“Oh dear,” said Maria.
“Wind’s steady in the west,” said Hornblower. Not that that would deter him from beating down Channel if he could once work Hotspur down the Sound – he could not think why he had held out this shred of hope to Maria.
Little Horatio began to wail again.
“Poor darling!” said Maria. “Let me take him.”
“I can deal with him.”
“No. It – it isn’t right.” It was all wrong, in Maria’s mind, that a father should be afflicted by his child’s tantrums. She thought of something else. “You wished to see this, dear. Mother brought it in this afternoon from Lockhart’s Library.”
She brought a magazine from the side table, and gave it in exchange for the baby, whom she clasped once more to her breast.
The magazine was the new number of the Naval Chronicle, and Maria with her free hand helped Hornblower to turn the pages.
“There!” Maria pointed to the relevant passage, on almost the last page. “On January 1st last . . .” it began, it was the announcement of little Horatio’s birth.
“The Lady of Captain Horatio Hornblower of the Royal Navy, of a son,” read Maria. “That’s me and little Horatio. I’m – I’m more grateful to you, dear, than I can ever tell you.”
“Nonsense,” replied Hornblower. That was just what he thought it was, but he made himself look up with a smile that took out any sting from what he said.
“They call you ‘Captain’,” went on Maria, with an interrogative in the remark.
“Yes,” agreed Hornblower. “That’s because -”
He embarked once more on the explanation of the profound difference between a Commander by rank (and a Captain only by courtesy) and a Post Captain. He had said it all before, more than once.
“I don’t think it’s right,” Maria.
“Very few things are right, my dear,” said Hornblower, a little absently. He was leafing through the other pages of the Naval Chronicle, working forward from the back page where he had started. Here was the Plymouth Report, and here was one of the things he was looking for.
‘Came in HM Sloop Hotspur under jury rig, from the Channel Fleet. She proceeded at once into dock. Captain Horatio Hornblower landed at once with dispatches.’ Then came the Law Intelligence, and the Naval Courts Martial, and the Monthly Register of Naval Events, and the Naval Debates in the Imperial Parliament, and then, between the Debates and the Poetry, came the Gazette Letters. And there it was. First, in italics, came the introduction.
Copy of a letter from Vice Admiral Sir William Cornwallis to Sir Evan Nepean, Bart., dated on board of HMS Hibernia, the 2nd instant.
Next came Cornwallis’s letter.
Sir,
I herewith transmit for their Lordships’ information, copies of letters I have received from Captains Chambers of HMS Naiad and Hornblower of HM Sloop Hotspur, acquainting me of the capture of the French national frigate Clorinde and of the defeat of an attempt by the French to escape from Brest with a large body of Troops. The conduct of both these officers appears to me to be highly commendable. I enclose also a copy of a letter I have received from Captain Smith of HMS Doris.
I have the honour to be, with deepest respect,
Your ob’d’t serv’t,
Wm. Cornwallis.
Chambers’ report came next. Naiad had caught Clorinde near Molene and had fought her to a standstill, capturing her in forty minutes. Apparently the other French frigate which had come out with the transports had escaped by the Raz du Sein and had still not been caught.
Then at last came his own report. Hornblower felt the flush of excitement he had known before on reading his own words in print. He studied them afresh at this interval, and was grudgingly satisfied. They told, without elaboration, the bare facts of how three transports had been run ashore in the Goulet, and of how Hotspur while attacking a fourth had been in action with a French frigate and had lost her foremast. Not a word about saving Ireland from invasion; the merest half-sentence about the darkness and the snow and the navigational perils, but men who could understand would understand.