“The glass stays low, sir,” said Freeman. “No sign of the weather moderating.”
“I can see none myself,” said Hornblower.
There was scanty material for conversation, even if Hornblower had wanted to enter into conversation with his subordinate. The grey sky and the grey sea, the shrieking wind, the chill that enveloped them, the pessimistic gloom which clouded Hornblower’s thoughts, all these helped Hornblower to maintain the deliberate taciturnity which he had so long cultivated.
“Have me called at the first sign of a change, Mr. Freeman,” he said.
He walked over to the hatchway; it was only with an effort that he could set one foot before the other, and he could hardly bend at all to get his hands on the hatch coaming as he descended. His joints groaned as he crept under the threatening deck-beams into his cabin. He was utterly numb with cold and fatigue and sea-sickness. He was just conscious, resentfully, that he must not fall, as he longed to do, fully clothed upon his cot — not for fear of rheumatism, but because there might be no chance for days of drying the cot’s bedding if once he made it wet. And then here came Brown, materialising suddenly at his side — he must have been alert in the wardroom pantry on the watch for him.
“Let me take your coat, sir,” said Brown. “You’re cold, sir. I’ll untie that scarf. Those buttons, sir. Sit down now and I’ll be able to get those boots off, sir.”
Brown was stripping him of his wet clothes as if he were a baby. He produced a towel as if by magic, and chafed Hornblower’s ribs with it; Hornblower felt life returning through his veins at the touch of the coarse material. Brown slipped a flannel nightshirt over his head, and then knelt on the swaying deck to chafe his legs and feet. Through Hornblower’s dazed mind there passed a momentary amazement at Brown’s efficiency. Brown was good at everything to which he turned his hand; he could knot and splice, and he could drive a pair of horses; he could carve model ships for Richard, and be tutor and nursemaid to the boy as well; heave the lead, hand and reef, and wait at table; take a trick at the wheel or carve a goose; undress a weary man and — just as important — know when to cut off his flow of soothing remarks and lay him down in silence and pull the blankets over him, leaving him alone without any trite or irritating words about hoping he slept well. In Hornblower’s last tumultuous thoughts before exhaustion plunged him into sleep he decided that Brown was a far more useful member of society than he himself was; that if in his boyhood Brown had been taught his letters and his figures, and if chance had brought him to the quarter-deck as a king’s letter-boy instead of to the lower deck as a pressed man, he would probably be a captain by now. And, significantly, hardly a trace of envy tinged Hornblower’s thoughts of Brown; he was mellow enough by now to admire without resentment. Brown would make some woman a fine husband, as long as there was no other woman within reach. Hornblower smiled at that, and went on smiling in his sleep, sea-sickness and the plunging of the Porta Coeli over the short seas notwithstanding.
He woke later feeling refreshed and hungry, listened benevolently to the tumult of the noisy ship about him, and then poked his head out of the blankets and shouted for Brown. The sentry outside the cabin door took up the cry, and Brown came in almost immediately.
“What’s the time?”
“Two bells, sir.”
“In which watch?”
“Afternoon watch, sir.”
He might have known that without asking. He had been asleep for four hours, of course — nine years as a captain had not eradicated the habits acquired during a dozen years as a watchkeeping officer. The Porta Coeli stood up first on her tail and then on her nose as an unusually steep sea passed under her.
“The weather hasn’t moderated?”
“Still blowin’ a full gale, sir. West-sou’west. We’re hove-to under maintopmast stays’l and maintops’l with three reefs. Out o’ sight o’ land, an’ no sail visible neither, sir.”