Four bells rang out sharply; they had been over half an hour on this tack.
“Kindly go about on the other tack, Mr. Freeman. I don’t want to get too far from land.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
If it was not for the war, no captain in his senses would dream for a moment of plunging about in the darkness on this shoal coast, especially when he was extremely doubtful of his exact position — their present estimate was the sum of a series of guesses, guesses about the leeway made while hove-to, guesses at the effects of the tides, guesses at the correspondence between soundings taken overside and soundings marked on the chart.
“What do you think the mutineers will do, sir, when they sight us?” asked Freeman.
The fact that Hornblower had unbent enough to give an explanation of why he wanted to go about must have encouraged Freeman to this familiarity; Hornblower was irritated, but most of all because he had no thoughts on the matter.
“There’s no profit in asking questions which time will surely answer, Mr. Freeman,” he said, tartly.
“Yet speculation is a fascinating thing, Sir Horatio,” replied Freeman, so unabashed that Hornblower stared at him in the darkness. Bush, if Hornblower had spoken to him in that fashion, would have retired wounded into his shell.
“You may indulge yourself in it if you so desire, Mr. Freeman. I have no intention of doing so.”
“Thank you, Sir Horatio.”
Now was there, or was there not, a hint of mockery behind the hint of subservience in that reply? Was it possible that Freeman could actually be smiling inwardly at his superior officer? If so, he was running a fearful risk; a suggestion of dissatisfaction in Hornblower’s future report to the Admiralty would put Freeman on the beach for life. But Hornblower knew, the moment the thought came into his head, that he would do no such thing. He could never blast an able man’s career just because that man had not treated him with slavish respect.
“Water’s shoaling fast, sir,” said Freeman, suddenly — both he and Hornblower had subconsciously been listening to the cry of the leadsman in the chains. “I should like to go about again.”
“Certainly, Mr. Freeman,” said Hornblower, formally.
They were creeping round Cape de la Hève, the northerly point of the Seine estuary, just within which lies Le Havre. There was a chance, a tiny one, that they might find themselves at dawn both to leeward of the Flame and between her and France so that she would have no means of escape at all. And the night was wearing on; it would not be long now before daylight.
“You have a good man at the masthead, Mr. Freeman?”
“Yes, Sir Horatio.”
He would have to tell the hands about the mission on which they had been sent, even though that meant violating the secrecy surrounding the mutiny. Normally there would be little enough need to confide in the hands; British seamen, fatalistic after twenty years of war, would fire into Frenchmen or Americans or Dutchmen without much thought about the rights or wrongs; but to ask them to fight against a sister-ship, to fire into a British vessel, which might, for all he knew, still be wearing her commissioning pendant and her White Ensign, might cause hesitation if he called upon them to do so without some preliminary warning. A careful officer would in ordinary circumstances never breathe the word ‘mutiny’ to his men; no lion-tamer would ever remind the lion that the lion was stronger than he. It was almost daylight.
“Would you be so good as to turn up the hands, Mr. Freeman? I wish to address them.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The pipes wailed through the brig, and the watch below came streaming up through the hatchway, pouring sleepily aft; the poor devils were losing an hour of sleep because of the inconsiderate way in which dawn did not correspond with the end of the watch. Hornblower looked round for some point of vantage from which he could address them; in a flush-decked vessel like the Porta Coeli he had not the advantage of speaking down into a waist from a quarterdeck. He swung himself up onto the weather bulwark, balancing himself with a hand on the mainbackstay.