“Thought we’d lost you,” said Bracegirdle, helping him in and thumping him on the back. “Midshipman Hornblower, our flying angel.”
Finch was in the top, too, smiling his fool’s smile and surrounded by the crew of the top. Everything seemed mad and exhilarating. It was a shock to remember that they were in the midst of a battle, and yet the firing had ceased, and even the yelling had almost died away. He staggered to the side of the top — strange how difficult it was to walk — and looked over. Bracegirdle came with him. Foreshortened by the height he could make out a crowd of figures on the Frenchman’s deck. Those check shirts must surely be worn by British sailors. Surely that was Eccles, the Indefatigable’s first lieutenant on the quarterdeck with a speaking trumpet.
“What has happened?” he asked Bracegirdle, bewildered.
“What has happened?” Bracegirdle stared for a moment before he understood. “We carried her by boarding. Eccles and the boarders were over the ship’s side the moment we touched. Why, man, didn’t you see?”
“No, I didn’t see it,” said Hornblower. He forced himself to joke. “Other matters demanded my attention at that moment.”
He remembered how the mizzen-top had lurched and swung, and he felt suddenly sick. But he did not want Bracegirdle to see it.
“I must go on deck and report,” he said.
The descent of the main shrouds was a slow, ticklish business, for neither his hands nor his feet seemed to wish to go where he tried to place them. Even when he reached the deck he still felt insecure. Bolton was on the quarterdeck supervising the clearing away of the wreck of the mizzenmast. He gave a start of surprise as Hornblower approached.
“I thought you were overside with Davy Jones,” he said. He glanced aloft. “You reached the mainyard in time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. I think you’re born to be hanged, Hornblower.” Bolton turned away to bellow at the men. “‘Vast heaving, there! Clynes, get down into the chains with that tackle! Steady, now, or you’ll lose it.”
He watched the labours of the men for some moments before he turned back to Hornblower.
“No more trouble with the men for a couple of months,” he said. “We’ll work ’em ’til they drop, refitting. Prize crew will leave us shorthanded, to say nothing of our butcher’s bill. It’ll be a long time before they want something new. It’ll be a long time for you, too, I fancy, Hornblower.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hornblower.
CHAPTER SIX — THE FROGS AND THE LOBSTERS
“They’re coming,” said Midshipman Kennedy.
Midshipman Hornblower’s unmusical ear caught the raucous sounds of a military band, and soon, with a gleam of scarlet and white and gold, the head of the column came round the corner. The hot sunshine was reflected from the brass instruments; behind them the regimental colour flapped from its staff, borne proudly by an ensign with the colour guard round him. Two mounted officers rode behind the colour, and after them came the long red serpent of the half-battalion, the fixed bayonets flashing in the sun, while all the children of Plymouth, still not sated with military pomp, ran along with them.
The sailors standing ready on the quay looked at the soldiers marching up curiously, with something of pity and something of contempt mingled with their curiosity. The rigid drill, the heavy clothing, the iron discipline, the dull routine of the soldier were in sharp contrast with the far more flexible conditions in which the sailor lived. The sailors watched as the band ended with a flourish, and one of the mounted officers wheeled his horse to face the column. A shouted order turned every man to face the quayside, the movements being made so exactly together that five hundred boot-heels made a single sound. A huge sergeant-major, his sash gleaming on his chest, and the silver mounting of his cane winking in the sun, dressed the already perfect line. A third order brought down every musket-butt to earth.
“Unfix — bayonets!” roared the mounted officer, uttering the first words Hornblower had understood.
Hornblower positively goggled at the ensuing formalities, as the fuglemen strode their three paces forward, all exactly to time like marionettes worked by the same strings, turned their heads to look down the line, and gave the time for detaching the bayonets, for sheathing them, and for returning the muskets to the men’s sides. The fuglemen fell back into their places, exactly to time again as far as Hornblower could see, but not exactly enough apparently, as the sergeant-major bellowed his discontent and brought the fuglemen out and sent them back again.