“I suppose you have come,” said the whiskered man at the head of the table, “to thrust yourself among your betters. Another soft-headed ignoramus come to be a nuisance to those who have to try to teach you your duties. Look at him” — the speaker with a gesture demanded the attention of everyone at the table — “look at him, I say! The King’s latest bad bargain. How old are you?”
“S-seventeen, sir,” stuttered Hornblower.
“Seventeen!” the disgust in the speaker’s voice was only too evident. “You must start at twelve if you ever wish to be a seaman. Seventeen! Do you know the difference between a head and a halliard?”
That drew a laugh from the group, and the quality of the laugh was just noticeable to Hornblower’s whirling brain, so that he guessed that whether he said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ he would be equally exposed to ridicule. He groped for a neutral reply.
“That’s the first thing I’ll look up in Norie’s Seamanship,” he said.
The ship lurched again at that moment, and he clung on to the table.
“Gentlemen,” he began pathetically, wondering how to say what he had in mind.
“My God!” exclaimed somebody at the table. “He’s seasick!”
“Seasick in Spithead!” said somebody else, in a tone in which amazement had as much place as disgust.
But Hornblower ceased to care; he was not really conscious of what was going on round him for some time after that. The nervous excitement of the last few days was as much to blame, perhaps, as the journey in the shore boat and the erratic behaviour of the Justinian at her anchors, but it meant for him that he was labelled at once as the midshipman who was seasick in Spithead, and it was only natural that the label added to the natural misery of the loneliness and homesickness which oppressed him during those days when that part of the Channel Fleet which had not succeeded in completing its crews lay at anchor in the lee of the Isle of Wight. An hour in the hammock into which the messman hoisted him enabled him to recover sufficiently to be able to report himself to the first lieutenant; after a few days on board he was able to find his way round the ship without (as happened at first) losing his sense of direction below decks, so that he did not know whether he was facing forward or aft. During that period his brother officers ceased to have faces which were mere blurs and came to take on personalities; he came painfully to learn the stations allotted him when the ship was at quarters, when he was on watch, and when hands were summoned for setting or taking in sail. He even came to have an acute enough understanding of his new life to realize that it could have been worse — that destiny might have put him on board a ship ordered immediately to sea instead of one lying at anchor. But it was a poor enough compensation; he was a lonely and unhappy boy. Shyness alone would long have delayed his making friends, but as it happened the midshipmen’s berth in the Justinian was occupied by men all a good deal older than he; elderly master’s mates recruited from the merchant service, and midshipmen in their twenties who through lack of patronage or inability to pass the necessary examination had never succeeded in gaining for themselves commissions as lieutenants. They were inclined, after the first moments of amused interest, to ignore him, and he was glad of it, delighted to shrink into his shell and attract no notice to himself.
For the Justinian was not a happy ship during those gloomy January days. Captain Keene — it was when he came aboard that Hornblower first saw the pomp and ceremony that surrounds the captain of a ship of the line — was a sick man, of a melancholy disposition. He had not the fame which enabled some captains to fill their ships with enthusiastic volunteers, and he was devoid of the personality which might have made enthusiasts out of the sullen pressed men whom the press gangs were bringing in from day to day to complete the ship’s complement. His officers saw little of him, and did not love what they saw. Hornblower, summoned to his cabin for his first interview, was not impressed — a middle-aged man at a table covered with papers, with the hollow and yellow cheeks of prolonged illness.