Turn that carriage, coachman.’

  ‘What are you hunting, sir?’ asked Hornblower, a little bewildered.

  ‘That deserter of yours. He might show us some sport,’ answered Hooper.

  They were hunting man, the biggest game of all – but Hudnutt, dreamy, scatterbrained Hudnutt, would be poor game. Two coloured servants rode in the party, each holding a leash of bloodhounds, tawny and black; grim, horrible creatures. He wanted to have nothing to do with this hunt, nothing whatever. He wanted to order the carriage to turn back again. This was a nightmare, and it was beyond his power to awaken himself from it. It was horrible to see Barbara taking part in it. At the dockyard gate, at the high palisade, the cortege halted.

  ‘That’s the prison,’ said the Assistant Provost-Marshal, pointing. ‘You can see the hole in the roof, sir.’

  An area of thatch had been torn away. Probably that prison was not very strongly built; to escape from it meant that the fifteen-foot palisade had to be scaled next – and even then certain recapture somewhere in the island awaited the man to achieve that feat.

  ‘Come on,’ said the Assistant Provost-Marshal, and he and his guard and the men with the bloodhounds trotted into the dockyard to the prison and dismounted. They took the bloodhounds into the prison, where presumably the hounds smelt at the prisoner’s bedding. Then they reappeared at the door, smelling at the ground below the hole in the roof. Instantly they caught the scent, throwing themselves against their leashes so that the coloured servants had a difficult task to remount, and then they came pelting across the dockyard again. They threw themselves against the palisade, leaping up at it, slavering with excitement.

  ‘Bring ’em round to this side!’ shouted the Governor, and then, turning to Hornblower, ‘Your man’s a marine, isn’t he? Even a sailor would find it hard to scale that palisade.’

  Hudnutt might have done it in some exalted mood, thought Hornblower – those dreamers were like madmen sometimes.

  The bloodhounds were brought round through the dockyard gate again and led to the corresponding point on the outside of the palisade. They
caught the scent again in a flash, throwing themselves against their leashes and galloping down the road.

  ‘Gone away!’ yelled the Governor, spurring his horse after them.

  Hudnutt had climbed that fifteen-foot palisade, then. He must have been insane. The cavalcade had all gone on ahead; the coachman was urging the carriage horses along as fast as their dignity and the inequalities of the road would permit; the carriage lurched and leaped, throwing Hornblower against Gerard beside him and sometimes even against Spendlove opposite. Straight up the road they went, heading for the open country and the Blue Mountains beyond. The horsemen ahead reined back into a trot, and the coachman followed their example, so that the progress of the carriage became more sedate.

  ‘A hot enough scent, My Lord,’ said Gerard, peering forward at the bloodhounds still straining at their leashes.

  ‘And yet this road must have been well travelled since he went along it,’ said Spendlove.

  ‘Ah!’ said Gerard, still peering forward. ‘They’re leaving the road.’

  As the carriage reached the corner they saw that the horsemen had turned up a broad lane through fields of cane; the coachman, nothing daunted, swung up into the lane after them, but after two more miles of rapid progress he pulled his horses to a halt.

  ‘A check here, Hornblower,’ said the Governor. ‘This lane fords the Hope River here.’

  The halted cavalcade was breathing the horses; Barbara waved her gloved hand to him.

  ‘No scent the other side,’ explained the Governor, and then, calling to the men with the bloodhounds. ‘Cast upstream as well as down. And on both sides.’

  The Assistant Provost-Marshal acknowledged the order with a salute.

  ‘Your man knew we’d have bloodhounds after him,’ said the Governor. ‘He waded along the river. But he has to come out sooner or later, and we’ll pick up the scent again there.’

  Barbara guided her horse to the side of the carriage, and raised her veil to speak to him.

  ‘Good morning, dear,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Hornblower.

  It was hard to say more, when the events of the last hour or two, and all their implications, were allowed for. And Barbara was hardly flushed with the heat and the exercise. She looked drawn and tired; her smile was positively wan. It occurred to Hornblower that she was participating in this hunt as unwillingly as he was. And it seemed likely that she had allowed the move from Admiralty House to Government House this morning to trouble her; womanlike she would not have been able to allow the Navy to execute the task without her supervision even though the Navy had made similar moves by the hundred thousand. She had tried to order it all and was weary in consequence.

  ‘Come and sit in the carriage, dear,’ he said. ‘Gerard will take your horse.’

  ‘Mr Gerard is wearing silk stockings the same as you are, dear,’ replied Barbara, smiling through her weariness, ‘and I have too much respect for his dignity to set him on a side saddle in any case.’

  ‘My groom will lead your horse, Lady Hornblower,’ interposed the Governor. ‘This hunt looks as if it’s going to turn out badly.’

  Hornblower scrambled down from the carriage to help Barbara from the side-saddle and up into the carriage. Gerard and Spendlove, who had followed him out, followed them back after a moment’s hesitation and sat with their backs to the horses.

  ‘We should have heard something from the bloodhounds by now,’ said the Governor. The four bloodhounds had now cast up and down both banks for a considerable distance. ‘Can he have climbed a tree?’

  A man could be more resourceful than any fox, Hornblower knew. But it was an unexpected aspect of Hudnutt’s character.

  ‘Not a trace of scent, Your Excellency,’ said the Assistant Provost-Marshal trotting up. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Oh, well then, we’ll go home again. A poor day’s sport after all. We’ll precede you, Lady Hornblower, with your permission.’

  ‘We’ll see you at the house, dear Lady Hornblower,’ echoed Lady Hooper.

  The carriage turned again and followed the horsemen down the lane.

  ‘You’ve had a busy morning, I fear, my dear,’ said Hornblower; with his staff sitting across the carriage from them he had to retain a certain formality of tone.

  ‘Not busy at all,’ answered Barbara, turning her head to meet his glance. ‘A very pleasant morning, thank you, dear. And you – your ceremonial went off without a hitch, I hope?’

  ‘Well enough, thank you. Ransome—’ he changed what he was going to say abruptly. What he would say about Ransome to Barbara’s private ear was not the same as what he would say in the hearing of his staff.

  The carriage trotted on, and conversation proceeded only fitfully in the heat. It was long before they swung through the gates of Government House, with Hornblower acknowledging the salute of the sentry, and drew up at the door. Aides-de-camp and butlers and maids awaited them; but Barbara had already dealt with the move, and in the vast, cavernous bedroom and dressing-room allotted to principal guests Hornblower’s things were already disposed along with hers.

  ‘At last alone,’ smiled Barbara. ‘Now we can look forward to Smallbridge.’

  Indeed that was so; this was the beginning of one of those periods of transition which Hornblower knew so well, as did every sailor, the strange days, or weeks, between one life and the next. He had ceased to be a Commander-in-Chief; now he had to endure existence until he would at least be master in his own house. The urgent need at the moment was for a bath; his shirt was sticking to his ribs under his heavy uniform coat. Perhaps never again, never in all his life, would he take a bath under a wash-deck pump somewhere out with the trade winds blowing upon him. On the other hand, he would not, at least while he was in Jamaica, have to wear a uniform again.

  It was later in the day that Barbara made her request to him.

  ‘Dear, would you please give me some money?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hornblower.

  He felt a delicacy about this which most men would laugh at. Barbara had brought a good deal of money to their marriage, which, of course, was now his property, and he felt an absurd guilt that she should have to ask him for money. That feeling of guilt was perfectly ridiculous, of course. Women were not supposed to dispose of money in any way, except small sums for housekeeping. They could not legally sign a cheque, they could enter into no business transaction at all, which was perfectly right and proper seeing how incapable women were. Except perhaps Barbara. It was the husband’s business to keep all moneys under his own hand and dole out under his own supervision what was needed.

  ‘How much would you like, dear?’ he asked.

  ‘Two hundred pounds,’ said Barbara.

  Two hundred pounds? Two hundred pounds! That was something entirely different. It was a fortune. What in the world would Barbara want two hundred pounds for here in Jamaica? There could not be one single gown or pair of gloves in the whole island that Barbara could possibly want to buy. A few souvenirs, perhaps. The most elaborate tortoiseshell toilet set in Jamaica would not cost five pounds. Two hundred pounds? There would be a few maids to whom she would have to give vails on leaving, but five shillings each, half a guinea at most, would settle those.

  ‘Two hundred pounds?’ he said it aloud this time.

  ‘Yes, dear, if you please.’

  ‘It will be my business to tip the butler and grooms, of course,’ he said, still trying to find reasons why she should think she needed this stupendous sum.

  ‘Yes, no doubt, dear,’ said Barbara, patiently. ‘But I need some money for other purposes.’

  ‘But it’s a lot of money.’

  ‘I think we can afford it, though. Please, dear—’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Hornblower hastily. He could not bear it that Barbara should have to plead to him. All he had was hers. It was always a pleasure to him to anticipate her wants, to forestall any request so that it never need be uttered. He felt shame that Barbara
, exquisite Barbara, should ever have to abase herself so low as to ask a favour of him, unworthy as he was.

  ‘I’ll write an order on Summers,’ he said. ‘He’s Coutts’s correspondent in Kingston.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ said Barbara.

  Yet as he handed the order over he could not refrain from further speech.

  ‘You’ll be careful, dear, won’t you?’ he said. ‘Two hundred pounds, whether in notes or gold—’

  His misgivings ceased to be voiced, died away in incoherent mumblings. He had no wish to pry. He had no wish to exert over Barbara the sort of parental authority that both law and custom gave a husband over his wife. And then he thought of a possible explanation. Lady Hooper was a keen and clever card player. Presumably Barbara had lost heavily to her. Well, in that case he need not worry. Barbara was a good player, too, and level headed, and cool. She would win it back. In any case she was no gambler. Perhaps on the voyage home they would have a few hands of piquet – if Barbara had any fault at all it was a tendency to discard a little thoughtlessly when playing the younger hand, and he could give a little unobtrusive advice. And there was a smug pleasure, and a tender pleasure, in the thought of Barbara not caring to admit, to a husband who notoriously won, that she had lost at cards. The deep respect that he felt for her was accompanied (as the flavour of a beef steak may be accompanied by that of mustard) by the knowledge that she was still human. Hornblower knew that there can be no love without respect – and no love without a twinkle of amusement as well.

  ‘You are the dearest man in the world,’ said Barbara, and he realised that her eyes had been fixed on his face for the last several seconds.

  ‘It is my greatest happiness to hear you say so,’ he answered, with a sincerity that no one could doubt. And then a recollection of their position in this house, as mere guests, came to them both to modify the intensity of their feelings.