The Young Hornblower Omnibus Page 32

  “That’s the greatest altitude I’ve ever measured,” remarked Hornblower. “I’ve never been as far south as this before. What’s your result?”

  They compared readings.

  “That’s accurate enough,” said Hornblower. “What’s the difficulty?”

  “Oh, I can shoot the sun,” said Bush. “No trouble about that. It’s the calculations that bother me—those damned corrections.”

  Hornblower raised an eyebrow for a moment. He was accustomed to taking his own observations each noon and making his own calculations of the ship’s position, in order to keep himself in practice. He was aware of the mechanical difficulty of taking an accurate observation in a moving ship, but—although he knew of plenty of other instances—he still could not believe that any man could really find the subsequent mathematics difficult. They were so simple to him that when Bush had asked him if he could join him in their noontime exercise for the sake of improving himself he had taken it for granted that it was only the mechanics of using a sextant that troubled Bush. But he politely concealed his surprise.

  “They’re easy enough,” he said, and then he added “sir.” A wise officer, too, did not make too much display of his superior ability when speaking to his senior. He phrased his next speech carefully.

  “If you were to come below with me, sir, you could check through my calculations.”

  Bush listened in patience to Hornblower’s explanations. They made the problem perfectly clear for the moment—it was by a hurried last-minute reading up that Bush had been able to pass his examination for lieutenant, although it was seamanship and not navigation that got him through—but Bush knew by bitter experience that tomorrow it would be hazy again.

  “Now we can plot the position,” said Hornblower, bending over the chart.

  Bush watched as Hornblower’s capable fingers worked the parallel rulers across the chart; Hornblower had long bony hands with something of beauty about them, and it was actually fascinating to watch them doing work at which they were so supremely competent. The powerful fingers picked up the pencil and ruled a line.

  “There’s the point of interception,” said Hornblower. “Now we can check against the dead reckoning.”

  Even Bush could follow the simple steps necessary to plot the ship’s course by dead reckoning since noon yesterday. The pencil in the steady fingers made a tiny x on the chart.

  “We’re still being set to the s’uth’ard, you see,” said Hornblower. “We’re not far enough east yet for the Gulf Stream to set us to the nor’ard.”

  “Didn’t you say you’d never navigated these waters before?” asked Bush.

  “Yes.”

  “Then how—? Oh, I suppose you’ve been studying.”

  To Bush it was as strange that a man should read up beforehand and be prepared for conditions hitherto unknown as it was strange to Hornblower that a man should find trouble in mathematics.

  “At any rate, there we are,” said Hornblower, tapping the chart with the pencil.

  “Yes,” said Bush.

  They both looked at the chart with the same thought in mind.

  “What d’ye think Number One’ll do?” asked Bush.

  Buckland might be legally in command of the ship, but it was too early yet to speak of him as the captain—“the captain” was still that weeping figure swathed in canvas on the cot in the cabin.

  “Can’t tell,” answered Hornblower, “but he makes up his mind now or never. We lose ground to loo’ard every day from now, you see.”

  “What’d you do?” Bush was curious about this junior lieutenant who had shown himself ready of resources and so guarded in speech.

  “I’d read those orders,” said Hornblower instantly. “I’d rather be in trouble for having done something than for not having done anything.”

  “I wonder,” said Bush. On the other hand a definite action could be made the subject of a court-martial charge far more easily than the omission to do something; Bush felt this, but he had not the facility with words to express it easily.

  “Those orders may detach us on independent service,” went on Hornblower. “God, what a chance for Buckland!”

  “Yes,” said Bush.

  The eagerness in Hornblower’s expression was obvious. If ever a man yearned for an independent command and the consequent opportunity to distinguish himself it was Hornblower. Bush wondered faintly if he himself was as anxious to have the responsibility of the command of a ship of the line in troubled waters. He looked at Hornblower with an interest which he knew to be constantly increasing. Hornblower was a man always ready to adopt the bold course, a man who infinitely preferred action to inaction; widely read in his profession and yet a practical seaman, as Bush had already had plenty of opportunity to observe. A student yet a man of action; a fiery spirit and yet discreet—Bush remembered how tactfully he had acted during the crisis following the captain’s injury and how dexterously he had handled Buckland.

  And—and—what was the truth about the injury to the captain? Bush darted a more searching glance than ever at Hornblower as he followed up that train of thought. Bush’s mind did not consciously frame the words “motive” and “opportunity” to itself—it was not that type of mind—but it felt its way along an obscure path of reasoning which might well have been signposted with those words. He wanted to ask again the question he had asked once before, but to do so would not merely invite but would merit a rebuff. Hornblower was established in a strong position and Bush could be sure that he would never abandon it through indiscretion or impatience. Bush looked at the lean eager face, at the long fingers drumming on the chart. It was not right or fit or proper that he should feel any admiration or even respect for Hornblower, who was not merely his junior in age by a couple of years—that did not matter—but was his junior as a lieutenant. The dates on their respective commissions really did matter; a junior was someone for whom it should be impossible to feel respect by the traditions of the service. Anything else would be unnatural, might even savour of the equalitarian French ideas which they were engaged in fighting. The thought of himself as infected with Red Revolutionary notions made Bush actually uneasy, and yet as he stirred uncomfortably in his chair he could not wholly discard those notions.

  “I’ll put these things away,” said Hornblower, rising from his chair. “I’m exercising my lower-deck guns’ crews after the hands have had their dinner. And I have the first dogwatch after that.”

  VI

  The lower-deck guns had been secured, and the sweating crews came pouring up on deck. Now that the Renown was as far south as 30 deg. north latitude the lower gundeck, even with the ports open for artillery exercise, was a warm place, and hauling those guns in and running them out was warm work. Hornblower had kept the crews hard at it, one hundred and eighty men, who afterwards came pouring up into the sunshine and the fresh air of the trade wind to receive the good-humoured chaff of the rest of the crew who had not been working so hard but who knew perfectly well that their turn would come soon.

  The guns’ crews wiped their steaming foreheads and flung jests—jagged and unpolished like the flints in the soil from which they had sprung—back at their tormentors. It was exhilarating to an officer to see the high spirits of the men and to be aware of the good temper that prevailed; in the three days that had elapsed since the change in command the whole atmosphere of the ship had improved. Suspicion and fear had vanished; after a brief sulkiness the hands had found that exercise and regular work were stimulating and satisfactory.

  Hornblower came aft, the sweat running down him, and touched his hat to Roberts, who was officer of the watch, where he stood chatting with Bush at the break of the poop. It was an unusual request that Hornblower made, and Roberts and Bush stared at him with surprise.

  “But what about the deck, Mr. Hornblower?” asked Roberts.

  A hand can swab it off in two minutes, sir,” replied Hornblower, wiping his face and looking at the blue sea overside with a longing that wa
s obvious to the most casual glance. “I have fifteen minutes before I relieve you, sir—plenty of time.”

  “Oh, very well, Mr. Hornblower.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Hornblower, and he turned eagerly away with another touch of his hat, while Roberts and Bush exchanged glances which were as much amused as puzzled. They watched Hornblower give his orders.

  “Captain of the waist! Captain of the waist, there!”

  “Sir?”

  “Get the wash-deck pump rigged at once.”

  “Rig the wash-deck pump, sir?”

  “Yes. Four men for the handles. One for the hose. Jump to it, now. I’ll be with you in two minutes.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The captain of the waist set about obeying the strange order after a glance at the receding figure. Hornblower was as good as his word; it was only two minutes before he returned, but now he was naked except for a towel draped sketchily round him. This was all very strange.

  “Give away,” he said to the men at the pump handles.

  They were dubious about all this, but they obeyed the order, and in alternate pairs they threw their weight upon the handles. Up—down, up—down; clank—clank. The seaman holding the hose felt it stir in his hands as the water from far overside came surging up along it; and next moment a clear stream of water came gushing out of it.

  “Turn it on me,” said Hornblower, casting his towel aside and standing naked in the sunshine. The hoseman hesitated.

  “Hurry up, now!”

  As dubiously as ever the hoseman obeyed orders, turning the jet upon his officer, who rotated first this way and then that as it splashed upon him; an amused crowd was gathering to watch.

  “Pump, you sons of seacooks!” said Hornblower; and obediently the men at the pump handles, now grinning broadly, threw all their weight on the handles, with such enthusiasm that their feet left the deck as they hauled down upon them and the clear water came hurtling out through the hose with considerable force. Hornblower twirled round and round under the stinging impact, his face screwed up in painful ecstasy.

  Buckland had been standing aft at the taffrail, lost in thought and gazing down at the ship’s wake, but the clanking of the pump attracted his attention and he strolled forward to join Roberts and Bush and to look at the strange spectacle.

  “Hornblower has some odd fancies,” he remarked, but he smiled as he said it—a rather pathetic smile, for his face bore the marks of the anxieties he was going through.

  “He seems to be enjoying himself, sir,” said Bush.

  Bush, looking at Hornblower revolving under the sparkling stream, was conscious of a prickling under his shirt in his heavy uniform coat, and actually had the feeling that it might be pleasurable to indulge in that sort of shower bath, however injurious it might be to the health.

  “ ’Vast pumping!” yelled Hornblower. “Avast, there!”

  The hands at the pumps ceased their labours, and the jet from the hose died away to a trickle, to nothing.

  “Captain of the waist! Secure the pump. Get the deck swabbed.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Hornblower grabbed his towel and came trotting back along the maindeck. He looked up at the group of officers with a grin which revealed his exhilaration and high spirits.

  “Dunno if it’s good for discipline,” commented Roberts, as Hornblower disappeared; and then, with a tardy flash of insight, “I suppose it’s all right.”

  “I suppose so,” said Buckland. “Let’s hope he doesn’t get himself a fever, checking the perspiration like that.”

  “He showed no sign of one, sir,” said Bush; lingering in Bush’s mind’s eye was the picture of Hornblower’s grin. It blended with his memory of Hornblower’s eager expression when they were discussing what Buckland had best do in the dilemma in which he found himself.

  “Ten minutes to eight bells, sir,” reported the quartermaster.

  “Very well,” said Roberts.

  The wet patch on the deck was now almost dry; a faint steam rose from it as the sun, still fierce at four o’clock in the afternoon, beat on it.

  “Call the watch,” said Roberts.

  Hornblower came running up to the quarterdeck with his telescope; he must have pulled on his clothes with the orderly rapidity that marked all his actions. He touched his hat to the quarterdeck and stood by to relieve Roberts.

  “You feel refreshed after your bath?” asked Buckland.

  “Yes, sir, thank you.”

  Bush looked at the pair of them, the elderly, worried first lieutenant and the young fifth lieutenant, the older man pathetically envying the youngster’s youth. Bush was learning something about personalities. He would never be able to reduce the results of his observations to a tabular system, and it would never occur to him to do so, but he could learn without doing so; his experience and observations would blend with his native wit to govern his judgments, even if he were too self-conscious to philosophize over them. He was aware that naval officers (he knew almost nothing of mankind on land) could be divided into active individuals and passive individuals, into those eager for responsibility and action and into those content to wait until action was forced on them. Before that he had learned the simpler lesson that officers could be divided into the efficient and the blunderers, and also into the intelligent and the stupid—this last division was nearly the same as the one immediately preceding, but not quite. There were the officers who could be counted on to act quickly and correctly in an emergency, and those who could not—again the dividing line did not quite coincide with the preceding. And there were officers with discretion and officers with none, patient officers and impatient ones, officers with strong nerves and officers with weak nerves. In certain cases Bush’s estimates had to contend with his prejudices—he was liable to be suspicious of brains and of originality of thought and of eagerness for activity, especially because in the absence of some of the other desirable qualities these things might be actual nuisances. The final and most striking difference Bush had observed during ten years of continuous warfare was that between the leaders and the led, but that again was a difference of which Bush. was conscious without being able to express it in words, and especially not in words as succinct or as definite as these; but he was actually aware of the difference even though he was not able to bring himself to define it.

  But he had that difference at the back of his mind, all the same, as he looked at Buckland and Hornblower chatting together on the quarterdeck. The afternoon watch had ended, and the first dogwatch had begun, with Hornblower as officer of the watch. It was the traditional moment for relaxation; the heat of the day had passed, and the hands collected forward, some of them to gaze down at the dolphins leaping round the bows, while the officers who had been dozing during the afternoon in their cabins came up to the quarterdeck for air and paced up and down in little groups deep in conversation.

  A ship of war manned for active service was the most crowded place in the world—more crowded than the most rundown tenement in Seven Dials—but long and hard experience had taught the inhabitants how to live even in those difficult conditions. Forward there were groups of men yarning, men skylarking; there were solitary men who had each preempted a square yard of deck for himself and sat, cross-legged, with tools and materials about them, doing scrimshaw work—delicate carvings on bone—or embroidery or whittling at models oblivious to the tumult about them. Similarly aft on the crowded quarterdeck the groups of officers strolled and chatted, avoiding the other groups without conscious effort.

  It was in accordance with the traditions of the service that these groups left the windward side of the quarterdeck to Buckland as long as he was on deck; and Buckland seemed to be making a long stay this afternoon. He was deep in conversation with Hornblower, the two of them pacing up and down beside the quarterdeck carronades, eight yards forward, eight yards back again; long ago the navy had discovered that when the walking distance was so limited conversation must not be interrupted
by the necessarily frequent turns. Every pair of officers turned inwards as they reached the limits of their walk, facing each other momentarily and continuing the conversation without a break, and walking with their hands clasped behind them as a result of the training they had all received as midshipmen not to put their hands in their pockets.

  So walked Buckland and Hornblower, and curious glances were cast at them by the others, for even on this golden evening, with the blue-enamel sea overside and the sun sinking to starboard with the promise of a magnificent sunset, everyone was conscious that in the cabin just below their feet lay a wretched insane man, half-swathed in a strait-jacket; and Buckland had to make up his mind how to deal with him. Up and down, up and down walked Buckland and Hornblower. Hornblower seemed to be as deferential as ever, and Buckland seemed to be asking questions; but some of the replies he received must have been unexpected, for more than once Buckland stopped in the middle of a turn and stood facing Hornblower, apparently repeating his question, while Hornblower seemed to be standing his ground both literally and figuratively, sturdy and yet respectful, as Buckland stood with the sun illuminating his haggard features.

  Perhaps it had been a fortunate chance that had made Hornblower decide to take a bath under the wash-deck pump—this conversation had its beginnings in that incident.