Hornblower and the Hotspur. C. S. Forester

“Aye aye, sir.”

The clank of iron; that was what heralded Doughty’s’ arrival at the cabin door, with gyves upon his wrists.

“Very well, master-at-arms. You can wait outside.”

Doughty’s hard blue eyes looked straight into his.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry to put you out like this.”

“What the hell did you do it for?”

There had always been a current of feeling – as Hornblower had guessed – between Mayne and Doughty. Mayne had ordered Doughty to do some specially dirty work, at this moment when Doughty wished to preserve his hands clean to serve his captain’s dinner. Doughty’s protest had been the instant occasion for Mayne to wind his starter.

“I – I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen.”

Among gentlemen a blow could only be wiped out in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word. Hornblower was captain of his ship, with powers almost unlimited. He could tell Mayne to shut his mouth; he could order Doughty’s irons to be struck off, and the whole incident forgotten. Forgotten? Allow the crew to think that petty officers could be struck back with impunity? Allow the crew to think that their captain had favourites?

“Damn it all!” raved Hornblower, pounding on the chartroom table.

“I could train someone to take my place, sir,” said Doughty, “before – before . . .”

Even Doughty could not say those words.

“No! No! No!” It was utterly impossible to have Doughty circulating about the ship with every morbid eye upon him.

“You might try Bailey, sir, the gun-room steward. He’s the best of a bad lot.”

“Yes.”

It made matters no easier to find Doughty still so co-operative. And then there was a glimmer of light, the faintest hint of a possibility of a solution less unsatisfactory than the others. They were three hundred leagues and more from Cadiz, but they had a fair wind.

“You’ll have to await your trial. Master-at-arms! Take this man away. You needn’t keep him in irons, and I’ll give orders about his exercise.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

It was horrible to see Doughty retaining the unmoved countenance so carefully cultivated as a servant, and yet to know that it concealed a dreadful anxiety. Hornblower had to forget about it, somehow. He had to come on deck with Hotspur flying along with every inch of canvas spread racing over the sea like a thoroughbred horse at last given his head after long restraint. The dark shadow might not be forgotten, but at least it could be lightened under this blue sky with the flying white clouds, and by the rainbows of spray thrown up by the bows, as they tore across the Bay of Biscay on a mission all the more exciting to the ship’s company in that they could not guess what it might be.

There was the distraction – the counter irritation – of submitting to the clumsy ministrations of Bailey, brought up from the gun-room mess. There was the satisfaction of making a neat landfall off Cape Ortegal, and flying along the Biscay coast just within sight of the harbour of Ferrol, where Hornblower had spent weary months in captivity – he tried vainly to make out the Dientes del Diablo where he had earned his freedom – and then rounding the far corner of Europe and setting a fresh course, with the wind miraculously still serving, as they plunged along, close-hauled now, to weather Cape Roca.

There was a night when the wind backed round and blew foul but gently, with Hornblower out of bed a dozen times, fuming with impatience when Hotspur had to go on the port tack and head directly out from the land, but then came the wonderful dawn with the wind coming from the south west in gentle puffs, and then from the westward in a strong breeze that just allowed studding sails to be spread as Hotspur reached southward to make a noon position with Cape Roca just out of sight to leeward.

That meant another broken night for Hornblower to make the vital chance of course off Cape St Vincent so as to head, with the wind comfortably over Hotspur’s port quarter and every stitch of canvas still spread, direct for Cadiz. In the afternoon, with Hotspur still flying along at a speed often reaching eleven knots, the look-out reported a blur of land, low-lying, fine on the port bow, as the coast-wise shipping – hastily raising neutral Portuguese and Spanish colours at sight of this British ship of war – grew thicker. Ten minutes later another hail from the masthead told that the landfall was perfect, and ten minutes after that Hornblower’s telescope, trained fine on the starboard bow, could pick up the gleaming white of the city of Cadiz.

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