The Young Hornblower Omnibus Read online

  “I must report this to the ship,” said Hornblower; Tapling as a civilian diplomatic officer, held no authority over him. The whole responsibility was Hornblower’s. The longboat and the longboat’s crew were Hornblower’s command, entrusted to him by Captain Pellew whose authority derived from the King.

  Amazing, how the panic was spreading. The Treasurer was gone; Duras’ Negro slave had ridden off on his late master’s donkey; the soldiers had hastened off in a single group. The waterfront was deserted now except for the dead and dying; along the waterfront, presumably, at the foot of the wall, lay the way to the open country which all desired to seek. The Englishmen were standing alone, with the bags of gold at their feet.

  “Plague spreads through the air,” said Tapling. “Even the rats die of it. We have been here for hours. We were near enough to—that—” he nodded at the dying Duras—“to speak to him, to catch his breath. Which of us will be the first?”

  “We’ll see when the time comes,” said Hornblower. It was his contrary nature to be sanguine in the face of depression; besides, he did not want the men to hear what Tapling was saying.

  “And there’s the fleet!” said Tapling bitterly. “This lot,”—he nodded at the deserted lighters, one almost full of cattle, the other almost full of grain sacks—“this lot would be a Godsend. The men are on two-thirds rations.”

  “Damn it, we can do something about it,” said Hornblower. “Maxwell, put the gold back in the boat, and get that awning in.”

  The officer of the watch in H.M.S. Indefatigable saw the ship’s longboat returning from the town. A slight breeze had swung the frigate and the Caroline (the transport brig) to their anchors, and the longboat, instead of running alongside, came up under the Indefatigable’s stern to leeward.

  “Mr. Christie!” hailed Hornblower, standing up in the bows of the longboat.

  The officer of the watch came aft to the taffrail.

  “What is it?” he demanded, puzzled.

  “I must speak to the Captain.”

  “Then come on board and speak to him. What the devil—?”

  “Please ask the Captain if I may speak to him.”

  Pellew appeared at the after-cabin window; he could hardly have helped hearing the bellowed conversation.

  “Yes, Mr. Hornblower?”

  Hornblower told him the news.

  “Keep to loo’ard, Mr. Hornblower.”

  “Yes, sir. But the stores—’

  “What about them?”

  Hornblower outlined the situation and made his request.

  “It’s not very regular,” mused Pellew. “Besides—”

  He did not want to shout aloud his thoughts that perhaps everyone in the longboat would soon be dead of plague.

  “We’ll be all right, sir. It’s a week’s rations for the squadron.”

  That was the point, the vital matter. Pellew had to balance the possible loss of a transport brig against the possible gain of supplies, immeasurably more important, which would enable the squadron to maintain its watch over the outlet to the Mediterranean. Looked at in that light Hornblower’s suggestion had added force.

  “Oh, very well, Mr. Hornblower. By the time you bring the stores out I’ll have the crew transferred. I appoint you to the command of the Caroline.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Mr. Tapling will continue as passenger with you.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  So when the crew of the longboat, toiling and sweating at the sweeps, brought the two lighters down the bay, they found the Caroline swinging deserted at her anchors, while a dozen curious telescopes from the Indefatigable watched the proceedings. Hornblower went up the brig’s side with half a dozen hands.

  “She’s like a blooming Noah’s Ark, sir” said Maxwell.

  The comparison was apt; the Caroline was flush-decked, and the whole available deck area was divided by partitions into stalls for the cattle, while to enable the ship to be worked light gangways had been laid over the stalls into a practically continuous upper deck.

  “An’ all the animiles, sir,” said another seaman.

  “But Noah’s animals walked in two by two,” said Hornblower. “We’re not so lucky. And we’ve got to get the grain on board first. Get those hatches unbattened.”

  In ordinary conditions a working party of two or three hundred men from the Indefatigable would have made short work of getting in the cargo from the lighters, but now it had to be done by the longboat’s complement of eighteen. Luckily Pellew had had the forethought and kindness to have the ballast struck out of the holds, or they would have had to do that weary job first.

  “Tail onto those tackles, men,” said Hornblower.

  Pellew saw the first bundle of grain sacks rise slowly into the air from the lighter, and swung over and down the Caroline’s hatchway.

  “He’ll be all right,” he decided. “Man the capstan and get under way, if you please, Mr. Bolton.”

  Hornblower, directing the work on the tackles, heard Pellew’s voice come to him through the speaking trumpet.

  “Good luck, Mr. Hornblower. Report in three weeks at Gibraltar.”

  “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Hornblower turned back to find a seaman at his elbow knuckling his forehead.

  “Beg pardon, sir. But can you hear those cattle bellerin’, sir? ’Tis mortal hot, an’ ’tis water they want, sir.”

  “Hell,” said Hornblower.

  He would never get the cattle on board before nightfall. He left a small party at work transferring cargo, and with the rest of the men he began to extemporize a method of watering the unfortunate cattle in the lighter. Half Caroline’s hold space was filled with water barrels and fodder, but it was an awkward business getting water down to the lighter with pump and hose, and the poor brutes down there surged about uncontrollably at the prospect of water. Hornblower saw the lighter heel and almost capsize; one of his men—luckily one who could swim—went hastily overboard from the lighter to avoid being crushed to death.

  “Hell,” said Hornblower again, and that was by no means the last time.

  Without any skilled advice he was having to learn the business of managing livestock at sea; each moment brought its lessons. A naval officer on active service indeed found himself engaged on strange duties. It was well after dark before Hornblower called a halt to the labours of his men, and it was before dawn that he roused them up to work again. It was still early in the morning that the last of the grain sacks was stowed away and Hornblower had to face the operation of swaying up the cattle from the lighter. After their night down there, with little water and less food, they were in no mood to be trifled with, but it was easier at first while they were crowded together. A bellyband was slipped round the nearest, the tackle hooked on, and the animal was swayed up, lowered to the deck through an opening in the gangways, and herded into one of the stalls with ease. The seamen, shouting and waving their shirts, thought it was great fun, but they were not sure when the next one, released from its bellyband went on the rampage and chased them about the deck, threatening death with its horns, until it wandered into its stall where the bar could be promptly dropped to shut it in. Hornblower, looking at the sun rising rapidly in the east, did not think it fun at all.

  And the emptier the lighter became, the more room the cattle had to rush about in it; to capture each one so as to put a bellyband on it was a desperate adventure. Nor were those half-wild bullocks soothed by the sight of their companions being successively hauled bellowing into the air over their heads. Before the day was half done Hornblower’s men were as weary as if they had fought a battle, and there was not one of them who would not gladly have quitted this novel employment in exchange for some normal seamen’s duty like going aloft to reef topsails on a stormy night. As soon as Hornblower had the notion of dividing the interior of the lighter up into sections with barricades of stout spars the work became easier, but it took time, and before it was done the cattle had already s
uffered a couple of casualties—weaker members of the herd crushed underfoot in the course of the wild rushes about the lighter.

  And there was a distraction when a boat came out from the shore, with swarthy Moors at the oars and the Treasurer in the stern. Hornblower left Tapling to negotiate—apparently the Bey at least had not been so frightened of the plague as to forget to ask for his money. All Hornblower insisted upon was that the boat should keep well to leeward, and the money was floated off to it headed up in an empty rum-puncheon. Night found not more than half the cattle in the stalls on board, with Hornblower worrying about feeding and watering them, and snatching at hints diplomatically won from those members of his crew who had had bucolic experience. But the earliest dawn saw him driving his men to work again, and deriving a momentary satisfaction from the sight of Tapling having to leap for his life to the gangway out of reach of a maddened bullock which was charging about the deck and refusing to enter a stall. And by the time the last animal was safely packed in Hornblower was faced with another problem—that of dealing with what one of the men elegantly termed “mucking out”. Fodder—water—mucking out; that deck-load of cattle seemed to promise enough work in itself to keep his eighteen men busy, without any thought of the needs of handling the ship.

  But there were advantages about the men being kept busy, as Hornblower grimly decided; there had not been a single mention of plague since the work began. The anchorage where the Caroline lay was exposed to north-easterly winds, and it was necessary that he should take her out to sea before such a wind should blow. He mustered his men to divide them into watches; he was the only navigator, so that he had to appoint the coxswain and the under-coxswain, Jordan, as officers of the watch. Someone volunteered as cook, and Hornblower, running his eye over his assembled company, appointed Tapling as cook’s mate. Tapling opened his mouth to protest, but there was that in Hornblower’s expression which cut the protest short. There was no bos’n, no carpenter—no surgeon either, as Hornblower pointed out to himself gloomily. But on the other hand if the need for a doctor should arise it would, he hoped, be mercifully brief.

  “Port watch, loose the jibs and main tops’l,” ordered Hornblower. “Starboard watch, man the capstan.”

  So began that voyage of H.M. transport brig Caroline which became legendary (thanks to the highly coloured accounts retailed by the crew during innumerable dog-watches in later commissions) throughout the King’s navy. The Caroline spent her three weeks of quarantine in homeless wanderings about the western Mediterranean. It was necessary that she should keep close up to the Straits, for fear lest the westerlies and the prevailing inward set of the current should take her out of reach of Gibraltar when the time came, so she beat about between the coasts of Spain and Africa trailing behind her a growing farmyard stench. The Caroline was a worn-out ship; with any sort of sea running she leaked like a sieve; and there were always hands at work on the pumps, either pumping her out or pumping sea water onto her deck to clean it or pumping up fresh water for the cattle.

  Her top hamper made her almost unmanageable in a fresh breeze; her deck seams leaked, of course, when she worked, allowing a constant drip of unspeakable filth down below. The one consolation was in the supply of fresh meat—a commodity some of Hornblower’s men had not tasted for three months. Hornblower recklessly sacrificed a bullock a day, for in that Mediterranean climate meat could not be kept sweet. So his men feasted on steaks and fresh tongues; there were plenty of men on board who had never in their whole lives before eaten a beef steak.

  But fresh water was the trouble—it was a greater anxiety to Hornblower than even it was to the average ship’s captain, for the cattle were always thirsty; twice Hornblower had to land a raiding party at dawn on the coast of Spain, seize a fishing village, and fill his water casks in the local stream.

  It was a dangerous adventure, and the second landing revealed the danger, for while the Caroline was trying to claw off the land again a Spanish guarda-costa lugger came gliding round the point with all sail set. Maxwell saw her first, but Hornblower saw her before he could report her presence.

  “Very well, Maxwell,” said Hornblower, trying to sound composed.

  He turned his glass upon her. She was no more than three miles off, a trifle to windward, and the Caroline was embayed, cut off by the land from all chance of escape. The lugger could go three feet to her two, while the Caroline’s clumsy superstructure prevented her from lying nearer than eight points to the wind. As Hornblower gazed, the accumulated irritation of the past seventeen days boiled over. He was furious with fate for having thrust this ridiculous mission on him. He hated the Caroline and her clumsiness and her stinks and her cargo. He raged against the destiny which had caught him in this hopeless position.

  “Hell!” said Hornblower, actually stamping his feet on the upper gangway in his anger. “Hell and damnation!”

  He was dancing with rage, he observed with some curiosity. But with his fighting madness at the boil there was no chance of his yielding without a struggle, and his mental convulsions resulted in his producing a scheme for action. How many men of a crew did a Spanish guarda-costa carry? Twenty? That would be an outside figure—those luggers were only intended to act against petty smugglers. And with surprise on his side there was still a chance, despite the four eight-pounders that the lugger carried.

  “Pistols and cutlasses, men,” he said. “Jordan, choose two men and show yourselves up here. But the rest of you keep under cover. Hide yourselves. Yes, Mr. Tapling, you may serve with us. See that you are armed.”

  No one would expect resistance from a laden cattle transport; the Spaniards would expect to find on board a crew of a dozen at most, and not a disciplined force of twenty. The problem lay in luring the lugger within reach.

  “Full and by,” called Hornblower down to the helmsman below. “Be ready to jump, men. Maxwell, if a man shows himself before my order shoot him with your own hand. You hear me? That’s an order, and you disobey me at your peril.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Maxwell.

  The lugger was romping up towards them; even in that light air there was a white wave under her sharp bows. Hornblower glanced up to make sure that the Caroline was displaying no colours. That made his plan legal under the laws of war. The report of a gun and a puff of smoke came from the lugger as she fired across the Caroline’s bows.

  “I’m going to heave to, Jordan,” said Hornblower. “Main tops’l braces. Helm-a-lee.”

  The Caroline came to the wind and lay there wallowing, a surrendered and helpless ship apparently, if ever there was one.

  “Not a sound, men,” said Hornblower.

  The cattle bellowed mournfully. Here came the lugger, her crew plainly visible now. Hornblower could see an officer clinging to the main shrouds ready to board, but no one else seemed to have a care in the world. Everyone seemed to be looking up at the clumsy superstructure and laughing at the farmyard noises issuing from it.

  “Wait, men, wait,” said Hornblower.

  The lugger was coming alongside when Hornblower suddenly realized, with a hot flood of blood under his skin, that he himself was unarmed. He had told his men to take pistols and cutlasses; he had advised Tapling to arm himself, and yet he had clean forgotten about his own need for weapons. But it was too late now to try to remedy that. Someone in the lugger hailed in Spanish, and Hornblower spread his hands in a show of incomprehension. Now they were alongside.

  “Come on, men!” shouted Hornblower.

  He ran across the superstructure and with a gulp he flung himself across the gap at the officer in the shrouds. He gulped again as he went through the air; he fell with all his weight on the unfortunate man, clasped him round the shoulders, and fell with him to the deck. There were shouts and yells behind him as the Caroline spewed up her crew into the lugger. A rush of feet, a clatter and a clash. Hornblower got to his feet empty handed. Maxwell was just striking down a man with his cutlass. Tapling was heading a rush forward into the bows, wa
ving a cutlass and yelling like a madman. Then it was all over; the astonished Spaniards were unable to lift a hand in their own defence.

  So it came about that on the twenty-second day of her quarantine the Caroline came into Gibraltar Bay with a captured guarda-costa lugger under her lee. A thick barnyard stench trailed with her, too, but at least, when Hornblower went on board the Indefatigable to make his report, he had a suitable reply ready for Mr. Midshiman Bracegirdle.

  “Hullo, Noah, how are Shem and Ham?” asked Mr Bracegirdle

  “Shem and Ham have taken a prize,” said Hornblower. “I regret that Mr. Bracegirdle can’t say the same.”

  But the Chief Commissary of the squadron, when Hornblower reported to him, had a comment to which even Hornblower was unable to make a reply.

  “Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Hornblower,” said the Chief Commissary, “that you allowed your men to eat fresh beef? A bullock a day for your eighteen men? There must have been plenty of ship’s provisions on board. That was wanton extravagance, Mr. Hornblower, I’m surprised at you.”

  THE DUCHESS AND THE DEVIL

  Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower was bringing the sloop Le Reve, prize of H.M.S. Indefatigable, to anchor in Gibraltar Bay. He was nervous; if anyone had asked him if he thought that all the telescopes in the Mediterranean Fleet were trained upon him he would have laughed at the fantastic suggestion, but he felt as if they were. Nobody ever gauged more cautiously the strength of the gentle following breeze, or estimated more anxiously the distances between the big anchored ships of the line, or calculated more carefully the space Le Reve would need to swing at her anchor. Jackson, his petty officer, was standing forward awaiting the order to take in the jib, and he acted quickly at Hornblower’s hail.

  “Helm-a-lee,” said Hornblower next, and Le Reve rounded into the wind. “Brail up!”

  Le Reve crept forward, her momentum diminishing as the wind took her way off her.

  “Let go!”

  The cable growled a protest as the anchor took it out through the hawsehole—that welcome splash of the anchor, telling of the journey’s end. Hornblower watched carefully while Le Reve took up on her cable, and then relaxed a little. He had brought the prize safely in. The commodore—Captain Sir Edward Pellew of H.M.S. Indefatigable—had clearly not yet returned, so that it was Hornblower’s duty to report to the port admiral.