Cecil Forester: Hornblower and the Hotspur

“Now let me see you eat a hearty breakfast,” he said; he was still using his mock-bullying tone, but the tenderness he felt was still evident. Maria took up her knife and fork and Hornblower did the same. He forced himself to eat a few mouthfuls, and so mangled the rest of his steak that it did not appear as if he had left too much. He took a pull at his pot of beer—he did not like drinking beer for breakfast, not even beer as small as this, but he realized that the old woman could not be expected to have access to the tea-caddy.

A rattling at the window attracted their attention. The ostler was opening the shutters, and they could dimly see his face for a moment, but it was still quite dark outside. Hornblower looked at his watch; ten minutes to five, and he had ordered his boat to be at the Sally Port at five. Maria saw the gesture and looked over at him. There was a slight trembling of her lips, a slight moisture in her eyes, but she kept herself under control.

“I’ll get my cloak,” she said quietly, and fled from the room. She was back in no time, her grey cloak round her, and her face shadowed in her hood; in her arms was Hornblower’s heavy coat.

“You’re leaving us now, sir?” piped the old woman coming into the coffee-room.

“Yes. Madam will settle the score when she returns,” said Hornblower; he fumbled out half a crown from his pocket and put it on the table.

“Thank you kindly, sir. And a good voyage, and prize money galore.” The sing-song tone reminded Hornblower that she must have seen naval officers by the hundreds leaving the George to go to sea—her memories must go back to Hawke and Boscawen.

He buttoned up his coat and took up his bag.

“I’ll have the ostler come with us with a lantern to escort you back,” he said, consideringly.

“Oh, no please, darling. It’s so short a way, and I know every step,” pleaded Maria, and there was enough truth in what she said for him not to insist.

They walked out into the keen cold air, having to adjust their eyes to the darkness even after the miserable light of the coffee-room. Hornblower realized that if he had been an Admiral or even a distinguished Captain, he would never have been allowed to leave with so little ceremony; the innkeeper and his wife would certainly have risen and dressed to see him on his way. They turned the corner and started on the steep slope down to the Sally Port, and it was borne in anew on Hornblower that he was about to start out for the wars. His concern for Maria had actually distracted him from this thought, but now he found himself gulping with excitement.

“Dear,” said Maria. “I have a little present for you.”

She was bringing something out from the pocket of her cloak and pressing it into his hand.

“It’s only gloves, dear, but my love comes with them,” she went on. “I could make nothing better for you in this little time. I would have liked to have embroidered something for you—I would have liked to give you something worthy of you. But I have been stitching at these every moment since—since—”

She could not go on, but once more she straightened her back and refused to break down.

“I’ll be able to think of you every moment I wear them,” said Hornblower. He struggled into the gloves despite the handicap of the bag he was carrying; they were splendid thick woollen gloves, each with separate thumb and forefinger.

“They fit me to perfection. I thank you for the kind thought, dear.”

Now they were at the head of the steep slope down the Hard, and this horrible ordeal would soon be over.

“You have the seventeen pounds safely?” asked Hornblower—an unnecessary question.

“Yes, thank you, dearest. I fear it is too much—”

“And you’ll be able to draw my monthly half pay,” went on Hornblower harshly, to keep the emotion from his voice, and then, realizing how harshly, he continued. “It is time to say good-bye now, darling.”

He had forced himself to use that unaccustomed last word. The water level was far up the Hard; that meant, as he had known when he had given the orders, that the tide was at the flood. He would be able to take advantage of the ebb.

“Darling!” said Maria, turning to him and lifting up her face to him in its hood.

He kissed her; down at the water’s edge there was the familiar rattle of oars on thwarts, and the sound of male voices, as his boat’s crew perceived the two shadowy figures on the Hard. Maria heard those sounds as clearly as Hornblower did, and she quickly snatched away from him the cold lips she had raised to his.

“Good-bye, my angel.”

There was nothing else to say now, nothing else to do; this was the end of this brief experience. He turned his back on Maria; he turned his back on peace and on civilian married life and walked down towards war.

“Slack water now, sir,” announced Bush. “First of the ebb in ten minutes. And anchor’s hove short, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bush.” There was enough grey light in the sky now to see Bush’s face as something more definite than a blur. At Bush’s shoulder stood Prowse, the acting-master, senior master’s mate with an acting-warrant. He was competing unobtrusively with Bush for Hornblower’s attention. Prowse was charged, by Admiralty instructions, with ‘navigating and conducting the ship from port to port under the direction of the captain’. But there was no reason at all why Hornblower should not give his other officers every opportunity to exercise their skill; on the contrary. And it was possible, even likely, that Prowse, with thirty years of sea duty behind him, would endeavour to take the direction of the ship out of the hands of a young and inexperienced captain.

“Mr. Bush!” said Hornblower. “Get the ship under way, if you please. Set a course to weather the Foreland.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower watched Bush keenly, while doing his best not to appear to be doing so. Bush took a final glance round him, gauging the gentle wind and the likely course of the ebb.

“Stand by there, at the capstan,” he ordered. “Loose the heads’ls. Hands aloft to loose the tops’ls.”

Hornblower could see in a flash that he could place implicit reliance on Bush’s seamanship. He knew he should never have doubted it, but his memories were two years old and might have been blurred by the passage of time. Bush gave his orders in a well-timed sequence. With the anchor broken out Hotspur gathered momentary sternway. With the wheel hard over and the forecastle hands drawing at the headsail sheets she brought her head round. Bush sheeted home and ordered hands to the braces. In the sweetest possible way Hotspur caught the gentle wind, lying over hardly more than a degree or two. In a moment she was under way, slipping forward through the water, rudder balanced against sail-pressure, a living, lovely thing.

There was no need to drop any word of commendation to Bush regarding such a simple operation as getting under way. Hornblower could savour the pleasure of being afloat, as the hands raced to set the topgallant sails and then the courses. Then suddenly he remembered.

“Let me have that glass, please, Mr. Prowse.”

He put the massive telescope to his eye and trained it out over the port quarter. It was still not yet full daylight, and there was the usual hint of haze, and Hotspur had left her anchorage half a mile or more astern. Yet he could just see it; a solitary, lonely speck of grey, on the water’s edge, over there on the Hard. Perhaps—just possibly—there was a flicker of white; Maria might be waving her handkerchief, but he could not be sure. In fact he thought not. There was just the solitary grey speck. Hornblower looked again, and then he made himself lower the telescope; it was heavy, and his hands were trembling a trifle so that the image was blurred. It was the first time in all his life that he had put to sea leaving behind him someone who was interested in his fate.