Hornblower 05 - Hornblower and the Atropos (11 page)

“That's what I was thinking, my lord. The midshipmen's berth in Atropos —”

“You'll have to put him there, all the same. Not much room in a flush-decked sloop. If it were a ship of the line he might berth by himself, but if it's to be Atropos he'll have to take what comes. And it won't be caviar and venison, either. I'll send you orders on the subject, of course.”

“Aye aye, my lord.”

The coach was grinding to a stop at the Admiralty; someone opened the door, and St Vincent began to heave himself out of his seat. Hornblower followed him in under the portico.

“I'll bid you good-bye, then, Hornblower,” said St Vincent, offering his hand.

“Good-bye, my lord.”

St Vincent stood looking at him from under his eyebrows.

“The Navy has two duties, Hornblower,” he said. “We all know what one is — to fight the French and give Boney what for.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“The other we don't think about so much. We have to see that when we go we leave behind us a Navy which is as good as the one in which we served. You've less than three years' seniority now, Hornblower, but you'll find you'll grow older. It'll seem you've hardly had time to look round before you'll have forty-three years' seniority, like me. It goes fast enough, I assure you. Perhaps then you'll be taking another young officer to present him at the Palace.”

“Er — yes, my lord.”

“Choose carefully, Hornblower, if it ever becomes your duty. One can make mistakes. But let them be honest mistakes.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“That's all.”

The old man turned away without another word, leaving Hornblower with Bracegirdle under the portico.

“Jervie's in a melting mood,” said Bracegirdle.

“So it seems.”

“I think he wanted to say he had his eye on you, sir.”

“But he had an anchor out to windward all the same,” said Hornblower, thinking of what St Vincent had said about the chance of one making mistakes.

“Jervie never forgives, sir,” said Bracegirdle, seriously.

“Well —”

Twelve years of service in the Navy had gone far to make Hornblower, on occasions, fatalist enough to be able to shrug off that sort of peril — at least until it was past.

“I'll take my boat cloak, if you please,” he said, “and I'll say good-bye, and thank you.”

“A glass of something? A cup of tea? A mouthful to eat, sir?”

“No, thank you, I'd better shove off.”

Maria was waiting for him at Deptford, longing to hear about his visit to Court and his presentation to the King. Maria had been wildly excited when Hornblower had told her what he was going to do. The thought that he was going to meet face to face the Lord's anointed was almost too much for her — the midwife had come forward with a warning that all this excitement might bring on a fever. And he had not merely been presented to the King, but the King had actually spoken to him, had discussed his professional career with him. Besides, he was to have a real Prince as a midshipman on board his ship — a dispossessed prince, admittedly, but to counter-balance that was the fact that the prince was a great-nephew of the King, related by blood to the Royal Family. That would delight Maria as much as his presentation at Court.

She would want to know all about it, who was there (Hornblower found himself wishing he had been able to identify a single one of the figures who had stood behind the throne) and what everyone was wearing — that would be easier, as there had been no women present, of course, at the levee, and practically everyone had been in uniform. He would have to be careful in his account, as it was possible to hurt Maria's feelings. Hornblower himself fought for his country; it might be better said that he fought for the ideals of liberty and decency against the unprincipled tyrant who ruled across the Channel; the hackneyed phrase “for King and Country” hardly expressed his feelings at all. If he was ready to lay down his life for his King that really had no reference to the kindly pop-eyed old gentleman with whom he had been speaking this morning; it meant that he was ready to die for the system of liberty and order that the old gentleman represented. But to Maria the King was representative of something other than liberty and order; he had received the blessing of the Church; he was somebody to be spoken about with awe. To turn one's back on the King was to Hornblower a breach of good manners, something damaging, in some degree, to the conventions which held the country together in the face of its imminent peril; but to Maria it would be something very close to sacrilege. He would have to be careful not to speak too lightly of the old gentleman.

And yet (the gig was carrying him through the Pool now, under the walls of the Tower) Hornblower had to admit it to himself that Maria's views about his service in the Navy were not on as lofty a plane as his own. To Maria it was a gentlemanly trade; it gave her a certain social status to which she otherwise would not have attained, and it put food into the mouth of her precious child — children, now that little Maria was born. But self-sacrifice for a cause; the incurring of danger beyond the dictates of duty; honour; glory; these were conceptions that Maria cared little about. She was in fact rather inclined to turn up her nose at them as purely masculine notions, part of an elaborate game or ritual devised by men to make them feel superior to and different from women whose self-respect and sublime certainty of superiority needed no such puerile bolstering.

It was a surprise to Hornblower to find that the gig was now passing the Atropos as she lay at the edge of the stream. He should have been all eyes to see that all was well with her and that the officer of the watch had been on the alert to detect the gig as she came down the river; as it was Hornblower merely had time to acknowledge the salute of Lieutenant Jones as the gig left the ship behind. There was Deptfort Dock, and beside it the enormous activities of the Victualling Yard. From a sailing barge lying beside the jetty a gang of men were at work driving a herd of pigs up into the yard, destined for slaughter and salting down to feed the Navy.

“Eyes in the boat, there!” growled the coxswain.

One of the gig's crew had made a sotto voice joke about those pigs, evidently. It was hard to believe, even with this evidence before their eyes, that the unrecognizable, wooden hard chunks of matter that were issued from the brine barrels to the men at sea, really came from decent respectable animals like those there. Hornblower's sympathies were with his men. The coxswain was putting his tiller over to bring the gig up to Deptford Hard. Hornblower disembarked, to walk up to the “George”, to where his family was awaiting him. He would sit by Maria's bed and tell her about the pageantry of the Court of St. James's. He would hold his little daughter in his arms; he would play with his little son. It might well be for the very last time; at any moment his orders would come, and he would take Atropos to sea. Battle, storm, shipwreck, disease — what were the chances that he would never come back again? And if ever he did the squalling baby he was leaving behind would be a trim little miss playing with her dolls; little Horatio would be at least starting with slate and pencil writing his letters and figures; he might be beginning to decline mensa and learning the Greek alphabet. And he himself? He hoped he would be able to say he had done his duty; he hoped that those weaknesses of which he was so conscious would not prevent him from achieving something of which his children might be proud.

Hornblower and the “Atropos”

So it was to be the Mediterranean. Hornblower sat in his canvas chair in his cabin in Atropos, rereading the orders which hat come for him.

Sir —

I am commanded by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty —

He was to prepare himself with the utmost diligence ready to proceed to Gibraltar, and there he was to call for orders which the Vice-Admiral Commanding in the Mediterranean might send to him there. In the event that no such orders should be forthcoming, he was to ascertain where the Vice-Admiral was likely to be found, and to proceed with the same diligence to put himself under the Vice-Admiral's orders.

That must be Cuthbert Collingwood — Lord Collingwood now that he had received his peerage after Trafalgar. The fleet that had won the battle there — or such ships of it as were still seaworthy — had been sent into the Mediterranean after the battle, he knew. The destruction of the French and Spanish fleets outside Cadiz had definitely established British command of the Atlantic, so now the Navy was carrying its ponderous weight into the Mediterranean to head off there any moves that Bonaparte might make now that Austerlitz had given him command of Continental Europe. Austerlitz — Trafalgar. The French army — and the Royal Navy. The one might be balanced against the other. There was no corner of Europe whither French troops might not march — as long as there was land for them to march on; there was no corner of the sea where British ships might not bring their influence to bear — as long as there was water in which they could float. In the landlocked Mediterranean with its peninsulas and islands sea power could best confront land power. The bloody and seemingly endless conflict between tyranny and liberty would be fought out there. He would play his part in it. The Secretary to the Lords Commissioners signed himself “your obedient humble servant”, but before he did so he went on to say that Their Lordships rested assured that Atropos was ready for immediate departure, so that on receipt of final orders and of the last minute despatches which would be entrusted to her she would be able to leave at once. Hornblower and his ship, in other words, were being put on notice of instant readiness.

Hornblower felt a slight feeling of apprehension, a sensation of gooseflesh at the back of his neck. He did not believe that his ship was prepared in all respects to leave at a moment's notice.

Hornblower lifted up his voice in a call to the sentry outside his door.

“Pass the word for Mr. Jones.”

He heard the cry repeated in 'tween decks like an echo, as he sat on with the orders in his hands. It was only a few moments before Mr. Jones came in hastily, and it was only when he arrived that Hornblower realized that he had not prepared himself to give the necessary orders and make the necessary inquiries. As a result Hornblower found himself compelled to look Jones over without speaking. His mind was sorting out his thoughts without reacting at all to the reports his eyes were making to it, but Hornblower's steady stare discomposed the unfortunate Jones, who put his hand up nervously to his face. Hornblower saw a dab of dry lather in front of Jones's right ear, and as the lieutenant's gesture recalled him to himself he noticed something more; one lantern cheek was smooth and well shaved, while the other bristled with a fair growth of black beard.

“Pardon, sir,” said Jones, “but your call caught me half shaved, and I judged it best to come at once.”

“Very well, Mr. Jones,” said Hornblower; he was not sorry that Jones had something to explain away while he himself was not ready with the definite orders that a good officer should be able to issue.

Under that embarrassing stare Jones had to speak again.

“Did you want me, sir?”

“Yes,” said Hornblower. “We are under orders for the Mediterranean.”

“Indeed, sir?” Mr. Jones's remarks did not make any great contribution to the progress of the conversation.

“I want your report on how soon we can be ready for sea.”

“Oh, sir —”

Jones put his hand up to his face again; perhaps it was as long as it was because of his habit of pulling at his chin.

“Are stores and water complete?”

“Well, sir, you see —”

“You mean they are not?”

“N — no, sir. Not altogether.”

Hornblower was about to ask for an explanation, but changed his approach at the last second.

“I won't ask why at present. How short are we?”

“Well, sir —” The wretched Jones entered into a hurried statement. They were twenty tons of water short. Bread, spirits, meat —

“You mean that with the Victualling Yard only across the river you have not kept the ship complete with stores?”

“Well, sir —” Jones tried to explain that he had not thought it necessary to draw supplies from day to day. “There was plenty of other work for the hands, sir, fitting out.”

“Watch bills? Station bills?”

These were the lists that allocated the hands to their duties and quarters in the ship.

“We're twenty topmen short, sir,” said Jones pitifully.

“All the more reason to make the most of what we have.”

“Yes, sir, of course, sir.” Jones sought desperately in his mind for excuses for himself. “Some of our beef, sir — it — it isn't fit to eat.”

“Worse than usual?”

“Yes, sir. Must be some of an old batch. Real bad, some of it.”

“In which tier?”

“I'll ask the purser, sir.”

“You mean you don't know?”

“No, sir — yes, sir.”

Hornblower fell into deep thought again, but as once more he did not take his eyes from Jones's face that did not help the delinquent first lieutenant to recover his equanimity. Actually Hornblower was condemning himself. During the few days he had held command of the Atropos he had been hard at work on the details of Nelson's funeral, and then he had been preoccupied with his own family affairs, but all that was no excuse. The captain of a ship should be aware at every moment of the state of his command. He was savagely angry with himself. He hardly knew his officers' names; he could not even estimate what sort of fight Atropos could put up — and yet he would not have to go very far down the river to find his ship likely to be in action.

“What about the gunner's stores?” he asked. “Powder? Shot? Wads? Cartridges?”

“I'll send for the gunner, sir, shall I?” asked Jones. He was desperate at all this revelation of his own inadequacies.

“I'll see 'em all in a minute,” said Hornblower. “Purser, gunner, bos'n, cooper, master's mate.”

These were the subordinate heads of department responsible through the first lieutenant to the captain for the proper functioning of the ship.