Cecil Forester - The Commodore

They reached the leeward end of the boom; a stretch of clear water extended from here towards the sandspit—the Nehrung, to use the curious German word for it—which divided the Haff from the Baltic for twenty miles. The open stretch must be a quarter of a mile wide, but it was useless for navigation. Brown’s pole recorded a depth of ten feet for a couple of soundings, and then the water shallowed to no more than six or eight.

Vickery suddenly put his hand on Hornblower’s arm and pointed to the land. There was a nucleus of greater darkness there—a guard-boat beating out through the shallows to keep watch over the boom.

“Out oars,” said Hornblower. “Get out to sea.”

There were thrum mats round the looms of the oars to muffle the noise they made against the thole-pins; the men put their backs into their work, and the cutter crept out to sea as the guard-boat continued its course. When the two boats were far enough apart for the sail to be invisible Hornblower gave orders for the lug to be set and they began the beat back to Lotus, with Hornblower shivering uncontrollably in his wet clothes, bitterly ashamed though he was that Vickery should be aware that his Commodore should shiver on account of a mere wet jacket which any tough seaman would think nothing of. It was irritating, though it was no more than was to be expected, that the first attempt to find Lotus in the darkness should be unsuccessful, and the cutter had to go about and reach to windward on the other tack before at last they picked up the loom of her in the night. When her hail reached their ears Brown made a speaking-trumpet of his hands.

“Commodore!” he shouted, and Vickery turned the cutter into the Lotus ’s lee, and Hornblower went up the sloop’s low side as the two came together. On the quarter-deck Vickery turned to him for orders.

“Haul up and make an offing, Mr. Vickery,” said Hornblower. “Make sure Raven follows us. We must be out of sight of land by dawn.”

Down in Vickery’s tiny cabin, stripping off his wet clothes, with Brown hovering round him, Hornblower tried to make his dulled mind work on the problem before him. Brown produced a towel and Hornblower rubbed a little life into his chilled limbs. Vickery knocked and entered, coming, as soon as he had seen his ship on her proper course, to see that his Commodore had all that he needed. Hornblower straightened up after towelling his legs and hit his head with a crash against the deck beams; in this small sloop there was hardly more than five feet clearance. Hornblower let out an oath.

“There’s another foot of headroom under the skylight, sir,” said Vickery, diplomatically.

The skylight was three feet by two, and standing directly beneath it Hornblower could just stand upright, and even then his hair brushed the skylight. And the lamp swung from a hook in a deck beam beside the aperture; an incautious movement on Hornblower’s part brought his bare shoulder against it so that warm stinking oil ran out of the receiver on to his collarbone. Hornblower swore again.

“There’s hot coffee being brought to you, sir,” said Vickery.

The coffee when it came was of a type which Hornblower had not tasted for years—a decoction of burnt bread with the merest flavouring of coffee—but at least it was warming. Hornblower sipped it and handed back the cup to Brown, and then took his dry shirt from the breech of the twelve-pounder beside him and struggled into it.

“Any further orders, sir?” asked Vickery.

“No,” replied Hornblower heavily; his head poked forward to make sure it did not hit the deck beams again. He tried to keep the disappointment and the bad temper out of his voice, but he feared he had not succeeded. It irked him to have to admit that there was no chance of any successful attempt against the Frisches Haff, and yet prudence, common sense, his whole instinct dictated such a decision. There was no breaking that boom, and there was no going round it, not in any of the vessels under his command. He remembered bitterly his unnecessary words to Bush about the desirability of raiding this area from the sea. If ever he needed a lesson in keeping his mouth shut he was receiving one now. The whole flotilla was expecting action, and he was going to disappoint them, sail away without doing anything at all. In future he would double lock his jaws, treble curb his unruly tongue, for if he had not talked so light-heartedly to Bush there would not be nearly so much harm done; Bush, in the absence of orders to the contrary, would naturally have discussed the future with his officers, and hope would be running high—everyone was expecting great things of the bold Hornblower (said he to himself with a sneer) whose reputation for ingenious daring was so tremendous.

Unhappy, he went back again over the data. At the sandspit end of the boom there was water enough for a flotilla of ship’s boats to pass. He could send in three or four launches, with four-pounders mounted in the bows and with a hundred and fifty men on board. There was not much doubt that at night they could run past the boom, and, taking everyone in the lagoon by surprise, could work swift havoc on the coasting trade. Very likely they could destroy thousands of tons of shipping. But they would never get out again. The exit would be watched far too carefully; the batteries would be manned day and night, gunboats would swarm round the end of the boom, and even gunboats manned by landsmen, if there were enough of them, would destroy the flotilla. His squadron could ill afford to lose a hundred and fifty trained seamen—one-tenth of the total ships’ complements—and yet a smaller force might well be completely wasted.

No; no destruction of coasters would be worth a hundred and fifty seamen. He must abandon the idea; as if symbolical of that decision he began to pull on the dry trousers Vickery had provided for him. And then, with one leg in and one leg out, the idea suddenly came to him, and he checked himself, standing in his shirt with his left leg bare and his right leg covered only from ankle to knee.

“Mr. Vickery,” he said, “let’s have those charts out again.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Vickery.

There was eagerness and excitement in his voice at once, echoing the emotion which must have been obvious in Hornblower’s tone—Hornblower took notice of it, and as he buckled his waistband he reaffirmed his resolution to be more careful how he spoke, for he must regain his reputation as a silent hero. He stared down at the charts which Vickery spread for him—he knew that Vickery was studying his face, and he took great care to show no sign whatever of reaching a decision one way or the other. When his mind was made up he said: “Thank you,” in the flattest tone he could contrive, and then, suddenly remembering his most non-committal exclamation, he cleared his throat.

“Ha-h’m,” he said, without any expression at all, and, pleased with the result, he repeated it and drew it out longer still, “Ha-a-a-a-h’m.”

The bewildered look in Vickery’s face was a great delight to him.

Next morning, back in his own cabin in Nonsuch, he took a mild revenge in watching the faces of his assembled captains as he laid the scheme before them. One and all, they thirsted for the command, hotly eager to risk life and liberty on a mission which might at first sight seem utterly harebrained. The two commanders yearned for the chance of promotion to post rank; the lieutenants hoped they might become commanders.

“Mr. Vickery will be in command,” said Hornblower, and had further opportunity of watching the play of emotion over the faces of his audience. But as in this case everyone present had a right to know why he had been passed over, he gave a few words of explanation.