Hornblower 05 - Hornblower and the Atropos (14 page)

“Now, Mr. Jones,” he said, “we'll start again. We'll have topmasts and yards struck — all top hamper down and stowed away. Order 'out pipes', if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jones.

The hands had already spent half the morning at sail drill; Hornblower was taking advantage of the fogbound calm to exercise his ship's company. With so many landsmen on board, with officers unfamiliar with their divisions, this fog actually could be used to advantage; the ship could be made more of a working, fighting unit during this interval of grace before proceeding down Channel. Hornblower put his cold hand inside his coat and brought out his watch; as if the gesture had called forth the sound five bells rang out sharply from beside the binnacle, and from the thick fog surrounding them came the sound of other bells — there were many ships anchored in the Downs all about them, so many that it was some minutes before the last sound died away; the sand-glasses on board the ships were by no means in agreement.

While the bells were still sounding Hornblower took note of the position of the minute hand of his watch and nodded to Jones. Instantly came a roar of orders; the men, already called to attention after their brief stand-easy came pouring aft with their petty officers urging them on. Watch in hand, Hornblower stood back by the taffrail. From where he stood only the lower part of the main rigging was visible; the foremast was completely hidden in fog. The hands went hurrying up the ratlines, Hornblower watching keenly to see what proportion of them were vague about their stations and duties. He could have wished that he could see all that was going on — but then if there had been no fog there would have been no sail drill, and Atropos would have been making the best of her way down Channel. Here was the Prince, hurried along by Horrocks with a hand at his shoulder.

“Come on,” said Horrocks, leaping at the ratlines.

The Prince sprang up beside him. Hornblower could see the bewildered expression on the boy's face. He had small enough idea of what he was doing. He would learn, no doubt — he was learning much even from the fact that the blood-royal, the King's nephew, could be shoved about by the plebeian hand of a midshipman.

Hornblower got out of the way as the mizzen topsail came swaying down. A yelping master's mate came running up with a small pack of waisters at his heels; they fell upon the ponderous roll and dragged it to the side. The mizzen mast hands were working faster than the mainmast, apparently — the main topsail was not lowered yet. Jones, his head drawn back so that his Adam's apple protruded apparently by inches, was bellowing the next orders to the masthead. A shout from above answered him. Down the ratlines came a flood of men again.

“Let go! Haul! Lower away!”

The mizzen topsail yard turned in a solemn arc and made its slow descent down the mast. There was an exasperating delay while the mainstay tackle was applied — organization at this point was exceedingly poor — but at last the yard was down and lying along the booms beside its fellows. The complicated and difficult business of striking the topmasts followed.

“An hour and a quarter, Mr. Jones. More nearly an hour and twenty minutes. Far too long. Half an hour — half an hour with five minutes' grace; that's the longest you should ever take.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jones. There was nothing else he could say.

As Hornblower was eyeing him before giving his next orders a faint dull thud came to his ears, sounding flatly through the fog. A musket shot? A pistol shot? That was certainly what it sounded like, but with the fog changing the quality of all the sounds he could not be sure. Even if it were a shot, fired in one of the numerous invisible ships round about, there might be endless innocent explanations of it; and it might not be a shot. A hatch cover dropped on a deck — a grating being pushed into place — it could be anything.

The hands were grouped about the deck, looming vaguely in the fog, awaiting further orders. Hornblower guessed that they were sweating despite the cold. This was the way to get that London beer out of them, but he did not want to drive them too hard.

“Five minutes stand-easy,” said Hornblower. “And, Mr. Jones, you had better station a good petty officer at that mainstay tackle.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower turned away to give Jones an opportunity to arrange his reorganization. He set himself to walk the deck to bring some life back into his cold body; his watch was still in his hand through sheer forgetfulness to replace it in his pocket. He ended his walk at the ship's side, glancing over into the black water. Now what was that floating down beside the ship? Something long and black; when Hornblower first caught sight of it it had bumped one end against the ship's side under the main chains, and as he watched it swung solemnly round, drawn by the tide, and came down towards him. It was an oar. Curiosity overcame him. In a crowded anchorage like this there was nothing very surprising about a floating oar, but still —

“Here, quartermaster,” said Hornblower. “Get down into the mizzen chains with a line to catch that oar.”

It was only an oar; Hornblower looked it over as the quartermaster held it for his inspection. The leather button was fairly well worn—it was by no means a new oar. On the other hand, judging by the fact that the leather was not entirely soaked through, it had not long been in the water, minutes rather than days, obviously. There was the number “27” burned into the loom, and it was that which caused Hornblower to look more sharply. The “7” bore a crossbar. No Englishman ever wrote a “7” with a crossbar. But everyone on the Continent did; there were Danes and Swedes and Norwegians, Russians and Prussians, at sea, either neutrals in the war or allies of England. Yet a Frenchman or a Dutchman, one of England's enemies, would also write a “7” in that way.

And there had certainly been something that sounded like a shot. A floating oar and a musket shot made a combination that would be hard to explain. Now if they had been connected in causation — ! Hornblower still had his watch in his hand. That shot — if it was a shot — had made itself heard just before he gave the order for stand-easy, seven or eight minutes ago. The tide was running at a good two knots. If the shot had caused the oar to be dropped into the water it must have been fired a quarter of a mile or so — two cables' length — upstream. The quartermaster still holding the oar was looking at him curiously, and Jones was waiting, with the men poised for action, for his next orders. Hornblower was tempted to pay no more attention to the incident.

But he was a King's officer, and it was his duty to make inquiry into the unexplainable at sea. He hesitated in inward debate; the fog was horribly thick. If he sent a boat to investigate it would probably lose itself; Hornblower had had much experience of making his way by boat in a fog-ridden anchorage. Then he could go himself. Hornblower felt a qualm at the thought of blundering about trying to find his way in the fog — he could make a fool of himself so easily in the eyes of his crew. Yet on the other hand that was not likely to be as exasperating as fuming on board waiting for a dilatory boat to return.

“Mr. Jones,” he said, “call away my gig.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jones, the astonishment in his voice hardly concealed at all.

Hornblower walked to the binnacle and took a careful reading of how the ship's head lay. It was the most careful reading he could possibly take, not because his comfort or his safety but because his personal dignity depended on getting that reading right. North by East half East. As the ship lay riding to her anchor bows to the tide he could be sure that the oar had come down from that direction.

“I want a good boat compass in the gig, Mr. Jones, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower hesitated before the last final order, which would commit him to a public admission that he thought there was a chance of something serious awaiting him in the fog. But not to give the order would be to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. If that had really been a musket shot that he had heard there was a possibility of action; there was a likelihood that at least a show of force would be necessary.

“Pistols and cutlasses for the gig's crew, Mr. Jones, if you please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Jones, as if nothing could astonish him again.

Hornblower turned back as he was about to step down into the boat.

“I shall start timing you from this moment, Mr. Jones. Try to get those tops'l yards across in half an hour from now — I'll be back before then.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The ship broke into a roar of activity as Hornblower took his place in the stern-sheets of the gig.

“I'll take the tiller,” he said to the coxswain. “Give way.”

He steered the gig along the Atropos from stern to bow. He took one last look up at her bows, at her bowsprit and bobstay, and then the fog swallowed them up. The gig was instantly in a world of its own, constricted about by the walls of mist. The sounds of activity on board the ship died rapidly away.

“Pull steady!” growled Hornblower to the man at the oars. That little boat compass would be swinging about chasing its tail in ten seconds if he allowed the gig to keep anything except an exactly straight course. North by East half East.

“Seventeen,” said Hornblower to himself. “Eighteen. Nineteen.”

He was counting the strokes of the oars; it was a rough way of estimating the progress made. At seven feet to the stroke less than two hundred strokes meant a quarter of a mile. But there was the speed of the tide to be allowed for. It would be nearer five hundred strokes — all very vague, but every possible precaution must be taken on a foolish expedition like Otis.

“Seventy-four, seventy-five,” said Hornblower, his eyes glued to the compass.

Even with the brisk tide running the surface of the sea was a glassy flat calm; the oar-blades, lifting from the water at the completion of each stroke, left whirlpools circling on the surface.

“Two hundred,” said Hornblower, suppressing a momentary fear that he had miscounted and that it was really three hundred.

The oars groaned on monotonously in the rowlocks.

“Keep your eyes ahead,” said Hornblower to the coxswain. “Tell me the moment you see anything. Two sixty-four.”

It seemed only yesterday that he had sat in the stern-sheets of the jolly boat of the Indefatigable, rowing up the estuary of the Gironde to cut out the Papillon. But that was more than ten years ago. Three hundred. Three hundred and fifty.

“Sir,” said the coxswain, tersely.

Hornblower looked forward. Ahead, a trifle on the port bow, there was the slightest thickening in the fog, the slightest looming of something solid there.

“Easy all!” said Hornblower, and the boat continued to glide over the surface; he put the tiller over slightly so as to approach whatever it was more directly. But the boat's way died away before they were near enough to distinguish any details, and at Hornblower's command the men began to row again. Distantly came a low hail out of the fog, apparently called forth by the renewal of the sound of the oars.

“Boat ahoy!”

At least the hail was in English. By now there was visible the vague outlines of a large brig; from the heaviness of her spars and fast lines she looked like one of the West India packets.

“What brig's that?” hailed Hornblower in reply.

“Amelia Jane of London, thirty-seven days out from Barbados.”

That was a direct confirmation of Hornblower's first impression. But that voice? It did not sound quite English, somehow. There were foreign captains in the British merchant service, plenty of them, but hardly likely to be in command of a West India packet.

“Easy,” said Hornblower to the rowers, the gig glided silently on over the water. He could see no sign of anything wrong.

“Keep your distance,” said the voice from the brig.

There was nothing suspicious about the words. Any ship at anchor hardly more than twenty miles from the coast of France was fully entitled to be wary of strangers approaching in a fog. But that word sounded more like “deestance” all the same. Hornblower put his helm over to pass under the brig's stern. Several heads were now apparent at the brig's side; they moved round the stern in time with the gig. There was the brig's name, sure enough. Amelia Jane, London. Then Hornblower caught sight of something else; it was a large boat lying under the brig's port quarter from the main chains. There might be a hundred possible explanations of that, but it was a suspicious circumstance.

“Brig ahoy!” he hailed, “I'm coming aboard.”

“Keep off!” said the voice in reply.

Some of the heads at the brig's side developed shoulders, and three or four muskets were pointed at the gig.

“I am a King's officer,” said Hornblower.

He stood up in the stern-sheets and unbuttoned his pea-jacket so that his uniform was visible. The central figure at the brig's side, the man who had been speaking, looked for a long moment and then spread his hands in a gesture of despair.

“Yes,” he said.

Hornblower went up the brig's side as briskly as his chilled limbs would permit. As he stood on the deck he felt a trifle self-conscious of being unarmed, for facing him were more than a dozen men, hostility in their bearing, and some of them with muskets in their hands. But the gig's crew had followed him on the deck and closed up behind him, handling their cutlasses and pistols.

“Cap'n, sir!” It was the voice from overside of one of the two men left down in the gig. “Please, sir, there's a dead man in the boat here.”

Hornblower turned away to look over. A dead man certainly lay there, doubled up in the bottom of the boat. That accounted for the floating oar, then. And for the shot, of course. The man had been killed by a bullet from the brig at the moment the boat was laid alongside; the brig had been taken by boarding. Hornblower looked back towards the group on the deck.

“Frenchmen?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The fellow was a man of sense. He had not attempted a hopeless resistance when his coup had been discovered. Although he had fifteen men at his back and there were only eight altogether in the gig he had realized that the presence of a King's ship in the immediate vicinity made his final capture a certainty.