“Damn it,” said Hornblower, “I won’t do it.”
There was nothing he wanted more in this world than to break through the iron serenity of the Mudir.
“Tell him,” said Hornblower, “I’ll drop the gold back into the Bay sooner than hand it over. By God, I will. I’ll drop it down to the bottom and they can fish for it themselves, which they can’t do. Tell him I swear that, by — by the Koran or the beard of the Prophet, or whatever they swear by.”
Turner nodded in surprised approval; that was a move he had not thought of, and he addressed himself eagerly to the task of translation. The Mudir listened with his eternal patience.
“No, it’s no good, sir,” said Turner, after the Mudir had replied. “You can’t frighten him that way. He says —”
Turner was interrupted by a fresh sentence from the Mudir.
“He says that after this ship has been seized the idolaters — that’s the Ceylonese divers, sir — will work for him just as they work for us.”
Hornblower, desperate, thought wildly of cutting the divers’ throats after throwing the treasure overboard; that would be consonant with this Oriental atmosphere, but before he could put the frightful thought into words the Mudir spoke again, and at considerable length.
“He says wouldn’t it be better to go back with some treasure, sir — whatever more we can recover — than to lose everything? He says — he says — I beg your pardon, sir, but he says that if this ship is seized for breaking the law your name would not be held in respect by King George.”
That was phrasing it elegantly. Hornblower could well imagine what their Lordships of the Admiralty would say. Even at the best, even if he fought it out to the last man, London would not look with favour on the man who had precipitated an international crisis and whose behaviour necessitated sending a squadron and an army into the Levant to restore British prestige at a moment when every ship and man was needed to fight Bonaparte. And at worst — Hornblower could picture his little ship suddenly overwhelmed by a thousand boarders, seized, emptied of the treasure, and then dismissed with contemptuous indulgence for him to take back to Malta with a tale possibly of outrage but certainly of failure.
It took every ounce of his moral strength to conceal his despair and dismay — from Turner as well as from the Mudir — and as it was he sat silent for a while, shaken, like a boxer in the ring trying to rally after a blow had slipped through his guard. Like a boxer, he needed time to recover.
“Very well,” he said at length, “tell him I must think over all this. Tell him it is too important for me to make up my mind now.”
“He says,” translated Turner when the Mudir replied, “he says he will come tomorrow morning to receive the treasure.”
Chapter XVIII
In the old days, long ago, Hornblower as a midshipman had served in the Indefatigable on cutting‑out expeditions more numerous than he could remember. The frigate would find a coaster anchored under the protection of shore batteries, or would chase one into some small harbour; then at night — or even in broad day — the boats would be manned and sent in. The coaster would take all the precautions she could; she could load her guns, rig her boarding nettings, keep her crew on the alert, row guard round the ship, but to no avail The boarders would fight their way on board, clear the decks, set sail, and carry off the prize under the nose of the defences. Often and often had Hornblower seen it close, had taken part. He had noted with small enough sympathy the pitiful precautions taken by the victim.
Now the boot was on the other leg; now it was even worse, because Atropos lay in the broad Bay of Marmorice without even the protection of shore batteries and with ten thousand enemies around her. Tomorrow, the Mudir had said, he would come for the treasure, but there was no trusting the Turks. That might be one more move to lull the Atropos into security. She might be rushed in the night. The Mejidieh, over there, could put into her boats more men than Atropos could boast altogether, and they could be supplemented with soldiers crammed into fishing boats from the shore. If she were attacked by twenty boats at once, from all sides, by a thousand Moslem fanatics, what could she do to defend herself?