“Heave to, Mr Bush,” said Hornblower, and stepped with elaborate calm to the other side to hail back.
It was Catalan which was being shouted to him; his wide and exact knowledge of Spanish — during his two years as a prisoner on parole when a young man he had learned the language thoroughly to keep himself from fretting into insanity — and his rough and ready French enabled him to understand what was being spoken, but he could not speak Catalan. He hailed back in Spanish.
“Yes,” he said. “This is a British ship.”
At the sound of his voice someone else stood up in the boat. The men at the oars were Catalans in ragged civilian dress; this man wore a brilliant yellow uniform and a lofty hat with a plume.
“May I be permitted to come on board?” he shouted in Spanish. “I have important news.”
“You will be very welcome,” said Hornblower, and then, turning to Bush. “A Spanish officer is coming on board, Mr Bush. See that he is received with honours.”
The man who stepped on to the deck and looked curiously about him, as the marines saluted and the pipes twittered, was obviously a hussar. He wore a yellow tunic elaborately frogged in black, and yellow breeches with broad stripes of gold braid. Up to his knees he wore shiny riding boots with dangling gold tassels in front and jingling spurs on the heels; a silver grey coat trimmed with black astrakhan, its sleeves empty, was slung across his shoulders. On his head was a hussar busby, of black astrakhan with a silver grey bag hanging out of the top behind an ostrich plume, and gold cords from the back of it round his neck, and he trailed a broad curved sabre along the deck as he advanced to where Hornblower awaited him.
“Good day, sir,” he said, smiling. “I am Colonel José Gonzales de Villena y Danvila, of His Most Catholic Majesty’s Olivenza Hussars.”
“I am delighted to meet you,” said Hornblower. “And I am Captain Horatio Hornblower, of His Britannic Majesty’s ship Sutherland.”
“How fluently your Excellency speaks Spanish!”
“Your Excellency is too kind. I am fortunate in my ability to speak Spanish, since it enables me to make you welcome on board my ship.”
“Thank you. It was only with difficulty that I was able to reach you. I had to exert all my authority to make those fishermen row me out. They were afraid lest the French should discover that they had been communicating with an English ship. Look! They are rowing home already for dear life.”
“There is no French garrison in that village at present, then?”
“No, sir, none.”
A peculiar expression played over Villena’s face as he said this. He was a youngish man of fair complexion, though much sunburned, with a Hapsburg lip (which seemed to indicate that he might owe his high position in the Spanish army to some indiscretion on the part of his female ancestors) and hazel eyes with drooping lids. Those eyes met Hornblower’s with a hint of shiftiness. They merely seemed to be pleading with him not to continue his questioning, but Hornblower ignored the appeal — he was far too anxious for data.
“There are Spanish troops there?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“But your regiment, Colonel?”
“It is not there, Captain,” said Villena, and continued hastily. “The news I have to give you is that a French army — Italian, I should say — is marching along the coast road there, three leagues to the north of us.”
“Ha!” said Hornblower. That was the news he wanted.
“They were at Malgret last night, on their way to Barcelona. Ten thousand of them — Pino’s and Lecchi’s divisions of the Italian army.”
“How do you know this?”
“It is my duty to know it, as an officer of light cavalry,” said Villena with dignity.
Hornblower looked at Villena and pondered. For three years now, he knew, Bonaparte’s armies had been marching up and down the length and breadth of Catalonia. They had beaten the Spaniards in innumerable battles, had captured their fortresses after desperate sieges, and yet were no nearer subjecting the country than when they had first treacherously invaded the province. The Catalans had not been able to overcome in the field even the motley hordes Bonaparte had used on this side of Spain — Italians, Germans, Swiss, Poles, all the sweepings of his army — but at the same time they had fought on nobly, raising fresh forces in every unoccupied scrap of territory, and wearing out their opponents by the incessant marches and countermarches they imposed on them. Yet that did not explain how a Spanish colonel of hussars found himself quite alone near the heart of the Barcelona district where the French were supposed to be in full control.