The Young Hornblower Omnibus Page 10

  The realization carried him far up the shrouds. At his elbow he felt the futtock shrouds and he transferred himself to them, hanging back downward with his toes hooked into the ratlines and his hands clinging like death. That only lasted for two or three desperate seconds, and then he hauled himself onto the topmast shrouds and began the final ascent, his lungs bursting with the effort. Here was the topsail yard, and Hornblower flung himself across it and felt with his feet for the footrope. Merciful God! There was no footrope—his feet searching in the darkness met only unresisting air. A hundred feet above the deck he hung, squirming and kicking like a baby held up at arm’s length in its father’s hands. There was no footrope; it may have been with this very situation in mind that the Frenchmen had removed it. There was no footrope, so that he could not make his way out to the yardarm. Yet the gaskets must be cast off and the sail loosed—everything depended on that. Hornblower had seen daredevil seamen run out along the yards standing upright, as though walking a tightrope. That was the only way to reach the yardarm now.

  For a moment he could not breathe as his weak flesh revolted against the thought of walking along that yard above the black abyss. This was fear, the fear that stripped a man of his manhood, turning his bowels to water and his limbs to paper. Yet his furiously active mind continued to work. He had been resolute enough in dealing with Hales. Where he personally was not involved he had been brave enough; he had not hesitated to strike down the wretched epileptic with all the strength of his arm. That was the poor sort of courage he was capable of displaying. In the simple vulgar matter of physical bravery he was utterly wanting. This was cowardice, the sort of thing that men spoke about behind their hands to other men. He could not bear the thought of that in himself—it was worse (awful though the alternative might be) than the thought of falling through the night to the deck. With a gasp he brought his knee up onto the yard, heaving himself up until he stood upright. He felt the rounded, canvas-covered timber under his feet, and his instincts told him not to dally there for a moment.

  “Come on, men!” he yelled, and he dashed out along the yard.

  It was twenty feet to the yardarm, and he covered the distance in a few frantic strides. Utterly reckless by now, he put his hands down on the yard, clasped it, and laid his body across it again, his hands seeking the gaskets. A thump on the yard told him that Oldroyd, who had been detailed to come after him, had followed him out along the yard—he had six feet less to go. There could be no doubt that the other members of the jolly boat’s crew were on the yard, and that Clough had led the way to the starboard yardarm. It was obvious from the rapidity with which the sail came loose. Here was the brace beside him. Without any thought of danger now, for he was delirious with excitement and triumph, he grasped it with both hands and jerked himself off the yard. His waving legs found the rope and twined about it, and he let himself slide down it.

  Fool that he was! Would he never learn sense and prudence? Would he never remember that vigilance and precaution must never be relaxed? He had allowed himself to slide so fast that the rope seared his hands, and when he tried to tighten his grip so as to slow down his progress it caused him such agony that he had to relax it again and slide on down with the rope stripping the skin from his hands as though peeling off a glove. His feet reached the deck and he momentarily forgot the pain as he looked round him.

  There was the faintest grey light beginning to show now, and there were no sounds of battle. It had been a well-worked surprise—a hundred men flung suddenly on the deck of the corvette had swept away the anchor watch and mastered the vessel in a single rush before the watch below could come up to offer any resistance. Chadd’s stentorian voice came pealing from the forecastle.

  “Cable’s cut, sir!”

  Then Eccles bellowed from aft.

  “Mr. Hornblower!”

  “Sir!” yelled Hornblower.

  “Man the halliards!”

  A rush of men came to help—not only his own boat’s crew but every man of initiative and spirit. Halliards, sheets and braces; the sail was trimmed round and was drawing full in the light southerly air, and the Papillon swung round to go down with the first of the ebb. Dawn was coming up fast, with a trifle of mist on the surface of the water.

  Over the starboard quarter came a sullen bellowing roar, and then the misty air was torn by a series of infernal screams, supernaturally loud. The first cannon balls Hornblower ever heard were passing him by.

  “Mr. Chadd! Set the headsails! Loose the foretops’l. Get aloft, some of you, and set the mizzen tops’l.”

  From the port bow came another salvo—Blaye was firing at them from one side, St. Dye from the other, now they could guess what had happened on board the Papillon. But the corvette was moving fast with wind and tide, and it would be no easy matter to cripple her in the half light. It had been a very near-run thing; a few seconds’ delay could have been fatal. Only one shot from the next salvo passed within hearing, and its passage was marked by a loud snap overhead.

  “Mr. Mallory, get that forestay spliced!”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  It was light enough to look round the deck now; he could see Eccles at the break of the poop, directing the handling of the corvette, and Soames beside the wheel conning her down the channel. Two groups of red-coated marines, with bayonets fixed, stood guard over the hatchways. There were four or five men lying on the deck in curiously abandoned attitudes. Dead men; Hornblower could look at them with the callousness of youth. But there was a wounded man, too, crouched groaning over his shattered thigh—Hornblower could not look at him as disinterestedly, and he was glad, maybe only for his own sake, when at that moment a seaman asked for and received permission from Mallory to leave his duties and attend to him.

  “Stand by to go about!” shouted Eccles from the poop; the corvette had reached the tip of the middle ground shoal and was about to make the turn that would carry her into the open sea.

  The men came running to the braces, and Hornblower tailed on along with them. But the first contact with the harsh rope gave him such pain that he almost cried out. His hands were like raw meat, and fresh-killed at that, for blood was running from them. Now that his attention was called to them they smarted unbearably.

  The headsail sheets came over, and the corvette went handily about.

  “There’s the old Indy!” shouted somebody.

  The Indefatigable was plainly visible now, lying-to just out of shot from the shore batteries, ready to rendezvous with her prize. Somebody cheered, and the cheering was taken up by everyone, even while the last shots from St. Dye, fired at extreme range, pitched sullenly into the water alongside. Hornblower had gingerly extracted his handkerchief from his pocket and was trying to wrap it round his hand.

  “Can I help you with that, sir?” asked Jackson.

  Jackson shook his head as he looked at the raw surface.

  “You was careless, sir. You ought to ’a gone down and over and,” he said, when Hornblower explained to him how the injury had been caused. “Very careless, you was, beggin’ your pardon for saying so, sir. But you young gennelmen often is. You don’t ’ave no thought for your necks, nor your ’ides, sir.”

  Hornblower looked up at the maintopsail yard high above his head, and remembered how he had walked along that slender stick of timber out to the yardarm in the dark. At the recollection of it, even here with the solid deck under his feet, he shuddered a little.

  “Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to ’urt you,” said Jackson, tying the knot. “There, that’s done, as good as I can do it, sir.”

  “Thank you, Jackson,” said Hornblower.

  “We got to report the jolly boat as lost, sir,” went on Jackson.

  “Lost?”

  “She ain’t towing alongside, sir. You see, we didn’t leave no boatkeeper in ’er. Wells, ’e was to be boatkeeper, you remember, sir. But I sent ’im up the rigging a’ead o’ me, seeing that ‘Ales couldn’t go. We wasn’t too many for the job. So the jolly
boat must ’a come adrift, sir, when the ship went about.”

  “What about Hales, then?” asked Hornblower.

  “ ’E was still in the boat, sir.”

  Hornblower looked back up the estuary of the Gironde. Somewhere up there the jolly boat was drifting about, and lying in it was Hales, probably dead, possibly alive. In either case the French would find him, surely enough, but a cold wave of regret extinguished the warm feeling of triumph in Hornblower’s bosom when he thought about Hales back there. If it had not been for Hales he would never have nerved himself (so at least he thought) to run out to the maintopsail yardarm; he would at this moment be ruined and branded as a coward instead of basking in the satisfaction of having capably done his duty.

  Jackson saw the bleak look in his face.

  “Don’t you take on so, sir,” he said. “They won’t ’old the loss of the jolly boat agin you, not the captain and Mr. Eccles, they won’t.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the jolly boat,” said Hornblower. “I was thinking about Hales.”

  “Oh, ’im?” said Jackson. “Don’t you fret about ’im, sir. ’E wouldn’t never ’ave made no seaman, not no ’ow.”

  THE MAN WHO SAW GOD

  Winter had come to the Bay of Biscay. With the passing of the Equinox the gales began to increase in violence, adding infinitely to the labours and dangers of the British Navy watching over the coast of France; easterly gales, bitter cold, which the storm-tossed ships had to endure as best they could, when the spray froze on the rigging and the labouring hulls leaked like baskets; westerly gales, when the ships had to claw their way to safety from a lee shore and make a risky compromise between gaining sufficient sea-room and maintaining a position from which they could pounce on any French vessel venturing out of harbour. The storm-tossed ships, we speak about. But those ships were full of storm-tossed men, who week by week and month by month had to endure the continual cold and the continual wet, the salt provisions, the endless toil, the boredom and misery of life in the blockading fleet. Even in the frigates, the eyes and claws of the blockaders, boredom had to be endured, the boredom of long periods with the hatches battened down, with the deck seams above dripping water on the men below, long nights and short days, broken sleep and yet not enough to do.

  Even in the Indefatigable there was a feeling of restlessness in the air, and even a mere midshipman like Hornblower could be aware of it as he was looking over the men of his division before the captain’s regular weekly inspection.

  “What’s the matter with your face, Styles?” he asked.

  “Boils, sir. Awful bad.”

  On Styles’ cheeks and lips there were half a dozen dabs of sticking plaster.

  “Have you done anything about them?”

  “Surgeon’s mate, sir, ’e give me plaister for ’em, an’ ’e says they’ll soon come right, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  Now was there, or was there not, something strained about the expressions on the faces of the men on either side of Styles? Did they look like men smiling secretly to themselves? Laughing up their sleeves? Hornblower did not want to be an object of derision; it was bad for discipline—and it was worse for discipline if the men shared some secret unknown to their officers. He glanced sharply along the line again. Styles was standing like a block of wood, with no expression at all on his swarthy face; the black ringlets over his ears were properly combed, and no fault could be found with him. But Hornblower sensed that the recent conversation was a source of amusement to the rest of his division, and he did not like it.

  After divisions he tackled Mr. Low the surgeon, in the gunroom.

  “Boils—” said Low. “Of course the men have boils. Salt pork and split peas for nine weeks on end—what d’you expect but boils? Boils—gurry sores—blains—all the plagues of Egypt.”

  “On their faces?”

  “That’s one locality for boils. You’ll find out others from your own personal experience.”

  “Does your mate attend to them?” persisted Hornblower.

  “Of course.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Muggridge?”

  “Is that his name?”

  “He’s a good surgeon’s mate. Get him to compound a black draught for you and you’ll see. In fact, I’d prescribe one for you—you seem in a mighty bad temper, young man.”

  Mr. Low finished his glass of rum and pounded on the table for the steward. Hornblower realized that he was lucky to have found Low sober enough to give him even this much information, and turned away to go aloft so as to brood over the question in the solitude of the mizzen-top. This was his new station in action; when the men were not at their quarters a man might find a little blessed solitude there—something hard to find in the crowded Indefatigable. Bundled up in his peajacket. Hornblower sat in the mizzen-top; over his head the mizzen-topmast drew erratic circles against the grey sky; beside him the topmost shrouds sang their high-pitched note in the blustering gale, and below him the life of the ship went on as she rolled and pitched, standing to the northward under close reefed topsails. At eight bells she would wear to the southward again on her incessant patrol. Until that time Hornblower was free to meditate on the boils on Styles’ face and the covert grins on the faces of the other men of the division.

  Two hands appeared on the stout wooden barricade surrounding the top, and as Hornblower looked up with annoyance at having his meditations interrupted a head appeared above them. It was Finch, another man in Hornblower’s division, who also had his station in action here in the mizzen-top. He was a frail little man with wispy hair and pale blue eyes and a foolish smile, which lit up his face when, after betraying some disappointment at finding the mizzen-top already occupied, he recognized Hornblower.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” he said. “I didn’t know as how you was up here.”

  Finch was hanging on uncomfortably, back downwards, in the act of transferring himself from the futtock shrouds to the top, and each roll threatened to shake him loose.

  “Oh come here if you want to,” said Hornblower, cursing himself for his soft-heartedness. A taut officer, he felt, would have told Finch to go back whence he came and not bother him.

  “Thank ’ee, sir. Thank ’ee,” said Finch, bringing his leg over the barricade and allowing the ship’s roll to drop him into the top.

  He crouched down to peer under the foot of the mizzen-topsail forward to the mainmast head, and then turned back to smile disarmingly at Hornblower like a child caught in moderate mischief. Hornblower knew that Finch was a little weak in the head—the all embracing press swept up idiots and landsmen to help man the fleet—although he was a trained seaman who could hand, reef and steer. That smile betrayed him.

  “It’s better up here than down below, sir,” said Finch, apologetically.

  “You’re right,” said Hornblower, with a disinterested intonation which would discourage conversation.

  He turned away to ignore Finch, settled his back again comfortably, and allowed the steady swing of the top to mesmerize him into dreamy thought that might deal with his problem. Yet it was not easy, for Finch was as restless almost as a squirrel in a cage, peering forward, changing his position, and so continually breaking in on Hornblower’s train of thought, wasting the minutes of his precious half-hour of freedom.

  “What the devil’s the matter with you, Finch?” he rasped at last, patience quite exhausted.

  “The Devil, sir?” said Finch. “It isn’t the Devil. He’s not up here, begging your pardon, sir.”

  That weak mysterious grin again, like a mischievous child. A great depth of secrets lay in those strange blue eyes. Finch peered under the topsail again; it was a gesture like a baby’s playing peep-bo.

  “There!” said Finch. “I saw him that time, sir. God’s come back to the maintop, sir.”

  “God?”

  “Aye indeed, sir. Sometimes He’s in the maintop. More often than not, sir. I saw Him that time, with His beard all a-blowing in t
he wind. ’Tis only from here that you can see Him, sir.”

  What could be said to a man with that sort of delusion? Hornblower racked his brains for an answer, and found none. Finch seemed to have forgotten his presence, and was playing peep-bo again under the foot of the mizzen-topsail.

  “There He is!” said Finch to himself. “There He is again! God’s in the maintop, and the Devil’s in the cable tier.”

  “Very appropriate,” said Hornblower cynically, but to himself. He had no thought of laughing at Finch’s delusions.

  “The Devil’s in the cable tier during the dog watches,” said Finch again to no one at all. “God stays in the maintop for ever.”

  “A curious timetable,” was Hornblower’s sotto voce comment.

  From down on the deck below came the first strokes of eight bells, and at the same moment the pipes of the bosun’s mates began to twitter, and the bellow of Waldron the bos’un made itself heard.