Hornblower and the Hotspur h-3

by Cecil Scott Forester

  “I must run down to see that your breakfast is ready,” she said, and was gone before he could protest.

  He folded his neckcloth carefully, but with practiced fingers, and slipped on his coat, glanced at his watch, put it in his pocket and then put on his shoes. He rolled his toilet things into his housewife and tied the tapes. Yesterday’s shirt and his nightshirt and bedgown he stuffed in the canvas bag that awaited them, and the housewife on top. A glance round the room told him that he had omitted nothing, although he had to look more carefully than usual because there were articles belonging to Maria scattered here and there. Bubbling with excitement, he opened the window curtains and glanced outside; no sign of dawn as yet. Bag in hand, he went downstairs and into the coffee-room. This smelt of stale living, and was dimly lit by an oil lamp dangling from the ceiling. Maria looked in at him from the farther door.

  “Here’s your place, dear,” she said. “Only a moment before breakfast.”

  She held the back of the chair for him to be seated.

  “I’ll sit down after you,” said Hornblower; it went against the grain to have Maria waiting on him.

  “Oh, no,” said Maria. “I have your breakfast to attend to—only the old woman is up as yet.”

  She coaxed him into the chair. Hornblower felt her kiss the top of his head, felt a momentary touch of her cheek against his, but before he could seize her, reaching behind him, she was gone. She left behind her the memory of something between a sniff and a sob; the opening of the door into the kitchen admitted a smell of cooking, the sizzling of something in a pan, and a momentary burst of conversation between Maria and the old woman. Then in came Maria, her rapid steps indicating that the plate she held was too hot to be comfortable. She dropped it in front of him, a vast rump steak, still sizzling on the plate.

  “There, dear,” she said, and busied herself with putting the rest of the meal within his reach, while Hornblower looked down at the steak with some dismay.

  “I picked that out for you specially yesterday,” she announced proudly. “I walked over to butcher’s while you were on the ship.”

  Hornblower steeled himself not to wince at hearing a naval officer’s wife speak about being ‘on’ a ship; he also had to steel himself to having steak for breakfast, when steak was by no means his favourite dish, and when he was so excited that he felt he could eat nothing. And dimly he could foresee a future—if ever he returned, if ever, inconceivably, he settled down in domestic life—when steak would be put before him on any special occasion. That thought was the last straw; he felt he could not eat a mouthful, and yet he could not hurt Maria’s feelings.

  “Where’s yours?” he asked, temporizing.

  “Oh, I shan’t be having any steak,” replied Maria. The tone of her voice proved that it was quite inconceivable to her that a wife should eat equally well as her husband. Hornblower raised his voice and turned his head.

  “Hey, there!” he called. “In the kitchen! Bring another plate—a hot one.”

  “Oh, no, darling,” said Maria, all fluttered, but Hornblower was by now out of his chair and seating her at her own place.

  “Now, sit there,” said Hornblower. “No more words. I’ll have no mutineers in my family. Ah!”

  Here came the other plate. Hornblower cut the steak in two, and helped Maria to the larger half.

  “But darling—”

  “I said I’ll have no truck with mutiny,” growled Hornblower parodying his own quarter-deck rasp.

  “Oh, Horry, darling. You’re good to me, far too good to me.” Momentarily Maria clapped hands and handkerchief to her face, and Hornblower feared she would break down finally, but then she put her hands in her lap and straightened her back, controlling her emotions in an act of the purest heroism. Hornblower felt his heart go out to her. He reached out and pressed the hand she gladly proffered him.

  “Now let me see you eat a hearty breakfast,” he said; he was still using his mock-bullying tone, but the tenderness he felt was still evident. Maria took up her knife and fork and Hornblower did the same. He forced himself to eat a few mouthfuls, and so mangled the rest of his steak that it did not appear as if he had left too much. He took a pull at his pot of beer—he did not like drinking beer for breakfast, not even beer as small as this, but he realized that the old woman could not be expected to have access to the tea-caddy.

  A rattling at the window attracted their attention. The ostler was opening the shutters, and they could dimly see his face for a moment, but it was still quite dark outside. Hornblower looked at his watch; ten minutes to five, and he had ordered his boat to be at the Sally Port at five. Maria saw the gesture and looked over at him. There was a slight trembling of her lips, a slight moisture in her eyes, but she kept herself under control.

  “I’ll get my cloak,” she said quietly, and fled from the room. She was back in no time, her grey cloak round her, and her face shadowed in her hood; in her arms was Hornblower’s heavy coat.

  “You’re leaving us now, sir?” piped the old woman coming into the coffee-room.

  “Yes. Madam will settle the score when she returns,” said Hornblower; he fumbled out half a crown from his pocket and put it on the table.

  “Thank you kindly, sir. And a good voyage, and prize money galore.” The sing-song tone reminded Hornblower that she must have seen naval officers by the hundreds leaving the George to go to sea—her memories must go back to Hawke and Boscawen.

  He buttoned up his coat and took up his bag.

  “I’ll have the ostler come with us with a lantern to escort you back,” he said, consideringly.

  “Oh, no please, darling. It’s so short a way, and I know every step,” pleaded Maria, and there was enough truth in what she said for him not to insist.

  They walked out into the keen cold air, having to adjust their eyes to the darkness even after the miserable light of the coffee-room. Hornblower realized that if he had been an Admiral or even a distinguished Captain, he would never have been allowed to leave with so little ceremony; the innkeeper and his wife would certainly have risen and dressed to see him on his way. They turned the corner and started on the steep slope down to the Sally Port, and it was borne in anew on Hornblower that he was about to start out for the wars. His concern for Maria had actually distracted him from this thought, but now he found himself gulping with excitement.

  “Dear,” said Maria. “I have a little present for you.”

  She was bringing something out from the pocket of her cloak and pressing it into his hand.

  “It’s only gloves, dear, but my love comes with them,” she went on. “I could make nothing better for you in this little time. I would have liked to have embroidered something for you—I would have liked to give you something worthy of you. But I have been stitching at these every moment since—since—”

  She could not go on, but once more she straightened her back and refused to break down.

  “I’ll be able to think of you every moment I wear them,” said Hornblower. He struggled into the gloves despite the handicap of the bag he was carrying; they were splendid thick woollen gloves, each with separate thumb and forefinger.

  “They fit me to perfection. I thank you for the kind thought, dear.”

  Now they were at the head of the steep slope down the Hard, and this horrible ordeal would soon be over.

  “You have the seventeen pounds safely?” asked Hornblower—an unnecessary question.

  “Yes, thank you, dearest. I fear it is too much—”

  “And you’ll be able to draw my monthly half pay,” went on Hornblower harshly, to keep the emotion from his voice, and then, realizing how harshly, he continued. “It is time to say good-bye now, darling.”

  He had forced himself to use that unaccustomed last word. The water level was far up the Hard; that meant, as he had known when he had given the orders, that the tide was at the flood. He would be able to take advantage of the ebb.

  “Darling!” said Maria, turning to him and l
ifting up her face to him in its hood.

  He kissed her; down at the water’s edge there was the familiar rattle of oars on thwarts, and the sound of male voices, as his boat’s crew perceived the two shadowy figures on the Hard. Maria heard those sounds as clearly as Hornblower did, and she quickly snatched away from him the cold lips she had raised to his.

  “Good-bye, my angel.”

  There was nothing else to say now, nothing else to do; this was the end of this brief experience. He turned his back on Maria; he turned his back on peace and on civilian married life and walked down towards war.

  Chapter III

  “Slack water now, sir,” announced Bush. “First of the ebb in ten minutes. And anchor’s hove short, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bush.” There was enough grey light in the sky now to see Bush’s face as something more definite than a blur. At Bush’s shoulder stood Prowse, the acting-master, senior master’s mate with an acting-warrant. He was competing unobtrusively with Bush for Hornblower’s attention. Prowse was charged, by Admiralty instructions, with ‘navigating and conducting the ship from port to port under the direction of the captain’. But there was no reason at all why Hornblower should not give his other officers every opportunity to exercise their skill; on the contrary. And it was possible, even likely, that Prowse, with thirty years of sea duty behind him, would endeavour to take the direction of the ship out of the hands of a young and inexperienced captain.

  “Mr. Bush!” said Hornblower. “Get the ship under way, if you please. Set a course to weather the Foreland.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Hornblower watched Bush keenly, while doing his best not to appear to be doing so. Bush took a final glance round him, gauging the gentle wind and the likely course of the ebb.

  “Stand by there, at the capstan,” he ordered. “Loose the heads’ls. Hands aloft to loose the tops’ls.”

  Hornblower could see in a flash that he could place implicit reliance on Bush’s seamanship. He knew he should never have doubted it, but his memories were two years old and might have been blurred by the passage of time. Bush gave his orders in a well-timed sequence. With the anchor broken out Hotspur gathered momentary sternway. With the wheel hard over and the forecastle hands drawing at the headsail sheets she brought her head round. Bush sheeted home and ordered hands to the braces. In the sweetest possible way Hotspur caught the gentle wind, lying over hardly more than a degree or two. In a moment she was under way, slipping forward through the water, rudder balanced against sail-pressure, a living, lovely thing.

  There was no need to drop any word of commendation to Bush regarding such a simple operation as getting under way. Hornblower could savour the pleasure of being afloat, as the hands raced to set the topgallant sails and then the courses. Then suddenly he remembered.

  “Let me have that glass, please, Mr. Prowse.”

  He put the massive telescope to his eye and trained it out over the port quarter. It was still not yet full daylight, and there was the usual hint of haze, and Hotspur had left her anchorage half a mile or more astern. Yet he could just see it; a solitary, lonely speck of grey, on the water’s edge, over there on the Hard. Perhaps—just possibly—there was a flicker of white; Maria might be waving her handkerchief, but he could not be sure. In fact he thought not. There was just the solitary grey speck. Hornblower looked again, and then he made himself lower the telescope; it was heavy, and his hands were trembling a trifle so that the image was blurred. It was the first time in all his life that he had put to sea leaving behind him someone who was interested in his fate.

  “Thank you, Mr. Prowse,” he said, harshly, handing back the telescope.

  He knew he had to think about something different, that he must quickly find something else to occupy his thoughts; fortunately as captain of a ship just setting sail there was no lack of subjects.

  “Now, Mr. Prowse,” he said, glancing at the wake and at the trim of the sails. “The wind’s holding steady at the moment. I want a course for Ushant.”

  “Ushant, sir?” Prowse had a long lugubrious face like a mule’s, and he stood there digesting this piece of information without any change of expression.

  “You heard what I said,” snapped Hornblower, in sudden irritation.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Prowse, hastily. “Ushant, sir. Aye aye, sir.”

  There was of course, some excuse for his first reaction. Nobody in the ship save Hornblower knew the content of the orders which were taking Hotspur to sea; nobody knew to what point in the whole world she was destined to sail. The mention of Ushant narrowed down the field to some extent at least. The North Sea and the Baltic were ruled out. So were Ireland and the Irish Sea and the St. Lawrence across the Atlantic. But it still might be the West Indies or the Cape of Good Hope or the Mediterranean; Ushant was a point of departure for all those.

  “Mr. Bush!” said Hornblower.

  “Sir!”

  “You may dismiss the watch below, and send the hands to breakfast when you think proper.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Who’s the officer of the watch?”

  “Cargill, sir.”

  “He has charge of the deck, then.”

  Hornblower looked about him. Everything was in order, and Hotspur was standing out for the Channel. But there was something odd, something different, something unusual. Then it dawned upon him. For the first time in his life he was going to sea in time of peace. He had served ten years as a naval officer without this experience. Always before, whenever his ship emerged from harbour, she was in instant danger additional to the hazards of the sea. In every previous voyage any moment might bring an enemy up over the horizon; at an hour’s notice ship and ship’s company might be fighting for their lives. And the most dangerous time of all was when first putting to sea with a raw crew, with drill and organization incomplete—it was a likely moment to meet an enemy, as well as the most inconvenient one.

  Now here they were putting to sea without any of these worries. It was an extraordinary sensation, something new—something new, like leaving Maria behind. He tried to shake that thought from him; as a buoy slithered past the starboard quarter he tried to leave the thought with it. It was a relief to see Prowse approaching again, with a piece of paper in his hand as he glanced up to the commission pendant and then out to the horizon in an attempt to forecast the weather.

  “Course is sou’west by west, half west, sir,” he said. “When we tack we may just be able to make that good, close-hauled.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Prowse. You may mark it on the board.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Prowse was pleased at this mark of confidence. He naturally had no idea that Hornblower, revolving in his mind, yesterday afternoon, all the responsibilities he would be carrying on the morrow, had made the same calculation to reach the same result. The green hills of the Isle of Wight were momentarily touched by a watery and level sun.

  “There’s the buoy, sir,” said Prowse.

  “Thank you. Mr. Cargill! Tack the ship, if you please.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Hornblower withdrew aft. He wanted not merely to observe how Cargill handled the ship, but also how Hotspur behaved. When war should come it was not a mere possibility, but a definite probability, that success or failure, freedom or captivity, might hinge on how Hotspur went about, how handy she was in stays.

  Cargill was a man of thirty, red-faced and corpulent in advance of his years; he was obviously trying hard to forget that he was under the simultaneous scrutiny of the captain, the first lieutenant, and the sailing master, as he applied himself to the manoeuvre. He stood beside the wheel looking warily up at the sails and aft at the wake. Hornblower watched Cargill’s right hand, down by his thigh, opening and shutting. That might be a symptom of nervousness or a mere habitual gesture of calculation. The watch on deck were all at their stations. So far the men were all unknown faces to Hornblower; it would be profitable to devote some of his attention to the study of their r
eactions as well.

  Cargill obviously braced himself for action and then gave his preliminary order to the wheel.

  “Helm’s alee!” he bellowed, but not a very effective bellow, for his voice cracked half-way.

  “Headsail sheets!” That was hardly better. It would not have served in a gale of wind, although it carried forward in present conditions. Jib and fore-topsail began to shiver.

  “Raise up tacks and sheets!”

  Hotspur was coming round into the wind, rising to an even keel. She was coming round, coming round—now was she going to hang in stays?

  “Haul, mains’l! Haul!”

  This was the crucial moment. The hands knew their business; the port-side bowlines and braces were cast off smartly, and the hands tailed on to the starboard-side ones. Round came the yards, but the Hotspur refused to answer. She baulked. She hung right in the eye of the wind, and then fell off again two points to port, with every sail ashiver and every yard of way lost. She was in irons, helpless until further action should be taken.

  “A fine thing if we were on a lee shore, sir,” growled Bush.

  “Wait,” said Hornblower. Cargill was glancing round at him for orders, and that was disappointing. Hornblower would have preferred an officer who went stolidly on to retrieve the situation. “Carry on, Mr. Cargill.”

  The hands were behaving well. There was no chatter, and they were standing by for further orders. Cargill was drumming on his right thigh with his fingers, but for his own sake he must find his way out of his troubles unaided. Hornblower saw the fingers clench, saw Cargill glance ahead and astern as he pulled himself together. Hotspur was slowly gathering stern-way as the wind pushed directly back on the sails. Cargill took the plunge, made the effort. A sharp order put the wheel hard-a-port, another order brought the yards ponderously round again. Hotspur hung reluctant for a moment, and then sulkily turned back on the starboard tack and gathered way as Cargill in the nick of time sent the wheel spinning back and took a pull on the braces. There was no lack of sea room, there was no dangerous lee shore to demand instant action, and Cargill could wait until every sail was drawing fully again, and Hotspur had plenty of way on her to enable the rudder to bite. Cargill even had the sense to allow her head to fall off another point so as to give plenty of momentum for his next attempt, although Hornblower noticed with a slight pang of regret that he hurried it a trifle more than he should have done. He should have waited perhaps two more minutes.