Hornblower and the Crisis

by Forester, C. S.

  Hornblower and the Crisis

  Hornblower and the Crisis

  Hornblower and the Crisis

  Hornblower and the Crisis

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hornblower was expecting the knock on the door, because he had seen through his cabin window enough to guess what was happening outside.

  “Waterhoy coming alongside, sir,” reported Bush, hat in hand.

  “Very well, Mr Bush.” Hornblower was disturbed in spirit and, irritated, had no intention of smoothing Bush's path for him.

  “The new captain's on board, sir.” Bush was perfectly well aware of Hornblower's mood yet was not ingenious enough to cope with it.

  “Very well, Mr Bush.”

  But that was simple cruelty, the deliberate teasing of a nearly dumb animal; Hornblower realized that such behaviour really gave him no pleasure and only occasioned embarrassment to Bush. He relented to the extent of introducing a lighter touch into the conversation.

  “So now you have a few minutes to spare for me, Mr Bush?” he said. “It's a change after your preoccupation of the last two days.”

  That was neither fair nor kind, and Bush showed his feelings in his face.

  “I've had my duties to do, sir,” he mumbled.

  “Getting Hotspur into apple pie order ready for her new captain.”

  “Y yes, sir.”

  “Doesn't matter about me, of course. I'm only a back number now.”

  “Sir —”

  Even though he was not in a smiling mood Hornblower could not help smiling at the misery of Bush's expression.

  “I'm glad to see you're only human, Mr Bush, after all. Sometimes I've doubted it. There couldn't be a more perfect First Lieutenant.”

  Bush needed two or three seconds in which to digest this unexpected compliment.

  “That's very good of you, sir. Very kind indeed. But it's been all your doing.”

  In a moment they would slide down the slippery slopes of sentiment, which would be unbearable.

  “Time for me to appear on deck,” said Hornblower. “We'd better say goodbye, Mr Bush. The best of luck under your new captain.”

  He went so far towards yielding to the mood of the moment as to hold out his hand, which Bush took. Luckily Bush's emotions prevented him from saying more than just “Goodbye, sir,” and Hornblower hurried out through the cabin door with Bush at his heels.

  There was instantly plenty of distraction as the waterhoy was laid alongside the Hotspur; the side of the hoy was covered from end to end with old sails in rolls and with substantial fendoffs of sandbags, yet it was a ticklish business, even in the sheltered waters of this little bay, to pass lines between the two ships and draw them together. A gangplank came clattering out from the hoy to bridge the gap between the two decks, and a burly man in full unicorn made the precarious crossing. He was very tall — two or three inches over six feet and heavily built; a man of middle age or more, to judge by the shock of grey hair revealed when he raised his hat. The boatswain's mates pealed loudly on their calls; the two ship's drummers beat a ragged ruffle.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” said Hornblower.

  The new captain pulled a paper from his breast pocket, opened it, and began to read. A shout from Bush bared every head so that the function would take place with due solemnity.

  “Orders given by us, William Cornwallis, Vice Admiral of the Red, Knight of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Commanding His Majesty's Ships and Vessels of the Channel Fleet, to James Percival Meadows, Esquire —”

  “D'ye think we have all day?” This was a new stentorian voice from the deck of the hoy. “Stand by to take the hoses, there! Mr Lieutenant, let's have some hands for the pumps.”

  The voice came, appropriately enough, from the barrel-​shaped captain of the hoy. Bush signalled frantically for him to stay quiet until this vital ceremonial was completed.

  “Time enough for that tomfoolery when the water's all aboard. The wind'll shift within the hour,” roared the barrel shaped captain quite unabashed. Captain Meadows scowled and hesitated, but for all his vast stature he could do nothing to silence the captain of the hoy. He roared through the rest of his orders at a pace nearer a gallop than a canter, and folded them up with evident relief now that he was legally captain of HMS Hotspur.

  “On hats,” bellowed Bush.

  “Sir, I relieve you,” said Meadows to Hornblower.

  “I much regret the bad manners displayed in the hoy, sir,” said Hornblower to Meadows.

  “Now let's have some sturdy hands,” said the barrel-​shaped captain to no one in particular, and Meadows shrugged his vast shoulders with resignation.

  “Mr Bush, my first lieutenant — I mean your first lieutenant, sir,” said Hornblower, hastily effecting the introduction.

  “Carry on, Mr. Bush,” said Meadows, and Bush plunged instantly into the business of transferring the fresh water from the hoy.

  “Who's that fellow, sir?” asked Hornblower with a jerk of his thumb at the captain of the hoy.

  “He's been my cross for the last two days,” answered Meadows. Dirty words unnecessary to reproduce interlarded every sentence he uttered. “He's not only captain but he's thirty seven sixty fourths owner. Under Navy Office contract — can't press him, can't press his men, as they all have protections. Says what he likes, does what he likes, and I'd give my prize money for the next five years to have him at the gratings for ten minutes.”

  “M'm,” said Hornblower. “I'm taking passage with him.”

  “Hope you fare better than I did.”

  “By your leave, sirs.” A hand from the hoy came pushing along the gangplank dragging a canvas hose. At his heels came someone carrying papers; there was bustle everywhere.

  “I'll hand over the ship's papers, sir,” said Hornblower. “Will you come with me? I mean — they are ready in your cabin when you have time to attend to them, sir.”

  His sea chest and ditty bag lay forlorn on the bare cabin deck, pathetic indications of his immediate departure. It was the work only of a few moments to complete the transfer of command.

  “May I request of Mr Bush the loan of a hand to transfer my dunnage, sir?” asked Hornblower.

  Now he was nobody. He was not even a passenger; he had no standing at all, and this became more evident still when he returned to the deck to look round for his officers to bid them farewell. They were all engrossed in the business of the moment, with hardly a second to spare for him. Handshakes were hasty and perfunctory; it was with a queer relief that he turned away to the gangplank.

  It was a relief that was short lived for, even at anchor, Hotspur was rolling perceptibly in the swell that curved in round the point, and the two ships, Hotspur and the waterhoy, were rolling in opposite phases, their upper works inclining first together and then away from each other, so that the gangplank which joined them was possessed of several distinct motions — it swung in a vertical plane like a seesaw and in a horizontal plane like a compass needle; it rose and fell bodily, too, but the most frightening motion, instantly obvious as soon as he addressed himself to the crossing, was a stabbing back and forth motion as the ships surged together and apart, the gap bridged by the plank being now six feet and then sixteen. To a barefooted seaman the passage would be nothing; to Hornblower it was a rather frightening matter — an eighteen inch plank with no handrail. He was conscious, too, of the barrel-​shaped captain watching him, but at least that made him determined to show no hesitation once he decided on the passage — until that moment he studied the motions of the plank out of the tail of his eye while apparently his attention was fully taken up by the various activities in the two ships.

  Then he made a rush for it, got both feet on the
plank, endured a nightmare interval when it seemed as if, hurry as he would, he made no progress at all, and then thankfully reached the end of the plank and stepped clear of it on to the comparative stability of the deck. The barrel-​shaped captain made no move to welcome him and while two hands dumped his baggage on the deck Hornblower had to make the first advance.

  “Are you the master of this vessel, sir?” he asked.

  “Captain Baddlestone, master of the hoy, Princess.”

  “I am Captain Hornblower, and I am to be given a passage to England,” said Hornblower. He deliberately chose that form of words, nettled as he was by Baddlestone's off hand manner.

  “You have your warrant?”

  The question and the way in which it was asked rather pricked the bubble of Hornblower's dignity, but he was roused sufficiently by now to feel he would stand no more insolence.

  “I have,” he declared.

  Baddlestone had a large round red face, inclining even to purple; from out of it, from under two thick black eyebrows, two surprisingly bright blue eyes met Hornblower's haughty stare. Hornblower was determined to yield not an inch, and was prepared to continue to meet the head on assault of those blue eyes indefinitely, but he found his flank neatly turned.

  “Cabin food a guinea a day. Or you can compound for the passage for three guineas,” announced Baddlestone.

  It was a surprise to find he had to pay for his subsistence, and Hornblower knew his surprise was apparent in his expression, but he would not allow it to be apparent in his words. He would not even condescend to ask the questions that were on the tip of his tongue. He could be quite sure that Baddlestone had legality on his side. The Navy Office charter of the hoy presumably compelled Baddlestone to give passages to transient officers, but omitted all reference to subsistence. He thought quickly.

  “Three guineas, then,” he said as loftily as he could, with all the manner of a man to whom the difference between one guinea and three was of no concern. It was not until after he had said the words that he worked out in his mind the deduction that the wind was likely to back round easterly and make a long return passage probable.

  During this conversation one pump had been working most irregularly, and now the other one came to a stop; the cessation of the monotonous noise was quite striking. Here was Bush hailing from the Hotspur.

  “That's only nineteen ton,” he said. “We can take two more.”

  “And two more you won't get,” yelled Baddlestone in reply. “We're sucked dry.”

  It was a strange feeling that this was of no concern to Hornblower; he was free of responsibility, even though his mind automatically worked out that Hotspur now had fresh water for forty days. It was Meadows who would have to plan to conserve that supply. And with the wind likely to come easterly Hotspur would have to close the mouth of the Goulet as closely as possible — that was Meadow's concern and nothing to do with him, not ever again.

  The hands who had been working at the pumps went scuttling back over the gangplank; the two hands from the Princess who had been standing by the hoses came back on board dragging their charges. Last came the Princess's mate with his papers.

  “Stand by the lines, there!” yelled Baddlestone. “Jib halliards, Mister!”

  Baddlestone himself went to the wheel, and he made a neat job of getting the hoy away from the Hotspur's side. He continued to steer the ship while the half dozen hands under the supervision of the mate set about the task of lifting and stowing the fendoffs that hung along her side. It was only a matter of seconds before the gap between the two ships was too wide to bridge by voice. Hornblower looked across the sparkling water. It appeared that Meadows was summoning all hands in order to address them in an inaugural speech; certainly no one spared a further glance towards the hoy or towards Hornblower standing lonely on the deck. The bonds of naval friendship, of naval intimacy, were exceedingly strong, but they could be ruptured in a flash. It was more than likely that he would never see Bush again.

  Hornblower and the Crisis

  CHAPTER TWO

  Life in the waterhoy Princess was exceedingly uncomfortable. She was empty of her cargo of drinking water, and there was almost nothing to replace it; the empty casks were too precious to be contaminated by sea water for use as ballast, and only a few bags of sand could be squeezed between the empty casks to confer any stability on her hull. She had been designed with this very difficulty in view, the lines of her dish-​shaped hull being such that even when riding light her broad beam made her hard to capsize, but she did everything short of that. Her motion was violent and, to the uninitiated, quite unpredictable, and she was hardly more weatherly than a raft, sagging off to leeward in a spineless fashion that boded ill for any prospect of working up to Plymouth while any easterly component prevailed in the wind.

  Hornblower was forced to endure considerable hardship. For two days he lingered on the verge of seasickness as a result of this new motion beneath his feet; he was not actually sick, having had several uninterrupted weeks at sea already, but he told himself that it would be less unpleasant if that were to happen — although in his heart of hearts he knew that was not true. He was allotted a hammock in a compartment six feet square and five feet high; he at least had it to himself and could derive some small comfort from observing that there were arrangements for eight hammocks, in two tiers of four, to be slung there. It had been a long time since he slept in a hammock, and his spine was slow to adjust to the necessary curvature, while the extravagant leaps and rolls of the hoy were conveyed to him through it and made the memory of his cot in Hotspur nostalgically luxurious.

  The wind stayed northeasterly, bringing clear skies and sunshine but no comfort to Hornblower, save that it was soon evident that he would be eating Baddlestone's 'cabin food' for more than three days — a doubtful source of satisfaction. All he wished to do was to make his way to England, to London, to Whitehall, and to secure his posting as captain before anything could happen to interfere. He watched morosely as the Princess lost more and more distance to leeward, more even than the clumsy ships of the line clustered off Ushant. There was nothing to read on board, there was nothing to do, and there was nowhere comfortable where he could do that nothing.

  He was coming up through the hatchway, weary of his hammock, when he saw Baddlestone whip his telescope to his eye and stare to windward.

  “Here they come!” said Baddlestone, unusually communicative.

  With the greatest possible condescension he passed the telescope over to Hornblower; there could be no more generous gesture (as Hornblower well knew) than for a captain to part with his glass even for a moment when something of interest was in sight. It was a veritable fleet bearing down on them, something far more than a mere squadron. Four frigates with every stitch of canvas spread, were racing to take the lead; behind them followed two columns of line of battleships, seven in one and six in the other. They were already setting studding sails as they edged into station. With the wind right astern and all sail set they were hurtling down upon the Princess. It was a magnificent sight, the commission pennants whipping out ahead, the ensigns flying forward as if in emulation. Under each bluff bow a creamy bow wave mounted and sank as the ships drove on over the blue water. Here was England's naval might seen to its best advantage. The right central frigate came cutting close beside the wallowing waterhoy.

  “Diamond, 32,” said Baddlestone; he had recovered his telescope by some means or other.

  Hornblower stared enviously and longingly at her as she passed within long cannon shot. He saw a rush of men up the foremast rigging. The fore topgallant sail was taken in and reset in the brief space while the Diamond was passing; a smart ship that — Hornblower had not detected anything wrong with the set of the sail. The mate of the hoy had just managed to hoist a dirty red ensign in time to dip it in salute, and the blue ensign over there dipped in reply. Now came the starboard column of ships of the line, a three decker in the lead, towering over the waves, her three rows of
chequered gunports revealing themselves as she approached, a blue vice admiral's flag blowing from her fore topgallant mast.

  “Prince of Wales, 98. Vice Admiral Sir Robert Calder, baronet,” said Baddlestone. “There's two other flags with this lot.”

  The ensigns dipped in salute and the next of the line came on, plunging before the wind with the spray flying. The flags dipped time and again as the seven ships hurtled by.

  “A fair wind for Finisterre,” said Baddlestone.

  “That looks like their course,” said Hornblower.

  It seemed obvious that Baddlestone knew as much about fleet movements as he did, and perhaps even more. Less than a week earlier Baddlestone had been in Plymouth with English newspapers to read and all the chatter of the alehouses to listen to. Hornblower himself had heard a good deal of circumstantial gossip from the Shetland, the victualler which had come alongside Hotspur a couple of days earlier than the Princess. The fact that Baddlestone suggested that Calder's destination was merely Finisterre, and not the Straits or the West Indies was nearly convincing proof of the extent of Baddlestone's knowledge. Hornblower asked a testing question.

  “Heading for the Strait's mouth, do you think?”

  Baddlestone eyed him with a trace of pity.

  “No farther than Finisterre,” he vouchsafed.

  “But why?”

  Baddlestone found it clearly hard to believe that Hornblower could be ignorant of what was being discussed throughout the fleet and the dockyard.

  “Villain noove,” he said.

  That was Villeneuve, the French admiral commanding the fleet that had broken out of the Mediterranean some weeks before and fled across the Atlantic to the West Indies.

  “What about him?” asked Hornblower.

  “He's heading back again, making for Brest. Going to pick up the French fleet there, so Boney thinks. Then the Channel. Boney's army's waiting at Boulong, and Boney thinks he'll eat his next dish of frogs in Windsor Castle.”