Lieutenant Hornblower. C. S. Forester

“Not our mission. That is still secret, Mr Roberts.”

“Very good, sir.”

“But I’ll tell you where we’re bound. Mr Carberry knows already.”

“Where, sir?”

“Santo Domingo. Scotchman’s Bay.”

There was a pause while this information was being digested.

“Santo Domingo,” said someone, meditatively.

“Hispaniola,” said Carberry, explanatorily.

“Hayti,” said Hornblower.

“Santo Domingo — Hayti — Hispaniola,” said Carberry. “Three names for the same island.”

“Hayti!” exclaimed Roberts, some chord in his memory suddenly touched. “That’s where the blacks are in rebellion.”

“Yes,” agreed Buckland.

Anyone could guess that Buckland was trying to say that word in as noncommittal a tone as possible; it might be because there was a difficult diplomatic situation with regard to the blacks, and it might be because fear of the captain was still a living force in the ship.

Chapter VII

Lieutenant Buckland, in acting command of HMS Renown, of seventy‑four guns, was on the quarterdeck of his ship peering through his telescope at the low mountains of Santo Domingo. The ship was rolling in a fashion unnatural and disturbing, for the long Atlantic swell, driven by the northeast trades, was passing under her keel while she lay hove‑to to the final puffs of the land breeze which had blown since midnight and was now dying away as the fierce sun heated the island again. The Renown was actually wallowing, rolling her lower deck gunports under, first on one side and then on the other, for what little breeze there was was along the swell and did nothing to stiffen her as she lay with her mizzen topsail backed. She would lie right over on one side, until the gun tackles creaked with the strain of holding the guns in position, until it was hard to keep a foothold on the steep-sloping deck; she would lie there for a few harrowing seconds, and then slowly right herself, making no pause at all at the moment when she was upright and her deck horizontal, and continue, with a clattering of blocks and a rattle of gear, in a sickening swoop until she was as far over in the opposite direction, gun tackles creaking and unwary men slipping and siding, and he there unresponsive until the swell had rolled under her and she repeated her behaviour.

“For God’s sake,” said Hornblower, hanging on to a belaying pin in the mizzen fife rail to save himself from sliding down the deck into the scuppers, “can’t he make up his mind?”

There was something in Hornblower’s stare that made Bush look at him more closely.

“Seasick?” he asked, with curiosity.

“Who wouldn’t be?” replied Hornblower. “How she rolls!”

Bush’s cast‑iron stomach had never given him the least qualm, but he was aware that less fortunate men suffered from seasickness even after weeks at sea, especially when subjected to a different kind of motion. This funereal rolling was nothing like the free action of the Renown under sail.

“Buckland has to see how the land lies,” he said in an effort to cheer Hornblower up.

“How much more does he want to see?” grumbled Hornblower. “There’s the Spanish colours flying on the fort up there. Everyone on shore knows now that a ship of the line is prowling about, and the Dons won’t have to be very clever to guess that we’re not here on a yachting trip. Now they’ve all the time they need to be ready to receive us.”

“But what else could he do?”

“He could have come in in the dark with the sea breeze. Landing parties ready. Put them ashore at dawn. Storm the place before they knew there was any danger. Oh, God!”

The final exclamation had nothing to do with what went before. It was wrenched out of Hornblower by the commotion of his stomach. Despite his deep tan there was a sickly green colour in his cheeks.

“Hard luck,” said Bush.

Buckland still stood trying to keep his telescope trained on the coast despite the rolling of the ship. This was Scotchman’s Bay — the Bahia de Escocesa, as the Spanish charts had it. To the westward lay a shelving beach; the big rollers here broke far out and ran in creamy white up to the water’s edge with diminishing force, but to the eastward the shore line rose in a line of tree‑covered hills standing bluffly with their feet in blue water; the rollers burst against them in sheets of spray that climbed far up the cliffs before falling back in a smother of white. For thirty miles those hills ran beside the sea, almost due east and west; they constituted the Samaná peninsula, terminating in Samaná Point. According to the charts the peninsula was no more than ten miles wide; behind them, round Samaná Point, lay Samaná Bay, opening into the Mona Passage and a most convenient anchorage for privateers and small ships of war which could lie there, under the protection of the fort on the Samaná peninsula, ready to slip out and harass the West Indian convoys making use of the Mona Passage. The Renown had been given orders to clear out this raiders’ lair before going down to leeward to Jamaica — everyone in the ship could guess that — but now that Buckland confronted the problem he was not at all sure how to solve it. His indecision was apparent to all the curious lookers‑on who clustered on the Renown’s deck.

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