The Young Hornblower Omnibus Page 28

  “Mr. Wellard at work?” said the captain.

  His voice was thick and a little indistinct, the tone quite different from the anxiety-sharpened voice with which he had previously spoken. Wellard, his eyes on the sandglasses, paused before replying. Bush could guess that he was wondering what would be the safest, as well as the correct, thing to say.

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  In the navy no one could go far wong by saying that to a superior officer.

  “Aye aye, sir,” repeated the captain. “Mr. Wellard has learned better now perhaps than to conspire against his captain, against his lawful superior set in authority over him by the Act of His Most Gracious Majesty King George II?”

  That was not an easy suggestion to answer. The last grains of sand were running out of the glass and Wellard waited for them; a “yes” or a “no” might be equally fatal.

  “Mr. Wellard is sulky,” said the captain. “Perhaps Mr. Wellard’s mind is dwelling on what lies behind him. Behind him. ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.’ But proud Mr. Wellard hardly wept. And he did not sit down at all. No, he would be careful not to sit down. The dishonourable part of him has paid the price of his dishonour. The grown man guilty of an honourable offence is flogged upon his back, but a boy, a nasty dirty-minded boy, is treated differently. Is not that so, Mr. Wellard?”

  “Yes, sir,” murmured Wellard. There was nothing else he could say, and an answer was necessary.

  “Mr. Booth’s cane was appropriate to the occasion. It did its work well. The malefactor bent over the gun could consider of his misdeeds.”

  Wellard inverted the glass again while the captain, apparently satisfied, took a couple of turns up and down the deck, to Bush’s relief. But the captain checked himself in mid-stride beside Wellard and went on talking; his tone now was higher-pitched.

  “So you chose to conspire against me?” he demanded. “You sought to hold me up to derision before the hands?”

  “No, sir,” said Wellard in sudden new alarm. “No, sir, indeed not, sir.”

  “You and that cub Hornblower. Mister Hornblower. You plotted and you planned, so that my lawful authority should be set at nought.”

  “No, sir!”

  “It is only the hands who are faithful to me in this ship where everyone else conspires against me. And cunningly you seek to undermine my influence over them. To make me a figure of fun in their sight. Confess it!”

  “No sir. I didn’t, sir.”

  “Why attempt to deny it? It is plain, it is logical. Who was it who planned to attach that reef point in the reef tackle block?”

  “No one, sir. It—”

  “Then who was it that countermanded my orders? Who was it who put me to shame before both watches, with all hands on deck? It was a deep-laid plot. It shows every sign of it.”

  The captain’s hands were behind his back, and he stood easily balancing on the deck with the wind flapping his coat-tails and blowing his hair forward over his cheeks, but Bush could see he was shaking with rage again—if it was not fear. Wellard turned the minute glass again and made a fresh mark on the slate.

  “So you hide your face because of the guilt that is written on it?” blared the captain suddenly. “You pretend to be busy so as to deceive me. Hypocrisy!”

  “I gave Mr. Wellard orders to test the glasses against each other, sir,” said Bush.

  He was intervening reluctantly, but to intervene was less painful than to stand by as a witness. The captain looked at him as if this was his first appearance on deck.

  “You, Mr. Bush? You’re sadly deceived if you believe there is any good in this young fellow. Unless”—the captain’s expression was one of sudden suspicious fear—“unless you are part and parcel of this infamous affair. But you are not, are you, Mr. Bush? Not you. I have always thought better of you, Mr. Bush.”

  The expression of fear changed to one of ingratiating good fellowship.

  “Yes, sir,” said Bush.

  “With the world against me I have always counted on you, Mr. Bush,” said the captain, darting restless glances from under his eyebrows. “So you will rejoice when this embodiment of evil meets his deserts. We’ll get the truth out of him.”

  Bush had the feeling that if he were a man of instant quickness of thought and readiness of tongue he would take advantage of this new attitude of the captain’s to free Wellard from his peril; by posing as the captain’s devoted companion in trouble and at the same time laughing off the thought of danger from any conspiracy, he might modify the captain’s fears. So he felt, but he had no confidence in himself.

  “He knows nothing, sir,” he said, and he forced himself to grin. “He doesn’t know the bobstay from the spankerboom.”

  “You think so?” said the captain doubtfully, teetering on his heels with the roll of the ship. He seemed almost convinced, and then suddenly a new line of argument presented itself to him.

  “No, Mr. Bush. You’re too honest. I could see that the first moment I set eyes on you. You are ignorant of the depths of wickedness into which this world can sink. This lout has deceived you. Deceived you!”

  The captain’s voice rose again to a hoarse scream, and Wellard turned a white face towards Bush, lopsided with terror.

  “Really, sir—” began Bush, still forcing a death’s-head grin.

  “No, no, no!” roared the captain. “Justice must be done! The truth must be brought to light! I’ll have it out of him! Quartermaster! Quartermaster! Run for’ard and tell Mr. Booth to lay aft here. And his mates!”

  The captain turned away and began to pace the deck as if to offer a safety valve to the pressure within him, but he turned back instantly.

  “I’ll have it out of him! Or he’ll jump overboard! You hear me? Where’s that bosun?”

  “Mr. Wellard hasn’t finished testing the glasses, sir,” said Bush in one last feeble attempt to postpone the issue.

  “Nor will he,” said the captain.

  Here came the bosun hurrying aft on his short legs, his two mates striding behind him.

  “Mr. Booth!” said the captain; his mood had changed again and the mirthless smile was back on his lips. “Take that miscreant. Justice demands that he be dealt with further. Another dozen from your cane, properly applied. Another dozen, and he’ll coo like a dove.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said the bosun, but he hesitated.

  It was a momentary tableau: the captain with his flapping coat; the bosun looking appealingly at Bush and the burly bosun’s mates standing like huge statues behind him; the helmsman apparently imperturbable while all this went on round him, handling the wheel and glancing up at the topsails; and the wretched boy beside the binnacle—all this under the grey sky, with the grey sea tossing about them and stretching as far as the pitiless horizon.

  “Take him down to the maindeck, Mr. Booth,” said the captain.

  It was the utterly inevitable; behind the captain’s words lay the authority of Parliament, the weight of ages-old tradition. There was nothing that could be done. Wellard’s hands rested on the binnacle as though they would cling to it and as though he would have to be dragged away by force. But he dropped his hands to his sides and followed the bosun while the captain watched him, smiling.

  It was a welcome distraction that came to Bush as the quartermaster reported, “Ten minutes before eight bells, sir.”

  “Very good. Pipe the watch below.”

  Hornblower made his appearance on the quarterdeck and made his way towards Bush.

  “You’re not my relief,” said Bush.

  “Yes I am. Captain’s orders.”

  Hornblower spoke without any expression—Bush was used to the ship’s officers by now being as guarded as that, and he knew why it was. But his curiosity made him ask the question.

  “Why?”

  “I’m on watch and watch,” said Hornblower stolidly. “Until further orders.”

  He looked at the horizon as he spoke, showing no sign of emotion.

 
; “Hard luck,” said Bush, and for a moment felt a twinge of doubt as to whether he had not ventured too far in offering such an expression of sympathy. But no one was within earshot.

  “No wardroom liquor for me,” went on Hornblower, “until further orders either. Neither my own nor anyone else’s.”

  For some officers that would be a worse punishment than being put on watch and watch—four hours on duty and four hours off day and night—but Bush did not know enough about Hornblower’s habits to judge whether this was the case with him. He was about to say “hard luck” again, when at that moment a wild cry of pain reached their ears, cutting its way through the whistling wind. A moment later it was repeated, with even greater intensity. Hornblower was looking out at the horizon and his expression did not change. Bush watched his face and decided not to pay attention to the cries.

  “Hard luck,” he said.

  “It might be worse,” said Hornblower.

  III

  It was Sunday morning. The Renown had caught the north-east trades and was plunging across the Atlantic at her best speed, with studding sails set on both sides, the roaring trades driving her along with a steady pitch and heave, her bluff bows now and then raising a smother of spray that supported momentary rainbows. The rigging was piping loud and clear, the treble and the tenor to the baritone and bass of the noises of the ship’s fabric as she pitched—a symphony of the sea. A few clouds of startling white dotted the blue of the sky, and the sun shone down from among them, revivifying and rejuvenating, reflected in dancing facets from the imperial blue of the sea.

  The ship was a thing of exquisite beauty in an exquisite setting, and her bluff bows and her rows of guns added something else to the picture. She was a magnificent fighting machine, the mistress of the waves over which she was sailing in solitary grandeur. Her very solitude told the story; with the fleets of her enemies cooped up in port, blockaded by vigilant squadrons eager to come to grips with them, the Renown could sail the seas in utter confidence that she had nothing to fear. No furtive blockade-runner could equal her in strength; nowhere at sea was there a hostile squadron which could face her in battle. She could flout the hostile coasts; with the enemy blockaded and helpless she could bring her ponderous might to bear in a blow struck wherever she might choose. At this moment she was heading to strike such a blow, perhaps, despatched across the ocean at the word of the Lords of the Admiralty.

  And drawn up in ranks on her maindeck was the ship’s company, the men whose endless task it was to keep this fabric at the highest efficiency, to repair the constant inroads made upon her material by sea and weather and the mere passage of time. The snow-white decks, the bright paintwork, the exact and orderly arrangement of the lines and ropes and spars, were proofs of the diligence of their work; and when the time should come for the Renown to deliver the ultimate argument regarding the sovereignty of the seas, it would be they who would man the guns—the Renown might be a magnificent fighting machine, but she was so only by virtue of the frail humans who handled her. They, like the Renown herself, were only cogs in the greater machine which was the Royal Navy, and most of them, caught up in the time-honoured routine and discipline of the service, were content to be cogs, to wash decks and set up rigging, to point guns or to charge with cutlasses over hostile bulwarks, with little thought as to whether the ship’s bows were headed north or south, whether it was Frenchman or Spaniard or Dutchman who received their charge. Today only the captain knew the mission upon which the Lords of the Admiralty—presumably in consultation with the Cabinet—had despatched the Renown. There had been the vague knowledge that she was headed for the West Indies, but whereabouts in that area, and what she was intended to do there was known only to one man in the seven hundred and forty on the Renown’s decks.

  Every possible man was drawn up on this Sunday morning on the maindeck, not merely the two watches, but every “idler” who had no place in the watches—the holders, who did their work so far below decks that for some of them it was literally true that they did not see the sun from one week’s end to another, the cooper and his mates, the armourer and his mates, sail-maker and cook and stewards, all in their best clothes with the officers with their cocked hats and swords beside their divisions. Only the officer of the watch and his assistant warrant officer, the quartermasters at the wheel and the dozen hands necessary for lookouts and to handle the ship in a very sudden emergency were not included in the ranks that were drawn up in the waist at rigid attention, the lines swaying easily and simultaneously with the motion of the ship.

  It was Sunday morning, and every hat was off, every head was bare as the ship’s company listened to the words of the captain. But it was no church service; these bare-headed men were not worshipping their Maker. That could happen on three Sundays in every month, but on those Sundays there would not be quite such a strict inquisition throughout the ship to compel the attendance of every hand—and a tolerant Admiralty had lately decreed that Catholics and Jews and even Dissenters might be excused from attending church services. This was the fourth Sunday, when the worship of God was set aside in favour of a ceremonial more strict, more solemn, calling for the same clean shirts and bared heads, but not for the downcast eyes of the men in the ranks. Instead every man was looking to his front as he held his hat before him with the wind ruffling his hair; he was listening to laws as all-embracing as the Ten Commandments, to a code as rigid as Leviticus, because on the fourth Sunday of every month it was the captain’s duty to read the Articles of War aloud to the ship’s company, so that not even the illiterates could plead ignorance of them; a religious captain might squeeze in a brief church service as well, but the Articles of War had to be read.

  The captain turned a page.

  “Nineteenth Article,” he read. “If any person in or belonging to the fleet shall make or endeavour to make any mutinous assembly upon any offence whatsoever, every person offending therein, and being convicted by the sentence of the court-martial, shall suffer death.”

  Bush, standing by his division, heard these words as he had heard them scores of times before. He had, in fact, heard them so often that he usually listened to them with inattention; the words of the previous eighteen Articles had flowed past him practically without his hearing them. But he heard this Nineteenth Article distinctly; it was possible that the captain read it with special emphasis, and in addition Bush, raising his eyes in the blessed sunshine, caught sight of Hornblower, the officer of the watch, standing at the quarterdeck rail listening as well. And there was that word “death”. It struck Bush’s ear with special emphasis, as emphatic and as final as the sound of a stone dropped into a well, which was strange, for the other articles which the captain had read had used the word freely—death for holding back from danger, death for sleeping while on duty.

  The captain went on reading.

  “And if any person shall utter any words of sedition or mutiny he shall suffer death….

  “And if any officer, mariner, or soldier shall behave himself with contempt to his superior officer …”

  Those words had a fuller meaning for Bush now, with Hornblower looking down at him; he felt a strange stirring within him. He looked at the captain, unkempt and seedy in his appearance, and went back in his memory through the events of the past few days; if ever a man had shown himself unfit for duty it was the captain, but he was maintained in his position of unlimited power by these Articles of War which he was reading. Bush glanced up at Hornblower again; he felt that he knew for certain what Hornblower was thinking about as he stood there by the quarterdeck rail, and it was strange to feel this sympathy with the ungainly angular young lieutenant with whom he had had such little contact.

  “And if any officer, mariner, or soldier or other person in the fleet,”—the captain had reached the Twenty-Second Article now—“shall presume to quarrel with any of his superior officers, or shall disobey any lawful command, every such person shall suffer death.”

  Bush had not realized bef
ore how the Articles of War harped on this subject. He had served contentedly under discipline, and had always philosophically assured himself that injustice or mismanagement could be lived through. He could see now very special reasons why they should be. And as if to clinch the argument, the captain was now reading the final Article of War, the one which filled in every gap.

  “All other crimes committed by any person or persons in the fleet which are not mentioned in this Act …”

  Bush remembered that article; by its aid an officer could accomplish the ruin of an inferior who was clever enough to escape being pinned down by any of the others.

  The captain read the final solemn words and looked up from the page. The big nose turned like a gun being trained round as he looked at each officer in turn; his face with its unshaven cheeks bore an expression of coarse triumph. It was as if he had gained by this reading of the Articles reassurance regarding his fears. He inflated his chest; he seemed to rise on tiptoe to make his concluding speech.

  “I’ll have you all know that these Articles apply to my officers as much as to anyone else.”

  Those were words which Bush could hardly believe he had heard. It was incredible that a captain could say such a thing in his crew’s hearing. If ever a speech was subversive to discipline it was this one. But the captain merely went on with routine.

  “Carry on, Mr. Buckland.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Buckland took a pace forward in the grip of routine himself.

  “On hats!”

  Officers and men covered their heads now that the ceremonial was completed.

  “Division officers, dismiss your divisions!”

  The musicians of the marine band had been waiting for this moment. The drum sergeant waved his baton and the drumsticks crashed down on the side drums in a long roll. Piercing and sweet the fifes joined in—“The Irish Washerwoman,” jerky and inspiriting. Smack—smack—smack; the marine soldiers brought their ordered muskets up to their shoulders. Whiting, the captain of marines, shouted the orders which sent the scarlet lines marching and counter-marching in the sunshine over the limited area of the quarterdeck.