"Lord Hornblower" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forester Cecil Scott)

Chapter V

Freeman bent over the tallow that armed the bottom of the lead; a seaman held a lantern at his shoulder so as to let the light fall upon it. The master’s mate and midshipman of the watch completed the group, a vignette of blackness and light in the massive darkness all around. Freeman was not hasty in reaching his decision; he peered at the sample brought up from the bottom of the sea first from one angle and then from another. He sniffed at it; he applied a forefinger to it and then carried the finger to his tongue.

“Sand and black shell,” he mused to himself.

Hornblower held back from the group; this was something Freeman could do better than he, although it would be nearly blasphemy to say so in public, seeing that he was a captain and Freeman a mere lieutenant.

“Maybe we’re off Antifer,” said Freeman at length. He looked out of the light into the darkness towards where Hornblower was standing.

“Lay her on the other tack, if you please, Mr. Freeman. And keep the lead going.”

Creeping about in the night off the treacherous Normandy coast was a nervous business, even though in the past twenty-four hours the wind had moderated to nothing more than a strong breeze. But Freeman knew what he was about; a dozen years spent in handling vessels in the soundings round the fringes of Europe had given him knowledge and insight obtainable in no other way. Hornblower had to trust Freeman’s judgment; he himself with compass and lead and chart might do a good workmanlike job, but to rate himself above Freeman as a Channel pilot would be ridiculous. ‘Maybe’, Freeman had said; but Hornblower could value that ‘maybe’ at its true worth. Freeman was confident about it. The Porta Coeli was off Cape Antifer, then, a trifle farther to leeward than he wished to be when dawn should come. He still had no plan in his head about how to deal with the Flame when he met her; there was no way round, as far as he could see, the simple geometrical difficulty that the mutineers, with Le Havre open to them on one side and Caen on the other, could not be cut off from taking refuge with the French if they wished to; for that matter, there were a dozen other inlets on the coast, all heavily protected by batteries, where the Flame could find a refuge. And any forcing of the matter might result easily enough in Chadwick being hoisted up to his yardarm, to dangle there as a dead man—the most horrible and dangerous incident in the history of the Navy since the murder of Pigott. But contact had to be made with the mutineers—that was clearly the first thing to do—and there was at least no harm in trying to make that contact at a point as advantageous as possible. Some miracle might happen; he must try and put himself across the course of wandering miracles. What was that Barbara had said to him once? ‘The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.’ Barbara had too good an opinion of him, even after all this time, but there was truth in what she said.

The Porta Coeli went smartly about, and reached to the north westward, close-hauled to the southwesterly wind.

“The tide starts to make about now, Sir Horatio,” said Freeman, beside him.

“Thank you.”

That was an additional bit of data in the problem of the morrow which was not yet fully revealed to him. War was as unlike spherical trigonometry as anything could be, thought Horablower, grinning at the inconsequence of his thoughts. Often one approached a problem in war without knowing what it was one wanted to achieve, to prove, or construct, and without even knowing fully what means were available for doing it. War was generally a matter of slipshod, makeshift, hit-or-miss extemporisation. Even if it were not murderous and wasteful it would still be no trade for a man who enjoyed logic. Yet maybe he was taking too flattering a view of himself; maybe some other officer—Cochrane, say, or Lidyard—would, if in his position, already have a plan worked out for dealing with the mutineers, a plan that could not fail to bring satisfactory results.

Four bells rang out sharply; they had been over half an hour on this tack.

“Kindly go about on the other tack, Mr. Freeman. I don’t want to get too far from land.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

If it was not for the war, no captain in his senses would dream for a moment of plunging about in the darkness on this shoal coast, especially when he was extremely doubtful of his exact position—their present estimate was the sum of a series of guesses, guesses about the leeway made while hove-to, guesses at the effects of the tides, guesses at the correspondence between soundings taken overside and soundings marked on the chart.

“What do you think the mutineers will do, sir, when they sight us?” asked Freeman.

The fact that Hornblower had unbent enough to give an explanation of why he wanted to go about must have encouraged Freeman to this familiarity; Hornblower was irritated, but most of all because he had no thoughts on the matter.

“There’s no profit in asking questions which time will surely answer, Mr. Freeman,” he said, tartly.

“Yet speculation is a fascinating thing, Sir Horatio,” replied Freeman, so unabashed that Hornblower stared at him in the darkness. Bush, if Hornblower had spoken to him in that fashion, would have retired wounded into his shell.

“You may indulge yourself in it if you so desire, Mr. Freeman. I have no intention of doing so.”

“Thank you, Sir Horatio.”

Now was there, or was there not, a hint of mockery behind the hint of subservience in that reply? Was it possible that Freeman could actually be smiling inwardly at his superior officer? If so, he was running a fearful risk; a suggestion of dissatisfaction in Hornblower’s future report to the Admiralty would put Freeman on the beach for life. But Hornblower knew, the moment the thought came into his head, that he would do no such thing. He could never blast an able man’s career just because that man had not treated him with slavish respect.

“Water’s shoaling fast, sir,” said Freeman, suddenly—both he and Hornblower had subconsciously been listening to the cry of the leadsman in the chains. “I should like to go about again.”

“Certainly, Mr. Freeman,” said Hornblower, formally.

They were creeping round Cape de la Hève, the northerly point of the Seine estuary, just within which lies Le Havre. There was a chance, a tiny one, that they might find themselves at dawn both to leeward of the Flame and between her and France so that she would have no means of escape at all. And the night was wearing on; it would not be long now before daylight.

“You have a good man at the masthead, Mr. Freeman?”

“Yes, Sir Horatio.”

He would have to tell the hands about the mission on which they had been sent, even though that meant violating the secrecy surrounding the mutiny. Normally there would be little enough need to confide in the hands; British seamen, fatalistic after twenty years of war, would fire into Frenchmen or Americans or Dutchmen without much thought about the rights or wrongs; but to ask them to fight against a sister-ship, to fire into a British vessel, which might, for all he knew, still be wearing her commissioning pendant and her White Ensign, might cause hesitation if he called upon them to do so without some preliminary warning. A careful officer would in ordinary circumstances never breathe the word ‘mutiny’ to his men; no lion-tamer would ever remind the lion that the lion was stronger than he. It was almost daylight.

“Would you be so good as to turn up the hands, Mr. Freeman? I wish to address them.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The pipes wailed through the brig, and the watch below came streaming up through the hatchway, pouring sleepily aft; the poor devils were losing an hour of sleep because of the inconsiderate way in which dawn did not correspond with the end of the watch. Hornblower looked round for some point of vantage from which he could address them; in a flush-decked vessel like the Porta Coeli he had not the advantage of speaking down into a waist from a quarterdeck. He swung himself up onto the weather bulwark, balancing himself with a hand on the mainbackstay.

“Men,” he said, “are you wondering what has sent you out here?”

Maybe they were, but the rather sleepy, apathetic, breakfastless lines before him showed little sign of it.

“Are you wondering what has sent me out to sea with you?”

By God, they were wondering that. There must have been speculation on the lower deck as to why a full commodore—and not only a commodore, but Hornblower of the legendary past—should have been sent to sea in a mere eighteen-gun brig. It was flattering to see a movement of interest in the lines, a lifting of heads, even while Hornblower cursed at fate for having to make use of rhetorical tricks, and more for having to exploit his own personal renown.

“There is villainy afloat,” said Hornblower. “British seamen have disgraced themselves. They have mutinied in the very presence of the enemy.”

He had the men’s interest now, without a doubt. He had said the word ‘mutiny’ to these slaves of the lash and the whistle. Mutiny, the remedy for all their ills, which would give them freedom from the hardship of their lives, the cruelty and the danger, the foul food and the severance from all the amenities of life. One crew had mutinied. Why should not they do so too? He would have to tell them about the Flame, remind them that close at hand lay the shores of France, where Bonaparte would gladly heap wealth and luxury upon any British seaman who brought a British ship of war over to him. Hornblower let a note of contempt creep into his voice.

“The crew of the Flame, our own sister-ship, has done this thing. Now they are sheltering here in this very bay of the Seine. Every man’s hand is against them. The French have no use for mutineers, and it is our mission to dig these rats from their holes. They have betrayed England, forgotten their duty to King and Country. I expect most of them are honest but stupid, led astray by a few designing villains. It is those villains who must pay the price of their villainy, and we must see they have no chance of escape. If they are mad enough to offer fight, then we must fight them. If they surrender without bloodshed, that fact will be remembered in their favour when they are brought to trial. I want no bloodshed if I can help it—you know as well as I do that a cannon-shot will kill a man without stopping to ask whether he is a villain or just a fool. But if they want bloodshed, then we shall let them have it.”

Hornblower ended his speech, and looked over to Freeman to dismiss the men. It was a cheerless business making a speech to hungry men in a grey dawn, but Hornblower, darting glances at the men as they went about their business, saw that there was nothing to fear from the ship’s company. They were buzzing with talk, of course, but news of mutiny would set any crew a-buzz, just as a village would be set a-buzz by news of a local murder. But it was only gossipy talk, he could see; the men were not making any deductions from the news. He had presented the case to them in such a way as to make it obvious to them that he expected them to obey his orders for dealing with the mutineers, and he had let no hint creep into his speech of his fear that they should be tempted to follow their example. That had not occurred to them yet—but it might, if they were allowed to ruminate over it. He must see that they were kept busy; the ordinary ship’s routine was attending to that at the moment, for they were at work on the opening business of every naval day, washing down the decks before being piped to breakfast.

“Land!” yelled a voice from the masthead. “Land on the port bow.”

It was rather thick weather, typical Channel weather for the end of the year, but in the growing light Hornblower could see the dark line against the grey. Freeman was scrutinising the coast through his glass.

“That’s the south shore of the Bay,” said Freeman. “There’s the Cane river.”

Hornblower was only just beginning to realise that Freeman was anglicising the pronunciation of ‘Caen’ when Freeman trained his telescope round and gave a string of more surprising examples still of what an Englishman can do to French names.

“Yes, there’s Cape dee lay Heave, and Harbour-Grace,” he said.

The growing light revealed the Porta Coeli’s position, over towards the southern shore of the estuary of the Seine.

“That was an excellent piece of navigation last night, Mr. Freeman.”

“Thank you, Sir Horatio.”

Hornblower would have added more words of warmer praise, if it had not been for Freeman’s rather chilling manner; he supposed Freeman was entitled to be short-tempered before breakfast if he wished. And any capable lieutenant was entitled to be jealous of a captain; in the opinion of every ambitious lieutenant a captain was just a lieutenant who had been lucky and who would continue to be lucky, drawing three times a lieutenant’s pay and prize-money, reaping the harvest of the lieutenant’s labours, and secure in the knowledge that time would make an admiral of him in the end while the lieutenant’s promotion still depended on the whims of his superiors. Hornblower could remember feeling just the same when he was a lieutenant; for Freeman to show it was natural even though foolish.

The leadsman’s cry in the chains indicated that the water was shoaling again; they had left the middle ground far behind them and had now crossed the southerly channel of the estuary. There was still plenty of water for the Porta Coeli; she had been expressly designed for this very purpose of penetrating into inlets and estuaries, carrying the war as close to Bonaparte’s shores as might be. Bonaparte’s dominion stopped short at the line which the shot from his shore batteries could reach, and beyond that line England ruled supreme and unchallenged.

“Sail on the lee bow!” yelled the lookout.

Freeman swung himself up to the lee main-shrouds with the agility of an ape; braced against the ratlines, he trained his glass forward.

“A brig, sir,” he hailed down to Hornblower, and a few seconds later “That’s Flame all right, sir.”

“Put the helm up and we’ll bear down on her, Mr. Freeman, if you please.”

Flame was exactly where one would expect to find her, close up under the lee of the land, sheltered from any gale from northwest round to east; and free to consult her own safety whether attacked by British or French. Soon Hornblower’s own glass picked her out from the grey murk. A trim, beautiful little vessel, lying hove-to on the edge of the shoals. She showed no signs, at that distance at least, of any disorder on board. Hornblower wondered how many telescopes there were being trained upon the Porta Coeli, what anxious debate was being held on board by men recognising the new arrival as the first move on the part of their Lordships of the Admiralty in reply to their suicidal ultimatum. Those men had ropes round their necks.

“She’s waiting for us to come down to her,” said Freeman.

“I wonder for how long,” answered Hornblower.

“What are you men standing chattering there for?” suddenly blared out Freeman, addressing a group of excited seamen lining the bulwark forward. “Master-at-arms! Master-at-arms! Take those men’s names and bring them to me at the end of the watch! You bos’un’s mate, there! Collier! Keep those men of yours at work! This is a King’s ship, not a blasted school for young ladies!”

A thin beam of watery sunshine broke through the greyness and lit up the Flame as she lay in the circle of Hornblower’s glass. He suddenly saw her yards swing round; she put herself before the wind and began to move in the direction of Honfleur. Her foretopsail was conspicuously patched—a light cross against the darker material, as if she were some Crusading ship.

“They won’t stand and wait for us,” said Freeman.

“Sail ho!” yelled the lookout again. “Sail on the lee quarter!”

Telescopes swung round as if all were actuated by a single machine. A big ship with all plain sail set to the royals had appeared out of the mist beyond the middle ground, on a course rapidly diverging from that of the Porta Coeli. Hornblower recognised her instantly for what she was, and did not need Freeman’s identification.

“French West Indiaman,” said Freeman. “With a clear run to Harbour-Grace.”

One of the rare ships to run the continental blockade, bearing an invaluable cargo of grain and sugar to ease Bonaparte’s distress; she had taken advantage of the recent gale, which had blown the blockading squadrons from their stations, to dash up the Channel. A cargo delivered into the Seine, where centred the Imperial power, and whence diverged the whole road and canal systems, was worth two brought into some isolated inlet on the Biscay coast. The small British vessels of war, like the Porta Coeli and the Flame, had been constructed and stationed to prevent this very thing.

“There’ll be no catching her before she reaches Harbour-Grace,” muttered Freeman.

“Let her go, Mr. Freeman,” said Hornblower, loudly. “Our duty’s with Flame at present. There goes ten pounds a man prize-money.”

There were enough hands within earshot to hear that speech; they would repeat it to the rest of the crew. No one who thought of the lost prize-money would feel any better disposed towards the mutineers.

Hornblower turned his attention back to the Flame; she was standing steadily and without hesitation on a course which would take her into Honfleur. It would not be long before she was in French power, and it would be foolish to press matters to such an extreme, even though it was a bitter pill to swallow, to admit a check.

“Oh, heave-to, Mr. Freeman, please. Let’s see what she does then.”

The Porta Coeli came up into the wind in response to sail and helm, Hornblower training round his glass to keep Flame under observation. The moment the Porta Coeli’s manoeuvre became apparent, the Flame imitated it, coming up into the wind and lying motionless, the white cross conspicuous on her foretopsail.

“Try bearing down on them again, Mr. Freeman.”

Flame turned away instantly towards France.

“A wink’s as good as a nod, Mr. Freeman. Heave-to again.”

Clearly the mutineers had no intention of allowing the Porta Coeli to come any nearer than she was at present, well beyond cannonshot. She would hand herself over to the French sooner than permit any closer approach.

“Mr. Freeman, will you be so good as to have a boat hoisted out for me? I’ll go and parley with the villains.”

That would be a sign of weakness, but the mutineers could be in no doubt about the weakness of his position and the corresponding strength of their own. It would be telling them nothing they did not know already, that they held Hornblower and the Lords of the Admiralty and the British Empire itself in a cleft stick. Freeman showed no signs of his doubts regarding the advisability of a valuable captain putting himself in the power of mutineers. Hornblower went below to pocket his orders; it might even be necessary to show the mutineers the full powers with which he had been entrusted—but it would be only in the last resort that he would do so; that would be letting the mutineers too much into their Lordships’ confidence. The boat was overside with Brown at the tiller when Hornblower came on deck again; Hornblower went down the side and settled himself into the sternsheets.

“Give way!” ordered Brown; the oars bit the water and the boat began to crawl towards the Flame, dancing over the little waves of the estuary.

Hornblower watched the brig as they approached; she lay hove-to, but Hornblower could see that her guns were run out and her boarding-nettings rigged, and she had clearly no intention of being taken by surprise. The hands were at their guns, there were lookouts aloft, a warrant officer aft with a telescope under his arm—not a sign in the world of mutiny on board.

“Boat ahoy!” came the hail across the water.

Brown held up his four fingers, the universal signal that there was a captain in the boat—four fingers for the four side-boys demanded by ceremonial.

“Who are ye?” hailed the voice.

Brown looked round at Hornblower, received a nod from him, and hailed back.

“Commodore Sir Horatio Hornblower, K.B.”

“We’ll allow Commodore Hornblower on board, but no one else. Come alongside, and we’ve cold shot here to drop into you if you play any tricks.”

Hornblower reached for the main-chains and swung himself up into them; a seaman raised the boarding-nettings so that he could struggle under them to the deck.

“Kindly tell your boat to sheer off, Commodore. We’re taking no risks,” said a voice.

It was a white-haired old man who addressed him, the telescope under his arm marking him out as officer of the watch. White hair fluttered about his ears; sharp blue eyes in a wrinkled face looked at Hornblower from under white brows. The only thing in the least bizarre about his appearance was a pistol stuck in his belt. Hornblower turned and gave the required order.

“And now may I ask your business here, Commodore?” asked the old man.

“I wish to speak to the leader of the mutineers.”

“I am captain of this ship. You can address yourself to me, Nathaniel Sweet, sir.”

“I have addressed myself to you as far as I desire, unless you are also the leader of the mutineers.”

“Then if you have done so, you can call back your boat and leave us, sir.”

An impasse already. Hornblower kept his eyes on the blue ones of the old man. There were several other men within earshot, but he could sense no wavering or doubt among them; they were prepared to support their captain. Yet it might be worth while speaking to them.

“Men!” said Hornblower, raising his voice.

“Belay that!” rapped out the old man. He whipped the pistol out of his belt and pointed it at Hornblower’s stomach. “One more word out of turn and you’ll get an ounce of lead through you.”

Hornblower looked steadily back at him and his weapon; he was curiously unafraid, feeling as if he were watching move and counter-move in some chess game, without remembering that he himself was one of the pawns in it with his life at stake.

“Kill me,” he said with a grim smile, “and England won’t rest until you’re swinging on a gallows.”

“England has sent you here to swing me on a gallows as it is,” said Sweet, bleakly.

“No,” said Hornblower. “I am here to recall you to your duty to King and Country.”

“Letting bygones be bygones?”

“You will have to stand a fair trial, you and your confederates.”

“That means the gallows, as I said,” replied Sweet. “The gallows for me, and I should be fortunate compared with some of these others.”

“A fair and honest trial,” said Hornblower, “with every mitigating circumstance taken into consideration.”

“The only trial I would attend,” replied the old man, “would be to bear witness against Chadwick. Full pardon for us—a fair trial for Chadwick. Those are our terms, sir.”

“You are foolish,” said Hornblower. “You are throwing away your last chance. Surrender now, with Mr. Chadwick unbound and the ship in good order, and those circumstances will weigh heavily in your favour at your trial. Refuse, and what have you to look for? Death. That is all. Death. What can save you from our country’s vengeance? Nothing.”

“Begging your pardon, Captain, but Boney can,” interposed the old man, dryly.

“You trust Bonaparte’s word?” said Hornblower, rallying desperately before this unexpected counter-attack. “He’d like to have this ship, no doubt. But you and your gang? Bonaparte won’t encourage mutiny—his power rests too much on his own army. He’ll hand you back for us to make an example of you.”

It was a wild shot in the dark, and it missed its bull’s-eye by an unmeasurable distance. Sweet stuck his pistol back into his belt and produced three letters from his pocket, waving them tauntingly in front of Hornblower.

“Here’s a letter from the Military Governor of Harbour-Grace,” he said. “That only promises us welcome. And here’s a letter from the Prefect of the Department of the Inferior Seine. That promises us provisions and water should we need them. And here’s a letter from Paris, sent down to us by post. It promises us immunity from arrest, civil rights in France, and a pension for every man from the age of sixty. That is signed ‘Marie Louise, Empress, Queen, and Regent’. Boney won’t go back on his wife’s word, sir.”

“You’ve been in communication with the shore?” gasped Hornblower. It was quite impossible for him to make any pretence at composure.

“We have,” said the old man. “And if you had the chance before you, Captain, of being flogged round the fleet, you would have done the same.”

It was hopeless to continue the present discussion. At least at the moment, the mutineers were unassailable. The only terms to which they would listen would be their own. There was no sign of doubt or dissension on board. But maybe if they were allowed more time to think about it, maybe if they had a few hours in which to consider the fact that Hornblower himself was on their trail, doubt might creep in. A party might form determined to save their necks by recapturing the ship; they might get at the liquor—Hornblower was completely puzzled by the fact that a mutinous British crew was not all roaring drunk—something might happen. But he must make a fighting retreat, not ignominiously crawl overside with his tail between his legs.

“So you are traitors as well as mutineers?” he blared. “I might have expected it. I might have guessed what kind of curs you are. I won’t foul my lungs by breathing the same air as you.”

He turned to the side and hailed for his boat.

“We’re the kind of curs,” said the old man, “who will let you go when we could clap you down below in the orlop with Chadwick. We could give you a taste of the cat, Commodore Sir Horatio Hornblower. How would you like that, sir? Remember, tomorrow, that the flesh is still on your ribs because we spared you. Good morning to you, Captain.”

There was sting and venom in those last words; they called up pictures in Hornblower’s imagination that made his flesh creep. He did not feel in the least dignified as he wriggled under the boarding-netting.

The Flame still rode peacefully to the wind as the boat danced back over the waves. Hornblower gazed from the Flame to the Porta Coeli, the two sister-ships, identical in appearance save for the white cross-shaped patch on the Flame’s foretopsail. It was ironical that not even a trained eye could see any difference in appearance between the brig that was loyal to the King and the brig that was in open rebellion against him. The thought increased his bitterness; he had failed, utterly and completely, in his first attempt to win over the mutineers. He did not think there was the least possibility of their abating their terms; he would have to choose between agreeing to them, between promising the mutineers a free pardon and driving them into the hands of Bonaparte. In either case he would have failed in his mission; the merest least experienced midshipman in the Navy could have done as much. There was still some time to spare, for there was still little chance of news of the mutiny leaking out, but unless time brought dissension among the mutineers—and he saw no chance of that—it would be merely wasted time as far as he could see.

The boat was now half-way between the two brigs; with those two vessels under his command he could wage a lively war against the Normandy coast; he felt in his bones that he could set the whole Seine estuary in an uproar. His bitterness surged up stronger still, and then abruptly checked itself. An idea had come to him, and with the idea all the well-known old symptoms, the dryness in his throat, the tingling in his legs, the accelerated heartbeat. He swept his glance back and forth between the two brigs, excitement welling up inside him; calculations of wind and tide and daylight already formulating themselves, unsummoned, in his mind.

“Pull harder you men,” he said to the boat’s crew, and they obeyed him, but the gig could not possibly travel fast enough to satisfy him in his new mood.

Brown was looking at him sidelong, wondering what plan was evoking itself in his captain’s brain; Brown himself—as well aware of the circumstances as Hornblower was—could see no possible way out of the situation. All he knew was that his captain looked back over his shoulder time and time again at the mutinous brig.

“Oars!” growled Brown to the boat’s crew, as the officer of the watch gave the signal to the boat to come alongside; the bowman hooked onto the chains, and Hornblower went up the brig’s side with a clumsy impetuosity that he could not restrain. Freeman was waiting for him on the quarterdeck, and Hornblower’s hand was still at his hat when be gave his first order.

“Will you pass the word for the sailmaker, Mr. Freeman? And I shall want his mates, and every hand who can use a needle and palm.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Orders were orders, even when they dealt with such extraneous matters as making sails while negotiating with a mutinous crew. Hornblower stared over at the Flame, still lying hove-to out of gunshot. The mutineers held a strong, an unassailable position, one which no frontal attack could break, and whose flanks were impregnable. It would be a very roundabout route that could turn such a position; maybe he had thought of one. There were some odd circumstances in his favour, fortunate coincidences. It was his business to seize upon those, exploit them to the utmost. He would have to take reckless chances, but he would do everything in his power to reduce the chances against him. The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance.

A stoop-shouldered seaman was awaiting his attention, Freeman at his side.

“Swenson, sailmaker’s mate, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Freeman. You see that patched fore-tops’l? Swenson, look at it well through this glass.”

The Swedish sailmaker took the telescope in his gnarled hands and levelled it to his eye.

“Mr. Freeman, I want Porta Coeli to have a foretops’l just like that, so that no eye can see any difference between the two. Can that be done?”

Freeman looked at Swenson.

“Aye aye, sir, I can do that,” said Swenson, glancing from Freeman to Hornblower and back again. “There’s a bolt o’ white duck canvas, an’ with the old foretops’l—I can do it, sir.”

“I want it finished and ready to bend by four bells in the afternoon watch. Start work on it now.”

A little group had formed behind Swenson, those members of the crew whom inquiry had ascertained to have sailmaking experience. There were broad grins on some of their faces; Hornblower seemed to be conscious of a little wave of excitement and anticipation spreading through the crew like a ripple over a pond set up by the stone dropped into it in the form of Hornblower’s unusual request. No one could see clearly as yet what was in Hornblower’s mind, but they knew that he intended some devilment. The knowledge was a better tonic to discipline and the happiness of the ship than any ordinary ship’s routine.

“Now see here, Mr. Freeman,” said Hornblower, moving towards the rail. “What I propose is this—Flame and Porta Coeli are as like as two peas and they’ll be liker yet as soon as we have that foretops’l set. The mutineers have been in communication with the shore; they told me so, and, what’s more, Mr. Freeman, the place they’ve had dealings with is Le Havre—Harbour-Grace, Mr. Freeman. Boney and the governor have promised them money and immunity to bring the Flame in. We’ll go in instead. There’s that West Indiaman we saw come in this morning.”

“We’ll bring her out, sir!”

“Maybe we will. God knows what we’ll find inside, but we’ll go in ready for anything. Pick twenty men and an officer, men you can rely on. Give each one his orders about what he is to do if we have a chance to take a prize—heads’ls, tops’ls, wheel, cutting the cable. You know about all that as well as I do. It’ll be just at dusk that we stand in, if the wind doesn’t change, and I don’t think it will. It’ll be strange if in the dark we don’t contrive something to annoy the Frogs.”

“By God, sir, an’ they’ll think it’s the mutineers! They’ll think the mutiny was just a sham! They’ll—”

“I hope they will, Mr. Freeman.”