“I’m here, sir,” reported Hornblower.
The hat to which he raised his hand was lopsided, and he was like a scarecrow in his battered uniform. His face was clean, but it bore a plentiful growth of beard.
“Can you speak Spanish enough to deal with him?” asked Bush, indicating the Spanish officer with a jerk of his thumb.
“Well, sir — yes.”
The last word was in a sense spoken against Hornblower’s will. He would have liked to temporise, and then he had given the definite answer which any military situation demanded.
“Let’s hear you, then.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Hornblower stepped up on the parapet; the Spanish officer, looking up from the edge of the ditch, took off his hat at the sight of him and bowed courteously; Hornblower did the same. There was a brief exchange of apparently polite phrases before Hornblower turned back to Bush.
“Are you going to admit him to the fort, sir?” he asked. “He says he has many negotiations to carry out.”
“No,” said Bush, without hesitation. “I don’t want him spying round here.”
Bush was not too sure about what the Spaniard could discover, but he was suspicious and cautious by temperament.
“Very good, sir.”
“You’ll have to go out to him, Mr Hornblower. I’ll cover you from here with the marines.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
With another exchange of courtesies Hornblower came down from the parapet and went down one ramp while the marine guard summoned by Bush marched up the other one. Bush, standing in an embrasure, saw the look on the Spaniard’s face as the shakos and scarlet tunics and levelled muskets of the marines appeared in the other embrasures. Directly afterwards Hornblower appeared round the angle of the fort, having crossed the ditch by the narrow causeway from the main gate. Bush watched while once more hats were removed and Hornblower and the Spaniard exchanged bows, bobbing and scraping in a ludicrous Continental fashion. The Spaniard produced a paper, which he offered with a bow for Hornblower to read — his credentials, presumably. Hornblower glanced at them and handed them back. A gesture towards Bush on the parapet indicated his own credentials. Then Bush could see the Spaniard asking eager questions, and Hornblower answering them. He could tell by the way Hornblower was nodding his head that he was answering in the affirmative, and he felt dubious for a moment as to whether Hornblower might not be exceeding his authority. Yet the mere fact that he had to depend on someone else to conduct the negotiations did not irritate him; the thought that he himself might speak Spanish was utterly alien to him, and he was as reconciled to depending on an interpreter as he was to depending on cables to hoist anchors or on winds to carry him to his destination.
He watched the negotiations proceeding; observing closely he was aware when the subject under discussion changed. There was a moment when Hornblower pointed down the bay, and the Spaniard, turning, looked at the Renown just approaching the point. He looked long and searchingly before turning back to continue the discussion. He was a tall man, very thin, his coffee‑coloured face divided by a thin black moustache. The sun beat down on the pair of them — the trumpeter had withdrawn out of earshot — for some time before Hornblower turned and looked up at Bush.
“I’ll come in to report, sir, if I may,” he hailed.
“Very well, Mr Hornblower.”
Bush went down to the courtyard to meet him. Hornblower touched his hat and waited to be asked before he began his report.
“He’s Colonel Ortega,” said Hornblower in reply to the “Well?” that Bush addressed to him. “His credentials are from Villanueva, the Captain‑General, who must be just across the bay, sir.”
“What does he want?” asked Bush, trying to assimilate this first rather indigestible piece of information.
“It was the prisoners he wanted to know about first, sir,” Bud Hornblower, “the women especially.”
“And you told him they weren’t hurt?”
“Yes, sir. He was very anxious about them. I told him I would ask your permission for him to take the women back with him.”
“I see,” said Bush.