“Good!” said the doctor. “Excellent!”
He peered closely at the debris entangled in the knot, and then bent to examine the trickle of pus which had followed the ligature out of the wound.
“Excellent,” repeated the doctor.
Hornblower went back in his mind through the numerous reports which surgeons had made to him regarding wounded men, and the verbal comments with which they had amplified them. The words ‘laudable pus’ came up in his mind; it was important to distinguish between the drainage from a wound struggling to heal itself and the stinking ooze of a poisoned limb. This was clearly laudable pus, judging by the doctor’s comments.
“Now for the other one,” said the doctor. He pulled at the remaining ligature, but all he got was a cry of pain from Bush — which seemed to go clean through Hornblower’s heart — and a convulsive writhing of Bush’s tortured body.
“Not quite ready,” said the doctor. “I should judge that it will only be a matter of hours, though. Is your friend proposing to continue his journey to-day?”
“He is under orders to continue it,” said Hornblower in his limping French. “You would consider such a course unwise?”
“Most unwise,” said the doctor. “It will cause him a great deal of pain and may imperil the healing of the wound.”
He felt Bush’s pulse and rested his hand on his forehead.
“Most unwise,” he repeated.
The door opened behind him to reveal the gendarmerie sergeant.
“The carriage is ready.”
“It must wait until I have bandaged this wound. Get outside,” said the doctor testily.
“I will go and speak to the Colonel,” said Hornblower.
He brushed past the sergeant who tried too late to intercept him, into the main corridor of the inn, and out into the courtyard where stood the coach. The horses were being harnessed up, and a group of gendarmes were saddling their mounts on the farther side. Chance dictated that Colonel Caillard should be crossing the courtyard, too, in his blue and red uniform and his gleaming high boots, the star of the Legion of Honour dancing on his breast.
“Sir,” said Hornblower.
“What is it now?” demanded Caillard.
“Lieutenant Bush must not be moved. He is very badly wounded and a crisis approaches.”
The broken French came tumbling disjointedly from Hornblower’s lips.
“I can do nothing in contravention of my orders,” said Caillard. His eyes were cold and his mouth hard.
“You were not ordered to kill him,” protested Hornblower.
“I was ordered to bring you and him to Paris with the utmost dispatch. We shall start in five minutes.”
“But, sir — Cannot you wait even to-day?”
“Even as a pirate you must be aware of the impossibility of disobeying orders,” said Caillard.
“I protest against those orders in the name of humanity.”
That was a melodramatic speech, but it was a melodramatic moment, and in his ignorance of French Hornblower could not pick and choose his words. A sympathetic murmur in his ear attracted his notice, and, looking round, he saw the two aproned maids and a fat woman and the innkeeper all listening to the conversation with obvious disapproval of Caillard’s point of view. They shut themselves away behind the kitchen door as Caillard turned a terrible eye upon them, but they had granted Hornblower a first momentary insight into the personal unpopularity which Imperial harshness was causing to develop in France.
“Sergeant,” said Caillard abruptly. “Put the prisoners into the coach.”
There was no hope of resistance. The gendarmes carried Bush’s stretcher into the courtyard and perched it up on the seats, with Brown and Hornblower running round it to protect it from unnecessary jerks. The surgeon was scribbling notes hurriedly at the foot of the sheaf of notes regarding Bush’s case which Hornblower had brought from Rosas. One of the maids came clattering across the courtyard with a steaming tray which she passed in to Hornblower through the open window. There was a platter of bread and three bowls of a black liquid which Hornblower was later to come to recognize as coffee — what blockaded France had come to call coffee. It was no pleasanter than the infusion of burnt crusts which Hornblower had sometimes drunk on shipboard during a long cruise without the opportunity of renewing cabin stores, but it was warm and stimulating at that time in the morning.