Cecil Forester: The Happy Return

Happily the business was got over quickly. The boatswain’s mates triced Owen, naked to the waist, up to the main rigging, and laid into him as the drum rolled. Owen, unlike the usual run of seamen, howled with pain as the cat of ninetails bit into his shoulders, and danced grotesquely, his bare feet flapping on the deck until at the end of his two dozen he hung from his bound wrists motionless and silent. Someone soused him with water and he was hustled below.

“Hands to breakfast, Mr. Bush,” snapped Hornblower; he hoped that the tan of the tropics saved him from looking as white as he felt. Flogging a half witted man was not to his taste as a before breakfast diversion and he was sick with disgust at himself at neither being strong enough to stop it nor ingenious enough to devise a way out of the dilemma Bush’s decision had forced him into.

The row of officers on the quarterdeck broke up as each turned away. Gerard, the second lieutenant, took over the deck from Bush. The ship was like a magic tessellated pavement. It presented a geometrical pattern; someone shook it up into confusion, and at once it settled itself into a new and orderly fashion.

Hornblower went below to where Polwheal had his breakfast awaiting him.

“Coffee, sir,” said Polwheal. “Burgoo.”

Hornblower sat down at table; in the seven months’ voyage every luxury had long since been consumed. The coffee was a black extract of burnt bread, and all that could be said in its favour was that it was sweet and hot. The burgoo was a savoury mess of unspeakable appearance compounded of mashed biscuit crumbs and minced salt beef. Hornblower ate absentmindedly. With his left hand he tapped a biscuit on the table so that the weevils would all be induced to have left it by the time he had finished his burgoo.

There were shipnoises all round him as he ate. Every time the Lydia rolled and pitched a trifle as she reached the crest of the swell which was lifting her, the woodwork all creaked gently in unison. Overhead came the sound of Gerard’s shod feet as he paced the quarterdeck, and sometimes the pattering of horny bare feet as some member of the crew trotted by. From forward came a monotonous steady clanking as the pumps were put to the daily task of pumping out the ship’s bilges. But these noises were all transient and interrupted; there was one sound which went on all the time so steadily that the ear grew accustomed to it and only noticed it when the attention was specially directed to it—the sound of the breeze in the innumerable ropes of the rigging. It was just the faintest singing, a harmony of a thousand highpitched tones and overtones, but it could be heard in every part of the ship, transmitted from the chains through the timbers along with the slow, periodic creaking.

Hornblower finished his burgoo, and was turning his attention to the biscuit he had been rapping on the table. He contemplated it with calm disfavour; it was poor food for a man, and in the absence of butter—the last cask had gone rancid a month back—he would have to wash down the dry mouthfuls with sips of burntbread coffee. But before he could take his first bite a wild cry from above caused him to sit still with the biscuit half way to his mouth.

“Land ho!” he heard. “Deck there! Land two points on the larboard bow, sir.”

That was the lookout in the foretop hailing the deck. Hornblower, as he sat with his biscuit in mid air, heard the rush and bustle on deck; everyone would be wildly excited at the sight of land, the first for three months, on this voyage to an unknown destination. He was excited himself. There was not merely the imminent thrill of discovering whether he had made a good landfall; there was also the thought that perhaps within twenty four hours he would be in the thick of the dangerous and difficult mission upon which my lords of the Admiralty had despatched him. He was conscious of a more rapid beating of his heart in his breast. He wanted passionately to rush out on deck as his first instincts dictated, but he restrained himself. He wanted still more to appear in the eyes of his officers and crew to be a man of complete self confidence and imperturbability—and this was only partially to gratify himself. The more respect in which a captain was held, the better for his ship. He forced himself into an attitude of complete composure, crossing his knees and sipping his coffee in entire unconcern as Mr. Midshipman Savage knocked at the cabin door and came bouncing in.

“Mr. Gerard sent me to tell you land’s in sight on the larboard bow, sir,” said Savage, hardly able to stand still in the prevailing infection of excitement. Hornblower made himself take another sip of coffee before he spoke, and he made his words come slowly and calmly.

“Tell Mr. Gerard I shall come on deck in a few minutes when I have finished my breakfast,” he said.

“Aye aye, sir.”

Savage bolted out of the cabin; his large clumsy feet clattered on the companion.

“Mr. Savage! Mr. Savage!” yelled Hornblower. Savage’s large moonlike face reappeared in the doorway.

“You forgot to close the door,” said Hornblower, coldly. “And please don’t make so much noise on the companionway.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said the crestfallen Savage.

Hornblower was pleased with himself for that. He pulled at his chin in self congratulation. He sipped again at his coffee, but found himself quite unable to eat his biscuit. He drummed with his fingers on the table in an effort to make the time pass more rapidly.

He heard young Clay bellowing from the masthead, where presumably Gerard had sent him with a glass.

“Looks like a burning mountain, sir. Two burning mountains. Volcanoes, sir.”

Instantly Hornblower began to call up before his mind’s eye his memory of the chart which he had so often studied in the privacy of this cabin. There were volcanoes all along this coast; the presence of two of the larboard bow was no sure indication of the ship’s position. And yet—and yet—the entrance of the Gulf of Fonseca would undoubtedly be marked by two volcanoes to larboard. It was quite possible that he had made a perfect landfall, after eleven weeks out of sight of land. Hornblower could sit still no longer. He got up from the table, and, remembering just in time to go slowly and with an air of complete unconcern, he walked up on deck.

The quarterdeck was thronged with officers, all the four lieutenants, Crystal the master, Simmonds of the marines, Wood the purser, the midshipmen of the watch. The rigging swarmed with petty officers and ratings, and every glass in the ship appeared to be in use. Hornblower realized that a stern coldblooded disciplinarian would take exception to this perfectly natural behaviour, and so he did the same.

“What’s all this?” he snapped. “Has no one in this ship anything to do? Mr. Wood, I’ll trouble you to send for the cooper and arrange with him for the filling of the water casks. Get the royals and stun’sails off her, Mr. Gerard.”

The ship burst into activity again with the twittering of the pipes and Harrison’s bellowing of “All hands shorten sail” and the orders which Gerard called from the quarterdeck. Under plain sail the Lydia rolled smoothly over the quartering swell.

“I think I can see the smoke from the deck, sir, now,” said Gerard, apologetically raising the subject of land again to his captain. He proffered his glass and pointed forward. Low on the horizon, greyish under a wisp of white cloud, Hornblower could see something through the telescope which might be smoke.

“Hah’m,” said Hornblower, as he had trained himself to say instead of something more conversational He went forward and began to climb the weather foremast shrouds. He was nothing of an athlete, and he felt a faint dislike for this task, but it had to be done—and he was uncomfortably aware that every idle eye on board was turned on him. Because of this he was morally compelled, although he was hampered by the telescope, to refrain from going through the lubbers’ hole and instead to make the difficult outward climb up the futtock shrouds. Nor could he pause for breath—not when there were midshipmen under his command who in their followmyleader games thought nothing of running without a stop from the hold to the main royal truck.