Cecil Forester - The Commodore

A shout from the mast-head claimed his attention.

“Gunfire to loo’ard, sir!”

From the deck they could just see a pinpoint of flame stab the darkness far to the westward, and then another one.

“That’s too far to the west’ard,” said Hornblower to Bush.

“I’m afraid it is, sir.”

At anchor on the very edge of the shoals in that direction was the Raven ; it was her light draught that had dictated her position there. Vickery in Lotus guarded the other bank of the river, while Nonsuch perforce still lay anchored in the fairway. All the armed boats of the squadron were rowing guard in the mouth of the river—a navy cutter with a three-pounder could be counted on to deal with a river barge, even if the latter did carry 300 soldiers. But from the direction of the gunfire it looked as if Vickery had given the alarm prematurely. Another gun flashed to leeward; the wind prevented them from hearing the sound of it.

“Call my barge,” ordered Hornblower. He felt he could not stay here in useless suspense.

The boat pushed off from the Nonsuch, the men tugging at the oars to move the boat in the teeth of the wind. Brown, in the darkness beside Hornblower, felt his captain’s restlessness and anxiety.

“Pull, you b—!” he shouted at the rowers. The boat crawled forward over the tossing water, with Brown standing in the sternsheets with his hand on the tiller.

“’Nother gun, sir. Right ahead,” he reported to Hornblower.

“Very good.”

A tedious quarter of an hour followed, while the boat lurched and pitched over the steep little waves, and the hands slaved away at the oars. The wash of the seas overside and the groaning of the oars against the thole-pins made a monotonous accompaniment to Hornblower’s racing thoughts.

“There’s a whole lot o’ guns firin’ now, sir,” reported Brown.

“I can see them,” replied Hornblower. The darkness was pierced by shot after shot; it was evident that the guard-boats were all clustered round a single victim. “There’s Raven, sir. Shall I make for her?”

“No. Steer for the firing.”

The dark shape of the sloop was just visible ahead; Brown put his helm over a little to lay the barge on a course that would take her past the sloop at a cable’s length distance, heading for the gunfire. They had drawn up abeam of the sloop when there came a flash and a roar from her side, and a shot howled close overhead.

“Jesus!” said Brown. “Ain’t the fools got eyes in their heads?”

Presumably the sloop had hailed the passing boat, and, receiving no reply—the hail being carried away by the wind—had incontinently fired. Another shot came from the Raven, and someone in the barge squawked with dismay. It was demoralizing to be fired upon by one’s own side.

“Turn towards her,” ordered Hornblower. “Burn a blue light.”

At any moment the sloop might fire a full broadside, with every chance of blowing the barge out of the water. Hornblower took the tiller while Brown wrestled, cursing under his breath, with flint and steel and tinder. The hand pulling at the stroke said something to try to quicken his movements.

“Shut your mouth!” snapped Hornblower.

Everything was in a muddle, and the men knew it. Brown caught a spark on the tinder, jabbed the fuse of the blue light upon it, and then blew the fuse into a glow. A moment later the firework burst into an unearthly glare, lighting up the boat and the water round it, and Hornblower stood up so that his features and his uniform should be visible to the sloop. It was poor revenge to think of the consternation in the Raven when they saw that they had been firing on their own Commodore. Hornblower went up the sloop’s side in a state of cold fury. Cole was there to receive him, of course.

“Well, Mr. Cole?”

“Sorry I fired on you, sir, but you didn’t answer my hail.”

“Did it occur to you that with this wind blowing I could not hear you?”

“Yes, sir. But we know the French are out. The boats fired on them an hour back, and half my crew is away in the boats. Supposing I were boarded by two hundred French soldiers? I couldn’t take chances, sir.”

It was no use arguing with a man as jumpy and as nervous as Cole evidently was.

“You sent up the alarm rocket?”

“Yes, sir. I had to inform you that the bridges were at sea.”

“You did that the first moment you knew?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

“Did it occur to you that you would alarm the French as well?”

“I thought that was what you wanted, sir.”

Hornblower turned away in disgust. The man in his excitement had clean forgotten every order given him.

“Boat approaching from to wind’ard, sir,” reported someone, his white shirt just visible in the gathering dawn. Cole ran forward excitedly, with Hornblower striding after him, catching up to him as he stood at the knightheads staring at the boat.

“Boat ahoy!” yelled Cole through his speaking trumpet.

“Aye aye” came the answering hail downwind. That was the correct reply for an approaching boat with officers on board. She was a ship’s cutter under a dipping lugsail; as Hornblower watched she took in the sail with considerable clumsiness and came dropping down to the sloop under oars. Level with the bow she turned, clumsily again, and headed in to lie alongside the sloop. Hornblower could see she was crammed with men.

“Soldiers!” suddenly exclaimed Cole, pointing at the boat with an excited forefinger. “Stand to your guns, men! Sheer off, there!”

Hornblower could see shakoes and crossbelts; it must be just the kind of vision Cole’s imagination had been toying with all through the night. A reassuring English voice came back to them from overside.

“Avast, there! This is Lotus ’s cutter with prisoners.”

It was Purvis’s voice without a doubt. Hornblower walked to the waist and looked down. There was Purvis in the stern, and British seamen in check shirts at the oars, but every inch of space was filled with soldiers, sitting in attitudes of apprehension or dejection. Right up in the eyes of the boat, round the boat’s gun, four red-coated marines held their muskets at the ready; that was the way Purvis had prepared to deal with any attempt by the prisoners to regain their freedom.

“Let ‘em come up,” said Hornblower.

They climbed the side, greeted by the grinning seamen as they reached the deck, and stared round in the growing light. Purvis swung himself up and touched his hat to Hornblower.

“They’re all Dutchmen, I think, sir. Not Frogs. We got ‘em off the barge we caught. Had to fire into ‘em a long time—just shot the barge to pieces, us an’ the other boats. They’re following us, sir, with the other prisoners.”

“You only caught one barge?”

“Yes, sir. The others ran for home the moment the rocket went up. But we got two hundred prisoners, I should think, an’ we had to kill nigh on a hundred more.”

One single barge taken, with two hundred men, when Hornblower had hoped for a dozen barges at least and three thousand men! But Purvis in his innocence was obviously delighted with his capture.

“Here’s one of their officers, sir.”

Hornblower turned on the blue-coated man who was wearily climbing over the side.

“Who are you, sir?” he asked in French, and after a moment’s hesitation the officer replied haltingly in the same language.

“Lieutenant von Bulow, of the Fifty-first Regiment of Infantry.”

“French infantry?”

“Of the King of Prussia,” said the officer, sternly, with a Teutonic explosiveness in the word ‘Prusse’ which indicated his annoyance at the suggestion that he would be a Frenchman.