Hornblower and the Hotspur. C. S. Forester

The huge bulk of the Hibernia loomed up before them, and Hornblower found himself going up the side and saluting the guard. Newton, the captain of the ship, and Collins, the Captain of the Fleet, both happened to be on deck and received him cordially enough; Hornblower hoped they did not notice his gulp of excitement as he returned their ‘Good afternoons’. Collins prepared to show him to the Admiral’s quarters.

“Please don’t trouble, sir. I can find my own way,” protested Hornblower.

“I’d better see you past all the Cerberuses that guard these nether regions,” said Collins.

Cornwallis was seated at one desk, and his flag-lieutenant at another, but they both rose at his entrance, and the flag-lieutenant slipped unobtrusively through a curtained door in the bulkhead while Cornwallis shook Hornblower’s hand – it could hardly be a reprimand that was coming, yet Hornblower found it difficult to sit on more than the edge of the chair that Cornwallis offered him. Cornwallis sat with more ease, yet bolt upright with his back quite flat as was his habit.

“Well?” said Cornwallis.

Hornblower realized that Cornwallis was trying to conceal his mood, yet there was – or was there not? – a twinkle in the china blue eyes; all these years as Commander-in-Chief still had not forged the Admiral into the complete diplomat. Or perhaps they had. Hornblower could only wait; he could think of nothing to say in reply to that monosyllable.

“I’ve had a communication about you from the Navy Board,” said Cornwallis at length, severely.

“Yes, sir?” Hornblower could find a reply to this speech; the Navy Board dealt with victualling and supplies and such like matters. It could be nothing vital.

“They’ve called my attention to the consumption of stores by the Hotspur. You appear to have been expensive, Hornblower. Gunpowder, shot, sails, cordage – you’ve been using up these things as if Hotspur were a ship of the line. Have you anything to say?”

“No, sir.” He need not offer the obvious defence, not to Cornwallis.

“Neither have I.” Cornwallis smiled suddenly, as he said that, his whole expression changing. “And that is what I shall tell the Navy Board. It’s a naval officer’s duty to shoot and be shot at.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve done all I need to do in transmitting this information.”

The smile died away from Cornwallis’s face, and was replaced by something bleak, something a little sad. He looked suddenly much older. Hornblower was making ready to rise from his chair; he could see that Cornwallis had sent for him so that this censure from the Navy Board should be deprived of all its sting. In the Service anticipated crises sometimes resolved themselves into anti-climaxes. But Cornwallis went on speaking; the sadness of his expression was echoed in the sadness of the tone of his voice.

“Now we can leave official business,” he said, “and proceed to more personal matters. I’m hauling down my flag, Hornblower.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” Those might be trite, mechanical words, but they were not. Hornblower was genuinely, sincerely sorry, and Cornwallis could hardly think otherwise.

“It comes to us all in time,” he went on. “Fifty-one years in the Navy.”

“Hard years, too, sir.”

“Yes. For two years and three months I haven’t set foot on shore.”

“But no one else could have done what you have done, sir.”

No one else could have maintained the Channel Fleet as a fighting body during those first years of hostilities, thwarting every attempt by Bonaparte to evade its crushing power.

“You flatter me,” replied Cornwallis. “Very kind of you, Hornblower. Gardner’s taking my place, and he’ll do just as well as me.”

Even in the sadness of the moment Hornblower’s ever observant mind took notice of the use of that name without the formal ‘Lord’ or ‘Admiral’; he was being admitted into unofficial intimacy with a Commander-in-Chief, albeit one on the point of retirement.

“I can’t tell you how much I regret it, all the same, sir,” he said.

“Let’s try to be more cheerful,” said Cornwallis. The blue eyes were looking straight through Hornblower, extraordinarily penetrating. Apparently what they observed was specially gratifying. Cornwallis’s expression softened. Something appeared there which might almost be affection.

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