Hornblower and the Atropos. C. S. Forester

“Easy,” said Hornblower to the rowers, the gig glided silently on over the water. He could see no sign of anything wrong.

“Keep your distance,” said the voice from the brig.

There was nothing suspicious about the words. Any ship at anchor hardly more than twenty miles from the coast of France was fully entitled to be wary of strangers approaching in a fog. But that word sounded more like “deestance” all the same. Hornblower put his helm over to pass under the brig’s stern. Several heads were now apparent at the brig’s side; they moved round the stern in time with the gig. There was the brig’s name, sure enough. Amelia Jane, London. Then Hornblower caught sight of something else; it was a large boat lying under the brig’s port quarter from the main chains. There might be a hundred possible explanations of that, but it was a suspicious circumstance.

“Brig ahoy!” he hailed, “I’m coming aboard.”

“Keep off!” said the voice in reply.

Some of the heads at the brig’s side developed shoulders, and three or four muskets were pointed at the gig.

“I am a King’s officer,” said Hornblower.

He stood up in the stern‑sheets and unbuttoned his pea‑jacket so that his uniform was visible. The central figure at the brig’s side, the man who had been speaking, looked for a long moment and then spread his hands in a gesture of despair.

“Yes,” he said.

Hornblower went up the brig’s side as briskly as his chilled limbs would permit. As he stood on the deck he felt a trifle self‑conscious of being unarmed, for facing him were more than a dozen men, hostility in their bearing, and some of them with muskets in their hands. But the gig’s crew had followed him on the deck and closed up behind him, handling their cutlasses and pistols.

“Cap’n, sir!” It was the voice from overside of one of the two men left down in the gig. “Please, sir, there’s a dead man in the boat here.”

Hornblower turned away to look over. A dead man certainly lay there, doubled up in the bottom of the boat. That accounted for the floating oar, then. And for the shot, of course. The man had been killed by a bullet from the brig at the moment the boat was laid alongside; the brig had been taken by boarding. Hornblower looked back towards the group on the deck.

“Frenchmen?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The fellow was a man of sense. He had not attempted a hopeless resistance when his coup had been discovered. Although he had fifteen men at his back and there were only eight altogether in the gig he had realized that the presence of a King’s ship in the immediate vicinity made his final capture a certainty.

“Where’s the crew?” asked Hornblower.

The Frenchman pointed forward, and at a gesture from Hornblower one of his men ran to release the brig’s crew from their confinement in the forecastle, half a dozen coloured hands and a couple of officers.

“Much obliged to you, mister,” said the captain, coming forward.

“I’m Captain Hornblower of His Majesty’s ship Atropos,” said Hornblower.

“I beg your pardon, Captain.” He was an elderly man, his white hair and blue eyes in marked contrast with his mahogany tan. “You’ve saved my ship.”

“Yes,” said Hornblower, “you had better disarm those men.”

“Gladly, sir. See to it, Jack.”

The other officer, presumably the mate, walked aft to take muskets and swords from the unresisting Frenchmen.

“They came out of the fog and laid me alongside before I was aware, almost, sir,” went on the captain. “A King’s ship took my four best hands when we was off the Start, or I’d have made a better account of them. I only got one crack at them as it was.”

“It was that crack that brought me here,” said Hornblower shortly. “Where did they come from?”

“Now that’s just what I was asking myself,” said the captain. “Not from France in that boat, they couldn’t have come.”

They turned their gaze inquiringly upon the dejected group of Frenchmen. It was a question of considerable importance. The Frenchmen must have come from a ship, and that ship must be anchored somewhere amid the crowded vessels in the Downs. And at that rate she must be disguised as a British vessel or a neutral, coming in with the others before the wind dropped and the fog closed down. There had been plenty of similar incidents during the war. It was an easy way to snap up a prize. But it meant that somewhere close at hand there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a disguised French privateer, probably crammed with men — she might have made more than one prize. In the bustle and confusion that would ensue when a breeze should get up, with everyone anxious to up anchor and away, she could count on being able to make her escape along with her prizes.

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