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

off handedly as he concentrated on his reading. He had never read a letter from an Emperor before.

Monsieur le Général Lauriston, the letter began. The first paragraph was taken up with allusions to the instructions already sent by the Ministries of Marine and of War. The second dealt with the relative seniority of General Lauriston and of various subordinates. The final one was more flamboyant.

“Hoist my flags over that beautiful continent, and if the British attack you, and you experience some bad luck, always remember three things, activity, concentration of forces, and the firm resolution to die with glory. These are the great principles of war which have brought me success in all my operations. Death is nothing, but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day. Do not worry about your family. Think only about that portion of my family which you are going to reconquer.”

“It reads like a counsel of despair, sir,” said Hornblower. “Telling him to fight to the last.”

“No mention of sending him reinforcements,” agreed Barrow. “Quite the opposite, in fact. A pity.”

To reinforce the West Indies would necessitate risking some of Bonaparte's naval forces at sea.

“Boney needs a victory here first, sir,” suggested Hornblower.

“Yes.”

Hornblower found his own bitter smile repeated by Barrow. A victory won by Bonaparte in home waters would mean the conquest of England, the automatic fall of West Indies and East Indies, of Canada and the Cape, of the whole Empire; it would mean an alteration in the destiny of all mankind.

“But this —” said Barrow with a wave of the dispatch. “This may play its part.”

Hornblower had already learned the importance of negative information, and he nodded agreement. And it was at that moment that Marsden returned to the room, with a fistful of papers.

“Oh, you're here, Dorsey,” he said. “That's for His Majesty at Windsor. See that the courier leaves within fifteen minutes. That's for the telegraph to Plymouth. So's that. That's for Portsmouth. Have the copying begun immediately.”

It was interesting to watch Marsden in action; there was no trace of excitement in his voice, and although the successive sentences followed each other without a pause they did not come tumbling out. Each was clearly enunciated in a tone of apparent indifference. The papers Marsden brought in might be of vital importance — most certainly were — but Marsden acted as if he were handing out blank sheets in some meaningless ceremony. On their way to Barrow the cold eyes passed over Hornblower without affording him an opportunity of taking his leave.

“No further messages, Mr Barrow?”

“None, Mr Marsden.”

“There will be no confirmation from Plymouth before eight o'clock tomorrow morning,” remarked Marsden looking at the clock.

The telegraph in clear weather and daylight could transmit a message from Plymouth in fifteen minutes — Hornblower had noticed several of the huge semaphore standards during his recent journey; last year he had landed outside Brest and burned a similar machine. But a written message, carried by relays of mounted couriers (some of them riding through darkness) would take twenty three hours to make the journey. On wheels in his post chaise he himself had taken forty; it seemed now as if it were weeks, and not hours.

“This captured dispatch of Captain Hornblower's is of interest, Mr Marsden,” said Barrow; the tone of his voice seemed to echo Marsden's apparent indifference. It was hard for Hornblower to decide whether it was imitation or parody.

Yet it was only a matter of moments for Marsden to read the dispatch and to grasp the important features of the writing of it.

“So now we might imitate a letter from His Imperial and Royal Majesty the Emperor Napoleon,” commented Marsden; the smile that accompanied the words was just as inhuman as the tone of his voice.

Hornblower was experiencing an odd reaction, possibly initialed by this last remark of Marsden's. His head was swimming with hunger and fatigue; he was being projected into a world of unreality, and the unreality was being made still more unreal by the manner of these two cold-​blooded gentlemen with whom he was closeted. There were stirrings in his brain. Wild — delirious — ideas were forming there, but no wilder than this world in which he found himself, where fleets were set in motion by a word and where an Emperor's dispatches could be the subject of a jest. He condemned his notions to himself as lunatic nonsense, and yet even as he did so he found additions making their appearance in his mind, logical contributions building up into a fantastic whole.

Marsden was looking at him — through him — with those cold eyes

“You may have done a great service for your King and Country,” said Marsden; the words might be interpreted as words of praise, perhaps, but the manner and expression would call for no modification if Marsden were a judge on the bench condemning a criminal.

“I hope I have done so, sir,” replied Hornblower.

“Exactly why do you hope that?”

It was a bewildering question, bewildering because its answer was so obvious.

“Because I am a King's officer, sir,” said Hornblower.

“And not, Captain, because you expect any reward?”

“I had not thought of it, sir. It was only the purest chance,” answered Hornblower.

This was verbal fencing, and faintly irritating. Perhaps Marsden enjoyed the game. Perhaps years of having to throw cold water on the hopes of innumerable ambitious officers demanding promotion and employment had made the process habitual to him.

“A pity it is not a dispatch of real importance,” he said. “This only makes clear what we already could guess that Boney does not intend to send reinforcements to Martinique.”

“But with that for a model —” began Hornblower. The he stopped, angry with himself. His tumultuous thought would make greater nonsense still expressed in words.

“With this as a model?” repeated Marsden.

“Let us have your suggestion, Captain,” said Barrow.

“I can't waste your time, gentlemen,” stammered Hornblower; he was on the verge of the abyss and striving unavailingly to draw back.

“You have given us an inkling, Captain,” said Barrow.