“Sir! Sir!”
It was an English seaman he did not recognise, in a striped shirt of white and red, his pigtail shaking from side to side as he gesticulated with the violence of his emotion.
“Sir! I was fightin’ against the Frogs. Your men saw me. Me an’ these other lads here.”
He motioned behind him to an anxious little group of seamen who had heretofore hung back, but now came forward, some of them bursting into speech, all of them nodding their heads in agreement.
“Mutineers?” asked Hornblower. In the heat of battle he had forgotten about the mutiny.
“I’m no mutineer, sir. I did what I had to or they’d ‘a killed me. Ain’t that so, mates?”
“Stand back, there!” blared Brown; there was blood on the blade of his cutlass.
A vivid prophetic picture suddenly leaped into Hornblower’s mind’s eye — the court martial, the semicircle of judges in glittering full dress, the tormented prisoners, tongue-tied, watching, only half understanding, the proceedings which would determine their lives or deaths, and he himself giving his evidence, trying conscientiously to remember every word spoken on both sides; one word remembered might make the difference between the lash and the rope.
“Arrest those men!” he snapped. “Put them under confinement.”
“Sir! Sir!”
“None o’ that!” growled Brown.
Remorseless hands dragged the protesting men away.
“Where are the other mutineers?” demanded Hornblower.
“Down below, sir, I fancies,” said Brown. “Some o’ the Frenchies is down there, too.”
Odd how a beaten crew so often scuttled below. Hornblower honestly believed that he would rather face the fighting madness of the victors on deck than surrender ignominiously in the dark confines of the ‘tween-decks.
A loud hail from the Porta Coeli came to his ears.
“Sir Horatio!” hailed Freeman’s voice. “We’ll be all aground if we don’t get way on the ships soon. I request permission to cast off and make sail.”
“Wait!” replied Hornblower.
He looked round him; the three ships locked together, prisoners under guard here, there, and everywhere. Below decks, both in the Bonne Celestine and in the Flame, there were enemies still unsecured, probably many more in total than he had men under his orders. A shattering crash below him, followed by screams and cries; the Flame shook under a violent blow. Hornblower remembered the sound of a cannon-shot striking on his inattentive ears a second before; he looked round. The two surviving gunboats were resting on their oars a couple of cables’ lengths away, their bows pointing at the group of ships. Hornblower could guess they were in shoal water, almost immune from attack. A jet of smoke from one of the gunboats, and another frightful crash below, and more screams. Those twenty-four-pounder balls were probably smashing through the whole frail length of the brig, whose timbers could resist their impact hardly better than paper. Hornblower plunged into the urgency of the business before him like a man into a raging torrent which he had to swim.
“Get those hatches battened down, Brown!” he ordered. “Put a sentry over each. Mr. Gibbons!”
“Sir?”
“Secure your hatches. Get ready to make sail.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“What topmen are there here? Man the halliards. Who can take the wheel? What, none of you? Mr. Gibbons! Have you a quartermaster to spare? Send one here immediately. Mr. Freeman! You can cast off and make sail. Rendezvous at the other prize.”
Another shot from those accursed gunboats crashed into the Flame’s stern below him. Thank God the wind was off shore and he could get clear of them. The Porta Coeli had set her boom-mainsail again and had got clear of the Bonne Celestine; Gibbons was supervising the setting of the latter’s lug-mainsail while half a dozen hands boomed her off from the Flame.
“Hoist away!” ordered Hornblower as the vessels separated. “Hard a-starboard, Quartermaster.”
A sound overside attracted his attention. Men — mutineers or Frenchmen — were scrambling out through the shot-holes and hurling themselves into the sea, swimming towards the gunboats. Hornblower saw the white hair of Nathaniel Sweet trailing on the surface of the water as he struck out, twenty feet away from him. Of all the mutineers he was the one who most certainly must not be allowed to escape. For the sake of England, for the sake of the service, he must die. The seaman acting as sentry at the after hatchway did not look as if he were a capable marksman.