It was a wide low room — a disused storeroom, in fact — lit and ventilated only by a few heavily barred apertures opening into the fortress ditch. It stank of closely confined humanity and it was at present filled with a babel of sound as what was left of the crew of the Sutherland plied questions at someone hidden in the middle of the crowd. At Hornblower’s entrance the crowd fell apart and the new prisoner came forward; he was naked save for his duck trousers and a long pigtail hung down his back.
“Who are you?” demanded Hornblower.
“Phillips, sir. Maintopman in the Pluto.”
His honest blue eyes met Hornblower’s gaze without a sign of flinching. Hornblower could guess that he was neither a deserter nor a spy — he had borne both possibilities in mind.
“How did you come here?”
“We was settin’ sail, sir, to beat out o’ the bay. We’d just seen the old Sutherland take fire, an’ Cap’n Elliott he says to us, he says, sir, ‘Now’s the time, my lads. Top’sls and to’gar’ns.’ So up we went aloft, sir, an’ I’d just taken the earring o’ the main to’gar’n when down came the mast, sir, an’ I was pitched off into the water. So was a lot o’ my mates, sir, but just then the Frenchy which was burnin’ blew up, an’ I think the wreckage killed a lot of ’em, sir, ‘cos I found I was alone, an’ Pluto was gone away, an’ so I swum for the shore, an’ there was a lot of Frenchies what I think had swum from the burning Frenchy an’ they took me to some sojers an’ the sojers brought me here, sir. There was a orficer what arst me questions — it’d ‘a made you laugh, sir, to hear him trying to speak English — but I wasn’t sayin’ nothin’, sir. An’ when they see that they puts me in here along with the others, sir. I was just telling ’em about the fight, sir. There was the old Pluto, an’ Caligula, sir, an’ —”
“Yes, I saw it,” said Hornblower, shortly. “I saw that Pluto had lost her main topmast. Was she knocked about much?”
“Lor’ bless you, sir, no, sir. We hadn’t had half a dozen shot come aboard, an’ they didn’t do no damage, barrin’ the one that wounded the Admiral.”
“The Admiral!” Hornblower reeled a little as he stood, as though he had been struck. “Admiral Leighton, d’you mean?”
“Admiral Leighton, sir.”
“Was — was he badly hurt?”
“I dunno, sir. I didn’t see it meself, o’ course, sir, seein’ as how I was on the main deck at the time. Sailmaker’s mate, he told me, sir, that the Admiral had been hit by a splinter. Cooper’s mate told him, sir, what helped to carry him below.”
Hornblower could say no more for the present. He could only stare at the kindly stupid face of the sailor before him. Yet even in that moment he could take note of the fact that the sailor was not in the least moved by the wounding of his Admiral. Nelson’s death had put the whole fleet into mourning, and he knew of half a dozen other flag officers whose death or whose wounding would have brought tears into the eyes of the men serving under him. If it had been one of those, the man would have told of the accident to him before mentioning his own misadventures. Hornblower had known before that Leighton was not beloved by his officers, and here was a clear proof that he was not beloved by his men either.
But perhaps Barbara had loved him. She had at least married him. Hornblower forced himself to speak, to bear himself naturally.
“That will do,” he said, curtly, and then looked round to catch his coxswain’s eye. “Anything to report, Brown?”
“No, sir. All well, sir.”
Hornblower rapped on the door behind him to be let out of prison, to be conducted by his guard back to his room again, where he could walk up and down, three steps each way, his brain seething like a pot on a fire. He only knew enough to unsettle him, to make him anxious. Leighton had been wounded, but that did not mean that he would die. A splinter wound — that might mean much or little. Yet he had been carried below. No admiral would have allowed that, if he had been able to resist — not in the heat of a fight, at any rate. His face might be lacerated or his belly torn open — Hornblower, shuddering, shook his mind free from the memories of all the horrible wounds he had seen received on ship board during twenty years’ service. But, coldbloodedly, it was an even chance that Leighton would die — Hornblower had signed too many casualty lists to be unaware of the chances of a wounded man’s recovery.