Cecil Forester - Lord Hornblower

The boat was now half-way between the two brigs; with those two vessels under his command he could wage a lively war against the Normandy coast; he felt in his bones that he could set the whole Seine estuary in an uproar. His bitterness surged up stronger still, and then abruptly checked itself. An idea had come to him, and with the idea all the well-known old symptoms, the dryness in his throat, the tingling in his legs, the accelerated heartbeat. He swept his glance back and forth between the two brigs, excitement welling up inside him; calculations of wind and tide and daylight already formulating themselves, unsummoned, in his mind.

“Pull harder you men,” he said to the boat’s crew, and they obeyed him, but the gig could not possibly travel fast enough to satisfy him in his new mood.

Brown was looking at him sidelong, wondering what plan was evoking itself in his captain’s brain; Brown himself—as well aware of the circumstances as Hornblower was—could see no possible way out of the situation. All he knew was that his captain looked back over his shoulder time and time again at the mutinous brig.

“Oars!” growled Brown to the boat’s crew, as the officer of the watch gave the signal to the boat to come alongside; the bowman hooked onto the chains, and Hornblower went up the brig’s side with a clumsy impetuosity that he could not restrain. Freeman was waiting for him on the quarterdeck, and Hornblower’s hand was still at his hat when be gave his first order.

“Will you pass the word for the sailmaker, Mr. Freeman? And I shall want his mates, and every hand who can use a needle and palm.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Orders were orders, even when they dealt with such extraneous matters as making sails while negotiating with a mutinous crew. Hornblower stared over at the Flame, still lying hove-to out of gunshot. The mutineers held a strong, an unassailable position, one which no frontal attack could break, and whose flanks were impregnable. It would be a very roundabout route that could turn such a position; maybe he had thought of one. There were some odd circumstances in his favour, fortunate coincidences. It was his business to seize upon those, exploit them to the utmost. He would have to take reckless chances, but he would do everything in his power to reduce the chances against him. The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.

A stoop-shouldered seaman was awaiting his attention, Freeman at his side.

“Swenson, sailmaker’s mate, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Freeman. You see that patched fore-tops’l? Swenson, look at it well through this glass.”

The Swedish sailmaker took the telescope in his gnarled hands and levelled it to his eye.

“Mr. Freeman, I want Porta Coeli to have a foretops’l just like that, so that no eye can see any difference between the two. Can that be done?”

Freeman looked at Swenson.

“Aye aye, sir, I can do that,” said Swenson, glancing from Freeman to Hornblower and back again. “There’s a bolt o’ white duck canvas, an’ with the old foretops’l—I can do it, sir.”

“I want it finished and ready to bend by four bells in the afternoon watch. Start work on it now.”

A little group had formed behind Swenson, those members of the crew whom inquiry had ascertained to have sailmaking experience. There were broad grins on some of their faces; Hornblower seemed to be conscious of a little wave of excitement and anticipation spreading through the crew like a ripple over a pond set up by the stone dropped into it in the form of Hornblower’s unusual request. No one could see clearly as yet what was in Hornblower’s mind, but they knew that he intended some devilment. The knowledge was a better tonic to discipline and the happiness of the ship than any ordinary ship’s routine.

“Now see here, Mr. Freeman,” said Hornblower, moving towards the rail. “What I propose is this— Flame and Porta Coeli are as like as two peas and they’ll be liker yet as soon as we have that foretops’l set. The mutineers have been in communication with the shore; they told me so, and, what’s more, Mr. Freeman, the place they’ve had dealings with is Le Havre—Harbour-Grace, Mr. Freeman. Boney and the governor have promised them money and immunity to bring the Flame in. We’ll go in instead. There’s that West Indiaman we saw come in this morning.”

“We’ll bring her out, sir!”

“Maybe we will. God knows what we’ll find inside, but we’ll go in ready for anything. Pick twenty men and an officer, men you can rely on. Give each one his orders about what he is to do if we have a chance to take a prize—heads’ls, tops’ls, wheel, cutting the cable. You know about all that as well as I do. It’ll be just at dusk that we stand in, if the wind doesn’t change, and I don’t think it will. It’ll be strange if in the dark we don’t contrive something to annoy the Frogs.”

“By God, sir, an’ they’ll think it’s the mutineers! They’ll think the mutiny was just a sham! They’ll—”

“I hope they will, Mr. Freeman.”

It was late afternoon when the Porta Coeli, apparently unable to reach any decision, stood away from the Flame and crossed the broad estuary with the wind blowing briskly on her port beam. The thick weather still persisted; she was far enough both from Flame and from Le Havre for the details to be quite obscure when she took in her foretopsail and substituted for it the patched one which an enthusiastic gang of toilers had made ready on deck abaft the foremast. Hurried work with paintbrush and paint erased one name and substituted the other; Hornblower and Freeman wore their plain pea-jackets over their uniforms, concealing their rank. Freeman kept his glass trained on the harbour as they stood in.

“That’s the Indiaman, sir. At anchor. And there’s a lighter beside her. O’ course, they wouldn’t unload her at the quay. Not here, sir. They’d put her cargo into lighters an’ barges, and send ‘em up the river, to Rouen and Paris. O’ course they would. I ought to ha’ thought o’ that before.” Hornblower had already thought of it. His glass was sweeping the defences of the town; the forts of Ste. Adresse and Tourneville on the steep cliff above the town; the twin lighthouses on Cape de la Hève—which for a dozen years had not shown a light—the batteries on the low ground beside the old jetty. These last would be the great danger to the enterprise; he hoped that the big forts above would not know of what was going on down below in time to open fire.

“There’s a lot of shipping farther in, sir,” went on Freeman. “Might even be ships of the line. They haven’t their yards crossed. I’ve never been in as close as this before.”

Hornblower turned to look at the western sky. Night was fast falling, and the thick weather on the horizon showed no signs of clearing. He wanted light enough to find his way, and darkness enough to cover him on his way out.

“Here’s the pilot lugger standing out, sir,” said Freeman. “They’ll think we’re Flame all right.”

“Very good, Mr. Freeman. Set the men to cheering at the ship’s side. Secure the pilot when he comes on board. I’ll con her in.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

It was just the sort of order to suit the temperament of British seamen. They entered whole-heartedly into the spirit of the thing, yelling like lunatics along the bulwarks, waving their hats, dancing exuberantly, just as one would expect of a horde of mutineers. The Porta Coeli backed her main-topsail, the lugger surged alongside, and the pilot swung himself into the mainchains.

“Lee braces!” roared Hornblower, the maintopsail caught the wind again, the wheel went over, and the Porta Coeli stood into the harbour, while Freeman put his shoulder between the pilot’s shoulderblades and shot him neatly down the hatchway where two men were waiting to seize and pinion him.