“Good-bye, Mongseer Crapaud,” said Bush. “You’ve a long day’s work ahead of you before you see Brest again.”
The Sutherland threshed away on her new course; the convoy had all turned and were beating up towards her, the lugger on their heels like a dog after a flock of sheep. At the sight of the Sutherland rushing down upon her she sheered off again. Obstinately, she worked round to make a dash at the Walmer Castle — steering wide as usual — but Hornblower swung the Sutherland round and the Walmer Castle scuttled towards her for protection. It was easy enough, even in a clumsy ship like the Sutherland, to fend off the attacks of a single enemy. The Frenchman realised this after a few minutes more, and bore away to the help of her crippled consort.
Hornblower watched the big lugsail come round and fill, and the lugger lying over as she thrashed her way to windward; already the dismasted Frenchman was out of sight from the Sutherland’s quarterdeck. It was a relief to see the Frenchman go — if he had been in command of her he would have left the other to look after herself and hung on to the convoy until nightfall; it would have been strange if he had not been able to snap up a straggler in the darkness.
“You can secure the guns, Mr Bush,” he said, at length. Someone on the main deck started to cheer, and the cheering was taken up by the rest of the crew. They were waving their hands or their hats as if a Trafalgar had just been won.
“Stop that noise,” shouted Hornblower, hot with rage. “Mr Bush, send the hands aft here to me.”
They came, all of them, grinning with excitement, pushing and playing like schoolboys; even the rawest of them had forgotten his seasickness in the excitement of the battle. Hornblower’s blood boiled as he looked down at them, the silly fools.
“No more of that!” he rasped. “What have you done? Frightened off a couple of luggers not much bigger than our long boat! Two broadsides from a seventy-four, and you’re pleased with yourselves for knocking away a single spar! God, you ought to have blown the Frenchie out of the water! Two broadsides, you pitiful baby school! You must lay your guns better than that when it comes to real fighting, and I’ll see you learn how — me and the cat between us. And how d’you make sail? I’ve seen it done better by Portuguese niggers!”
There was no denying the fact that words spoken from a full heart carry more weight than all the artifices of rhetoric. Hornblower’s genuine rage and sincerity had made a deep impression, so stirred up had he been at the sight of botched and bungling work. The men were hanging their heads now, and shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, as they realised that what they had done had not been so marvellous after all. And to do them justice, half their exhilaration arose from the mad excitement of the Sutherland’s rush through the convoy, with ships close on either hand. In later years, when they were spinning yarns of past commissions, the story would be embroidered until they began to affirm that Hornblower had steered a two-decker in a howling storm through a fleet of two hundred sail all on opposing courses.
“You can pipe down now, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower. “And when the hands have had their breakfasts you can exercise them aloft.”
In the reaction following his excitement he was yearning to get away to the solitude of the stern gallery again. But here came Walsh the surgeon, trotting up the quarterdeck and touching his hat
“Surgeon’s report, sir,” he said. “One warrant officer killed. No officers and no seamen wounded.”
“Killed?” said Hornblower, his jaw dropping. “Who’s killed?”
“John Hart, midshipman,” answered Walsh.
Hart had been a promising seaman in the Lydia, and it was Hornblower himself who had promoted him to the quarterdeck and obtained his warrant for him.
“Killed?” said Hornblower again.
“I can mark his ‘mortally wounded’, sir, if you prefer it,” said Walsh. “He lost a leg when a nine-pounder ball came in through No. 11 gun port on the lower deck. He was alive when they got him down to the cockpit, but he died the next minute. Popliteal artery.”
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