They heard a faint inquiring bark from a dog.
“Give ’em a hail, Brown,” said Hornblower.
“Ahoy!” roared Brown. “House ahoy!”
Instantly two dogs burst into a clamorous barking.
“Ahoy!” yelled Brown again, and they staggered on. Another light flashed into view from another part of the house. They seemed to be in some kind of garden now; Hornblower could feel plants crushing under his feet in the snow, and the thorns of a rose tree tore at his trouser leg. The dogs were barking furiously. Suddenly a voice came from a dark upper window,
“Who is there?” it asked in French.
Hornblower prodded at his weary brain to find words to reply.
“Three men,” he said. “Wounded.”
That was the best he could do.
“Come nearer,” said the voice, and they staggered forward, slipped down an unseen incline, and halted in the square of light cast by the big lighted window in the ground floor, Bush in his nightshirt resting in the arms of the bedraggled other two.
“Who are you?”
“Prisoners of war,” said Hornblower.
“Wait one moment, if you please,” said the voice politely.
They stood shuddering in the snow until a door opened near the lighted window, showing a bright rectangle of light and some human silhouettes.
“Come in, gentlemen,” said the polite voice.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The door opened into a stone flagged hall; a tall thin man in a blue coat with a glistening white cravat stood there to welcome them, and at his side was a young woman, her shoulders bare in the lamplight. There were three others, too — maidservants and a butler, Hornblower fancied vaguely, as he advanced into the hall under the burden of Bush’s weight. On a side table the lamplight caught the ivory butts of a pair of pistols, evidently laid there by their host on his deciding that his nocturnal visitors were harmless. Hornblower and Brown halted again for a moment, ragged and dishevelled and daubed with snow, and water began to trickle at once to the floor from their soaking garments; and Bush was between them, one foot in a grey worsted sock sticking out under the hem of his flannel nightshirt. Hornblower’s constitutional weakness almost overcame him again and he had to struggle hard to keep himself from giggling as he wondered how these people were explaining to themselves the arrival of a night-shirted cripple out of a snowy night.
At least his host had sufficient self-control to show no surprise.
“Come in, come in,” he said. He put his hand to a door beside him and then withdrew it. “You will need a better fire than I can offer you in the drawing-room. Felix, show the way to the kitchen — I trust you gentlemen will pardon my receiving you there? This way, sirs. Chairs, Felix, and send the maids away.”
It was a vast low-ceilinged room, stone-flagged like the hall. Its grateful warmth was like Paradise; in the hearth glowed the remains of a fire and all round them kitchen utensils winked and glittered. The woman without a word piled fresh billets of wood upon the fire and set to work with bellows to work up a blaze. Hornblower noticed the glimmer of her silk dress; her piled up hair was golden, nearly auburn.
“Cannot Felix do that, Marie, my dear? Very well, then. As you will,” said their host. “Please sit down, gentlemen. Wine, Felix.”
They lowered Bush into a chair before the fire. He sagged and wavered in his weakness, and they had to support him; their host clucked in sympathy.
“Hurry with those glasses, Felix, and then attend to the beds. A glass of wine, sir? And for you, sir? Permit me.”
The woman he had addressed as ‘Marie’ had risen from her knees, and withdrew silently; the fire was crackling bravely amid its battery of roasting spits and cauldrons. Hornblower was shivering uncontrollably, nevertheless, in his dripping clothes. The glass of wine he drank was of no help to him; the hand he rested on Bush’s shoulder shook like a leaf.
“You will need dry clothes,” said their host. “If you will permit me, I will —”
He was interrupted by the re-entrance of the butler and Marie, both of them with their arms full of clothes and blankets.