Mr Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester

The dark eyes met Masters’, and the gawky figure came to a halt, raising a hand selfconsciously to the brim of his dripping hat. His mouth opened and tried to say something, but closed again without achieving its object as shyness overcame him, but then the newcomer nerved himself afresh and forced himself to say the formal words he had been coached to utter.

“Come aboard, sir.”

“Your name?” asked Masters, after waiting for it for a moment.

“H-Horatio Hornblower, sir. Midshipman,” stuttered the boy.

“Very good, Mr Hornblower,” said Masters, with the equally formal response. “Did you bring your dunnage aboard with you?”

Hornblower had never heard that word before, but he still had enough of his wits about him to deduce what it meant.

“My sea chest, sir. It’s — it’s forrard, at the entry port.”

Hornblower said these things with the barest hesitation; he knew that at sea they said them, that they pronounced the word ‘forward’ like that, and that he had come on board through the ‘entry port’, but it called for a slight effort to utter them himself.

“I’ll see that it’s sent below,” said Masters. “And that’s where you’d better go, too. The captain’s ashore, and the first lieutenant’s orders were that he’s not to be called on any account before eight bells, so I advise you, Mr Hornblower, to get out of those wet clothes while you can.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hornblower; his senses told him, the moment he said it, that he had used an improper expression — the look on Masters’ face told him, and he corrected himself (hardly believing that men really said these things off the boards of the stage) before Masters had time to correct him.

“Aye aye, sir,” said Hornblower, and as a second afterthought he put his hand to the brim of his hat again.

Masters returned the compliment and turned to one of the shivering messengers cowering in the inadequate shelter of the bulwark. “Boy! Take Mr Hornblower down to the midshipmen’s berth.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Hornblower accompanied the boy forward to the main hatchway. Seasickness alone would have made him unsteady on his feet, but twice on the short journey he stumbled like a man tripping over a rope as a sharp gust brought the Justinian up against her cables with a jerk. At the hatchway the boy slid down the ladder like an eel over a rock; Hornblower had to brace himself and descend far more gingerly and uncertainly into the dim light of the lower gundeck and then into the twilight of the ‘tweendecks. The smells that entered his nostrils were as strange and as assorted as the noises that assailed his ears. At the foot of each ladder the boy waited for him with a patience whose tolerance was just obvious. After the last descent, a few steps — Hornblower had already lost his sense of direction and did not know whether it was aft or forward — took them to a gloomy recess whose shadows were accentuated rather than lightened by a tallow dip spiked onto a bit of copper plate on a table round which were seated half a dozen shirt-sleeved men. The boy vanished and left Hornblower standing there, and it was a second or two before the whiskered man at the head of the table looked up at him.

“Speak, thou apparition,” said he.

Hornblower felt a wave of nausea overcoming him — the after effects of his trip in the shore boat were being accentuated by the incredible stuffiness and smelliness of the ‘tweendecks. It was very hard to speak, and the fact that he did not know how to phrase what he wanted to say made it harder still.

“My name is Hornblower,” he quavered at length.

“What an infernal piece of bad luck for you,” said a second man at the table, with a complete absence of sympathy.

At that moment in the roaring world outside the ship the wind veered sharply, heeling the Justinian a trifle and swinging her round to snub at her cables again. To Hornblower it seemed more as if the world had come loose from its fastenings. He reeled where he stood, and although he was shuddering with cold he felt sweat on his face.

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