Hornblower and the Crisis, Forester, S. [ebook reader ink .TXT] 📗

second quoin under the breech of the gun, so that it pointed down at a steep angle into the hatchway. He and Baddlestone stood clear, and then he jerked at the lanyard. A bellowing roar, a blinding flash, a billow of smoke; yells and screams from down below, distinctly heard where Hornblower was standing. Then the Englishmen came running across the deck, Baddlestone and Gurney, the guards at the scuttle and the hatchway, the guards over the prisoners. Hornblower watched them scrambling down into the boat, Baddlestone last, turning to yell defiance before he disappeared down into his boat. Hornblower released his hold on the chains and sat down in the sternsheets.

“Shove off!” he said.

Over there that tiny pinpoint of dancing light showed where Princess still lay to. In five minutes they would be under way again, free from pursuit, with the wind fair for Plymouth.

Hornblower and the Crisis

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hornblower wrote the final lines of his letter, rapidly checked it through, from 'My dear Wife' to 'Your loving husband, Horatio Hornblower', and folded the sheet and put it in his pocket before going up on deck. The last turn was being taken round the last bollard, and Princess was safely alongside the quay in the victualling yard in Plymouth.

As always, there was something unreal, a sort of nightmare clarity in this first contact with England. The people, the sheds, the houses, seemed to stand out with unnatural sharpness; voices sounded different with the land to echo them; the wind was vastly changed from the wind he knew at sea. The passengers were already stepping ashore, and a crowd of curious onlookers had assembled; the arrival of a waterhoy from the Channel fleet was of interest enough became she might have news, but a waterhoy which had actually captured, and for a few minutes had held possession of, a French brig of war was something very new.

There were farewells to say to Baddlestone; besides making arrangements to land his sea chest and ditty bag there was something else to discuss.

“I have the French ship's papers here,” said Hornblower, indicating the bundle.

“What of them?” countered Baddlestone.

“It's your duty to hand them over to the authorities,” said Hornblower. “In fact I'm sure you're legally bound to do that. Certainly as a King's officer I must see that is done.”

Baddlestone seemed to be in a reserved mood; he seemed as anxious as Hornblower not to betray himself.

“Then why not do it?” he said at length, after a long hard look at Hornblower.

“It's prize of war and you're the captain.”

Baddlestone voiced his contempt for prize of war that consisted solely of worthless papers.

“You'd better do it, Captain,” he said, after the oaths and obscenities. “They'll be worth something to you.”

“They certainly may be,” agreed Hornblower.

Baddlestone's reserve was replaced now by a look of inquiring puzzlement. He was studying Hornblower as if seeking to ascertain some hidden motive behind the obvious ones.

“It was you who thought of taking them,” he said, “and you're ready to hand them over to me?”

“Of course. You're the captain.”

Baddlestone shook his head slowly as if he was giving up a problem; but what the problem was Hornblower never did discover.

Next there was the strange sensation of feeling the unmoving earth under his feet as he stepped ashore; there was the silence that fell on the two groups of passengers — officers and ratings — as he approached them. He had to take a formal farewell of them — it was only thirty hours since he and they had fought their way along the French brig's deck, swinging their cutlasses. There was a brotherhood in arms — one might almost say a brotherhood of blood — between them, something that divided them off sharply into a caste utterly different from the ignorant civilians here.

But the very first thing to deal with on shore was his letter. There was a skinny and bare footed urchin hanging on the fringe of the crowd.

“You boy!” called Hornblower. “D'you want to earn a shilling?”

“Iss, that do I.” The homely accent was accompanied by an embarrassed grin.

“D'you know Driver's Alley?”

“Iss, sir.”

“Here's sixpence and a letter. Run all the way and take this letter to Mrs Hornblower. Can you remember that name? Let's hear you say it. Very well. She'll give you the other sixpence when you give her the letter. Now — run.”

Now for the goodbyes.

“I said goodbye to most of you gentlemen only a few days back, and now I have to do so again. And a good deal has happened since then.”

“Yes, sir!” an emphatic agreement, voiced by Bush as the only commissioned officer present.

“Now I'm saying goodbye once more. I said before that I hoped we'd meet again, and I say it now. And I say 'thank you', too. You know I mean both those.”

“It's us that have to thank you, sir,” said Bush, through the inarticulate murmurs uttered by the others.

“Goodbye, you men,” said Hornblower to the other group. “Good luck.”

“Goodbye and good luck, sir.”

He turned away; there was a dockyard labourer available to wheel away his gear on a barrow, on which he could also lay the blanket bundle which swung from his hand; it might be vastly precious but it would not be out of his sight, and he had his dignity as a captain to consider. That dignity Hornblower felt imperilled enough as it was by the difficulty he experienced in walking like a landsman; the cobbles over which he was making his way seemed as if they could not remain level. He knew he was rolling in his gait like any Jack Tar, and yet, try as he would, he could not check the tendency while the solid earth seemed to seesaw under his feet.

The labourer — as might have been expected — had no knowledge of where the admiral commanding the port was to be found; he did not know even his name, and a passing clerk had to be stopped and questioned.

“The port admiral?” The lard faced clerk who repeated Hornblower's