He was a quarter of the way up the captains’ list now. In less than twenty years’ time — long before he was sixty — if he continued to obtain commands in this fashion he would hoist his flag as an Admiral. Then they might yellow him if they wanted to; he would be satisfied with Admiral’s rank. On Admiral’s half pay he could live in London, find a patron who would nominate him to a seat in Parliament. He would know power, and dignity, and security. All this was possible — and Lady Barbara still remembered him, cherished a kindly thought of him, was anxious to see him again despite the ludicrous way in which he had behaved towards her. High spirits bubbled within him again.
A seagull, wheeling motionless up wind, suddenly flapped its wings until it hovered stationary, and screamed raucously in his face. It flapped and screamed aimlessly along the gallery, and then, equally aimlessly, wheeled away again. Hornblower followed it with his eyes, and when he resumed his walk the thread of his thoughts was broken. Instantly there loomed up again into his consciousness the knowledge of the frightful need of men under which he laboured. Tomorrow he would have to confess miserably to his Admiral that the Sutherland was still a hundred and fifty men short of complement; he would be found wanting in the very first of a captain’s duties. An officer might be the finest possible seaman, the most fearless fighter (and Hornblower did not think himself either) and yet his talents were useless if he could not man his ship.
Probably Leighton had never asked for his services at all, and he had been allotted to Leighton’s squadron by some trick of fate. Leighton would suspect him of having been his wife’s lover, would be consumed with jealousy, and would watch for every opportunity to achieve his ruin. He would make his life a misery to him, would plague him to madness, and would finally have him broken and dismissed the service — any admiral could break any captain if he set his mind to it. Perhaps Lady Barbara had planned to put him thus in Leighton’s power, and was working his ruin in revenge for his treatment of her. That seemed much more likely than his earlier wild imaginings, thought Hornblower, the cold fit working on him.
She must have guessed just what Maria was like, and must have sent the invitation so as to have the pleasure of gloating over her weaknesses. The dinner tomorrow would be one long humiliation for him. He could not venture to draw on his next quarter’s pay for another ten days at least; otherwise he would have taken Maria out to buy her the finest gown in Plymouth — although what would a Plymouth gown avail in the sight of an Earl’s daughter who would undoubtedly buy all her clothes from Paris? He had not twenty pounds in the whole world now, having sent Bush and Gerard and Rayner and Hooker, his four lieutenants, out to drum up recruits. They had taken thirty men with them, the only trustworthy men in the whole ship, too. Probably there would be trouble on the lower deck in consequence — probably reaching a head tomorrow while he was dining with his admiral.
Gloomy anticipation could go no further than that. He jerked his head up with irritation, and hit it hard against one of the beams of the cove above. Then he clenched his fists and cursed the service, as he had cursed it a thousand times before. That made him laugh at himself — if Hornblower had never been able to laugh at himself he would have been, long ago, another of the mad captains in the Navy List. He took a firmer grip on his emotions and set himself to thinking seriously about the future.
The orders which had attached him to Admiral Leighton’s squadron had stated briefly that he was destined for service in the Western Mediterranean, and it was an uncovenanted mercy on the part of the lords of the Admiralty to give him that much warning. He had known of captains who had laid in personal stores in the expectation of service in the West Indies only to find that they had been allotted to the Baltic convoy. The Western Mediterranean meant the Toulon blockade, the protection of Sicily, harassing the Genoese coasters, and, presumably, taking a hand in the war in Spain. It meant a more variegated life than the blockade of Brest, at least, although now that Spain was England’s ally there would be far less chance of prize money.