“This ‘ere’s Mr Bush, sir. ‘Ere ‘e is!”
Hands were lifting his head. The sunshine was agonising as it poured into his eyes, and he closed his eyelids tight to keep it out.
“Bush! Bush!” That was Hornblower’s voice, pleading and tender. “Bush, please, speak to me.”
Two gentle hands were holding his face between them. Bush could just separate his eyelids sufficiently to see Hornblower bending over him, but to speak called for more strength than he possessed. He could only shake his head a little, smiling because of the sense of comfort and security conveyed by Hornblower’s hands.
Chapter XV
“Mr Hornblower’s respects, sir,” said the messenger, putting his head inside Bush’s cabin after knocking on the door. “The admiral’s flag is flying off Mosquito Point, an’ we’re just goin’ to fire the salute, sir.”
“Very good.” said Bush.
Lying on his cot he had followed in his mind’s eye all that had been going on in the ship. She was on the port tack at the moment and had clewed up all sail save topsails and jib. They must be inside Gun Key, then. He heard Hornblower’s voice hailing.
“Lee braces, there! Hands wear ship.”
He heard the grumble of the tiller ropes as the wheel was put over, they must be rounding Port Royal point. The Renown rose to a level keel — she had been heeling very slightly — and then lay over to port, so little that, lying on his cot, Bush could hardly feel it. Then came the bang of the first saluting gun. Despite the kindly warning that Hornblower had sent down Bush was taken sufficiently by surprise to start a little at the sound. He was as weak and nervous as a kitten, he told himself. At five‑second intervals the salute went on, while Bush resettled himself in bed. Movement was not very easy, even allowing for his weakness, on account of all the stitches that closed the numerous cuts and gashes on his body. He was sewn together like a crazy quilt; and any movement was painful.
The ship fell oddly quiet again when the salute was over — he was nearly sure it had been fifteen guns; Lambert presumably had been promoted to vice‑admiral. They must be gliding northward up Port Royal bay; Bush tried to remember how Salt Pond Hill looked, and the mountains in the background — what were they called? Liguanea, or something like that — he could never tackle these Dago names. They called it the Long Mountain behind Rock Fort.
“Tops’l sheets!” came Hornblower’s voice from above. “Tops’l clew lines.”
The ship must be gliding slowly to her anchorage.
“Helm‑a‑lee!”
Turning into the wind would take her way off her.
“Silence, there in the waist!”
Bush could imagine how the hands would be excited and chattering at coming into harbour — the old hands would be telling the new ones about the grog shops and the unholy entertainments that Kingston, just up the channel, provided for seamen.
“Let go!”
That rumble and vibration; no sailor, not even one as matter‑of‑fact as Bush, could hear the sound of the cable roaring through the hawsehole without a certain amount of emotion. And this was a moment of very mixed and violent emotions. This was no homecoming; it might be the end of an incident, but it would be most certainly the beginning of a new series of incidents. The immediate future held the likelihood of calamity. Not the risk of death or wounds; Bush would have welcomed that as an alternative to the ordeal that lay ahead. Even in his weak state he could still feel the tension mount in his body as his mind tried to foresee the future. He would like to move about, at least fidget and wriggle if he could not walk, in an endeavour to ease that tension, but he could not even fidget while fifty-three stitches held together the half‑closed gashes on his body. There would most certainly be an inquiry into the doings on board HMS Renown, and there was a possibility of a court‑martial — of a whole series of courts‑martial — as a result.
Captain Sawyer was dead. Someone among the Spaniards, drunk with blood lust, at the time when the prisoners had tried to retake the ship, had struck down the wretched lunatic when they had burst into the cabin where he was confined. Hell had no fire hot enough for the man — or woman — who could do such a thing, even though it might be looked upon as a merciful release for the poor soul which had cowered before imagined terrors for so long. It was a strange irony that at the moment a merciless hand had cut the madman’s throat some among the free prisoners had spared Buckland, had taken him prisoner as he lay in his cot and bound him with his bedding so that he lay helpless while the battle for his ship was being fought out to its bloody end. Buckland would have much to explain to a court of inquiry.