Mr Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester

“I must speak to the Captain.”

“Then come on board and speak to him. What the devil — ?”

“Please ask the Captain if I may speak to him.”

Pellew appeared at the after-cabin window; he could hardly have helped hearing the bellowed conversation.

“Yes, Mr Hornblower?”

Hornblower told him the news.

“Keep to loo’ard, Mr Hornblower.”

“Yes, sir. But the stores —”

“What about them?”

Hornblower outlined the situation and made his request.

“It’s not very regular,” mused Pellew. “Besides —”

He did not want to shout aloud his thoughts that perhaps everyone in the longboat would soon be dead of plague.

“We’ll be all right, sir. It’s a week’s rations for the squadron.” That was the point, the vital matter. Pellew had to balance the possible loss of a transport brig against the possible gain of supplies, immeasurably more important, which would enable the squadron to maintain its watch over the outlet to the Mediterranean. Looked at in that light Hornblower’s suggestion had added force.

“Oh, very well, Mr Hornblower. By the time you bring the stores out I’ll have the crew transferred. I appoint you to the command of the Caroline.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Mr Tapling will continue as passenger with you.”

“Very good, sir.”

So when the crew of the longboat, toiling and sweating at the sweeps, brought the two lighters down the bay, they found the Caroline swinging deserted at her anchors, while a dozen curious telescopes from the Indefatigable watched the proceedings. Hornblower went up the brig’s side with half a dozen hands.

“She’s like a blooming Noah’s Ark, sir,” said Maxwell.

The comparison was apt; the Caroline was flush-decked, and the whole available deck area was divided by partitions into stalls for the cattle, while to enable the ship to be worked light gangways had been laid over the stalls into a practically continuous upper deck.

“An’ all the animiles, sir,” said another seaman.

“But Noah’s animals walked in two by two,” said Hornblower. “We’re not so lucky. And we’ve got to get the grain on board first. Get those hatches unbattened.”

In ordinary conditions a working party of two or three hundred men from the Indefatigable would have made short work of getting in the cargo from the lighters, but now it had to be done by the longboat’s complement of eighteen. Luckily Pellew had had the forethought and kindness to have the ballast struck out of the holds, or they would have had to do that weary job first.

“Tail on to those tackles, men,” said Hornblower.

Pellew saw the first bundle of grain sacks rise slowly into the air from the lighter, and swung over and down the Caroline’s hatchway.

“He’ll be all right,” he decided. “Man the capstan and get under way, if you please, Mr Bolton.”

Hornblower, directing the work on the tackles, heard Pellew’s voice come to him through the speaking trumpet.

“Good luck, Mr Hornblower. Report in three weeks at Gibraltar.”

“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Hornblower turned back to find a seaman at his elbows knuckling his forehead.

“Beg pardon, sir. But can you hear those cattle bellerin’, sir? ‘Tis mortal hot, an’ ’tis water they want, sir.”

“Hell,” said Hornblower.

He would never get the cattle on board before nightfall. He left a small party at work transferring cargo, and with the rest of the men he began to extemporize a method of watering the unfortunate cattle in the lighter. Half Caroline’s hold space was filled with water barrels and fodder, but it was an awkward business getting water down to the lighter with pump and hose, and the poor brutes down there surged about uncontrollably at the prospect of water. Hornblower saw the lighter heel and almost capsize; one of his men — luckily one who could swim — went hastily overboard from the lighter to avoid being crushed to death.

“Hell,” said Hornblower again, and that was by no means the last time.

Without any skilled advice he was having to learn the business of managing livestock at sea; each moment brought its lessons. A naval officer on active service indeed found himself engaged on strange duties. It was well after dark before Hornblower called a halt to the labours of his men, and it was before dawn that he roused them up to work again. It was still early in the morning that the last of the grain sacks was stowed away and Hornblower had to face the operation of swaying up the cattle from the lighter. After their night down there, with little water and less food, they were in no mood to be trifled with, but it was easier at first while they were crowded together. A bellyband was slipped round the nearest, the tackle hooked on, and the animal was swayed up, lowered to the deck through an opening in the gangways, and herded into one of the stalls with ease. The seamen, shouting and waving their shirts, thought it was great fun, but they were not sure when the next one, released from its bellyband, went on the rampage and chased them about the deck, threatening death with its horns, until it wandered into its stall where the bar could be promptly dropped to shut it in. Hornblower, looking at the sun rising rapidly in the east, did not think it fun at all.

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