Cecil Forester - Hornblower and the Hotspur

“See that I am called when any alteration of course is necessary, if you please, Mr. Bush,” he said.

“Aye aye, sir.”

The deck was heaving, but he knew it was not heaving as much as his distorted mind told him it was. He forced himself somehow to walk aft to his cabin; twice he had to stop and brace himself, and when Hotspur rose to a wave he was nearly made to run—certainly he had to walk faster than a captain should—past the sentry, and he fetched up against the door with some little violence. It was no comfort—in fact it added to his distress—to see that the sentry had a bucket on the deck beside him. He wrenched open the door, hung suspended for a moment as Hotspur completed her pitch, with her stern in the air, and then crashed down groaning on to his cot, his feet dragging on the deck as the cot swung.

Hornblower sat at his desk in his cabin holding a package in his hand. Five minutes earlier he had unlocked his chest and taken this out; in five minutes more he would be entitled to open it—at least, that was what his dead reckoning indicated. It was a remarkably heavy package; it might be weighted with shot or scrap metal, except that Admiral Cornwallis was hardly likely to send shot or scrap metal to one of his captains. It was heavily sealed, in four places, and the seals were unbroken. Inked upon the canvas wrapper was the superscription:

‘Instructions for Horatio Hornblower, Esq., Master and Commander, H.M. Sloop Hotspur. To be opened on passing the Sixth Degree of Longitude West of Greenwich.’

Sealed orders. Hornblower had heard about such things all his professional life, but this was his first contact with them. They had been sent on board the Hotspur on the afternoon of his wedding day, and he had signed for them. Now the ship was about to cross the sixth meridian; she had come down-Channel with remarkable ease; there had been only one single watch when she had not been able to make good her direct course. Putting her about in order to restore Cargill’s selfconfidence had been extraordinarily fortunate. The wind had hardly backed westerly at all, and only momentarily even then. Hotspur had escaped being embayed in Lyme Bay; she had neatly weathered the Casquets, and it all stemmed from that fortunate order. Hornblower was aware that Prowse was feeling a new respect for him as a navigator and a weather prophet. That was all to the good, and Hornblower had no intention of allowing Prowse to guess that the excellent passage was the result of a fortunate fluke, of a coincidence of circumstances.

Hornblower looked at his watch and raised his voice in a shout to the sentry at the door.

“Pass the word for Mr. Bush.”

Hornblower could hear the sentry shouting, and the word being passed on along the quarter-deck. Hotspur rose in a long, long, pitch with hardly any roll about it. She was meeting the long Atlantic swell now, changing her motion considerably, and all for the better, in Hornblower’s opinion—and his seasickness was rapidly coming under control. Bush was taking a long time to respond to the call—he obviously was not on the quarter-deck, and the chances were he was taking a nap or was engaged in some other private business. Well, it would do him no harm and cause him no surprise to be summoned from it, for that was the way of the Navy.

At last came the knock on the door, and Bush entered.

“Sir?”

“Ah, Mr. Bush,” said Hornblower pedantically. Bush was the closest friend he had, but this was a formal matter, to be carried through formally. “Can you tell me the ship’s position at this moment?”

“No, sir, not exactly, sir,” replied the puzzled Bush. “Ushant bears ten leagues to the east’ard, I believe, sir.”

“At this moment,” said Hornblower, “we are in longitude six degrees and some seconds west. Latitude 48° 40’, but we do not have to devote any thought to our latitude at present, oddly enough. It is our longitude that matters. Would you be so kind as to examine this packet?”

“Ah. I see, sir,” said Bush, having read the superscription.

“You observe that the seals are unbroken?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then perhaps you will have the further kindness, when you leave this cabin, to make sure of the ship’s longitude so that, should it become necessary, you can bear witness that I have carried out my orders?”

“Yes, sir, I will,” said Bush, and then, after a pause long enough for him to realize that Hornblower intended the inter view to be at an end, “Aye aye, sir.”

The temptation to tease Bush was a very strong one, Hornblower realized as Bush left the cabin. It was a temptation he must resist. It might be indulged to the extent of causing resentment; in any case, Bush was too easy a target—he was a sitting bird.

And thinking along those lines had actually delayed for several seconds the exciting moment of opening the orders. Hornblower took out his penknife and cut the stitching. Now the weight of the packet was explained. There were three rolls of coins—golden coins. Hornblower split them out on to his desk. There were fifty small ones, about the size of sixpences; twenty larger ones, and ten larger still. Examination revealed that the medium-sized ones were French twenty-franc pieces, exactly like one he had seen in Lord Parry’s possession a week or two ago, with ‘Napoleon First Consul’ on one side and ‘French Republic’ on the other. The small ones were ten franc pieces, the larger ones forty francs. Altogether it made a considerable sum, over fifty pounds without allowing for the premium on gold in an England plagued by a depreciating paper currency.

And here were his supplementary instructions, explaining how he should employ the money. ‘You are therefore required—’ said the instructions after the preliminary sentences. Hornblower had to make contact with the fishermen of Brest; he had to ascertain if any of them would accept bribes; he had to glean from them all possible information regarding the French fleet in that port; finally he was informed that in case of war information of any kind, even newspapers, would be acceptable.

Hornblower read his instructions through twice; he referred again to the unsealed orders he had received at the same time; the ones that had sent him to sea. There was need for thought, and automatically he rose to his feet, only to sit down again, for there was no chance whatever of walking about in that cabin. He must postpone his walk for a moment. Maria had stitched neat linen bags in which to put his hair brushes—quite useless, of course, seeing that he always rolled his brushes in his housewife. He reached for one, and swept the money into it, put the bag and the orders back into his chest and was about to lock it when a further thought struck him, and he counted out ten ten-franc pieces and put them into his trouser pocket. Now, with his chest locked, he was free to go on deck.

Prowse and Bush were pacing the weather side of the quarter-deck in deep conversation; no doubt the news that their captain had opened his sealed orders would spread rapidly through the ship—and no one on board save Hornblower could be really sure that Hotspur was not about to set course for the Cape and India. It was a temptation to keep them all on tenterhooks, but Hornblower put the temptation aside. Besides, it would be to no purpose—after a day or two of hanging about outside Brest everyone would be able to guess Hotspur’s mission. Prowse and Bush were hurriedly moving over to the lee side, leaving the weather side for their captain, but Hornblower halted them.

“Mr. Bush! Mr. Prowse! We are going to look into Brest and see what our friend Boney is up to.”

Those few words told the whole story to men who had served in the last war and who had beaten about in the stormy waters off the Brittany coast.