“Silence!”
The rasp in his voice came from fatigue and strain, for reaction was closing in upon him in the moment of victory. He had to stop and think, he had to prod his mind into activity before he could give his next orders. He hung the speaking-trumpet on its becket and turned to Bush; the two unplanned gestures took on a highly dramatic quality in the eyes of the ship’s company, who were standing watching him and expecting some further speech.
“Mr Bush! You can dismiss the watch below, if you would be so kind.” Those last words were the result of a considerable effort.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Secure the guns, and dismiss the men from quarters.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Mr Prowse!” Hornblower gauged by a glance at Ushant the precious distance they had lost to leeward. “Put the ship on the port tack close‑hauled, if you please.”
“Close‑hauled on the port tack. Aye aye, sir.”
Strictly speaking, that was the last order he need give at this moment. He could abandon himself to his fatigue now, this very second. But a few words of explanation were at least desirable, if not quite necessary.
“We shall have to beat back. Call me when the watch is changed.” As he said those words he could form a mental picture of what they implied. He would be able to fall across his cot, take the weight off his weary legs, let the tensions drain out of him, abandon himself to his fatigue, close his aching eyes, revel in the thought that no further decisions would be demanded of him for an hour or two. Then he recalled himself in momentary surprise. Despite those visions he was still on the quarter‑deck with all eyes on him. He knew what he had to say; he knew what was necessary — he had to make an exit, like some wretched actor leaving the stage as the curtain fell. On these simple seamen it would have an effect that would compensate them for their fatigue, that would be remembered and quoted months later, and would — this was the only reason for saying it — help to reconcile them to the endless discomforts of the blockade of Brest. He set his tired legs in motion towards his cabin, and paused at the spot where the greatest number of people could hear his words to repeat them later.
“We are going back to watch Brest again.” The melodramatic pause. “Loire or no Loire.”
Chapter 7
Hornblower was seated in the cramped chart‑room eating his dinner. This salt beef must have come from the new cask, for there was an entirely different tang about it, not unpleasant. Presumably it had been pickled at some other victualling yard, with a different quality of salt. He dipped the tip of his knife into the mustard pot; that mustard was borrowed — begged — from the wardroom, and he felt guilty about it. The wardroom stores must be running short by now — but on the other hand he himself had sailed with no mustard at all, thanks to the distractions of getting married while commissioning his ship.
“Come in!” he growled in response to a knock.
It was Cummings, one of the ‘young gentlemen’, First Class Volunteers, King’s Letter Boys, with whom the ship was plagued in place of experienced midshipmen, thanks again to the haste with which she had been commissioned.
“Mr Poole sent me, sir. There’s a new ship joining the Inshore Squadron.”
“Very well. I’ll come.”
It was a lovely summer day. A few cumulus clouds supplied relief to the blue sky. Hotspur was hardly rocking at all as she lay hove‑to, her mizzen topsail to the mast, for she was so far up in the approaches to Brest that the moderate easterly wind had little opportunity, since leaving the land, to raise a lop on the water. Hornblower swept his eye round as he emerged on the quarter‑deck, landward at first, naturally. They lay right in the mouth of the Goulet, with a view straight up into the Outer Roads. On one side, was the Capuchins, on the other the Petit Minou, with Hotspur carefully stationed — as in the days of peace but for a more forceful reason — so that she was just out of cannon‑shot of the batteries on those two points. Up the Goulet lay the reefs of the Little Girls, with their outlier, Pollux Reef, and beyond the Little Girls, in the outer roadstead, lay the French navy at anchor, forced to tolerate this constant invigilation because of the superior might of the Channel Fleet waiting outside, just over the horizon.