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

for their return to England was not immediately apparent. Most of them were likely to be ruptured so badly as to rate discharge; possibly one or two others may have been illegally impressed and fortunate enough to have friends at home with sufficient influence to win their freedom. Altogether it was a large and formidable body of men mustered on the deck of the hoy, crowding it, while the longboat cast off and, with her lugsails hauled as flat as boards, set off on the long beat back to the flagship.

Baddlestone followed Meadows' gaze and ran his eye over the crowd, and Meadows accentuated his earlier glance with a wave of his hand. Hornblower was reminded of the legendary captain of a ship of war who, when asked for his authority for some particular action, pointed to his guns and said “There!”

“By the terms of your contract you victual ratings at sixpence a day,” said Meadows, “This voyage you'll victual officers at the same rate, and that's all it's worth.”

“Is this piracy?” exclaimed Baddlestone.

“Call it anything you like,” answered Meadows.

Baddlestone fell back a step or two, staring round him, to find no comfort in sea or sky, with the nearest ship some cables' lengths away. Meadows' expression was unchanging, bleak and lonely. Whatever had been the terms of the reprimand he had received he obviously felt it severely. Believing himself to be a man without a future he could well be careless about any possible charge of mutiny Baddlestone could bring against him. His officers were sheltered under his authority, while clearly they had lost all they possessed when Hotspur sank and were aware that by law they went on half pay from that moment too. They could be dangerous men, and the ratings would obey them without hesitation. The Princess's crew in addition to Baddlestone comprised a mate, a cook, four hands, and a boy; the odds were overwhelming if there was no chance of appealing to higher authority, and Baddlestone realized it even though his words still conveyed defiance.

“I'll see you in the dock, Mr Captain Meadows,” he said.

“Captain Hornblower travels at the same rate,” said Meadows imperturbably.

“I've paid my three guineas,” interposed Hornblower.

“Better still. That'll be — a hundred and twenty six sixpences already paid. Am I right, Mr Baddlestone?”

Hornblower and the Crisis

CHAPTER FIVE

In the Princess conditions were intolerably crowded. Where Hornblower's hammock had been slung there were now seven more, so that each of the eight officers occupied no more space than might be found inside a coffin. They were packed together in an almost solid mass, but not quite solid; as the Princess leaped and bounded there was just enough play for everyone to bump against his neighbour or against a bulkhead, maddeningly, every second or two. Hornblower in the lower tier (which he had selected sensibly enough to avoid the poisonous upper air) had Meadows above him, a bulkhead on one side and Bush on the other. Sometimes the weight of the three bodies to his left compressed him against the bulkhead, and sometimes he swayed the other way and thumped Bush in the ribs; sometimes the deck below rose up to meet him and sometimes Meadows' vast bulk above came down to impress itself on him — Meadows was an inch or two longer than the cabin and lay in a pronounced curve. Hornblower's restless mind deduced that these latter contacts were proof of how much the Princess 'worked' — the cabin was pulled out of shape when she rolled, diminishing its height by an inch or two, as was confirmed by the creaking and crackling that went on all round him. Long before midnight Hornblower wriggled with difficulty out of his hammock and then, snaking along on his back under the lower tier, crawled out of the cabin to where the purer air outside fluttered his shirt tails. After the first night common sense dictated another arrangement whereby the passengers, officers and ratings alike, slept 'watch and watch', four hours in bed and four hours squatting in sheltered corners on deck. It was a system to which they were all inured, and was extended, naturally and perforce, to cooking and meals and every other activity. Even so, the Princess was not a happy ship, with the passengers likely to snarl at each other at small provocation, and potential trouble on a far greater scale only a hair's breadth away as the experts with whom the hoy swarmed criticized Baddlestone's handling of her. For the persistent summer breezes still blew from between north and east, and she lost distance to leeward in a manner perfectly infuriating to men who for months and years had not seen homeland or family. That wind meant sparkling and delightful weather; it might mean a splendid harvest in England, but it meant irritation in the Princess, where bitter arguments developed between those who advocated that Baddlestone should reach to the westward, into the Atlantic, in the hope of finding a favourable slant of wind there, and those who still had sufficient patience to recommend beating about where they were — but both schools were ready to agree that the trim of the sails, the handling of the helm, the course set when under way, and the tack selected when lying to could and should be improved upon.

Hope came timorously to life one noontime; there had been disappointments before and, despite all the previous discussions, hardly a soul dared speak a word when, after a period of almost imperceptible easterly airs something a trifle more vigorous awoke, with a hint of south in it, backing and strengthening so that the sheets could be hauled in, with Baddlestone bellowing at the hands and the motion of the Princess changing from spiritless wallowing to a flat footed advance, an ungainly movement over the waves like a cart horse trying to canter over wet furrow.

“What's her course, d'you think?” asked Hornblower.

“Nor'east, sir,” said Bush, tentatively, but Prowse shook his head as his natural pessimism