Cecil Forester: Hornblower and the Crisis

Then he made a rush for it, got both feet on the plank, endured a nightmare interval when it seemed as if, hurry as he would, he made no progress at all, and then thankfully reached the end of the plank and stepped clear of it on to the comparative stability of the deck. The barrel-shaped captain made no move to welcome him and while two hands dumped his baggage on the deck Hornblower had to make the first advance.

“Are you the master of this vessel, sir?” he asked.

“Captain Baddlestone, master of the hoy, Princess .”

“I am Captain Hornblower, and I am to be given a passage to England,” said Hornblower. He deliberately chose that form of words, nettled as he was by Baddlestone’s offhand manner.

“You have your warrant?”

The question and the way in which it was asked rather pricked the bubble of Hornblower’s dignity, but he was roused sufficiently by now to feel he would stand no more insolence.

“I have,” he declared.

Baddlestone had a large round red face, inclining even to purple; from out of it, from under two thick black eyebrows, two surprisingly bright blue eyes met Hornblower’s haughty stare. Hornblower was determined to yield not an inch, and was prepared to continue to meet the headon assault of those blue eyes indefinitely, but he found his flank neatly turned.

“Cabin food a guinea a day. Or you can compound for the passage for three guineas,” announced Baddlestone.

It was a surprise to find he had to pay for his subsistence, and Hornblower knew his surprise was apparent in his expression, but he would not allow it to be apparent in his words. He would not even condescend to ask the questions that were on the tip of his tongue. He could be quite sure that Baddlestone had legality on his side. The Navy Office charter of the hoy presumably compelled Baddlestone to give passages to transient officers, but omitted all reference to subsistence. He thought quickly.

“Three guineas, then,” he said as loftily as he could, with all the manner of a man to whom the difference between one guinea and three was of no concern. It was not until after he had said the words that he worked out in his mind the deduction that the wind was likely to back round easterly and make a long return passage probable.

During this conversation one pump had been working most irregularly, and now the other one came to a stop; the cessation of the monotonous noise was quite striking. Here was Bush hailing from the Hotspur .

“That’s only nineteen ton,” he said. “We can take two more.”

“And two more you won’t get,” yelled Baddlestone in reply. “We’re sucked dry.”

It was a strange feeling that this was of no concern to Hornblower; he was free of responsibility, even though his mind automatically worked out that Hotspur now had fresh water for forty days. It was Meadows who would have to plan to conserve that supply. And with the wind likely to come easterly Hotspur would have to close the mouth of the Goulet as closely as possible — that was Meadow’s concern and nothing to do with him, not ever again.

The hands who had been working at the pumps went scuttling back over the gangplank; the two hands from the Princess who had been standing by the hoses came back on board dragging their charges. Last came the Princess ’s mate with his papers.

“Stand by the lines, there!” yelled Baddlestone. “Jib halliards, Mister!”

Baddlestone himself went to the wheel, and he made a neat job of getting the hoy away from the Hotspur ’s side. He continued to steer the ship while the halfdozen hands under the supervision of the mate set about the task of lifting and stowing the fendoffs that hung along her side. It was only a matter of seconds before the gap between the two ships was too wide to bridge by voice. Hornblower looked across the sparkling water. It appeared that Meadows was summoning all hands in order to address them in an inaugural speech; certainly no one spared a further glance towards the hoy or towards Hornblower standing lonely on the deck. The bonds of naval friendship, of naval intimacy, were exceedingly strong, but they could be ruptured in a flash. It was more than likely that he would never see Bush again.

Life in the waterhoy Princess was exceedingly uncomfortable. She was empty of her cargo of drinking water, and there was almost nothing to replace it; the empty casks were too precious to be contaminated by sea water for use as ballast, and only a few bags of sand could be squeezed between the empty casks to confer any stability on her hull. She had been designed with this very difficulty in view, the lines of her dish-shaped hull being such that even when riding light her broad beam made her hard to capsize, but she did everything short of that. Her motion was violent and, to the uninitiated, quite unpredictable, and she was hardly more weatherly than a raft, sagging off to leeward in a spineless fashion that boded ill for any prospect of working up to Plymouth while any easterly component prevailed in the wind.

Hornblower was forced to endure considerable hardship. For two days he lingered on the verge of seasickness as a result of this new motion beneath his feet; he was not actually sick, having had several uninterrupted weeks at sea already, but he told himself that it would be less unpleasant if that were to happen — although in his heart of hearts he knew that was not true. He was allotted a hammock in a compartment six feet square and five feet high; he at least had it to himself and could derive some small comfort from observing that there were arrangements for eight hammocks, in two tiers of four, to be slung there. It had been a long time since he slept in a hammock, and his spine was slow to adjust to the necessary curvature, while the extravagant leaps and rolls of the hoy were conveyed to him through it and made the memory of his cot in Hotspur nostalgically luxurious.

The wind stayed northeasterly, bringing clear skies and sunshine but no comfort to Hornblower, save that it was soon evident that he would be eating Baddlestone’s ‘cabin food’ for more than three days — a doubtful source of satisfaction. All he wished to do was to make his way to England, to London, to Whitehall, and to secure his posting as captain before anything could happen to interfere. He watched morosely as the Princess lost more and more distance to leeward, more even than the clumsy ships of the line clustered off Ushant. There was nothing to read on board, there was nothing to do, and there was nowhere comfortable where he could do that nothing.

He was coming up through the hatchway, weary of his hammock, when he saw Baddlestone whip his telescope to his eye and stare to windward.

“Here they come!” said Baddlestone, unusually communicative.

With the greatest possible condescension he passed the telescope over to Hornblower; there could be no more generous gesture (as Hornblower well knew) than for a captain to part with his glass even for a moment when something of interest was in sight. It was a veritable fleet bearing down on them, something far more than a mere squadron. Four frigates with every stitch of canvas spread, were racing to take the lead; behind them followed two columns of lineofbattleships, seven in one and six in the other. They were already setting studding sails as they edged into station. With the wind right astern and all sail set they were hurtling down upon the Princess . It was a magnificent sight, the commission pennants whipping out ahead, the ensigns flying forward as if in emulation. Under each bluff bow a creamy bow wave mounted and sank as the ships drove on over the blue water. Here was England’s naval might seen to its best advantage. The right central frigate came cutting close beside the wallowing waterhoy.